April 6, 2004

Arts Briefing

IGHLIGHTS

TV: `SIMPSONS' SILENCE Production on the new season of "The Simpsons," the enduring animated show on the Fox network, has been held up over contract demands by the actors who play major voice roles in the comedy series. People close to the negotiations said that the actors whose voices portray Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa and other characters had not appeared for several table readings and had stalled production for the fall season. Those familiar with the negotiations said that the actors were seeking $360,000 an episode, or $8 million for a 22-episode season. Currently, top actors on the show earn about $125,000 an episode. Details of the impasse in contract talks were disclosed last week in Daily Variety. Executives at 20th Century Fox Television and James L. Brooks's Gracie Films, which produces the show, declined to comment. The actors involved include Dan Catellaneta, the voice of Homer; Julie Kavner (Marge); Hank Azaria (Moe, Apu and others); Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns, Mr. Smithers and others), Yeardley Smith (Lisa) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart). The Simpsons began as a series of short vignettes on "The Tracey Ullman Show" in 1987, and with its off-kilter, even subversive, humor, became an enormous success two years later as a regular series. It has also proven a gold mine for its creators. The franchise itself is, according to Variety, worth more than $1 billion.   BERNARD WEINRAUB

VIRGINIA WOOLF PORTRAIT FOUND Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) didn't like sitting for portraits. When the National Portrait Gallery in London issued an invitation, she said no. But now a portrait of Woolf, the author of "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs. Dalloway," painted by her sister, Vanessa Bell, and last seen in 1934, has surfaced, the BBC reported. The painting, above, was exhibited at a gallery in London 70 years ago, then sold to a private collector and disappeared from public view. But when a recent phone call to the Charleston Trust disclosed its whereabouts, the BBC said, negotiations began for a display, now at the Charleston museum near Lewes, in West Sussex, England. Woolf explained her decision to reject the request from the National Portrait Gallery in a letter to her nephew Quentin Bell. She imagined that "they keep the drawing in a cellar and when I've been dead 10 years they have it out and say `Does anyone want to know what Mrs. Woolf looked like?' No, say all the others, and then it's torn up."

FILM: DOCUMENTARY PRIZE WINNER A film by an Egyptian-American about the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera in the first days of the war in Iraq has won the Grand Jury Award at the seventh annual Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham, N.C. Directed by Jehane Noujaim, the documentary, "The Control Room," not only won the top prize in the festival, co-sponsored by The New York Times; it also took the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award and second prize in the Seeds of War category, The Associated Press reported. Ms. Noujaim's film follows three principal characters: a senior producer at Al Jazeera, a Jazeera journalist and a marine who defends the United States invasion to the global news media. "The Control Room" is to be distributed in the summer by Magnolia Pictures.

BOB DYLAN'S GIG Bob Dylan, left, is to headline the annual Fleadh festival before an anticipated audience of 30,000 music fans in Finsbury Park in London on June 20. Last year problems in finding a leading act led to cancellation of the one-day event, the BBC reported. Also scheduled to appear on this year's bill is the American band Counting Crows. Fleadh, pronounced FLAH, is Gaelic for festival. Past performers included Sting, Neil Young and the Pogues.

TUT'S TREASURES TOUR Unseen outside Egypt for a quarter of a century, funerary treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamun are to go on view for six months beginning tomorrow at the Museum of Antiquities in Basel, Switzerland. Besides 50 artifacts from the tomb, the show includes 70 other pieces, many never seen outside Egypt, from the Valley of the Kings, the site of royal tombs, The Associated Press reported. In addition, the exhibition features a replica of King Tut's burial chamber, with reproductions of the original frescoes that are intended to convey to visitors the excitement felt by the British archaeologist Howard Carter when he unsealed the tomb in 1922. Other highlights of the show include the Golden Shrine, a highly decorated wooden chest covered in sheet gold, and a miniature coffin made of beaten gold. Although negotiations are pending, Peter Blome, the director of the Basel museum, said he expected the exhibition to move to the United States early next year and later to Japan. The objects are insured for $650 million.

FOOTNOTES

A John Wayne stamp, scheduled to be issued in September as part of the United States Postal Service's Legends of Hollywood series, was introduced over the weekend at a fund-raising event for the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. The painting by Drew Struzan used for the stamp was based on a black-and-white photograph taken for publicity purposes during the filming of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a 1962 western.