| Ray's Picks: '1776' a well-acted musical | | Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 3:05:26 AM by Blog57 Team | | Love old or unusual movies but never know when they're on? Here are four to watch this week: 1776 (1972): This is one of my personal favorites. It's based on the Broadway musical about events leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. If this sounds deranged, give the movie five minutes and you'll be hooked. It's full of slam-dunk acting: William Daniels as John Adams, Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, John Cullum as Edward Rutledge, Ron Holgate as Richard Henry Lee, and many more. The songs and surprisingly funny dialogue bring to life the compromises and strategies necessary to forge the document that transformed the colony into a republic. - 7 p.m. Monday, Turner Classic Movies How the West Was Won (1962): This one's also from my all-time favorites file.... | |
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| | | Lifetime frets about reaching a certain age | | Posted Sunday, October 22, 2006 7:08:29 AM by Blog57 Team | | "OH, my gosh," said Geralyn Lucas. "I've become a Lifetime movie!" Dressed in a black flapper-gone-goth dress with a pink flower tucked behind her dark hair, she addressed the nearly 200 people in the glam screening room of the new Hearst tower, just off Columbus Circle in Manhattan, on the evening of Oct. 11. .... | |
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| | | Catch Joe Cocker tomorrow night at Fantasy Springs | | Posted Saturday, September 30, 2006 11:03:04 AM by Blog57 Team | | If you can remember swooning as Richard Gere swept Debra Winger off in the last scene of An Officer and a Gentleman, relive the moment with Joe Cocker crooning Up Where We Belong tonight at 8 p.m. at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. Cocker, famous for the remake, shot to fame covering The Beatles With a Little Help From My Friends. Hes sure to please the audience with it and many others at the Resorts Special Events Center. Tickets are $49, $59 , $69 and $79 and can be purchased at the box office, by calling (800) 827-2946 or 342-5000 or online at www.fantasyspringsresort.com. .... | |
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| | | Rosanna Arquette to do Documentary Feature on 'Manopause' | | Posted Sunday, September 03, 2006 9:14:17 AM by Blog57 Team | | Rosanna Arquette plans to bring us a big screen documentary about a subject she says has been pretty much kept secret -- male menopause. It's a condition, she says, that 'No one ever talks about. But it's there." The project won't happen for a while. Right now Arquette is toiling up to 17-hour days on the set of her ABC "What About Brian?" series with Barry Watson, and she says her filmmaking efforts will be on hold until work on the series lets up. "It's coming along great, with a lot of surprises and plot switches," she says of the program that starts its new season Oct. 9. But, she says, "No one realizes how much of your life an hour show like this takes up." Arquette, whose filmmaking credits include the pop documentary "All We Are Saying" and "Searching For Debra Winger, "had intended to continue to concentrate on producing and directing when the offer for "Brian" came along.... | |
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| | | Music Industry Icon Mike Curb Pledges $10 Million to Cal State Northridge | | Posted Wednesday, August 30, 2006 7:07:32 AM by Blog57 Team | | Curb Records Chairman and former California Lt. Gov. Mike Curb has pledged $10 million to California State University, Northridge to endow his alma mater's nationally renowned arts college and provide a lead gift for the university's planned regional performing arts center that also will serve as a "learning laboratory" for students. Curb -- an award-winning songwriter, music producer and record company owner -- launched his 40-plus-year career as an 18-year-old student composing songs on the Northridge campus. Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester, in announcing Curb's gift, said it is the university's largest single cash contribution and the largest gift by a Northridge alumnus. In recognition of the gift, President Koester said she will ask the California State University's Board of Trustees to rename Northridge's arts college as the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.... | |
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| | | Road-testing the latest generation of garden tools | | Posted Sunday, August 13, 2006 1:01:17 AM by Blog57 Team | | Gardening, unfortunately, is more about dreary but necessary chores than tiptoeing through dewy grass snipping flowers to fill a beribboned basket. Unless you're the Duchess of Devonshire, which I definitely am not. There's only so much time my patient husband, a gardening widower, will devote to landscaping, especially when all he gets for his trouble is criticism. He's cut the grass too short. He's weed-whacked bald spots in the turf. He's mowed over brittle, brown magnolia leaves instead of bagging them. I could go on. Eventually, I've had to face the fact that I have to do more maintenance and less plant buying. This revelation must happen a lot in America; public relations people earn their living by bombarding me with news of gardening products that weigh less, are easier to handle, require no assembly or protect my dainty hands.... | |
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| | | Final clue in contest revealed | | Posted Tuesday, August 08, 2006 3:01:29 AM by Blog57 Team | | PORT TOWNSEND -- The fourth and final clue in the Port Townsend Film Festival's ``Guess-the-Guest'' contest was revealed Wednesday as the countdown continues for the seventh annual weekend movie marathon Sept. 15-17. Hidden within four clues offered over a four-week period is the identity of festival's featured guest. Previous guests have included such film stars from the 1950s and 1960s as Tony Curtis, Eva Marie Saint, Patricia Neal, Shirley Knight, Peter Fonda, Jane Powell, Dickie Moore, Debra Winger and Arliss Howard. The fourth 2006 clue reads: Our guest appeared in two films in Entertainment Weekly's list of 25 ``most controversial'' films. The first three clues were: * Howard Schultz has nothing on our guest * Another kind of tailor.... | |
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| | | How to deal with this pain | | Posted Saturday, July 22, 2006 5:02:09 AM by Blog57 Team | | As regional hostilities escalated sharply this week, two films highlighting efforts by Israelis and Palestinians to foster understanding and reconciliation between the two peoples were screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival. An all-women team of young filmmakers produced "Encounter Point," a powerful 90-minute documentary that portrays ordinary Israelis and Palestinians who have channeled the pain of their own private tragedies into action aimed at preventing further casualties of the conflict. "Can You Hear Me? Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight for Peace" is a shorter film by New York-based filmmaker Lilly Rivlin, who focuses on the role of women in peacemaking. .... | |
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| | | Second clue in film festival contest revealed | | Posted Monday, July 17, 2006 7:03:01 PM by Blog57 Team | | Hidden within four clues offered Wednesdays during four weeks is the identity of the featured celebrity guest for the film festival, which will be held Sept. 15-17. * First clue: Howard Schultz has nothing on our guest. * Second clue: Another kind of tailor. The third clue will be issued July 19, and the final clue will be revealed July 26. The identity of this year's Port Townsend Film Festival guest will be revealed on Aug. 2. Previous guests have included such film stars from the 1950s and '60s as Tony Curtis, Eva Marie Saint, Patricia Neal, Shirley Knight, Peter Fonda, Jane Powell, Dickie Moore, Debra Winger and Arliss Howard. The winning contestant will be selected at random from those who correctly guess the name of the guest by July 31.... | |
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| | | Taking the show on the road | | Posted Friday, June 30, 2006 1:04:19 PM by Blog57 Team | | A grizzled, diminutive 80-year-old actor playing King Lear lurched around the stage, terrorizing his daughters before descending into madness. Alvin Epstein's performance in the Actors' Shakespeare Project's production last fall was a tour de force. The show drew ecstatic reviews, both locally and nationally, its sold-out run extended twice. Now ``King Lear" opens tomorrow night in New York as something of an homage to the beloved Epstein, whose career has spanned 50 years. As soon as the play closed in Boston, artistic director Benjamin Evett and director Patrick Swanson knew they wanted to take it to New York, where Epstein, a longtime Brookline resident, now lives. The generosity of anonymous donors and the help of several celebrities who had worked with Epstein made that possible.... | |
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