Delray Beach-based author Rod MacDonald’s primary audience for his debut novel, The Open Mike, is likely to include many of the folks who have followed his primary career as a singer/songwriter. Considering that he got his musical start singing and playing guitar in Greenwich Village in the 1970s, where the book’s lead character (the similarly-named Reo MacGregor) does the … [Read more...]
Sundays: I’ve got a little listicle
By Myles Ludwig Some days I wake up and think the world is coming to an end. Maybe not the material world as we know it, but the world of popular culture, the world in which celebrity pregnancy overshadows genocide as a global news event and zombies are exalted. Popular culture is a phenomenon that used to be marked by an unwarranted appreciation of the lowbrow, the … [Read more...]
Director Montiel draws on his tough early life for film
Director-screenwriter Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Fighting) grew up in the low-income housing projects of Queens, N.Y. Many of the guys that he grew up with are now either in prison or dead, yet through sheer determination he avoided both and became a filmmaker. How did he beat the odds and avoid the violence that he recreates in his latest feature, The … [Read more...]
For Anna Kendrick, odds of stardom are better than 50/50
You could never accuse Anna Kendrick of avoiding offbeat projects. She copped an Oscar nomination two years ago as the cold-blooded tech geek in Up in the Air, a comedy about corporate downsizing. In 2007, she co-starred in a high school debate team tale with the off-putting title of Rocket Science. And this Friday she plays a novice therapist in the cancer comedy, 50/50. … [Read more...]
Broadway Postcard No. 7: Boca team backs sharp ‘Born Yesterday’
This afternoon I got to see the handiwork of those three young chargers from Boca Raton -- Philip Morgaman (27 years old), Frankie J. Grande (28) and Brian Kapetanis (28) -- the lead producers of the new revival of Born Yesterday that opened last Sunday night to very favorable reviews. That was the opening I missed taking a three-hop flight to New York by way of Detroit. It … [Read more...]