For a generation of comedy fans, Bobcat Goldthwait is known as that guy with the weird, grating, man-child voice—one he used to great effect alongside Bill Murray in Scrooged, John Cusack in One Crazy Summer and multiple Police Academy films as reformed gang leader Zed. But in recent years, the once larger-than-life Goldthwait is keeping […]
Zack Smith
Link: http://zacksmithwriter.wordpress.comTwitter: http://twitter.com/thezacksmith
Posted inCulture
Frasier and Spamalot star David Hyde Pierce takes spotlight at PlayMakers
Photo by Joan Marcus On the phone to discuss his receiving the PlayMakers Distinguished Achievement Award at the Carolina Inn on Saturday, Feb. 12, David Hyde Pierce shows little of the stuffy, obtuse uptightness he became famous for over 11 seasons as Niles Crane on TV’s Frasier. But the character’s fierce intelligence is on display […]
Posted inCulture
Practical Magic author Alice Hoffman discusses new book, North Carolina
Photo by Deborah Feingold It’s not unusual for an acclaimed author to make an appearance at a Triangle bookstore, but Alice Hoffman is going the extra mile to promote her new novel The Red Garden with consecutive appearances at four Triangle book stores over three days, starting tonight in Durham. “It seems like North Carolina […]
Posted inArt
Carrboro opens up for laughs in February with N.C. Comedy Arts Festival
North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival Feb. 2–20 DSI Comedy Theater, Varsity Theatre, Local 506, Cat’s Cradle, The ArtsCenter, UNC Campus Starting on Feb. 2, the population of Carrboro will increase by an estimated four percent in people and approximately eight billion percent in laughs as the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival heads into its 11th […]
Posted inArt
The Craigslist Killer and other scary worlds of Lifetime television
The Craigslist Killer Lifetime Next airdate: Feb. 21 Also viewable online at www.mylifetime.com Self-destruction takes many forms. On a recent Monday night, my self-destruction (along with that of 5.4 million other viewers) was The Craigslist Killer, a Lifetime original movie about Philip Markoff, a medical student who was accused of assaulting various “masseuses” he found […]
Posted inArt
The lion trumps the spider at DPAC
Disney’s The Lion King Durham Performing Arts Center Through Jan. 30 Director Julie Taymor is a frequent name in the entertainment news these days with her $65 million Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark being Broadway’s most expensive and potentially life-threatening musical. The sheer scale of the projectand its oddball depiction of a classic comic book […]
Posted inArt
The long twilight of the soap opera gods
Daytime soap operas are not what they used to be, yet they still hold a place in popular culture. Every few months, Oscar nominee James Franco does some brazen “performance art” on General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless star Eric Braeden recently made headlines when Neil Patrick Harris called him a “d-bag” on […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Is there hope for our culture on a 4-inch screen?
For me, the most interesting part of the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the N.C. Museum of Art wasn’t the information behind Rockwell’s famous pieces, or the video on his life, or even the look at his pieces dealing with the social upheaval of the 1960s. It was the wall of Saturday Evening Post covers featuring […]
Posted inFilm & Television
How Do You Know fails at failing
How Do You Know opens Friday throughout the Triangle (see times below) Our rating: What the hell happened to James L. Brooks? The man’s oeuvre, on TV and film, is filled with classics. Forgive the vitriol, but when Brooks is on, he’s the king of broadly appealing human comedy, able to deftly combine witty dialogue […]
Posted inFilm & Television
A delightful Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader opens Friday throughout the Triangle (see times below) Our rating: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of the least structured of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narniaso much so that a British television adaptation bundled its story together with the second book, Prince Caspian. […]
