CELEBRITY NEWS

The Perils Of Live Theater
CELEBRITY NEWS, Journalism, POLITICS

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...
As Entertaining As The ‘Barbie’ And ‘Star Wars’ Universes Are, They Also Unexpectedly Can Help People Understand Why Revolutions Happen
CELEBRITY NEWS

As Entertaining As The ‘Barbie’ And ‘Star Wars’ Universes Are, They Also Unexpectedly Can Help People Understand Why Revolutions Happen

The ‘Barbie’ and ‘Star Wars’ universes are entertaining, but they also unexpectedly can help people understand why revolutions happen. Barbie dolls and “Star Wars” movies and toys have entertained generations of American children – in many cases, well into adulthood. But these brands’ influence stretches beyond a penchant for hot pink and lightsaber battles. In particular, both the “Barbie” movie, released in July 2023, and a “Star Wars” franchise television series called “Andor” offer important lessons about revolutions. Hollywood has long been obsessed with revolutions. There are uprisings in other popular movie franchises like “The Hunger Games,” “Harry Potter” and “Avatar.” In each fictional universe, an oppressed group stages a revolution that fights for political and economic free...
Reality TV Show Contestants — Unpaid Interns Or Hollywood Stars
CELEBRITY NEWS

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...
A Cinema Scholar Explains How AI Is Upending The Movie And TV Business What Hollywood Actors And Writers Afraid Of
AI, CELEBRITY NEWS, TECHNOLOGY

A Cinema Scholar Explains How AI Is Upending The Movie And TV Business What Hollywood Actors And Writers Afraid Of

What are Hollywood actors and writers afraid of? A cinema scholar explains how AI is upending the movie and TV business. The bitter conflict between actors, writers and other creative professionals and the major movie and TV studios represents a flashpoint in the radical transformation roiling the entertainment industry. The ongoing strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild were sparked in part by artificial intelligence and its use in the movie industry. Both actors and writers fear that the major studios, including Amazon/MGM, Apple, Disney/ABC/Fox, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount/CBS, Sony, Warner Bros. and HBO, will use generative AI to exploit them. Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that learns from text and images to automatically produce ...
New Rock Follies Review Musical Brings 1970s Feminist TV Sensation To The Stage
CELEBRITY NEWS, CULTURE, TOP FOUR

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...
Barbie Is The Classic Material Girl — For Better Or Worse
CELEBRITY NEWS, TOP FOUR

Barbie Is The Classic Material Girl — For Better Or Worse

Barbie is — and has always been — a material girl. That’s one message from scholars as the first live-action “Barbie” film opens Friday amid a fresh wave of merch, product collabs and advertising that highlights her characteristic consumerism. That consumption also isn’t all Barbie represents, they say, pointing to controversies over her problematic proportions, her potential to empower as a single woman without children and her evolution to reflect American culture’s changing tastes. Barbie’s Corvette convertible, tricked-out Dreamhouse and revolving door of pink outfits in the film say as much about the titular character as any dialogue in a movie that features three recent Oscar nominees — director Greta Gerwig and stars Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Ryan Gosling (Ken). One tween in the...
A Brief History Of Barbie’s Boyfriend, From All-American Boy To Movie Star — ‘I’m Just Ken’
CELEBRITY NEWS, TOP FOUR

A Brief History Of Barbie’s Boyfriend, From All-American Boy To Movie Star — ‘I’m Just Ken’

‘I’m just Ken’ – a brief history of Barbie’s boyfriend, from all-American boy to movie star. As first boyfriends go, you could do worse than Ken Carson. Introduced in 1961 by Mattel, the Ken doll was the epitome of the all-American boy next door. Clean cut, athletic and with a sharp haircut, he was the perfect counterpart to his more famous girlfriend, Barbie. Ken’s first item of clothing was a pair of red swimming trunks, indicating his sportiness and reflecting the modern American lifestyle of leisure and penchant for outdoor recreation. Created by Barbie’s inventor Ruth Handler, Ken was a boyfriend designed by women for girls. Just as Barbie was named after Handler’s daughter, so Ken was named after her son. And so the safe, boyfriend-friend dynamic of Barbie and Ken’s relationship ...
Exploreing The Legacy Of “Big Mama” Thornton The Black Musician Who Made ‘Hound Dog’ A Hit
CELEBRITY NEWS

Exploreing The Legacy Of “Big Mama” Thornton The Black Musician Who Made ‘Hound Dog’ A Hit

What do you want to know about LGBTQ+ issues? We want to hear from you, our readers, about what we should be reporting and how we can serve you. Get in touch here. June is a month of joy, resistance and celebration. In addition to Pride, a celebration of queer identities that stemmed from the Stonewall uprising, June is also Black Music Month. Black musical traditions, originating in Africa and remixed in the many places Africans were distributed, have left their mark on music worldwide. From gospel to country, from jazz to the blues, from hip-hop to rock and roll, traces of Black entertainers can be found at the roots of many genres. And Black, queer musicians have been there all the way. When Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton recorded her bluesy hit song “Hound Dog” in 1952, she did it h...
Why Online Celebrity Gossip?
CELEBRITY NEWS, LIFESTYLE

Why Online Celebrity Gossip?

Celebrity gossip sites are probably the most popular online destinations after pornography. The reason could be various, ranging from the profane to the profound. Celeb Hollywood gossip touches upon the lives of the rich and the famous. They hold up slices of their existence for us to gaze upon with a sense of longing. This sense of wish fulfillment is the driving force that propels entertainment news sites. People like to know more about their favorite icons and they would be willing to go to any lengths to grab the inside scoop, much like the paparazzi themselves. The spurt of online celebrity gossip is testimony to the fact that people have taken to the online version of celeb gossip in a very enthusiastic way. The online avatar of entertainment news scores well in a few areas. The fir...
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child Picks Up 19 Years After The Deathly Hallows Book Left Off
CELEBRITY NEWS

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...