Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” a film that set the standard for not just animation, but for the art of musical storytelling, garnered such critical praise in its initial theatrical release that it received multiple Academy Award nominations. Had Walt Disney been alive, he would have surely been proud — the founding father of Walt [...]
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All of that changed when Lincoln Center’s annual Midsummer Night Swing imported The Time Jumpers, a group of well-respected western musicians from Nashville that are nearly the only ones left keeping Western Swing music alive. To see this old fashioned bunch of artists take the outdoor stage at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park was quite a unique experience. New Yorkers gathered around the stage, decked out in cowboy boots and hats, ready to do some two stepping on the specially designed dance floor. “The Time Jumpers only play a couple road dates a year,” Ranger Doug Green told me while we chatted backstage before the performance. When not playing with this group, Green keeps busy as the lead singer of an equally impressive western band, Riders in the Sky. The fact that Green and his band-mates agreed to play New York City put a smile on his face. “It’s the most exciting town on Earth and we have a great turn out.” Green, a self-professed music historian, reminisced about the seeming lost art of Western Swing, pinning the original style to musician Bob Willis. “Back in the 1930s, [Willis] took the fiddle music he grew up with and mixed it with Benny Goodman which he was hearing on the radio and mixed the two together.” While that sound dropped off the pop culture radar when rock music swept the scene in the 1950s, Green beams with pride, asserting that the Time Jumpers are keeping it alive. Continue reading Bringing Country Music to Lincoln Center  Jeffrey Katzenberg It’s no wonder that Jeffrey Katzenberg and the entire DreamWorks team were weary of Nicole LaPorte’s new book, The Men Who Would Be King: An almost epic tale of moguls, movies, and a company called DreamWorks, a sweeping look at the tumultuous creation of Hollywood’s wunderkind studio. Just five years earlier, Katzenberg’s meteoric rise to success at Disney was chronicled in James Stewart’s book DisneyWar. And earlier this year, moviegoers were treated to yet a further look at the one-time studio chairman of the Walt Disney Company in the insider-documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, a look back at the rebirth of Disney’s animation franchise. Katzenberg, with the soft-spoken help of Roy Disney, injected new life into the animation arm of the studio following a drought that lasted more than 30 years — it wasn’t until the Katzenberg-led Little Mermaid took Hollywood by storm that critics paid attention to the integral part of Disney that birthed Mickey Mouse. Neither leaders Michael Eisner nor Frank Wells saw any life left in drawings, rather they hoped to boost the performance of live-action movies and expand Disney’s theme parks and hotels. Following a bitter, and soon-to-be court contested departure from Disney, Katzenberg found himself trying to kick start animation at DreamWorks SKG, the studio he created with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg. If he could usher in a new era at Disney, certainly he could work the same magic across town. Or so he thought. Antz, the first animated release under the DreamWorks banner, only made $90 million in the U.S., or as LaPorte reports, “about as much as it had cost, thanks to high-profile voice talents… no longer were actors always agreeing to make animated films on the cheap.” Then came the traditionally animated films The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado, both failing to find expected critical praise. Spirit, Sinbad and Shark Tale rounded out the list of less than stellar pieces under the one-time animation Midas’ oversight. Despite Katzenberg being a cheerleader of traditional animation, he ignored the rest of his Disney schooling, opting instead to fill animated films with celebrities rather than heart — none of Disney’s classics relied on star power. It was the magic of fantastical storytelling, beautiful music, and even the Disney brand that made audiences fall in love with Snow White, Cinderella and the pantheon of animated masterpieces making up the studio’s rich library.
So many friendly recommendations. But, wait a minute. I’m a theatre reporter. Why haven’t I seen an alert telling me someone is seeing La Cage aux Folles or Hair? After all, Broadway has just experienced an onslaught of show openings and the Tony Awards are coming up. Yet, none of my Foursquare friends are checking in to a show tonight, which is the case mostly every night. Since this year’s South By Southwest festival, it seems like every news outlet, both broadcast and print, has been latching onto Foursquare, a social networking tool that hipsters in New York City have been playing with their friends since it debuted in March of last year. A person could hardly consider themselves digital insiders, up until now, unless they were checking in to a location around town that was swarming with other in-the-know individuals. There are Foursquare badges for checking in to a venue with photo booths (“photogenic”), being a frequent gym user (“gym rat”), and eating at 20 different pizza places (“pizzaiolo”). Bravo, Zagat, and the New York Times have all joined forces with the social networking company, awarding their own special badges to select users. Yet, at the time of writing this article, there is no Broadway badge. Broadway marketers have finally harnessed the power of Facebook. A Twitter campaign for last season’s musical Next to Normal was so successful that it earned a Webby Award nomination. Now, with Foursquare gaining so much buzz, it is time or Broadway’s 21st century Mad Men to boldly go where the internet’s trendsetters are now playing, location-based applications. Continue reading Broadway Marketing Ready to Play Foursquare In an age when television programming is scattered across what often seems like thousands of channels, the idea of one channel ruling them all is a joke. There was a time when the three networks, NBC, ABC and CBS commanded the airwaves, but those days are tucked away in the annals of TV history. Viewers are [...] As if the reality of media layoffs and non-existant newspaper readerships wasn’t enough of a reason for journalists to take up drinking, along comes Broadway’s ‘Time Stands Still,’ a play focusing on the emotional breakdown of a war correspondent. Photo by Joan Marcus Written by Donald Margulies and directed by Daniel Sullivan, ‘Time Stands Still’ touches on [...] While many New Yorkers stick their noses up at the thought of a “theatre scene” in Los Angeles, there is plenty of live theatre going on in the spread-out city. Some of it is actually worth watching. Having covered the Los Angeles theatre beat for a long while, it was always my hope to [...] |
   
  
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Copyright © 2010 SofaSnark.com - All Rights Reserved by James Sims
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Remember those Pace Picante Sauce 
It’s Friday night. 8 p.m. After scanning Facebook for last minute status updates from friends and scrolling through a nearly endless number of tweets, it’s time to figure out what to do around New York City. My iPhone lights up with an alert message. A friend has just checked in on Foursquare at the rooftop bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another alert. Someone else is at a Sara Silverman book signing at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square. Alert. Party at the Hotel on Rivington. Alert. Drinks at Mason Dixon.
