January 24, 2005

Arts, Briefly

Snow Discourages Moviegoers

The blanket of snow over the Northeast this weekend kept many moviegoers from the theaters, resulting in the lowest box-office receipts of the year so far. "Are We There Yet?" (Sony), a lighthearted family road comedy starring Ice Cube was the top film, selling an estimated $18.5 million in tickets over the weekend; last week's No. 1, "Coach Carter" (Paramount), starring Samuel L. Jackson, took in $11 million. That is a drop of 32 percent in receipts over last week's top two films. But "Meet the Fockers" (Universal), the third most popular film, continued to draw sizable crowds; it made $10.2 million this weekend, bringing its cumulative sales to $247.7 million. "In Good Company" (Universal), with $8.5 million, reached No. 4, and the family comedy "Racing Stripes" (Warner Brothers) narrowly beat the high-octane action flick "Assault on Precinct 13" (Focus Features) to become the No. 5 film, with sales of just over $7 million. — CATHERINE BILLEY

Tsunami Benefit in Wales

A benefit concert in Wales on Saturday with Eric Clapton, Charlotte Church, Manic Street Preachers and Keane raised more than $2.3 million for victims of the Asian tsunami, the BBC reported. The seven-hour concert at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium drew more than 60,000 people, and more tuned in for a special hour broadcast on BBC television; the entire concert was also shown on the BBC's Web site. The concert also included Snow Patrol, Badly Drawn Boy, Embrace and Jools Holland, as well as taped goodwill messages from Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bono and Sharon Osbourne.

Dylan, How Does It Feel?

It's official. Bob Dylan is a good writer. His book "Chronicles: Volume One" (Simon & Schuster) was named a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award on Saturday, along with 24 other books in five categories. Mr. Dylan's book was nominated in the biography/autobiography category, along with Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare" (Norton) and Ron Chernow's "Alexander Hamilton" (Penguin Press). Fiction nominees include Philip Roth's "Plot Against America" (Houghton Mifflin), Edwidge Danticat's "Dew Breaker" (Knopf) and David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" (Random House); for general nonfiction, Edward Conlon's "Blue Blood" (Riverhead) and "The Reformation: A History" (Viking) by Diarmaid MacCulloch were among the books named. The awards, which also include poetry and criticism, will be given on March 18 at New School University.

Al Qaeda Anthology

Doubleday will publish a collection of the translated writings of Al Qaeda leaders next year and will donate profits from the book to charities that are aiding American victims of terrorism. The book, tentatively titled "The Al Qaeda Reader," will consist of writings by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second in command, plus material attributed to Osama bin Laden. The material was discovered in the Library of Congress by Raymond Ibrahim, a Library of Congress specialist in Middle Eastern studies, who will translate the text. Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House Inc., Doubleday's parent, said the company had not yet determined which charities would receive profits from the book. Doubleday considers its use of the material to be "fair use" and therefore will not pay royalties, although it will make payments to the translator for the right to publish his work. — EDWARD WYATT

Grant for Musical Theater

Who ever said there's no money in the theater? Certainly not the folks at the fledgling New York Musical Theater Festival, who will receive a $100,000 grant today from Jujamcyn, the Broadway theater owner. The prize, awarded annually by Jujamcyn, is given to a group displaying an "outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent for the theater." In the case of the musical theater festival, that contribution has been made quickly; in only its second year, the nonprofit festival staged more than 30 productions of new musicals last fall, several of which have since been optioned by commercial producers. Its second incarnation is due in September. — JESSE McKINLEY

Dance on Film Awards

"The Cost of Living," a 34-minute film made by the DV8 Physical Theater in London, won the top prize at the 33rd Dance on Camera Festival, presented by the Dance Films Association. The $1,500 prize was announced Saturday afternoon at the final screening of the three-weekend festival at Lincoln Center. The jury also gave an honorary award to "Carmen and Geoffrey," a feature-length documentary about Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder. — JOHN ROCKWELL

The Holocaust in Ukraine

Steven Spielberg and Victor Pinchuk, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, will be the executive producers of a new documentary about the Holocaust in Ukraine based on more than 3,000 videotaped interviews of survivors and witnesses of the genocide there. The film is to focus on the massacre at Babi Yar, the ravine on the edge of Kiev where Nazi forces killed more than 30,000 Jews in two days in September 1941. The Shoah Visual History Foundation, founded by Mr. Spielberg in 1994, conducted the Ukraine interviews from 1996 to 1999. The foundation has collected more than 50,000 interviews throughout the world in 32 languages.

Drama on 59th Street

Primary Stages will end its current season with Lee Blessing's "Going to St. Ives," about the mother of a brutal African dictator. It will star L. Scott Caldwell of the hit television show "Lost" and begin on March 16 at the Off Broadway company's 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street. Its 2005-6 season will include two New York premieres: Terrence McNally's "Dedication, or the Stuff of Dreams," about a couple who run a children's theater in upstate New York, will be directed by Michael Morris and begin in July; Charles Grodin's comedy "The Right Kind of People" will follow, in a production directed by Chris Smith.

Footnotes

The Salzburg Festival in Austria will honor its most famous son next year on his 250th birthday. All 22 works Mozart wrote for the stage - operas, singspiels and other pieces - will be performed over six weeks in July and August 2006, the festival announced. Among the rarities: "Apollo et Hyacinthus," Mozart's first opera, which had its premiere at Salzburg University when the composer was all of 11. ... The world premiere of John Adams's "Doctor Atomic," about the nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the first atomic bomb, has been scheduled for Oct. 1 by the San Francisco Opera. The baritone Gerald Finley will sing the role of Oppenheimer, and the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson will play his wife, Kitty. ... The French newspaper Le Parisien reported on Saturday that Audrey Tautou ("Amélie") will star in the film adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code," with Tom Hanks.