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Lorne Michaels — Nearly 50 Years Of Comedy Gold
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Lorne Michaels — Nearly 50 Years Of Comedy Gold

Lorne Michaels, the man behind the curtain at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ has been minting comedy gold for nearly 50 years. On April 24, 1976, Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer of the late-night NBC comedy program “Saturday Night” – it had not yet changed its name to “Saturday Night Live” – appeared on camera in hopes of luring the Beatles to reunite on the program. The Fab Four’s last concert had been eight years earlier in San Francisco, and the band had stopped recording together in 1969. Michaels addressed the band members by name – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – and then acknowledged rumors that the group might get back together. “It’s also been said that no one has yet to come up with enough money to satisfy you,” Michaels said. “Well, if it’s money ...
From The Comedic Mind Of Tina Fey Comes A New Twist On The Modern Classic
CELEBRITY NEWS

From The Comedic Mind Of Tina Fey Comes A New Twist On The Modern Classic

From the comedic mind of Tina Fey comes a new twist on the modern classic. MEAN GIRLS New student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is welcomed into the top of the social food chain by the elite group of popular girls called “The Plastics,” ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika). However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), she finds herself prey in Regina’s crosshairs. As Cady sets to take down the group’s apex predator with the help of her outcast friends Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), she must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school.
‘The Exorcist’ Hollywood’s Imagination, And Our Obsession With Evil
CELEBRITY NEWS, CULTURE, MOVIES, SUPERNATURAL

‘The Exorcist’ Hollywood’s Imagination, And Our Obsession With Evil

50 years later, ‘The Exorcist’ continues to possess Hollywood’s imagination, reflecting our obsession with evil. When the “The Exorcist” premiered 50 years ago, in December 1973, some theatergoers fainted or broke down in tears. A few even vomited. The film, which cast a young Linda Blair as a girl claiming to be possessed by the devil, was an almost instant success, with moviegoers waiting in line for hours to secure tickets. It went on to gross over US$440 million worldwide. The horror film eventually received two Oscars, for Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay. In the 50 years since, the cultural fascination with Satan has persisted. But as religiosity has waned, popular portrayals of Satan have also changed. Rather than embody pure evil, Luciferian characters that are complicated – ...
The Perils Of Live Theater
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The Perils Of Live Theater

What live theater can learn from Branson, Missouri. In summer 2023, the publication American Theatre declared unequivocally that live theater was “in crisis” – particularly regional, nonprofit theaters. Writing for The New York Times, Isaac Butler preferred the phrase “on the verge of collapse.” The numbers are stark. Not only have dozens of theaters across the country closed their doors since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, but those that are still open have also contracted their seasons massively, producing 40% fewer shows than in 2019. What can regional, nonprofit theaters do to survive? One place to look for ideas is the tourist town of Branson, Missouri. Scholars and theater critics have ignored this mecca of live entertainment that attracts millions of people a year, larg...
Reality TV Show Contestants — Unpaid Interns Or Hollywood Stars
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Reality TV Show Contestants — Unpaid Interns Or Hollywood Stars

Reality TV show contestants are more like unpaid interns than Hollywood stars. In December 2018, John Legend joined then-newly elected U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to criticize the exploitation of congressional interns on Capitol Hill, most of whom worked for no pay. Legend’s timing was ironic. NBC’s “The Voice” had just announced that Legend would join as a judge. He would go on to reportedly earn US$14 million per season by his third year on the show. Meanwhile, all of the participants on “The Voice,” save for the winner, earned $0 for their time, apart from a housing and food stipend – much like those congressional interns. The fall 2023 TV lineup will be saturated with low-cost reality TV shows like “The Voice”; for networks, it’s an end-around to the ongoing TV writers and ac...
New Rock Follies Review Musical Brings 1970s Feminist TV Sensation To The Stage
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New Rock Follies Review Musical Brings 1970s Feminist TV Sensation To The Stage

Rock Follies review: powerful new musical brings 1970s feminist TV sensation to the stage. Rock Follies was a groundbreaking television series about an all-female rock band that originally aired for two seasons in 1976 and 1977. It wove fantastical, trippy and campy rock-musical numbers together with the often less glamorous realities of show business. The television show also led to two soundtrack albums, Rock Follies and Rock Follies of ’77, that charted in the UK. Now, nearly 50 years after it first aired, the show has been reimagined as a stage musical with a new book by Chloë Moss that showcases the TV show’s original music from Howard Schuman and Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay. The Chichester Festival Theatre staging is a successful update for a contemporary live audience. It pays musica...
SAG-AFTRA Flexing Their Labor Power
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SAG-AFTRA Flexing Their Labor Power

From Picket Lines to Plot Lines Hundreds of thousands of creative workers in the film and television industry are currently flexing their labor power. For the first time in more than 60 years, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (which merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012 to become SAG-AFTRA) are striking simultaneously. Filming has halted midproduction and press junkets are on hold. Negotiations are reportedly poised to resume on August 4. At the heart of the unions’ conflict with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents all the major entertainment media corporations, are the issues of royalty payments—known as residuals—and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The former is an ...
The Center Of The Miami Housewife Universe
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The Center Of The Miami Housewife Universe

The Real Housewives Of Miami. This entry in the "Real Housewives" franchise sticks to the tried-and-true formula that has made other incarnations a staple on the Bravo schedule. The women featured on the series are at the center of the Miami housewife universe, though not all are actually wives at the time of the show's filming. Among the women are Adriana De Moura, known as the Brazilian bombshell of Miami's art scene, and Texas native Lea Black, a committed philanthropist who is married to one of America's top criminal defense attorneys.
Kiss And Tell Celebrity Gossip
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Kiss And Tell Celebrity Gossip

The term 'media whore' is now widely used in celebrity gossip circles. Though it may come across as something derogatory if you go by the literary meaning of the term, the same cannot be said if you take it as a modern idiom. It refers to celebrities who always court celeb gossip reporters to get themselves into the focus. They deliberately make off-color comments to create a controversy in the pages of entertainment news. This category of celebrities, mostly ex reality show stars or mainstream celebrities past their primes, manage to grab headlines not just by making statements which are bizarre and fictional. They sometimes get into relationships with bona-fide celebrities to bask in the sunlight of short-lived fame. Kiss and tell stories are ones where the partner of a celebrity sel...
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child Picks Up 19 Years After The Deathly Hallows Book Left Off
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Harry Potter And The Cursed Child Picks Up 19 Years After The Deathly Hallows Book Left Off

About Harry Potter and The Cursed Child Arriving on Broadway via London’s West End, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth installment of the beloved J.K. Rowling story series. Unlike its predecessors which were churned out by the author in the form of massive tomes, The Cursed Child was instead written collaboratively as a play by Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany. But in keeping with Rowling’s lengthy story style, the five-hour production is split into two parts, intended on being viewed back-to-back in the same day, or over the course of two consecutive days. Following its West End premier in July 2016, much of the original London cast packed up and brought the play to New York for its 2018 American debut. Synopsis Harry Potter and the Cursed Child picks up 19 years aft...