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Coppola's 'Megalopolis' plays to near-empty theaters
LOS ANGELES, CA.- There is no kind way to put it: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” died on arrival over the weekend. Coppola, 85, spent decades on the avant-garde fable, ultimately selling part of his wine business to raise the necessary funds — about $120 million in production costs and another $20 million or so in marketing and distribution expenses. But moviegoers rejected the film: Ticket sales from Thursday night through Sunday will total roughly $4 million in North America, according to analysts, slightly below worst-case scenario prerelease projections. “Megalopolis” played in nearly 2,000 theaters in the United States and Canada. As of Saturday evening, it was on pace to place sixth in the weekend box office derby, behind even “Devara Part 1,” a poorly reviewed, three-hour, Telugu-language action drama ... More

Nick Gravenites, mainstay of the San Francisco rock scene, dies at 85
NEW YORK, NY.- Nick Gravenites, a Chicago-bred blues vocalist and guitarist who rose to prominence during the explosion of psychedelia in San Francisco in the 1960s as a founder of hard-driving blues-rock band the Electric Flag and as a songwriter for Janis Joplin and others, died Sept. 18 in Santa Rosa, California. He was 85. His son Tim Gravenites said he died in an assisted-living facility, where he was being treated for dementia and diabetes. Nick Gravenites grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where he was part of a cadre of “white misfit kids,” as he put it on his website, who honed their craft watching Chicago blues masters like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in local clubs. His colleagues included singer and harmonica player Paul Butterfield and guitarists Michael Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop; all four of them would go on to help ... More

Cat Glover, who danced with Prince, dies at 62
NEW YORK, NY.- Cat Glover, a dancer and choreographer for Prince who added a frenetic flair to the artist’s late 1980s ensembles, and who danced onstage with him during his “Sign o’ the Times” tour, has died at her home in Los Angeles. She was 62. Her death was confirmed by Hayley Drinkall, a former manager, who did not say when she had died or cite a cause. Amid the fevered and color-saturated sets of Prince’s music videos and stage shows, Glover often appeared to break through a cloud of fog or a group of dancers with her own rhythms and energy. The grace that Prince, a perfectionist in his productions, allowed Glover was palpable in their appearances together. In the video for “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” Glover is featured as the main character of Prince’s sonic arc as she circles him onstage, her emotions shifting between bemused and charmed. ... More

Caterina Valente, singer who was a star on two continents, dies at 93
NEW YORK, NY.- Caterina Valente, a polyglot performer who sang in more than a dozen languages and was a television mainstay on two continents in the 1950s and ’60s, died Sept. 9 at her home in Lugano, Switzerland. She was 93. Her death was announced on her website. Valente achieved stardom in mid-1950s Germany in a popular music genre known as schlager: novelty songs, with titles like “Ganz Paris Träumt von der Liebe” (“All Paris Dreams of Love”) and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Honolulu Strandbikini.” By 1955, her hits had put her on the cover of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. She had her own television show in Germany in 1957, and she appeared regularly at the Olympia in Paris throughout her career. Her fluid, confident delivery and sure pitch, as well as her skill as both a guitar player and a tap dancer, also ... More

Skoto Gallery presents a two-person exhibition of recent works by SoHyun Bae and Choong Sup Lim
NEW YORK, NY.- Skoto Gallery is presenting Wind, Water, Stone, a two-person exhibition of recent works by Korean American artists SoHyun Bae and Choong Sup Lim. This is their first two-person exhibition at the gallery. This exhibition encourages us to think expansively about the creative process and takes its title from a 1979 poem “Wind, Water, Stone” by the celebrated Mexican poet Octavio Paz, first published in English in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987 and put together by the poet’s English translator Eliot Weinberger. The poem, as summarized by the poet Roger Caillois explores the interconnectedness and transformational qualities of water, wind, and stone. Each element interacts with and influences the others in a perpetual cycle of change. Water erodes stone over time, wind disperses water, and stone ... More

Secci Gallery opens a solo exhibition by Daria Dmytrenko titled "Who's Afraid of the Dark"
MILAN.- The grandeur of painting, the grandeur of the themes that crawl like veins through a dark side of the psyche, the iconographic grandeur that emanates from the subconscious mind, dragging one into the depths of darkness, of fears, and those fears that instill a resistance we must not wish to escape. There is a majestic dignity to the canvas, which possesses an unusual immersive quality. In this vast dimension of painting, within the daily temporal filter, in that specific hour that marks the birth of the day, Daria Dmytrenko captures the literary hour where the darkness of sleep, the waves of resting consciousness, crash within us, resisting the light and awakening. An hour experienced in the music of Alberto Savinio in his historic composition “Chant de la mi mort”, where even the title reflects the absence of a vigilant consciousness, ... More

Viewfinders make fall foliage pop for the colorblind in Virginia
NEW YORK, NY.- Like so many other leaf-peeping enthusiasts, Tim Yates ventured out to Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake State Park late this summer to see the early whispers of the fall foliage, which would soon give way to bright bursts of orange and red. But for Yates, it was a rare opportunity to see the leaves, whether they were just beginning to turn or in their full glory. For his entire life, Yates, 56, has been red-green colorblind, meaning his eyes have trouble distinguishing between certain hues. For him, the leaf-peeping experience can be relatively muted. “Clothes or flowers and a lot of different stuff, I just never really knew the color,” said Yates, a retired beverage salesman from Bedford County, Virginia. “In school, I always struggled with colors.” But at Smith Mountain La ... More

On 'Downton Abbey,' Maggie Smith made an icy aristocrat irresistible
NEW YORK, NY.- In retrospect, Maggie Smith’s brilliant, high-wire career can be seen as a protest against celebrity. As an actor, Smith, who died Friday at 89, favored characters into which she could disappear, and the rare interviews she agreed to were awkward, unrevealing, sometimes deliberately uningratiating. In a 2013 “60 Minutes” profile, she seems almost physically wracked by the journalist’s curiosity. There was one personal detail, though, that she had no problem sharing in her final years: how much she despised the fame that her most recognized part had brought down on her. “It’s ridiculous,” she told one reporter. “I was able to live a somewhat normal life until I started doing ‘Downton Abbey.’ I know that sounds funny, but I am serious. Before that I could go to all the places I wanted and see all of the things that I like, but now I can’t, ... More

Using dance to provoke, delight and tell South Africa's stories
JOHANNESBURG.- The young boy couldn’t resist the dance moves he saw being performed around him: the rapid foot taps, the ligament-spraining knee twists, the torso shimmies, all coming together in what some might describe as a sort of urban tap dance. Growing up in an impoverished Black township near Johannesburg in the 1980s, the boy, Vusi Mdoyi, loved watching his father dance with friends, in a style known as pantsula, in the dirt yards of their staid four-room bungalows. It was a sprinkle of joy in the dark days of apartheid. At about 7 years old, Mdoyi began mimicking the dance form. By 10, he was dancing in school festivals. By 14, he had created his own dance crew with neighborhood friends. Now 44, Mdoyi is a celebrated dance and choreographer who has helped to achieve what felt unimaginable during apartheid: ... More

Kris Kristofferson, country singer, songwriter and actor, dies at 88
NEW YORK, NY.- Kris Kristofferson, a singer-songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday. He was 88. His death was announced by Ebie McFarland, a spokesperson, who did not give a cause. Hundreds of artists have recorded Kristofferson’s songs — among them Al Green, the Grateful Dead, Michael Bublé and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Kristofferson’s breakthrough as a songwriter came with “For the Good Times,” a bittersweet ballad that topped the country chart and reached the Top 40 on the pop chart for Ray Price in 1970. His “Sunday Morning Coming Down” became a No. 1 country hit for his friend and mentor Johnny Cash later that year. ... More