Free Republic

More than 50 years after the musical “West Side Story” had its original Broadway premiere, it is set to return in February in a darker, grittier, bilingual revival, the show’s producers said on Wednesday. In an element that its director, Arthur Laurents, said would heighten the passion and authenticity of the show, much of the dialogue — both spoken and sung — will be in Spanish. “They will speak Spanish where they would naturally,” Mr. Laurents said in a telephone interview from his home in Quogue, N.Y., adding that supertitles would be used to aid the audience. “The scenes with...

Originally scheduled to be shot at Emory, the remake of "Revenge of the Nerds," the 1984 film in which a group of bookish and socially awkward outcasts band together to fight their oppressive bullies, has been cancelled, Fox Atomic Films announced last week. The magazine explained that filmmakers' concerns with the direction of the movie prompted the decision to cancel, but some movie bloggers blamed Emory for the shutdown. McClurkin said the filmmakers initially proposed to the University a crew of about 100 people with three trucks of equipment. But the filmmakers' final proposal called for about three times as...

In a world of movie remakes, it's not unusual to see a remake flop. Steve Martin's recent Pink Panther is, unfortunately, no exception. Take the first few painful minutes of the new film as a warning: it really doesn't get any better. Steve Martin is a very funny and talented actor, but that doesn't come through in this newest addition to the Pink Panther movies in which he plays the famously incompetent Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Drawing from elements found principally in the first two films in the series, The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark, this latest film...

CLAREMONT, Calif. -- I used to be a big time Bush-basher. I loved the Web sites that made George W. Bush look like a monkey, the books full of garbled speeches and interviews, and the jokes about the President's IQ. I would begin every article I wrote for this newspaper by describing how idiotic, greedy, fascist, and evil the President was and how once again he was going to screw up all of our lives. Lately, however, the pervasive Bush-bashing is beginning to bother me. It is not that my opinion of the President has changed; it is as low...