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Tags: Festival Travel / Shakespeare Festivals / Los Angeles Travel / Tom Hanks / Rita Wilson / → All Tags
Shakespeare Festival LA Offering the Chance to Act with Tom Hanks
So, you think you have the chops to act along side Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson? If you do, today’s your last chance to bid on a speaking role in a performance of "The Comedy of Errors."
Every year, some of Hollywood's A-list stars with legit acting chops (sorry Lindsay, Paris, Kim, Heidi, LC, Lo, et. al.) participate in a staged reading of a Shakespearean comedy. The annual event raises money to support Shakespeare Festival/LA’s acting programs. According to their mission statement, Shakespeare Festival/L.A. works to “enchant, enrich, and build community through professional theatrical traditions that are accessible to all”.
The winner, or highest bidder, will participate in rehearsal, gain admission to the VIP post-show party and take a group photo with the cast, which the cast will all sign.
This year’s participants will also include Martin Short, Christina Applegate, Peter Graves, Arte Johnson, Shirley Jones, Kelsey Grammer, and Eugene Levy.
If you’re more of an observer than an actor, the event, which will take place May 18th at the Geffen Playhouse, is open to the public. Visit Shakespeare Festival/L.A.’s website for ticket information.
Related Stories:
· Shakespeare Festival/L.A. [Official Site]
· Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors [Ebay]
· Shakespeare Festival/L.A. [Facebook]
[Photo: Ebay]
Tags: Literary Travel / Angels and Demons / Tom Hanks / Ron Howard / → All Tags
Searching For Roman Culture Beyond 'Angels & Demons'
Who knew one man's horrible haircut could cast such a long shadow? Tom Hanks may have shed his greasy "professorial" mop from "The Da Vinci Code", but with posters for "Angels & Demons" suddenly appearing on the sides of buses everywhere, we fear for not only our own souls, but also for the soul of Rome, the city in which we are informed the movie is set.
The prequel features "symbologist" Robert Langdon running around making Secret Connections to everything, and was written to take place largely in the Vatican. Despite the Church banning director Ron Howard from filming in Vatican City, "Angels & Demons" tours have been springing up all over the place as local operators take advantage of American tourists' willingness to believe anything as long as they read it in a paperback thriller. We haven't read the book yet, so we've crossed these kind of adventures off our list... but what to replace them with?
Tags: Angels and Demons / Movie Travel / Tom Hanks / Ron Howard / Ayelet Zurer / Ewan McGregor / Videos / → All Tags
Set In Vatican City, Shot In LA
The trailer for the film "Angels and Demons" just came out, and you'd think they'd actually shot it in Vatican City. But Ron Howard's cast and crew were locked out of the Holy See because church officials didn't really care for "The Da Vinci Code."
Instead, a mock-up St. Peter's Square was built in LA for filming. Producers also got access to the super-swanky Royal Palace in Caserta, Italy to use as a stand-in for interior shots.
Real Vatican or not, there's no doubt that the film will inspire a new batch of movie tourists, eager to see the place that the Illuminati are supposedly trying to destroy with antimatter. The film opens May 15, 2009.
Related Stories:
· Vatican City Is Rebuilt in LA [Telegraph]
· Vatican Bans Da Vinci Code Sequel [Telegraph]
· Movie Travel coverage [Jaunted]
Tags: Celeb Travel / Tom Hanks / Dan Brown / Ron Howard / The Da Vinci Code / Movie Set Travel / → All Tags
Not This Movie Set Travel: Church Blocks New Dan Brown Adaptation
Hey, remember those awesome scenes in "The Da Vinci Code" where Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu went into a church and discovered "Jesus" could be her middle name? (It was something like that.) Well, hope you enjoyed those sweeping Ron Howard shots, because the Vatican is cracking down on filming requests for the Dan Brown prequel "Angels and Demons."
When the Catholic Church was unable to kill the best-selling thriller and the train of books that followed it, it struck back by blocking Tom Hanks and Howard from shooting inside two Rome churches, Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria, which supposedly figure prominently into the plot of "Angels and Demons."
(We've never read it, but we assume it takes Langdon the symbologist from idyllic desert childhood to kill-happy atheist. It's a prequel, after all!)
Church cooperation or no, look for "Angels and Demons" to hit theaters sometime in 2009, with new costars Ewan McGregor as a Vatican hotshot and Ayelet Zurer ("Vantage Point," "Munich") as the requisite hot-lady scientist.
Related Stories:
· Movie Set Travel: "The Da Vinci Code" [Jaunted]
· Vatican Bans Tom Hanks from Filming in Churches [ICYDK]
· Celeb Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: Defamer]
Tags: Classic New York Movies / Classic-NYC-Movies-Map / Meg Ryan / Tom Hanks / → All Tags
Classic New York Movies: "You've Got Mail" and a Sweet UWS Apartment
Visit our Classic NYC Movies Map to... hey, what's that sound? Sorry, we got distracted by our 1998 e-mail.
When "You've Got Mail" opened in theatres and made a jillion dollars, we were young, naive non-New Yorkers. Why wouldn't a children's book store owner (Meg Ryan) and a publishing magnate (Tom Hanks) meet on AOL and eventually fall in love?
We had a screen name, we were fairly sure how it worked. Well, the Internet has changed a lot since then, but this movie is still a prime Sunday-afternoon cable pick--and its sense of Upper West Side geography pretty sound.
Well, sound with one big exception, and it's not that the Upper West Side is full of pretty people living decent lives. The bookstore Kathleen owns, the Shop Around the Corner, doesn't exist. Why location scouts didn't bother to find another of the many, many independent children's books in the city (like Books of Wonder or the Bank Street Bookstore) is beyond us, but you can see the storefront which stood in for Kathleen's shop at 169 West 69th Street. (It sells cheese and antiques.)
