“Bravo brings 'Atlanta' cast back - Variety” plus 3 more

Bravo brings 'Atlanta' cast back - Variety
Same Phantom, Different Spirit - New York Times
'High Society' on the CW - Los Angeles Times
Dallas-area women among World War II pilots to receive nation's top ... - Dallas Morning News

Bravo brings 'Atlanta' cast back - Variety

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 07:58 PM PST

'Real Housewives,' Mizrahi among those returning to net

Bravo arrives at today's Gotham upfront with "Project Runway" far in its rearview mirror.

The fashion skein was the No. 1 show on the cabler before moving over to Lifetime following a lengthy legal battle. But its success may have been eclipsed by the "Real Housewives" phenomenon.

The just-completed second season of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" was the highest-rated "Housewives" season ever, averaging 2.32 million adults in the 18-49 and 3.26 million total viewers. Season three is set to go into production with the season-two cast intact.

In addition, last week's

season-five finale of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" drew a healthy 2.45 million.

Network will announce that Isaac Mizrahi will be back as host for season two of "The Fashion Show." Skein, which Bravo looked at as a replacement for viewers looking for their "Runway" fix, earned fewer eyeballs -- averaging about a million viewers for the 12 episodes -- but was deemed healthy enough to earn a second-season pickup by g.m. Frances Berwick.

Among the shows Bravo announced at January's Television Critics Assn. confab that are looking for start dates are "Real Housewives of New York" star Bethenny Frankel in "Bethenny's Getting Married," which examines how she balances her professional and personal lives.

Also, Bravo -- in trying to stay on target with its fashion, beauty, food, design and pop culture categories -- will reteam with "Project Runway" shingle Magical Elves on "Top Chef: Just Desserts." Elves and Bravo have collaborated on the "Top Chef" franchise since the series launched four years ago. Season seven of "Top Chef" goes into production next month.

Magical Elves also produces "Kell on Earth," starring fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone, which is currently in the middle of its first season.

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Same Phantom, Different Spirit - New York Times

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 08:06 PM PST

LONDON — To think that all this time that poor old half-faced composer hasn't been dead at all, just stewing in his lust for greater glory. Being the title character of "The Phantom of the Opera," the most successful musical of all time, wasn't enough for him. Oh, no. Like so many aging stars, he was determined to return — with different material and a rejuvenated body — to the scene of his first triumph. So now he's back in the West End with a big, gaudy new show. And he might as well have a "kick me" sign pasted to his backside.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the Phantom, who has been uncomfortably reincarnated in "Love Never Dies," which opened Tuesday night at the Adelphi Theater here. Surely no stage show has ever been as widely and severely prejudged as this belated sequel from Andrew Lloyd Webber.

You see, Mr. Lloyd Webber's original "Phantom of the Opera," based on the oft-filmed 1911 novel by Gaston Leroux, has developed a stark raving fan base since it opened (and never closed) in London and on Broadway in the late 1980s. When the news got out that there was to be another show about the Phantom — to be set in early-20th-century Coney Island, no less, instead of gaslight Paris — a few of those fans took to their cybersoapboxes to cry sacrilege.

Soon theater writers (including me) were receiving e-mail messages from "Phantom"-ites lamenting the show's rank inappropriateness. And they hadn't even seen the darn thing. Once the musical went into previews, many were reporting in chat rooms and blogs that their darkest fears had been confirmed.

Of course, bad advance word on the Internet has sometimes proved false. (Ever hear of "Avatar"?) And I would be delighted to tell you that's what happened here, especially since "Love Never Dies" is scheduled for Broadway this fall. But how can I, when at every opportunity Mr. Lloyd Webber's latest sets itself up to be knocked down? Directed by the protean Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray," the New York production of "The Coast of Utopia"), choreographed by a seriously underused Jerry Mitchell and designed by Bob Crowley ("Mary Poppins," "The History Boys"), this poor sap of a show feels as eager to be walloped as a clown in a carnival dunking booth.

For starters, the title, with its promise of immortality, was just asking for trouble. And its breathless solemnity pervades the show's every aspect. This production keeps such a straight face, it's as if the slightest smile might crack it. It never acknowledges that in a musical in which no one could exactly be described as animated, it might be a mistake to introduce your leading lady in the form of an automaton in her image. Or that it's probably not a good idea to have your hero, in his first solo, sing "the moments creep, but I can't bear to sleep" to a melody that moves like a sloth in quicksand.

That fellow for whom time creeps is the Phantom (Ramin Karimloo), now going by the name of Mr. Y. (Is that because Y is the, uh, sequel to X?) A decade after he terrorized the Paris Opera with falling chandeliers and his deadly Punjab lasso trick, Mr. Y has set up his own little sinister sideshow, called Phantasma (no comment), in Coney Island. Though Phantasma bids fair to be the season's must-see cultural destination, the Phantom deplores "10 years of wasting my time in smoke and noise." (No comment.)

Under his assumed name, the Phantom engages Christine Daaé (Sierra Boggess), the famous French soprano whom he once stalked and hypnotized, to appear in his show. Wearing the latest in French fashion (and a cunning little head mike), she arrives with her vicomte husband, Raoul (Joseph Millson), and her 10-year-old son, Gustave (played by a rotating cast of child actors). The advent of the glamorous Christine antagonizes the Phantom's envious aides-de-camp, Madame Giry (Liz Robertson, doing a Frenchified Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca") and her daughter, Meg (Summer Strallen), hitherto the singing star of Phantasma.

Friends of "Phantom" will recognize these characters, as they are all (except Gustave) recycled — and in some cases, changed beyond recognition — from the earlier show. The book is credited to four writers: Mr. Lloyd Webber, the comedian Ben Elton, the novelist Frederick Forsyth and the show's lyricist, Glenn Slater. And its plot is so elaborate and implausible it makes the libretto of "Il Trovatore" read like a first-grade primer. If you don't know the first "Phantom," you will be very confused; if you do know the first "Phantom," you will also be very confused.

Granted, using Coney Island as the setting makes a certain sense. "The Phantom of the Opera" was one of the first (and best) versions of that grandiose showbiz genre, the musical as amusement park ride. (The last time I saw it, 10 years ago, it was sort of like visiting Coney Island's venerable Cyclone roller coaster, rickety but sturdy.) So why not put on a show set in a real amusement park?

Yet the wheels that keep this particular park in motion grind torturously. There's no equivalent to the stage-crossing gondola of "Phantom" (unless you count the mechanical glass horse that briefly appears in Act I). The thrill rides, like much of the scenery here, are digital projections (often rather pretty) on scrims. Most of the three-dimensional scenery is made up of vast Art Noveau gates and sculptures, huge creations that match Mr. Lloyd Webber's melodies in form and weight.

While lushly orchestrated (by David Cullen with Mr. Lloyd Webber), the score is, for the most part, so slow that you have time to anticipate Mr. Slater's next leaden rhyme. Each of the songs — which range from bathing-beauty frolics to power-chord operetta ballads — spins a single tune until it loses its tread.

Since the lead singers are required to haunt demanding, throat-taxing upper registers, it is perhaps too much to expect them to act as well. As the Phantom, Mr. Karimloo sings with all the force that artificial amplification allows. Vocally, the pretty Ms. Boggess (who starred in "The Little Mermaid" on Broadway) combines the more mechanical qualities of Jeanette MacDonald and Julie Andrews. Mr. Millson glares handsomely. And Ms. Strallen, as the unappreciated Meg, has a spark of something like personality.

If this show could speed up and loosen up it might be (marginally) more amusing. As it is, only a couple of sequences are campy enough to elicit "whoa, nelly" smiles. Well, one, anyway: an electric-rock number in which the Phantom, accompanied by an automaton skeleton organist, communes with little Gustave, who takes off his jacket and swings it in the air, like a miniature Van Halen member.

That's the concluding number of the first act, and it actually has some energy. But true to self-sabotaging form, this musical follows that song with the bizarrely unexciting postscript of Mrs. Danvers, I mean Mme. Giry, tossing the kid's jacket down a stairwell. This is matched, in the second act climax, by what feels like the longest death scene of all time. Relax, I'm not going to tell you who dies (while gasping out a reprise of the title song). Why bother, when from beginning to end, "Love Never Dies" is its very own spoiler.

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'High Society' on the CW - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 08:20 PM PST

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Dallas-area women among World War II pilots to receive nation's top ... - Dallas Morning News

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 08:06 PM PST

Long before their faces became wrinkled and their hair turned gray, they were the young, daring women of World War II.

Daring because they defied tradition, overcoming discrimination to become the first female pilots to fly military planes in the U.S.

Betty Jo Reed was perhaps one of the boldest. After high school, she worked as a sales clerk, devoting half her paycheck to flying lessons.

Today, the 86-year-old North Richland Hills resident will be among the 295 surviving members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots to accept the Congressional Gold Medal.

The medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress, will be presented to the group during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The medal then will be donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

Each of the women or their surviving family members will receive a bronze replica.

"It is wonderful to finally be honored for our service to this country," said Reed, who is attending the ceremony with her daughter, Melissa Reed of Aurora, Colo.

"None of these women expected this honor, but what they did was incredible," said another daughter, Sally Reed Zobrist of Southlake.

Thirty-one Texans, including six women from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, are among the recipients. The local women include Eloise Bailey of Carrollton, Rita Wischmeyer of Dallas, Dora McKeown and Martha Roundtree, both of Fort Worth, Frankie Bretherick of Plano and Reed.

A bill sponsored last year by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, and Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, called for the women to be honored. It also lauded the women for ferrying military aircraft around the U.S. between 1942 and 1944.

Some of the pilots, including Reed, flew planes that had undergone repairs and needed to be tested before going back into service.

But the hardest part for the women was not always the flying.

"They faced overwhelming cultural and gender bias against women in nontraditional roles and overcame multiple injustices and inequities in order to serve their country," the bill noted.

When the bill was passed last summer, it authorized medals for the 1,102 WASP members or their survivors, along with those for the 11 women killed during pilot training.

Another recipient was Jacqueline Cochran, the seasoned U.S. pilot who suggested using women to solve a pilot shortage during the war.

"Their service was intrepid, unprecedented and, for many years, largely unnoticed," Hutchison said after introducing the bill.

"Their success in the line of duty paved the way for the armed forces to lift the ban on women attending military flight training in the 1970s, and their efforts eventually led to women being fully integrated as military pilots."

The recognition of the female pilots was a bit unexpected – and somewhat late – considering that most of the women have died and those still living are in their 80s and 90s. About half were expected to attend today's ceremony.

"It's a shame they were almost forgotten and their program was deactivated before the end of the war," said Dawn Letson, coordinator of special collections at Texas Woman's University in Denton.

Since 1992, the university has been home to the personal archives of WASP members, including about 300 oral histories by the pilots. The collection is maintained by a $600,000 endowment fund.

Reed, who was born in Sherman, shared her personal story of falling in love with flying when she was "a tiny girl."

When she heard the Army Air Force was recruiting female pilots, she jumped at the opportunity. She was only 20 but had taken flying lessons as a teen.

"It was an experiment," Reed recalled. "They weren't sure women could fly the big bombers. There were 74 types of military aircraft, and we flew every one of them."

Most of the women's military training took place in Texas, at airfields in Houston and Sweetwater.

"They went in as civilian pilots, because the military needed them so badly," Letson said. "But the plan was always to get militarization for them later."

WASP, however, was deactivated Dec. 20, 1944, when the war was winding down, and male pilots came home expecting to take over the flying jobs.

"We offered to fly the planes for free, but they wouldn't let us," Reed said. "They didn't want women flying their planes anymore."

Other than becoming a stewardess, it was nearly impossible for a woman to find a job in aviation back then. Most went home and started families.

Then in 1974, the Navy announced that it would allow women to fly military planes for the first time in U.S. history.

WASP members knew this was inaccurate, and they protested not only to the Navy, but also to Congress to finally recognize them as members of the military.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the measure into law.

"By then, the women had missed out on GI Bill benefits," Letson said. "But it gave them access to the VA hospital, which is no small thing.

"And they get an American flag on their casket when they die."

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Cultural

Tuesday, March 9, 2010