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11/12/99- Updated 05:28 PM ET | ||||||||
'Dawson's Creek' throwing a party
Dawson's Creek is hosting a party. About 600 fans won tickets to hear Paula Cole, whose I Don't Want to Wait, is the television show's theme song, and other singers perform Saturday on the University of North Carolina at Wilmington campus. The six Dawson's Creek stars - James Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, Michelle Williams, Meredith Monroe and Kerr Smith - will be the concert's co-hosts. A car personalized by the cast will be auctioned on eBay, with proceeds benefiting Hurricane Floyd victims. "We were all trying to come up with an idea for a charity that Dawson's Creek could support, and we all had different ideas," Williams said. "Once we lived through Hurricane Floyd and saw its impact on the community we work in, the choice was clear.'
'Dogma': A decidedly defiant parable
If you ever saw tangled-hair pop siren Alanis Morissette wail her tortured anthems and
thought, "Oh, God," it turns out you weren't far from wrong. At least that's the
gospel according to director/writer Kevin Smith in his hot-potato theological parable, Dogma.
The film is often vulgar, juvenile (the poop-spewing demon must be the Pokémon from
hell's sewage system) and silly. But sacrilegious? Only if it's a sin to uphold personal
faith and criticize man-made institutions. There is a keen intellect behind this devoutly
defiant fable. And this is a movie that is sharp enough to seriously dissect John Hughes'
teen oeuvre while slamming the Hughes-scripted Home Alone. (Rating:
Bush heartthrob: Pop lacks passion"It's a bad time for pop music," says Gavin Rossdale. "So much of what I've been hearing lately has no passion, no direction. It's like performing monkeys." The famously photogenic lead singer and songwriter of the British rock band Bush is sitting in a tony restaurant in New York, digging into a tastefully arranged slab of red meat. It's an interesting spectacle: Beefcake devouring beefsteak while airing his beefs about contemporary music."It all seems so superficial and vacuous," Rossdale continues. "I want the interesting kids to form bands and talk about their rites of passage. I want them to put Holden Caulfield in a band and have him write lyrics." On Bush's new album, The Science of Things, which hit stores Oct. 26, Rossdale maintains his flair for the sort of pensive self-expression that fans call soul-searching and detractors navel-gazing. But he also turns his ambivalent eyes toward the world around him. Harrelson clouds up 'Rainmaker'
NEW YORK - Had N. Richard Nash's play The Rainmaker been written today, it
would be a made-for-TV movie, happily encountered, quickly forgotten. But this is a story
with history, first as a teleplay that became a 1954 Broadway hit. Two years later, it was
made into a now-fondly recalled film with Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. By 1963,
it was a popular musical titled 110 in the Shade. It's bound to have the aura of
a classic. But the new Broadway revival (
Readers cast 'Atlas Shrugged'Atlas Shrugged, the classic Ayn Rand novel mixing her Objectivism philosophy with plenty of drama and sex, has never been put on the screen, till now. Albert S. Ruddy, The Godfather trilogy producer, will make a four-hour miniseries for Turner Network Television, and we asked our readers to help with casting. Dozens of e-mails came in, and Ruddy says three major female stars on our list have contacted him. (He won't say who.) In an ideal fan-world, Jodie Foster, Sharon Stone or Rene Russo would play beautiful railroad tycoon Dagny Taggart. Harrison Ford or Liam Neeson would be the industrialist Hank Rearden. John Galt, mysterious genius who organizes a strike of the world's creative minds, could be Mel Gibson, Edward Norton, Rob Lowe, Rick Schroder - or even Bill Gates! For Francisco d'Anconia, South American copper heir, Antonio Banderas is hands-down winner. Ruddy hopes to shoot next summer with a possible late fall air date. He assures fans that his plan is to convey the sweep of Rand's story, and he'll hire a big-screen director.
Craving a good read?
This holiday season, some 20 films based on literature will hit the big screen, including movies based on such varied popular works as Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. It's not just that Hollywood wants to help you catch up on your reading. Like big-name movie stars, familiar titles command a built-in audience that can enhance box-office prospects - crucial during the super-competitive holiday season. Last year, for example, 14 of the 50 top-grossing films were based on books - second only to original screenplays.
No ripple of energy in this 'Aftershock'I'll shake Manhattan. On that simple piece of sci-fi bedrock - an earthquake hitting
New York City - CBS has built a four-hour miniseries. It might not have been a bad
foundation, either, if the network had bothered to add a decent script, some convincing
special effects and a few actors who didn't give you the impression they were forced to do
this clunker at gunpoint. Minus those basic building blocks, what you get is yet another
poorly constructed sweeps disappointment: Aftershock: Earthquake in New York ( MTV's Eurobash honors Bono, Spears
DUBLIN, Ireland - High school heartthrob Britney Spears scored a landslide victory Thursday at the 6th annual MTV Europe Music Awards. The singer from Louisiana won the Best Female, Best Breakthrough, Best Pop Act and Best Single for Hit Me Baby One More Time, reflecting the 17-year-old's popularity with some 2 million telephone-voting MTV viewers across Europe. At the star-studded ceremony in Dublin's Point Depot, a converted warehouse on the banks of the River Liffey, she thanked "Jesus Christ and my family . . . and just the world for accepting pop again." The channel's peace-lauding Free Your Mind Award went to U2's lead singer Bono, who's credited with promoting the "yes" vote in last year's peace referendum in Northern Ireland and crusading to abolish Third World debt. NBC's 'Mary' errs unforgivablyWe'd be better off if NBC stayed away from the Bible. Last season, the network delved
into the Old Testament for the deeply silly Noah's Ark. Now NBC turns to the New
Testament for Mary, Mother of Jesus, which is far more reverent but no more
dramatically viable - and often just as giggle-inducing in its inability to believably
portray either the human or the divine. Caught in some never-never land between historical
accuracy and religious sensitivities, the Mary actors - overwhelmingly British,
with the notable exception of Swedish star Pernilla August - speak stilted dialogue
studded with biblical quotes in accents assigned by the English class system. (Rating:
Groening's grumpy, but cuddly, 'Reindeer'
What's Matt Groening, creator of that "subversive" TV cartoon The Simpsons, doing getting involved with a heartwarming animated Christmas special? "This is my opportunity to take the sap out," says Groening, producer of Fox's Olive, the Other Reindeer (Dec. 17, 8 p.m. ET), based on a children's book by J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh. "It's definitely got some cuddlesome moments, but it's sufficiently amusingly grumpy in spots." A dog named Olive decides to save Christmas after hearing that Blitzen is injured and Santa needs "all of the other reindeer." (The pooch thinks he's calling for "Olive, the other reindeer.") Drew Barrymore voices Olive, Peter MacNicol is her pal Fido, and Ed Asner is Santa. Just to remind you that he hasn't gone totally soft, Groening has a Christmas episode of Futurama in the works. Santa is a robot who terrorizes the naughty.
Pumping up the audienceThe Newsboys want to blow up an arena. Don't alert the authorities - this isn't terrorism or a pyrotechnics stunt. The Australian band plans to perform in an inflatable venue during its 55-city tour, starting Feb. 17 in Florida. The leased pump-it-up dome, introduced as a stationary structure at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, will be transported in three tractor trailers and erected by 50 crew members in parking lots, fairgrounds and "wherever it will fit," says publicist Chris Roslan. Air-conditioned and outfitted with an "in-the-round" stage flanked by two curved video walls, the venue holds 3,000 (2,000 seated and 1,000 standing). It's equipped to handle 150,000 watts of sound and 1 million watts of lighting. Since this is a music first, success is a matter of faith for The Newsboys, a Christian band hoping for a pop crossover with eighth album Love Liberty Disco, due Tuesday. If the experiment works, can a helium-filled version be far behind for a Chipmunks reunion tour? Can literary hits carry opera's tune?Finding attentive audiences for new operas may be the simplest thing in the world: Adapt a classic play, movie or novel and make it sing. Sound easy? If only. Blessings are rarely more mixed. On the plus side, adaptations of well-known material bring mainstream attention to oft-marginalized composers. Previously shut doors fly open. Recordings are planned. PBS cameras show up. But then there's a severity of scrutiny and preconceived notions about the original that can break reputations as well as make them. Undaunted, America's three biggest opera houses are producing such works. Lyric Opera of Chicago just wrapped up A View From the Bridge; the Metropolitan Opera unveils The Great Gatsby Dec. 20; and San Francisco Opera premieres Dead Man Walking October 2000.
Ballroom dancers give off heatLONDON - For anyone who ever felt they could do without the story and singing, Burn the Floor is your musical. Arriving on the heels of hoofers-only hits such as Lord of the Dance, this two-hour workout shows what happens when 44 ballroom dancing experts ease up on the starch. After stomping through Australia and Europe, Burn the Floor greets the USA on Dec. 5 via PBS' Great Performances, followed by an eight-city tour. A healthy slice of the $10 million budget went to costume designer Bonita Bryg for creations including hoop skirts that light up and designer duds such as $250 LaPerla underwear. A recent performance at London's Royal Albert Hall prompted teens to shriek and one elderly couple to leave early. And that's the idea, says performance director Kerrie Shrimpton. "We want people to get rid of their old notion of ballroom dancing as being boring and old-fashioned." Sneak preview: 'Eye of the Beholder'
Audiences have gone nuts for Double Jeopardy, starring Ashley Judd. The movie has topped $100 million in its six weeks in release. So what's next for the star? Eye of the Beholder, due from Destination Films in January. Judd plays a glamorous, dangerous criminal being pursued by British intelligence agent Ewan McGregor. But of course McGregor falls for the mysterious woman and finds himself unable to carry out his mission. Genevieve Bujold, k.d. lang and Jason Priestley also star.
Copyright 1999 USA TODAY. All rights reserved. USA TODAY staff writers Cesar Soriano and Michelle Healy and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
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out of four)
out of four,
Sunday and Tuesday, 9 p.m. ET). It's shaken, but not stirring.
out of four)
