After a successful run in the West End, the play that examines abstract artist Mark Rothko's decision to turn down painting the murals in New York's famed Four Seasons restaurant is finally opening on Broadway. With Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his studio assistant Ken reprising their roles from the London production,
Red looks like a sure hit. Over the two years that the play unfolds, Rothko struggles with his desire to express the darkness of the human condition—despair and doom, void and oblivion. After dining at the elegant restaurant at the end of 1959, however, the artist decides he cannot continue on the job and returns the $35,000 he was paid. The two men engage in incredibly powerful and intense dialogue that eventually leads Rothko to admit the limits of his abilities, leading to a period of progressively darker work. It's certainly no musical, but it is, as Molina told the Los Angeles Times, "a
very real, very powerful story about an intelligent, troubled and conflicted man."
Red opens on Thursday, April 1 at New York's Golden Theater.
Fashion season may be coming to a close, but things have not yet frozen over on the runways of Russia. Moscow is readying for Russian Fashion Week as Eastern Europe's premiere fashion event celebrates its 20th season at the Congress-Hall of World Trade Center. Over 50 cutting-edge designers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, the U.K., Italy, Sri Lanka, Croatia, and more will showcase their works, including the already popular PPQ and Eley Kishimoto. The event is expected to bring in over 45,000 visitors, carrying on a young, but burgeoning fashion tradition. "Ten years ago we started with less than 20 shows in a season," Russian Fashion Week president Alexander Shumsky said. "Now Moscow generates a lot of new fashion ideas and showcases the
best international talents." It may not be Milan, Paris, or New York, but Russia is proving it has more style than its notorious furry hats.
Russian Fashion Week runs from Thursday, April 1 through Wednesday, April 7 at Moscow's Congress-Hall of World Trade Center.
Though many before her have walked the runway at the biggest lingerie fashion show of the year, supermodel Behati Prinsloo is one of the chosen few given the opportunity to launch her own line at Victoria's Secret. The Namibian-born VS Angel will premiere her swimwear collection Behati Loves PINK at the end of the month, which will include African-inspired prints from her native country. "They're like my second family," she has said of Victoria's Secret, which she became a part of in 2008. "My family is so far away and I
love working with them… They always just look out for you!" And she recently told her Twitter followers to look for the
upcoming collection at the end of this month in select stores and online at VictoriasSecret.com.
Behati Loves PINK launches at
Victoria's Secret at the end of the month.
Stanley Tucci had a busy awards season after playing Meryl Streep's husband in
Julie & Julia and Saoirse Ronan's killer in
The Lovely Bones. But now the acclaimed actor is stepping behind the scenes to direct the upcoming Broadway production of
Lend Me a Tenor. This screwball stage comedy is set in the 1930s as a classic farce featuring a world famous Italian opera star, Tito Merrelli (Anthony LaPaglia), arriving in Cleveland to make his debut. But the fiery tenor goes missing after taking a massive dose of tranquilizers with wine, leading his wife and the show's presenter (Tony Shalhoub) to ward off his passionate stateside fans and find a replacement (Justin Bartha). The madcap mania may be silly, but it's also good family fun. And while Tucci isn't an opera fan himself, he was drawn to the play because he "liked the performance aspect of the play and the heightened reality of it and the
absurdity of it."
Lend Me a Tenor begins previews on Sunday, April 4 at New York's Music Box Theater.
Well, Ian McEwan's got a new book out about a plagiarizing global-warming scientist whose wife is having an affair, and it's probably quite well-written and trenchant and so forth. He also might be the only author who can take one of the most dry topics imaginable—climate change—and actually make it funny. But more importantly,
Solar is going to be the best way to meet a certain kind of person on public transit for the next month or so. When you purchase it, we recommend you practice holding it in such a way that the other subway or bus passengers can see the title.
Solar, by Ian McEwan, hits bookstores on Tuesday, March 30.
Here's the thing that will save the publishing industry: Books…based on blogs! Yes, the wildly popular tribute to cultural narcissism known as "
Look at this fucking hipster" (translation: a blog where a "hipster" posts pictures of "other hipsters" and "makes fun of them" for the benefit of "even more hipsters") will now be available for your reading pleasure away from an iPhone or Macbook, in case you're ever stuck somewhere without an Internet connection and are desperate to explain to someone the concept of "narcissism of small differences."
Look at This Fucking Hipster will be available on Tuesday, March 30.
Time to dust off those three-month-old iPad-more-like-MaxiPad jokes—the device that will Save Journalism and Change Our Lives As We Know Them is here! Apple's brand-new "tablet" device (read: flat computer), which debuted to much fanfare in January, will go on sale this week. Will its iPhone style and relatively low price point transform the media world, saving newspapers and magazines by providing a technologically advanced platform for their content? Probably not! Will it make laptops obsolete? Almost definitely no! What it
will do is provide a brief distraction from the crushing, soulless alienation that defines the modern condition. So we're psyched for it.
The Apple
iPad
goes on sale on Saturday, April 3. You can pre-order one here.
It can be hard to keep track of all the comic conventions these days—it seems like there's one every weekend—so you'll just have to take our word for it: You don't want to miss WonderCon in California (unless you are, you know, not a sci-fi nerd). Keep an eye out in particular for the viral-marketing press conference set up by Encom—aka the awesome evil corporation from
Tron and the upcoming
Tron: Legacy—so you can pretend to be a journalist and ask hard-hitting questions like, "How cool is this movie going to be, seriously?"
WonderCon 2010 kicks off on Friday, April 2 at the Moscone Center South in San Francisco, and ends on Sunday, April 4.
