Well before the 2009 Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, Oscar-watchers were abuzz over the potential excitement in this year's major categories. Would Slumdog Millionaire's seemingly unstoppable march toward a Best Picture win be derailed by a surge of popular support for The Dark Knight or even - gulp! - WALL•E? Would the season's continued award-splitting between Milk's Sean Penn (recipient of 15 pre-Oscar citations thus far) and The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke (14 and counting) allow Clint Eastwood to sneak in a career-achievement win for Gran Torino? Would Kate Winslet receive her long-overdue trophy for Best Actress in Revolutionary Road, or for Best Supporting Actress in The Reader ... or could the performer, as she did at the Golden Globes, actually walk away with both awards?
The excitement was fun while it lasted, huh?
MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D
Immortalized in Don McLean's
"American Pie," the date of February 3, 1959, will forever be
remembered by rock 'n' roll historians and fans as "the day the
music died," when the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens,
and the Big Bopper crashed north of Clear Lake, Iowa. Five days
beforehand, though, the music was still very much alive in the Quad
Cities, as this trio of legends brought their Winter Dance Party tour
to Davenport's Capitol Theatre for two shows, rocking audiences
with such classics as "Peggy Sue," "La Bamba," and "Chantilly
Lace."
Friday's sensational opening-night presentation of Ring of Fire, the Johnny Cash tribute currently playing at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, was the beneficiary of an awful lot of goodwill before the production even started, and very little of it actually had to do with Johnny Cash.
If you haven't yet attended a production of the show, Agatha Christie's murder mystery The Mousetrap - which has been running in London's West End for more than 56 years now - is definitely worth a look-see. Boasting ripe British caricatures and the author's signature brand of mordant wit, this clever, funny play is one of Christie's most enjoyably constructed contraptions.
DEFIANCE
With the Golden Globes behind us and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) telecast not taking place until January 25, there's nothing for movie-award hounds to do now but wait for the announcement of this year's Oscar nominations on Thursday, January 22.
The current production of the musical revue Songs for a New World features a winning, frequently exemplary quartet and some excellent design ... and, in all honesty, I doubt I'd have enjoyed this Green Room Theatre presentation nearly as much as I did had it actually been performed at the Green Room Theatre.
GRAN TORINO
Born in Mississippi, veteran jazz
trumpeter Art Hoyle was raised in Oklahoma in the early 1930s, and
says that jazz "was just an inevitable part of the black community
when I was growing up. You heard it everywhere - jazz and blues,
and gospel music, of course. It was just part of everyday living."
