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“The Dark Knight” - What did you think?
REVIEWS
It’s only fair for the second-most hyped summer movie (first being Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) that The Dark Knight’s viewers get a chance to comment on the film.
So - What do you think?
Did Heath Ledger’s performance deserve the buzz? Was the film too dark for a summer action film? Too dark for young kids? Any message to take home for discussion about society, violence and terrorism? Or am I reading something into a comic book movie …?
One more thing - Don’t give away too much for those who haven’t seen it yet. I think the above questions can be answered without providing spoiling details, but keep that in mind.
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HOT Fair music - Walker, Morgan and lots of familiar faces
The Heart O’ Texas Fair and Rodeo has announced its music lineup for this year’s fair and it’s filled with performers who definitely know the road to Waco.
The fair runs Oct. 2 to 11 and here’s who’s on the Bud Light True Music Stage:;
Thursday, Oct. 2 - Cory Morrow
Friday, Oct. 3 - Stoney LaRue
Saturday, Oct. 4 - Todd Fritsch and Kevin Fowler
Sunday, Oct. 5 - La Ley Day (Hispanic performers booked by Spanish language radio station KWOW-FM, La Ley)
Monday, Oct. 6 - The Gimbles
Wednesday, Oct. 8 - The Bellamy Brothers
Thursday, Oct. 9 - The Randy Rogers Band
Friday, Oct. 10 - Craig Morgan
Saturday, Oct. 11 - Aaron Watson and Neal McCoy
The headliner for the Sept. 27 Western Roundup that precedes the fair - no longer a gala, but a more casual “roundup” - is Clay Walker, with Dave Alexander Band opening for him.
Walker, Morgan and McCoy are the closest to A-list talent booked for the fair, though they’re more B-list or B+ list. Of the rest, Morrow, the Gimbles, the Bellamy Brothers, the Randy Rogers Band, Aaron Watson and Kevin Fowler have performed in Waco within the last year (I can’t remember if LaRue has, but know he has played Waco in recent years).
I asked HOT Fair President Wes Allison about that and he said it’s a combination of what the fair can afford - expect to start at $25,000 for a nationally known act - and what audiences will turn out for. Last year’s entertainment lineup lacked big national names - and the fair cracked 200,000 visitors for the first time.
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“The Dark Knight” - dynamic, disturbing
BATMAN INTERACTIVES
- link: Review: Read Carl's full take
- link: → Rank the Batman actors
- link: → Rank the Batman villains
- link: → The Joker: Who has the edge?
- link: → Batman quiz
Saw a critics’ screening of The Dark Knight in Dallas yesterday and while I’m supposed to hold my review until the movie opens this Friday (or late Thursday night), I’ll preview the preview by saying this may be the best of the Batman films - as well as the most unsettling.
It’s action-driven throughout, but without the comedy or campiness of the first four films. Like the best comic books, there’s a cerebral or philosophical streak to chew on as director Christopher Nolan expands the question of Batman’s vengeful vigilante nature to a societal level: Where does the rule of law fit in when it’s threatened by a nihilist terrorist like the Joker?
Heath Ledger’s intense performance as the Joker merits the praise it’s gotten so far, but he largely fleshes out the role Nolan and his brother Jonathan have written for him, that of a destructive madman beyond the usual motivations of criminals - greed, power, lust, revenge - and the larger loyalties to which the good usually appeal (love of family, country, humanity). It’s this aspect of the Joker, and possible parallels in our current national war on some terrorism, that’s the disturbing part of the film. How does a free society fight someone or something that simply wants to bring it all crashing down with no thought of building anything in its place? Is mindful violence the only answer to mindless violence?
Enough said, other than the film’s intensity and dark nature should make parents of young kids take its PG-13 rating seriously. I’ll try and post a discussion thread after the movie opens to see if I’m reading too much into a comic book film …
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Post your own “Grease” comments here
A confession here: As much as I’ve tried to screw my courage to the sticking place and review the Waco Children’s Theatre production of “Grease” this weekend, my heart’s not in it. I’ve seen my share of “Grease” productions over the years and I still don’t like that musical. I’ve never resonated with its greasers or Pink Ladies - my high school years were in the ’70s and different dynamics and music - and its conclusion that happiness lies in conforming with the fast and loose crowd (or, probably more accurately, the crowd that likes to project itself as that way, even if it isn’t) makes me grind my teeth. I say that knowing that Waco has a special place in its heart for “Grease” - productions from national tours to collegiate ones invariably have sold-out performances in Waco. They must be related to the girls who lived in the apartment above me and my roommates in college who played the Grease movie soundtrack seemingly every afternoon after classes.
At the same time, there’s a good amount of young talent in the Waco Children’s Theatre and musicals like this that mix singing, dancing and acting offer a showcase to display that talent. There’s good support, too, from people like director John Haskett, WCT president Linda Haskett and choreographer Jerry MacLauchlin.
So, given my subjectivity on the subject, I’ll let you guys with less jaded eyes/ears do the job of highlighting the praiseworthy for a broader audience. If you’ve attended “Grease” - three performances left if you haven’t - and want to salute something in the performances and production that’s worthwhile, step up here and post.
“Grease’s” remaining performances are at 7:30 tonight and Saturday (July 11-12) and 2:30 p.m. Sunday (July 13) at Waco High School Performing Arts Center. Tickets cost $10 at the door.
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Movies in 3DDDDDDD …
Saw a screening of the 3-D Journey to the Center of the Earth today at Starplex Galaxy 16 and found it fun in the same way an amusement park ride is - you’re there for the thrill, not the acting or the story.
The dialogue, for instance, is lifted by the page from the Book of Cliches (e.g., hero, female interest and teenage boy tumble hundreds of feet down a lava tube. Boy asks, “Where are we?” Umm, several hundred feet under the Earth’s surface, maybe?).
Many of the scenes with the nifty effects are lifted, too. The runaway mine train - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The nail-biting walk across an enormous chasm - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (though Journey’s version adds a nifty touch in that the walk is on magnetic rocks suspended in the air, with a tendency to flip upside down). The rampaging T rex -Jurassic Park. The flock of bioluminescent birds and the flying fish with really nasty fangs were original, but it really didn’t matter how much Journey borrowed and didn’t - the effects were what the film was about.
I did find myself wishing for several remakes, though: the 3-D versions of the Indiana Jones films, Jurassic Park, even King Kong and The Lord of the Rings. If 3-D effects could make a derivative action film enjoyable, think what it could do in the hands of a storyteller like Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson or George Lucas …
You have to wear special disposable (and supposedly recyclable), polarized glasses for the 3-D to work. That adds an extra $2 to the ticket price, according to Starplex’s Web site, but you don’t notice them much once the film starts. If you wear glasses, however, you may feel a bit dorkish
with glasses over your glasses.
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“Wanted’s” Baylor name-dropping
An inquisitive reader noticed a local connection in the Internet Movie Database’s trivia info for Wanted. The action film’s screenplay was written by Baylor graduates Derek Haas and Michael Brandt and continues a running joke that’s found in their other screenplays, including 2 Fast 2 Furious and their sterling adaptation of 3:10 to Yuma.
The two studied under Baylor professors Robert Darden and Michael Korpi and the students pay tribute to their elders by naming characters who die in their films after them. In 3:10 To Yuma, for instance, one of the first characters to bite the dust is named Thomas Darden.
Korpi’s not in Yuma or Wanted - Brandt told me in an interview last fall that Korpi’s a hard name to sneak into a movie - but Darden shows up in Wanted as the first victim of assassin-in-training Wesley Gibson.
According to the trivia tidbit in IMDB, former Baylor University president Robert Sloan gets a character shout-out, too, with the character played by Morgan Freeman bearing the name Sloan, the head of the mysterious, secret organization called The Fraternity.
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3-D movie at Starplex this Friday
When I did a story last month about Starplex Galaxy 16 getting the first digital projectors in town, one of the first questions I fielded was on whether that would allow 3-D movies to be screened.
The answer arrives Friday, July 11, when Starplex will show the 3D version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. I’m awaiting word on whether it will require disposable glasses or the semi-permanent ones that you return after the film; regardless, there’s an extra $2 tagged on the ticket price for the 3-D film, according to the Web site. Hollywood Jewel, incidentally, will have the 2D, but they’re working on getting their digital projector up and running by the end of July, I hear.
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James Hand’s Smithsonian Folk Fest gig to air online
Thanks to Deborah Orazi, a writer, country music fan and former Tribber, for this tip: West country singer-songwriter James Hand’s Sunday performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., part of the Texas emphasis at this summer’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival, will be carried online (I think the video link will be added the day of the show). His performance starts at 5 p.m. CST Sunday, July 6, for those who want to catch it.
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“WALL-E” as liberal propaganda?
My first reaction to this commentary that film critics didn’t sufficiently warn readers that Pixar’s latest animated feature WALL-E was liberal propaganda was a mental ‘Get a life, guy.’
For one thing, while admittedly pro-environment (which most reviews I saw had mentioned, including mine), the movie doesn’t paint government as the solution, as you might suppose for an intentionally political film. It affirms (towards the film’s close) inventiveness and initiative as fundamentally human traits (as do entrepeneurs) and attacks materialism and sloth, which some conservatives target as well (conservative Christians who feel pollution violates God’s command to be stewards of his world, in the first case, and, in the second, our own McLennan County Madman Ted Nugent, who frequently rails against parents who allow juvenile couch potatoes to grow in their homes). And, at its core, WALL-E’s a love story.
The hyperventilating tone of Bill Wyman’s piece probably irritated me more than his point and I had to wonder if he was so angry because it was a family film or because Pixar is so successful at whatever it touches.
Then I saw the enormous comment thread on Kyle Smith’s similar takedown of WALL-E and marveled at several things: the variety of comment; the ease at which comments and opinions were distorted by others; the ideological filters through which some people perceive everything; and the heated passion stirred up over a single movie, as if the millions who watch this would suddenly change their political views and consumer habits rather than simply laugh with their kids and pass the supersized popcorn.
Hmm. The impact of one family film vs. television commercials ingested daily that tell us our lives are incomplete unless we buy product A, B or C?
I can’t tell from my vantage point whether this “controversy” is merely the Internet showing off its strengths of speed and diversity - or a post-critical future where arts commentary is (to borrow a recent observation on American spirituality) “3,000 miles wide and three inches deep.”
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Happy 8th b’day, KWBU (FM)
Today marks the eighth year that Waco public radio station KWBU-FM has been a National Public Radio/Public Radio International affiliate.
Listeners like me probably take the station too much for granted, but it was a pretty big deal at the time. I dug out my story announcing the event:
Waco airwaves will crackle with a new sound Saturday, and it’s not fireworks going off three days early.
It’s the sound of public radio, heard for the first time in the Waco market as KWBU -FM (107.1) switches to National Public Radio and Public Radio International programming, ending Waco’s status as the largest American city without a public radio station.
For Waco transplants who grew attached, if not addicted, to such programs as “All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition,” “Prairie Home Companion” and “Car Talk” in other cities, Saturday represents the end of their listening drought. And for Waco natives who know radio only as a source of music or national talk shows, KWBU -FM and its new station manager Brodie Bashaw aim to demonstrate an alternative.
Some of the programming airing that first year has left - “Marketplace,” “Talk of the Nation,” “Echoes” - and the station’s on a different frequency (103.3) than the one on which it started (107.1), but, by and large, KWBU continues to offer much of what it did that first year. That’s praiseworthy, given the fact that the Waco station has had to grow its financial support from listeners each year simply to match increasing programming costs.
So, here’s a happy KWBU birthday wish to (station manager) Brodie Bashaw, Brazos Valley Broadcasting Foundation president Polly Anderson and their crew. It’s not quite the same thing as a pledge, but sincere, nonetheless.
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Thoughts of Waco while in Nashville
I flew up to Nashville Friday to pick up my middle daughter in a summer program at Vanderbilt University and two things caught my attention.
One was a full-page ad in the Nashville Scene entertainment weekly advertising a concert by Australian guitar phenom Tommy Emmanuel. Nashville, of course, has fielded its share of guitar whizzes, so the big spread on him indicated his talent obviously was appreciated by some of the best of the best. The Waco connection? Emmanuel performed at the Bosque River Stage in 2005 and 2006, for a fraction of the ticket price.
The second took place Saturday morning in downtown Nashville when I noticed a long line of scruffy, down-and-out men congregating outside a church. Turned out the church was offering free breakfast for men at the nearby Nashville Rescue Mission and as many men were at the church, there was an equal number going to and fro at the mission. Some may complain about the homeless on Waco streets, but it’s a fraction of what’s in larger cities.
I know our Trib blogs have been active over the last few months with posters either going on about how Waco sucks or singing the city’s praises. I’ve lived in much larger cities and my Waco experience has been in between - plenty to praise, but room for improvement. I think that’s true for most city dwellers and 24 hours in Nashville reminded me of that.
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On the arts and soccer
I missed the opening ceremonies of Sunday’s European soccer championship in Vienna, and honestly doubt this made it on American television, but the baritone singing the German national anthem was Eddie Gauntt, a Clifton native and 1979 Baylor grad.
Talk about globalization …
As for those of you who feel football always dominates the arts in Texas, you’re thinking too parochially. The New York Times reported last week that the celebrated Vienna State Opera, whose productions usually sell out, had to cancel one performance of “La forza del destino” because the European soccer championship (and the fear of game rowdies) had cut deeply into the opera’s audience. Attendance at the city’s Kunsthistorisches Museum was down 60 percent and the Burgtheater, which stages Shakespeare and Goethe, simply rented itself out for the month as a giant sports bar to Austria Telecom.
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Baylor Theatre’s “Tape” - fast forward to the good parts
Stephen Belber’s three-person drama “Tape,” whose three-performance Baylor Theatre run opened Thursday night at Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center, is one of those plays whose value lies in the questions that are raised or post-play discussions that take onstage action and flesh them out with real-world behavior.
So while the short play deals with date rape, self-identity, deception and manipulation, Belber doesn’t come to a firm conclusion about any of those as much as bat those balls into the audience for viewers to consider - a perfectly valid role for theater.
In “Tape,” two close friends from high school meet again 10 years later in a Lansing, Mich., motel room. Jon (Justin Locklear) is in town for the screening of his movie at the Lansing Film Festival; Vince (Sky Bennett) has come in from Oakland, Cal., for the occasion.
From the beginning of their reunion, however, something is not right. Jon soon brushes off the high school buddy banter to prod Vince about his latest failed relationship, a failure Vince attributes to his violent tendencies, and Vince’s continuing career as a small drug dealer supplying aging hippies in the Bay area. It’s not clear, though, why Jon is on the offensive so soon even though he says he’s simply caring for a friend.
Vince, too, has an agenda in his counter-questioning: He wants to know what happened between Jon and Vince’s ex-girlfriend Amy that night late in their senior year. Did Jon coerce Amy into sex? More specifically, did Jon rape her? When Jon confesses that maybe kinda sorta he did, Vince reveals he had been taping their conversation. Armed with the incriminating tape, he tries to knock his high school friend off the moral high ground he had been occupying.
Then Amy (Shaun Patterson) shows up at the motel room, invited by Vince, but not realizing Jon was there, too. She’s now an assistant prosecutor and her presence puts the play in a higher gear (Patterson’s controlled performance also steadies the play). Amy has her own set of questions and her own memories of the incident in question. Soon the professional interrogator shows the boys who’s the adult in the room, springing a trap that reveals their ostensible concern for her merely masks a personal selfishness.
Director Dan Buck gets good performances from his cast, given the play’s heavy emotional - and adult - content. Belber’s drama, however, feels like an extended acting exercise. There’s plenty of tension and emotion, but the audience often is left puzzled by what’s really motivating Jon and Vince; what’s expressed doesn’t fully answer it.
Why does Jon start criticizing Vince so soon if they haven’t seen each other in years? Is it simple jealousy that’s driving Vince to wrest a confession from Jon, or the three beers, one joint and two lines of cocaine that he ingests in the span of some 20 minutes? (Program notes, incidentally, remind the audience that Baylor doesn’t condone such behavior.)
I didn’t see “Tape” so much about the subject of date rape as the manipulation of others, either through fear, words, force or emotional intimidation. There’s plenty to chew on, however, and viewers might want to plan on some post-play discussion. Just turn off those tape recorders.
“Tape” continues with performances at 7:30 tonight (June 27) and Saturday at Theater 11 in Baylor’s Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center. Tickets cost $10; call 710-1865.
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Art movie alert - “The Visitor”
I almost overlooked this in running through the list of movies playing this weekend at Hollywood Jewel 16, but there, between WALL-E and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan was The Visitor, a small-scaled but acclaimed indie film about a college professor whose unexpected encounter with an immigrant couple squatting in his city apartment restores a humanity he had repressed after his wife’s death.
If you haven’t been impressed with summer movie fare yet (though WALL-E’s a sweet charmer and a remarkable accomplishment in animation), you might take in The Visitor. Given the typical half-life of indie films in a Waco summer, it won’t be there long.
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George Carlin - a Texas connection
Comedian George Carlin died of heart failure on Sunday. For many like me, he left several decades’ worth of memories, from his frequent “Saturday Night Live” appearances to later TV specials and occasional movie appearances (or voice ones: He was the VW bus in the animated Cars).
Carlin struck me as smart, fearless and, in later years, angry and maybe a little bitter. Most people mellow with age; he seemed to start mellow and grow sharper and less compromising with the years.
I remember my first day as a Daily Texan wire editor at the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court had upheld the government’s right to fine radio stations that broadcast adult language during hours when most children might be listening. The language in question was in Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television” routine - two of which you can hear most any given day on Waco streets when rap-thumping cars with windows down cruise by - and I expected my editors to debate the free speech ramifications of the story.
Their sole question? Did the wire story include the seven words in question? It did. “We’ll run it, then.”
John Fletcher, president of Fletcher Communications and a former Waco broadcaster (KJNE-FM), recalls Carlin worked with his father Earle Fletcher and Fort Worth radio station KXOL-AM (1360) early in Carlin’s career.
“My father felt that George was burning the candle at both ends, with an incredible radio show that ended at midnight, and then comedy until 3am at the Cellar night club,” he emailed me.
“He called him in and said, ‘Hoss, you’re going to have to choose between radio and comedy,’ knowing full well that George would choose radio. His reply shocked Dad: ‘You’re right, Boss. I’ve been needing someone to force me into a decision. I’m taking comedy, so I quit.’
“It was one of those forced decisions that turned out very well for George. He took newsman Jack Burns (who later teamed with Avery Schreiber to form the comedy team Burns & Schreiber) with him. Within 10 months, he was on (television’s) “The Jack Paar Show” and then his career really took off.
“Just think, in a short span of time, KXOL had George Carlin, Jack Burns, (then-future game show host) Rod Roddy, and (soon-to-become CBS News reporter and anchor) Bob Schieffer. A pretty good breeding ground for talent on a national scale!”
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West’s James Hand at Smithsonian’s Texas festival
West-area honky-tonking singer-songwriter James Hand and Temple’s Tejano stars Little Joe y La Familia are among the 23 Texas bands and musicians scheduled to play this coming week and next at the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Texas is one of three festival themes (NASA and Bhutan - there’s a combo - are the other two) and the weeklong fest will look at Texas music, food and wine (Isn’t beer the national wine of Texas?).
Little Joe and his band will play Wednesday through June 28, Hand and his band July 2-6 at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.
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Actors make BU’s “Brilliant Traces” glow with warmth, sympathy
For a play that celebrates the loves and foibles that make us human, it’s only fitting that it’s the human element that makes it work.
In Baylor Theatre’s “Brilliant Traces,” actors Daniel Hubbard and Adria McCauley carry the audience over the play’s more implausible parts, holding its attention for much of two hours without an intermission.
While their characters are neurotically flawed in different ways, the actors nonetheless make them sympathetic, crucial for the warm, sweet way in which Cindy Lou Johnson winds up her piece.
The setup: Rosannah, a scattered, voluble bride (McCauley) in a wedding gown crashes into an Alaskan cabin inhabited by Henry, a taciturn, troubled man (Hubbard).
Both are fleeing something, it turns out, and the layers of their personal histories slowly get peeled away in the course of their interaction.
Interestingly, Henry doesn’t say a word for the play’s first 20 minutes, but his actions in that time frame an important aspect of his character that sets the tone for the play.
After Rosannah collapses on his cabin floor, exhausted from driving non-stop from a near-wedding in Arizona to Alaska, Henry puts her in his bed, removes her gown and bathes her limbs. Whoever he is, he’s essentially kind - even if he ends up burning her satin wedding slippers (a key plot point).
Hubbard’s eyes communicate a hurt and sadness whose source is revealed late in the play. Think Darcy in Alaska and you’re not too far off.
McCauley’s character, on the other hand, is harder to make real - driving non-stop to Alaska without knowing why, surviving a blizzard in a wedding gown, her conversation a patchwork of thoughts.
Still, she makes her audience willing to come along and see what makes Rosannah tick. Every time Rosannah and Henry draw physically close in the play, there’s a charge in the air.
Director Becca Johnson makes good use of her surrounded space in the intimate Theater 11, keeping the mystery and interest high in what could have bogged down into a two-hour talkfest.
The play’s pacing is deliberate, but rarely drags. The one nagging, but minor problem on opening night was that the music cues and breaks were a bit loud, making the song lyrics used seem too overt or at odds tonally with the action onstage.
Sweet and humane in its outlook, if a little sentimental, “Brilliant Traces” offers an evening’s worth of personality, seasoned with wit and warmth. The play continues at 7:30 tonight and Saturday at Baylor’s Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Building. Tickets cost $10.
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More AFI “Best” movies - whatever
The American Film Institute released the latest round of Top 10 lists this week, this time the best of 10 genres, as chosen by actors, movie critics and industry insiders.
Their choices are, well, safe (though I wonder about Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights as the No. 1 romantic comedy. Or In Cold Blood as a courtroom drama?), which only reinforces my suspicion that the AFI’s on-going series of lists are meant to create money-making TV specials and drive occasional fans to DVD rentals to check out films with which they are unfamiliar.
Of the 100 films making the Top 10 Genre cut, three - three - came out after the year 2000, The Lord of the Rings, Shrek and Finding Nemo.
I find the film lists on www.greencine.com or www.netflix.com more likely to introduce me to something I haven’t seen and would find worthwhile.
Let’s see. In the last 10 years, other AFI lists have covered Top 100 of All Time, Top 100 Stars. Top 100 Cheers, 100 Movie Quotes, 100 Songs, 100 Years of Film Scores, 100 Heroes & Villains, 100 Laughs, 100 Passions, 100 Thrills …
I know, I know. They’re only preparing the way for Top 100 Films Not Yet Referenced by the AFI …
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WSO outdoor pops - some numbers
A follow-up to last week’s thinking-aloud post on bringing the Waco Symphony Orchestra back to downtown for an outdoor pops concert:
The outdoor pops concerts were held in the late 1980s and early 1990s and drew crowds of 6,000 to 8,000 people (Susan Taylor, executive director of the Waco Symphony Association, thinks attendence may have been as high as 10,000, and that could be; I just remember the hillside surrounding the Indian Spring Park amphitheatre blanketed with people).
It’s not cheap. The cost of hiring 50-60 orchestra musicians for a pops concert runs in the ballpark of $18,000 to $20,000 (and that’s less than the cost of a full orchestra for a regular season concert).
In contrast, the city’s Jonathan Cook tells me his four-concert Brazos Nights budget runs about $35,000, thanks to help from corporate sponsorships (Spanish-language radio station KWOW-FM, “La Ley,” for instance, underwrote part of the costs for the Cinco de Mayo-themed Brazos Nights concert on May 2). Entertainers are paid $500 to $7,500, but he adds it’s hard to find a good headliner for under $10,000 these days. And with tomorrow’s gas prices …
Expensive, but doable, if there’s a way to find new corporate underwriting and/or private donors. Charging admission would add a whole layer of logistical complication to such a concert, but if you could get 2,000 people to pay $5 for a pops concert, it seems like you could knock a good chunk out of your operating cost (at least according to Hoover economics, which, admittedly, is a bit naive and simplistic).
Any way, it’s more food for thought as you’re watching Madagascar Thursday night, June 19, at Heritage Square …
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Trickle-down Tonys
On the premise that what musical wins a Tony Award will eventually make its way to Waco (2004’s “Avenue Q” and 2007’s “Spring Awakening” excepted), I checked this year’s winners for any tips what time - and national tours - will bring to Waco.
On the musical front, there was the evening’s big prize-magnet, the revival of “South Pacific,” which took home seven Tonys, including Best Revival, and the Latino-infused “In the Heights,” the Best Musical winner of the year.
I thought that the national tour of “South Pacific”that stopped in Waco several years ago might give pause to promoters organizing a new tour, but that performance was five years ago. “South Pacific” is enough of an evergreen, too, that repeats don’t necessarily mean fading attendance. Don’t be surprised if “South Pacific” returns in another two or three years.
As for “In the Heights,” that’s harder to second-guess. It’s contemporary, energetic and skews to younger audiences; on the other, it’s somewhat specific to the New York neighborhood from which its title refers, Washington Heights in northern Manhattan. (Props to composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, by the way, for his rapped acceptance speech. Why didn’t anyone think of that sooner?) Will that Hispanic experience translate to, say, Los Angeles’ Latino culture or Texas’ Tejano? Will it play in Peoria? Those are considerations that promoters debate before mounting national tours; should “In the Heights” tour, count on it hitting major cities first (and perhaps last) before a tour of Waco-sized cities.
As for the year’s Tony-winning drama “August: Osage County,” well, chances of it playing in Waco are only slightly better than in the Oklahoma county of its title (OK, maybe better than that). National tours of three-and-a-half-hour-long dramatic plays are rare; even shorter ones tend to feature celebrity casting or well-known plays. Critics and New York audiences may fall over new work like this, but in Flyover Country, name-recognition among general audiences is the name of the game.
Sad but true.
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Time to bring back WSO outdoor pops?
Next Thursday brings the second free movie screening to downtown’s Heritage Square and, if audiences respond to Madagascar as they did to Shrek, another crowd of more than 1,000.
Here’s my idea to the (funding) powers that be for next year: How about an outdoor pops concert by the Waco Symphony Orchestra? The WSO used to have them on a regular basis at Indian Spring Park until rainouts two consecutive years caused a major underwriter (the Trib, I think) to back out.
The pluses? It’s family-friendly, good music and a good excuse to break out the blankets and picnic baskets (and bottles of wine, if you’re so inclined). I remember some concerts drew double last month’s Shrek crowd (at least) and it seems like a fun addition to the cultural scene that downtown developers are trying to create for young professionals and loft-dwellers they’re wanting to attract.
Or, a variation on the theme, have the WSO accompany live a movie projected on the Alamo Drafthouse’s inflatable outdoor screen. I’m not sure what film scores are out there and securing two sets of rights (to show the film and play the soundtrack) might price it out of anyone’s budget. However, I once heard the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra play Carmine Coppola’s score to Abel Gance’s silent film Napoleon (here’s a poster from a 1981 New York City/American Symphony Orchestra performance) and it was a truly thrilling experience.
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Heath Ledger was AWESOME… Such shame is is gone.. The movie was pretty good but a bit too long….
... read the full comment by batman fan | Comment on "The Dark Knight" - What did you think? Read "The Dark Knight" - What did you think?
A good lineup for the fair. Quit whining. It’s free with admission.
... read the full comment by Brad | Comment on HOT Fair music - Walker, Morgan and lots of familiar faces Read HOT Fair music - Walker, Morgan and lots of familiar faces
So much for “they’ll never find me in Waco … “
... read the full comment by choover | Comment on "The Dark Knight" - What did you think? Read "The Dark Knight" - What did you think?
Do the HOT Fair organizers have any other options than Cory Morrow, Kevin Fowler, Aaron Watson nand Neal McCoy ? Geez! These guys play in Waco more than performers who live here. How about a little effort and variety? New concept, I know, but……..?????!!
... read the full comment by Citizen | Comment on HOT Fair music - Walker, Morgan and lots of familiar faces Read HOT Fair music - Walker, Morgan and lots of familiar faces