Erotic new musical a hit on Broadway January 30, 2007
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Teenage sex scenes showing a naked breast, masturbation and sadomasochism aren’t the usual Broadway fare, but “Spring Awakening” has become the surprise hit musical of the season while being hailed as tastefully erotic.
Adapted from German playwright Frank Wedekind’s then-scandalous 1891 play, “Spring Awakening” looks at the angst of high school students and their sexual awakening in repressed 19th-century Germany.
With song titles such as “The Bitch of Living” and “Touch Me,” the show opened on Broadway last month to glowing reviews that compared its contemporary rock song score to that of the prize-winning “Rent.” Its run was recently extended.
When considering a Broadway musical, “probably nobody thinks: pure sex. That might just change,” said New York Times critic Charles Isherwood, calling the show “a straight shot of eroticism” as it tastefully deals with provocative topics such as abortion, homosexuality and abuse. “‘Spring Awakening’ makes sex strange again, no mean feat, in our mechanically prurient age,” Isherwood said.
Scenes between the lead male and female characters include an erotically charged one in which she encourages a spanking with a wooden plank, leading to the exposure of a bare breast. Similarly, one of the secondary characters displays homosexual longings and comically sings and masturbates center stage, surrounded by dancing females.
Critics and the show’s creators, playwright Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik, said the show is less about sex than about staying true to teen spirit. The cast members are 17 to 22 years old.
“It touches something deep that is resonant in all of us, which is our own adolescent experience,” said Sater, who persuaded Sheik to write the music after meeting him chanting at a Buddhist gathering and writing the lyrics to Sheik’s third album. Neither feared the sexuality would leave audiences aghast.
“There is nothing exploitative about it. It simply shows what it is like for these young people to go through the trials of puberty,” Sater said.
Sheik, 37, gained fame for his 1996 hit pop music single “Barely Breathing.” He said he composed the musical after becoming disillusioned with his early success. “Our culture in general has a real acceptance and even love of violence and a real fear of sexuality that is troubling, and that is one of the things ‘Spring Awakening’ addresses,” he said.
While the show’s longer-term success may lie in whether it can seduce traditional theater-goers and a younger audience, both men say they already have an avid fan base.
“I just got an e-mail from a 15-year-old boy who was going through a lot of teenage angst,” Sheik said. “Every day he puts on ‘The Bitch of Living’ and jumps around his room screaming at the top of his lungs.”
DiCaprio says he’s not ‘Piece of Cute Meat’ January 30, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Movies.comments closed
Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to give up acting for a time after the hit movie “Titanic.”
DiCaprio was back to being considered a “another piece of cute meat” after the 1997 film’s spectacular box office success, an image he had wanted to get away after his days on the cover of teen magazines, he told Newsweek for editions on newsstands on Monday.
“It was pretty disheartening to be objectified like that. I wanted to stop acting for a little bit,” he said at the magazine’s Oscar panel discussion with other actors. “It changed my life in a lot of ways, but at the same time, I can’t say that it didn’t give me opportunities. It made me, for the first time, in control of my career.”
After many successful movies and critical acclaim, DiCaprio said he loves acting.
“There’s no other art form in the world that affects me more. There’s nothing that I walk away from feeling transformed by the way I do with cinema,” he said.
DiCaprio starred in a cast featuring Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and others in “The Departed,” which earned Martin Scorsese a Golden Globe for best director.
Erotic publications declining in Russia January 30, 2007
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The Federal Oversight Service over Mass Communications and Cultural Legacy in 2006 stripped 12 erotic publications of registration.
“Since the beginning of 2006 the number of publications registered as erotic has declined from 116 to 104 because at our lawsuits courts stripped 12 publications of registration. Fourteen more court cases are pending,” service head Boris Boyarskov said in an interview with Interfax.
“Almost all erotic publications violate the requirements of law to produce mandatory copies, to publish properties and to duly circulate them [packaged and in specially assigned places],” he added.
As for the publications that are essentially erotic but pose as other Boyarskov said that an expert center has been set up that is drawing its conclusions about their contents.
“We will be suing publications for spreading pornography. We have grounds for that. We have received conclusions concerning four publications which experts have found to be pornographic,” he said.
St. Petersburg to host UNESCO forum on world heritage January 29, 2007
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An international forum on the protection of the world’s cultural heritage will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, Monday.
Senior UNESCO officials and prominent experts from countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Israel, Greece, and Italy will gather at the Hermitage Museum to discuss ways of preserving cities included by the UN’s cultural body in its World Heritage List.
“The symposium will focus on the protection of historical cityscapes, including against potential damage by urban development works,” the organizers said.
Strategies to protect the heritage of Russia’s second city will also be high on the agenda of the forum, to run through February 3, they said.
The World Heritage List features 830 cultural and natural sites recognized as having universal cultural or natural importance. St. Petersburg’s historical center was included in the list in 1990.
Stepped street of King Herod unearthed in Jerusalem January 29, 2007
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An international archaeological team excavating the City of David in Jerusalem has found a stepped street of the King Herod days.
The 600-meter-long street led from the City of David to the Second Temple, Radio Vatican said on Sunday. Structures that look like shops and the road width suggest that it might have been the main street of the ancient town.
The archaeologists have also unearthed drainage canals mentioned in the Jewish War chronicles by Joseph Flavius. Locals were hiding there when soldiers of Roman Emperor Titus seized Jerusalem and burned down the Second Temple in 70 B.C. Dishes, stone instruments and other household appliances were found.
The excavations will go on for another three years. So far, only a 30-meter piece of the street has been unearthed.
A link of the lower water pipeline that connected the Solomon’s Pool near Bethlehem to the Temple Mount was found earlier. A mikwe, a ritual bath of the Second Temple times, was discovered near the Wailing Wall.
a web (not paper) magazine 