Posted in Film, TV, tagged 30 Rock, Matt Damon, Saving Private Ryan, Tina Fey, True Grit on January 7, 2011| 2 Comments »
This week, Matt Damon stops by the studio to talk about his career in movies – from his role as the windbag LaBeouf in “True Grit” to his impressive improvised monologue in “Saving Private Ryan.” But one of our favorite appearances has to be his recent foray on NBC’s “30 Rock.” He plays Liz Lemon’s insecure pilot boyfriend who yearns to settle down for true love.
Damon told Kurt how he got the gig.
Damon’s full conversation with Kurt airs this weekend — listen online here.
– Julia Botero
Posted in Film, Theater, TV, tagged broadway, Carrie Fisher, HBO, one-woman show, Princess Leia, Star Wars, Wishful Drinking on December 8, 2010|
(photo by Michael Lamont)
About a year ago, Carrie Fisher (script doctor, memoirist, recovering Princess) took to Broadway a one-woman show called “Wishful Drinking” – an account of her struggles with alcoholism, failed romances, and brushes with death that proved Fisher had a knack for stand-up. A filmed version of her stage show airs this weekend on HBO.
Fisher has long been outspoken about her problems, but seeing is believing. When she came to Studio 360 to talk with Kurt late in the afternoon, a couple hours before showtime, she arrived in dark glasses, and yawning. “To me there’s Carrie and there’s Carrie Fisher,” she explained, “and Carrie has to make sure Carrie Fisher gets enough sleep so Carrie Fisher can do her show, [because] Carrie wants to go shopping.”
You can hear their full conversation here:
– Jenny Lawton
About a year ago, Carrie Fisher (script doctor, memoirist, recovering Princess) took to Broadway a one-woman show called “Wishful Drinking” – an account of her struggles with alcoholism, failed romances, and brushes with death that proved Fisher had a knack for stand-up. A filmed version of her stage show airs this weekend on HBO.
Fisher has long been outspoken about her problems, but seeing is believing. When she came to Studio 360 to talk with Kurt late in the afternoon, a couple hours before showtime, she arrived in dark glasses, and yawning. “To me there’s Carrie and there’s Carrie Fisher,” she explained, “and Carrie has to make sure Carrie Fisher gets enough sleep so Carrie Fisher can do her show, [because] Carrie wants to go shopping.”
– JL
Posted in 360 Staff Picks, Film, tagged 3-D, Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, Roger Deakins on November 29, 2010| 1 Comment »
Pixar is still tops when it comes to animation, but don’t overlook Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon, recently out on DVD. The movie’s unlikely hero is Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, a scrawny Viking who uses brains over brawn to befriend a wounded dragon. The real star, however, is legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, who directed the 3-D flight sequences. The whoosh-bang joy of fire-breathing dragons soaring through the sky is a reminder of why we still go to the movies.
– Derek L. John
Posted in Film, TV, tagged American Icons, dallas, Disco and Atomic War, Jaak Kilmi, Studio 360, Your American Icon on November 26, 2010| 1 Comment »
For our next American Icon, Studio 360 is headed to Southfork Ranch…via Estonia!
After the premiere of nine new stories this fall, our second series of American Icons episodes is nearly complete. There’s just one more show left to make – yours! Throughout the broadcasts, we’ve been asking listeners to nominate their own Icons. We got some great ideas, but none impressed us more than Laura Detre’s suggestion of the television series Dallas, which ran from 1979 – 1991 on CBS.
The original cast of Dallas.
Laura says Dallas presented an alluring, glamorous vision of capitalism that may have had an even larger impact abroad than here at home. Especially in the old Eastern Bloc.
Movie still from "Disco and Atomic War" - courtesy of Icarus Films
How much impact could one American soap opera have? A lot, according to Jaak Kilmi a film director who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Tallinn, Estonia in the 1970s and 80s. At one point during the Cold War, Tallinn began receiving Western television programs from a giant transmitter in nearby Finland. Kilmi told us no television program was more loved or influential than Dallas: “It was a substitute for a nice life that we didn’t have. We wanted to believe that people live in skyscrapers and have beautiful cars.”
Jaak had even more to say about Dallas and the fall of Communism. We’ll share that when our American Icons story is broadcast in the spring. In the meantime, Jaak’s movie about American soft power in Soviet Estonia (including David Hasselhoff’s modest contribution) is out now in limited release. It’s called Disco and Atomic War, and it recently won Best Documentary prize at the Warsaw International Film Festival.
-Michael Guerriero
Posted in Film, tagged Abraham Lincoln, American Icons, Daniel Day-Lewis, David Strathairn, Gettysburg Address on November 19, 2010| 1 Comment »
This just in: Two-time Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis will play Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming biopic.
No doubt the English actor will hit it out of the park… But our heart belongs to David Strathairn, who played Lincoln throughout our American Icons episode about The Lincoln Memorial. His stately performance of the Gettysburg Address (engraved on the Memorial) is a sober, powerful end to the hour.
You can listen to the entire program below – Strathairn’s reading starts at 44:35.
The new movie is based on the book Team of Rivals by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was also part of our hour.
By the way, we found Stathairn such a compelling commander in chief, we recently asked him to play our 3rd president for this season’s Icon Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
– Jenny Lawton
Posted in Dance, Film, Literary, Theater, tagged AAWIC, For Colored Girls, Hilton Als, Ntozake Shange, Tyler Perry, when the rainbow is enuf, who have considered suicide on November 19, 2010|
Broadway audiences were probably not familiar with the term “choreopoem” when “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” arrived at the Booth Theatre 1976. But Ntozake Shange’s dynamic and revealing series of poems (set to music and movement) was a giant hit, winning a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. “All sorts of people who might never have set foot in a Broadway house—black nationalists, feminist separatists—came to experience Shange’s firebomb of a poem,” remembers Hilton Als, now the theater critic for The New Yorker.
The play went on to be adapted into a TV movie and interpreted in countless regional and amateur productions. Now it’s a major motion picture, with direction and a screenplay by comedy mogul Tyler Perry.
This weekend, the 13th annual African American Women In Cinema Film Festival concludes with an event honoring Shange. “for colored girls” launched a generation of spoken-word and performance artists – and Shange has proved prolific since then, publishing dozens of plays, poetry collections, and other books. She’ll receive the African American Women In Cinema Pioneer Award. The 1982 PBS version of the work, starring Shange, will be shown. I’m particularly curious to hear Shange’s conversation with Felicia Lee of the New York Times: I hope to hear how Shange feels her choreopoem fared in the hands of a filmmaker perhaps most famous for wearing a fat suit and playing “the gun-toting, insult-hurling grandmother” Madea.
RELATED: Our colleague, WQXR host Terrance McKnight, recently talked with Ntozake Shange and vocalist M. Nahadr (who wrote a song for the new film) about whether “For Colored Girls” is still relevant for the modern African-American woman:
– Georgette Pierre
TITLE: The Steady Rise of “For Colored Girls”
Broadway audiences were probably not familiar with the term “choreopoem” when “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” hit Broadway 1976. But Ntozake Shange’s dynamic and revealing series of monologue poems (set to music and movement) was a giant hit, winning a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. “All sorts of people who might never have set foot in a Broadway house—black nationalists, feminist separatists—came to experience Shange’s firebomb of a poem,” remembers Hilton Als, now the theater critic for The New Yorker.
The play went on to be adapted into a TV movie and countless regional and amateur productions. Now the work has entered a new phase of life as a major motion picture, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad, Janet Jackson (among many other greats), and produced by entertainment mogul Tyler Perry.
So it strikes me that this is a particularly fitting time to revisit the source of it all. This weekend, the 13th Annual African American Women In Cinema Film Festival concludes with an event honoring Shange. “for colored girls” launched generation of spoken-word and performance artists – and Shange has proved prolific since then, publishing dozens of plays, poetry collections, and other books. She’ll receive the African American Women In Cinema Pioneer Award – and the 1982 PBS version of the work, starring Shange, will be shown.
But the part of the event I’m most interested to see is the “Conversation with Ntozake” (moderated by Felicia Lee of the New York Times). I hope she’ll share her thoughts of Perry’s adaptation of her work and whether a man can really tell a woman’s story.
Related: Our colleague, WQXR host Terrance McKnight, recently talked with Ntozake Shange and vocalist M. Nahadr (who wrote a song for the new film) about whether For Colored Girls is still relevant for the modern African-American woman.
– Georgette Pierre
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2007/03/05/070305gonb_GOAT_notebook_als
http://www.forcoloredgirlsmovie.com/
Posted in Film, Literary, Music, tagged Michael Muhammad Knight, Muslim punk, punk, The Kominas, The Taqwacores on November 12, 2010| 1 Comment »
The Taqwacores: Muslim Punk in the USA (Photographs by Kim Badawi)
There’s a new movie out about Muslim-American punk rockers living in upstate New York. Sound familiar?
Last year we aired a story about Michael Muhammad Knight, an Islamic convert from upstate New York who wrote a novel about Muslim-American punk rockers. It was called The Taqwacores and as far as he was concerned, it was pure fantasy. At first, Knight sold the book out of the trunk of his car, but eventually it gained a following among rebellious Muslim teenagers on the web — including the members of a Pakistani punk band from Boston called The Kominas. It was only a matter of time before Knight and The Kominas got together. What happened next was the stuff of great fiction… or was it real? Listen to our story to find out.
– Derek L. John
Posted in Design, Film, Literary, Music, TV, Video, Visual Art, tagged Airstream Trailer, American Icons, Apollo 11, Bruce Springsteen, Bugs Bunny, I Love Lucy, Malcolm X, Monticello, My Antonia, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Sound and the Fury, Thomas Jefferson, Thunder Road, Willa Cather, William Faulkner on October 29, 2010| 3 Comments »
What do Lucille Ball and Malcolm X have in common?
They’re both part of Studio 360 American Icons series. This fall, we’ve traced the impact of The Autobiography of Malcolm X on race relations and glimpsed the dawn of the American sitcom with I Love Lucy. Last week we visited Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia – and in wandering the building and the grounds, confronted some lingering questions about the country and its founding.
Monticello (photo by Geoff Kilmer / Monticello)
Now we’re turning to you for a little “listener support.” No, it’s not a pledge drive (though we encourage you to support your local station…).
Tell us what we’ve missed. We’ve produced nine new Icons — we want you to decide the tenth. If your pick is selected, we’ll make a radio story about it — and you could be a guest on an episode of Studio 360.
We put out the call a few weeks ago, and our listeners have already come up with some surprising and impressive ideas. They range wide across America’s cultural landscape: from My Antonia and The Sound and the Fury to Bugs Bunny, from the Airstream Trailer to Apollo 11. Daniel Leathersich, of Kutztown, Pennsylvania, suggested Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” because it’s a “quintessential song of the dreams of youth, the wonder of escape, and what people become from their memories.”
We need to hear from you. Tell us your ideas…and listen for our tenth American Icon!
– Michael Guerriero
Posted in 360 Staff Picks, Film, Music, tagged Baby Huey, Donny Hathaway, hip-hop, Jimmy Fallon, John Legend, Marvin Gaye, Motown, Questlove, The Roots, Waiting for Superman, Wake Up! on October 1, 2010| 2 Comments »
The Roots are busy: they play every night as the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, drummer Questlove has over one million followers on Twitter, and last month the band released Wake Up! a collaboration with John Legend. It was their 10th studio album in twenty years and the second released this year. Clearly, The Roots do not press the snooze button.
Wake Up! covers soul hits from the 1960s and 70s by Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, and Baby Huey among others. Legend’s smoky and soulful voice blends with The Roots acoustic sound, the songs have a Motown feel to them but the lyrics (sometimes slightly tweaked) have a poignancy that feels relevant in 2010.
In “Our Generation”, originally recorded by soul singer Ernie Hines, Legend sings:
Hope of the world is in our generation
It’s all left up to us to change this present situation
Take caution from our elders, don’t make the same mistake
Let’s fill the world with love, and get rid of all the hate
The Roots have a gift for embracing all genres –try to catch their “Freestylin’ with The Roots” bit on Late Night, a genius display of musical improv. This album is a showcase for that versatility. They take the funky grooves of Motown and effortlessly transition between rap, spoken word, and reggae. In the lead single “Wake Everybody”, Common raps over a gospel chorus leading into another chorus by Legend and vocalist Melanie Fiona.
Amid a sea of strong covers, the album’s one original tune stands out. In “Shine” John Legend sings: “can’t eat if we don’t feed them, can’t read if we don’t teach them.” And the song’s call to action will reach even more people than just dedicated Roots and John Legend fans: it’s a featured tune on the soundtrack for Waiting For Superman, the new documentary about the state of American public education, opening around the country October 8th.
–Max Bass
Posted in 360 Staff Picks, Film, tagged blood, horror, House of the Devil, Satanists, Ti West on August 16, 2010|
House of the Devil uses a familiar horror movie plot of a babysitting gig gone horribly wrong and turns it into something surprising. Samantha has no idea that her employers are raving Satanists — but before the night is over, she’ll become painfully aware. Rather than confuse torture and gore for genuine scares, director Ti West creates an atmosphere of terror that relies almost entirely on what you don’t see. There will be blood, but not for nearly two-thirds of the film, in which practically nothing “happens.” It’s the most scared you will ever be by an (almost) empty house.
– Stephen Reader
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
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