10/3 Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com

Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. Boston Phoenix - thePhoenix.com - All articles from the Boston Phoenix Review: The Invention of Lying October 2, 2009 at 4:50 pm Gervais not inventive enough In the world of this debut effort from Ricky Gervais, there are no movies. There's only Lecture Films, a studio that produces pictures in which actors read from accounts of historical events. Interview: Steve Martin, banjo extraordinaire October 2, 2009 at 3:36 pm Just two wild and crazy guys I remember watching Steve Martin's Wild and Crazy Guy on a crinkly VHS tape, while sitting on my parent's bedroom floor. I was just a little fat kid at the time. My parents were at work, as they often were, and my older sister, my only sibling, had just married her high school sweetheart and moved two miles away.   Steve Martin: Wild and Crazy Guy emeritus? Well, not quite. Though with the release of a melancholy memoir, Born Standing Up, Martin signalled that comedy isn't the only love of his life. His current tour, which arrives at the Wang Center on October 7, is a musical outing inspired by his Rounder debut, The Crow: New Songs for the Five String Banjo -- his first music release since "King Tut" topped the charts in 1978. Along with a few other writers, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Steve over the phone from his Los Angeles home the other day. He was ostensibly promoting the tour, but I managed to sneak in some comedy related questions. He was as nice and thoughtful as I imagined him to be, and, of course, very funny. Born Standing Up has a bit of a melancholy tint to it. It also transmits the impression that you were generally unsatisfied with stand-up at a certain point. However, when it comes to your banjo music, say in the song like "Late for School," you sound so satisfied and joyous. Can you describe the satisfaction you get from making music and how it satisfies you differently from performing and writing comedy? STEVE MARTIN: Well it's very clear difference, almost everything else I do involves words. And the music doesn't so it's automatically a different - I think it's a different part of the brain and it's a way to be emotional in an, you know, in an utterly different way than you would normally. You're actually bringing it out through an instrument rather than, you know, telling someone you love them you can play it. Read more Photos: Charles Daniels at Nave Gallery October 2, 2009 at 1:43 pm 'In Through the Out Door: Photography & Video of Charles Daniels,' on display until October 4   Images from Charles Daniels' photography exhibit at the Nave Gallery DJ Axel Foley at Project MUM, Somerville, 2009 'In Through the Out Door: Photography & Video of Charles Daniels,' on display until October 4 Read more No place like home October 2, 2009 at 12:32 pm Boston Ballet's Giselle fits right in The first thing audiences see when the curtain goes up on Boston Ballet's Giselle is our heroine's charming Rhineland-village home, a rustic abode that in Peter Farmer's set is framed by birches, a symbol of fidelity.   Erica Cornejo and Nelson Madrigal (photo: Eric Antoniou) The first thing audiences see when the curtain goes up on Boston Ballet's Giselle is our heroine's charming Rhineland-village home, a rustic abode that in Peter Farmer's set is framed by birches, a symbol of fidelity. Call it a symbol for the company: like Albrecht, Boston Ballet has forsaken the castle for the cottage, leaving the spacious -- even cavernous -- Wang Theatre, where it roamed for nearly 30 years, for the more intimate Boston Opera House, to which it's pledged its troth for the next 30 years. But unlike Albrecht, whose decision ends in tragedy, the Ballet, on the evidence of last night's opening performance, is unlikely to regret its decision. VIEW photos of Giselle at the Opera House. By Eric Antoniou The Opera House is, granted, a pretty fancy cottage: it opened in 1928 as a lavish movie theater and vaudeville palace and was taken over in 1980 by Sarah Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston before undergoing a $38 million restoration (courtesy of Clear Channel) in 2004. The stage area is slightly smaller than the Wang's but comparable to what most first-tier ballet companies perform on. The backstage area is much smaller and will test the company's resources. The acoustics are much better: Jonathan McPhee's Boston Ballet Orchestra sounds louder, clearer, brighter. Read more   This email was sent to phoenixnews09@gmail.com.  Manage Your Account Don't want to receive this feed any longer? Unsubscribe here.