AUSTIN, Minn. - A play called "Monty Python's Spamalot" is headed for Broadway, and Hormel Foods Corp. is laughing.
Based on the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," the musical begins previews Feb. 14 at New York's Shubert Theatre. It will run in Chicago from Dec. 21 to Jan. 23.
Hormel plans to issue Spam golden honey grail in a collector's edition can. The product will be available in limited quantities at select New York City retailers in February.
For those who can't wait, cans will be given to the first 100 customers who purchase tickets when the Shubert box office opens Dec. 6.
"Spam is the holy grail of canned meats," Eric Idle, a Monty Python veteran and lyricist and book writer for the new musical, said in a recent statement.
"Spamalot," directed by Mike Nichols, stars David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry and Hank Azaria.
Idle has said the musical will be "as good as or quite likely better than any other show with killer rabbits and a legless knight opening on Broadway or in Chicago this season."
Hormel spokeswoman Julie Craven said company executives who have read the script said it's hysterical, and company leaders including chief executive Joel Johnson plan to attend the show's New York opening.
She said Hormel sees New York as an ideal spot to promote the iconic Spam brand.
"New York is a great place to get buzz," said Craven. "It is where buzz starts."
On the Net:
http://www.MontyPythonsSpamalot.com
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NEW YORK - The queen of the all-female alliance on CBS' "Survivor: Vanuatu - Islands of Fire" has been dethroned.
Last week, part of the alliance mutinied after Twila Tanner initiated a voting bloc with the game's lone remaining male, Chris Daugherty. On Thursday's episode, the alliance's leader, Ami Cusack, was voted off the show.
"Last night, I beat up every pillow in my hotel room," Cusack told The Associated Press during a phone interview Friday. "It was so frustrating. I believed so much in Twila. I was doing the 'Braveheart' deal. We were going to the death."
Lea "Sarge" Masters and James "Chad" Crittenden, male victims of the alliance and now jury members, told the AP upon their dismissals that Cusack was a "man-hater" and "anti-man."
"I love men. I have a few friends who know some men," Cusack said jokingly.
The 31-year-old model and coffee barista could have been potentially saved by Eliza Orlins, a tribe mate she befriended.
"She talks so much," Cusack said. "But she gave me a lot of information about the game. She has watched every episode, every season. She is amazing when it comes to understanding the history and the game of 'Survivor.' It was nice having someone to explain it because I had never seen the show."
That's right. The so-called mastermind behind the powerful female alliance, who had applied to be on "The Amazing Race" but was asked to do "Survivor" instead, had never seen one episode from any of the eight previous seasons.
On the Net:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor9/
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NEW YORK - Bob Dylan's songs may have spoken for a generation in the 1960s, but he never saw himself as more than a singer-songwriter.
"'You're the prophet. You're the savior.' I never wanted to be a prophet or a savior," Dylan tells Ed Bradley on CBS' "60 Minutes." Excerpts of Sunday night's scheduled broadcast were released in advance by the network.
"Elvis maybe. I could see myself becoming him," Dylan says. "But prophet? No."
The idea of such a perception made him feel like an "impostor," he says.
"It was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story and you're just not that person everybody thinks you are, though they call you that all the time."
He added, "If you examine the songs I don't believe you're going find anything in there that says that I'm a spokesman for anybody or anything, really."
One of Dylan's songs, "Like a Rolling Stone," was recently named the top song of all-time by Rolling Stone magazine.
"No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all-time," wrote senior editor David Fricke.
But it's an honor Dylan downplays.
"You know, the list, they change names... quite frequently, really. I don't pay much attention to that," says the 63-year-old singer, who recently published his memoir, "Chronicles: Volume One."
The interview is Dylan's first TV interview in 19 years, CBS said.
On the Net:
http://www.bobdylan.com/index.html
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BRUSSELS, Belgium - News that actor Tom Hanks plans to attend remembrance ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge sent tourism officials scurrying to find him a place to stay since all hotel rooms have been taken.
Tourism officials said Friday that Hanks, star of the Steven Spielberg film "Saving Private Ryan," apparently planned to stay Dec. 15-19 in the southeast town of Bastogne, where commemoration services will be held for one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.
However, officials said they hadn't received final confirmation from Hanks that he would join a 25-member veterans group that made the lodging request on his behalf.
Hotels had sold out across the Ardennes region for over a year ahead of the anniversary, officials said.
Some 80,000 American soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing during Hitler's last desperate stand to reverse the Allied advance. German casualties numbered between 80,000 and 120,000.
"Last week we got a request for a room from American actor Tom Hanks, but we didn't have any more rooms," Emilie Louvignie of the Bastogne tourism office told Belgian daily De Morgen. "We made an urgent call around town to see if any one could put him up, and we found a place he could rent downtown."
The anniversary of the Ardennes offensive is expected to draw thousands, including some 80 American veterans.
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LANCASTER, N.Y. - Who hasn't spent part of a holiday season watching "It's a Wonderful Life"?
Even the most devoted fans of Frank Capra's 1946 classic film might find something new in its black-and-white images after listening to Karolyn Grimes. She played Zuzu Bailey, the little girl with the memorable movie-ending line: "Look, Daddy: Teacher says that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."
Grimes, 64, said she's seen the movie, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, so many times she's beyond paying attention to the story and acting and instead focuses on the subtleties others may overlook.
"Like for instance, there's a point where Mary and George are asked to go to Florida with Sam Wainwright and his wife. Very subtly, (Mary) rubs her tummy - and that night she tells him she's on the nest," Grimes said.
Grimes has a whole presentation about such moments, which she attributes to "the magic of Frank Capra."
"So many people love this film," she said during a stop in this Buffalo suburb, where she introduced the Lancaster Opera House's stage production of the story. "It's such a part of the Christmas celebration nowadays that it's become part of our culture."
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ATHENS, Greece - A group of Greek lawyers angry at the portrayal of Alexander the Great as a bisexual in the Hollywood movie "Alexander" indicated they had no plans to take legal action against the film.
In the Oliver Stone epic, to be released here Friday, Alexander has an intimate relationship with a male childhood friend. The movie has opened to mixed reviews in the United States.
The lawyers argue there is no historical evidence supporting claims that Alexander had male lovers. They had wanted a disclaimer warning audiences that the movie wasn't historically accurate.
But after a special screening this week, the 25 lawyers decided not to pursue legal options.
"There is a kiss that can be interpreted in many ways, but we have avoided the worst," Giannis Varnakas, one of the lawyers, said after the screening. "Fortunately it was not what we had feared. The people can go and see the movie."
The Greek distributors of "Alexander" had argued that art shouldn't be censored.
"Everyone has his own ethical values and beliefs, but I don't believe we should censor art. Cinema is an art and (Oliver) Stone did a movie - not a historical documentary," said Serafim Mavromatis, marketing and advertising manager for Spentzos Film, the Greek distributors of "Alexander."
Mavromatis said he'd seen the movie and argued that there is nothing in it that can damage the image of Alexander.
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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Kenneth Starr says he never should have led the investigation that resulted in President Clinton's impeachment.
The former independent counsel, now dean of the Pepperdine University law school, says "the most fundamental thing that could have been done differently" was for somebody else to have investigated Clinton's statements under oath denying he had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Starr said his role in a yearlong investigation of Clinton should have focused instead on Clinton's role in the failed Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.
"There was a sense on the part of the country that my (Lewinsky) effort was an effort somehow to expand the (Whitewater) investigation, when it was separate," he told the Santa Barbara News-Press following a speech Wednesday.
Clinton has accused Starr of running a Republican effort to ruin his presidency. Starr, however, defended the integrity of the investigation.
"It reinforced the proposition that all of us are subject to the law, no matter how high our station," he said. "The facts are the facts."
At his 1999 impeachment trial, Clinton was acquitted by the Senate of perjury and obstruction of justice. The Whitewater case ended with the conviction of Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and two of Clinton's former business partners for fraud and conspiracy. Clinton was never charged.
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CHICAGO - Lawyers in Chicago have reached a settlement in the last of a series of lawsuits involving the multimillion dollar rare violin collection of British collector Gerald Segelman.
When Segelman died in 1992 at 93, his estate sold rare Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati violins through a series of dealers and investors.
Over the next seven years, the estate filed civil lawsuits alleging the dealers defrauded Segelman's charitable trust by providing low appraisals of the instruments before purchasing them, then selling the instruments to one another at steep markups - often making seven-figure profits. The dealers and investors said they simply bought and sold instruments the way the rare violin trade was always practiced.
Each of the cases has ended in an out-of court resolution. The last of the disputes, involving Chicago instrument dealer Kenneth Warren & Son, was scheduled for a jury trial this week in U.S. District Court.
But lawyers for both sides have agreed in principle to a settlement and expect Judge Wayne R. Andersen to dismiss the case soon, Warren lawyer Jack J. Carriglio and estate lawyer Peter C. John said Wednesday.
In the lawsuit, the estate said Kenneth Warren & Son partnered with London violin dealer Peter Biddulph in "providing unfair and unreasonably low expert opinions" of violin values, of "wrongfully purchasing property of the estate at substantially below market value," and of "wrongfully purchasing estate property in secret." Warren denied the charges in court documents.
The lawyers declined to comment about details of the settlement.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2012 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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