What to do this week in Milwaukee
Oedipus' last words
Oedipus' story doesn't end with his blinding and tragic self-awareness. In "Oedipus at Colonus," Sophocles gives the exiled king a final chance to speak for himself and confront his fate. David Mulroy reads from his new translation of "Oedipus at Colonus" at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave. John Van Slyke of Vanity Theatre Company will perform one of the choral songs Mulroy has translated. Mulroy is a professor emeritus of classics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. »Read Full Article
'The Hobbit' tops box office for 3rd weekend
NEW YORK (AP) - Hollywood kicked off the New Year on a positive note, with three films vying closely for the weekend box-office title that nevertheless remained with "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" for the third straight week.
Peter Jackson's Middle-earth finale took in $21.9 million for Warner Bros. in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday, narrowly edging out the Disney musical "Into the Woods" ($19.1 million) and Angelina Jolie's World War II tale "Unbroken" ($18.4 million) from Universal. »Read Full Article(1)
Longtime ESPN sportscaster Scott dies at 49
Stuart Scott was in his element, working a "Monday Night Football" game, when he was forced to leave for an appendix operation.
Doctors discovered a tumor during surgery and Scott was diagnosed with cancer. But he made a point of continuing to live his life - at work and outside of it. »Read Full Article(3)
'Goodbye to Language' top pick of NYC film critics
NEW YORK (AP) - The National Society of Film Critics has chosen the 3-D movie "Goodbye to Language" as the best picture of 2014 in their 49th annual awards meeting in New York City.
Society members gathered at Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Saturday to vote, choosing French director Jean-Luc Godard's 70-minute film collage as their top pick. »Read Full Article
Remembering Country music star Little Jimmy Dickens
With "Little" Jimmy Dickens' death Friday at 94 years old, the Grand Ole Opry and Country music lost one of its last living connections to the earliest days of the popular art form and one of the genre's greatest ambassadors. But, the star - diminutive in size, while outsize in gregarious spirit - was so much more than a piece of rhinestone-studded Country and Western nostalgia. He was still a vibrant piece of Nashville right up until his death.
A native of West Virginia, Dickens knew he wanted to be an entertainer from his earliest days and he began appearing on radio music variety shows across the south and Midwest before the "King of Country Music," Roy Acuff discovered him and brought him to the biggest radio show of all - the Grand Ole Opry - in 1948. Dickens became an Opry star before he had even cut his own first record, but when he did - recording songs like "Take an Old Cold Tater (And Wait)" (the track that would inspire Hank Williams to coin Dickens' lasting nickname, "Tater"), "Country Boy," "A-Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed" and "Hillbilly Fever" that all became top-10 country hits - it set off a career that would take Dickens around the world and make him one of country music's first international stars. In 1964 he scored his lone chart-topping hit when "May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose" jumped to number one. »Read Full Blog Post
Off the Wall Theatre takes trashy tour of ‘Valley of the Dolls’
In his curtain speech Friday night at Off the Wall Theatre, director Dale Gutzman threw down the gauntlet in describing the film he'd adapted for stage.
"This year," Gutzman declared, "we decided to go for the trashiest show of all." Bad songs with brainless lyrics? Check. Worst performance of Patty Duke's career? Check. A show that's empty and ditsy, vulgar and glitzy? Of course, and that's why we love it. »Read Full Article
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