Innholdsfortegnelse for #037 i eNews Magazine

The heat on “Fifty Shades of Grey’s” blockbuster debut cooled ever so slightly as the final four-day weekend numbers were revealed on Tuesday. The R-rated movie, which cost only $40 million to produce, took in $93 million from 3,646 locations across the long President’s Day holiday. Although initial estimates put the four-day gross at over $94 million, director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of EL James’ steamy best seller still took the crown for best February opening ever, unseating the 2004 record set by “The Passion of the Christ.” Matthew Vaughn’s R-rated comic book adaptation “Kingsman: The Secret Service” also exceeded expectations in its first four days in theaters, bringing in $41.8 million from 3,204 locations, helping to solidify an overall record-breaking President’s Day weekend at the box office. The top 20…

Timing is everything in the Oscar race. Except when it’s not. This year’s Academy Awards field has done more than most to upend traditional rhythms of Hollywood’s awards season, a normally finely-tuned red-carpet ballet. “Not my tempo” - the indelible line from J.K. Simmons’ music instructor in the best-picture nominated “Whiplash” - has been the season’s mantra. The critical favorite, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” was the front-runner for much of the season, only to be seemingly usurped by the industry’s choice, “Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” which swept the guild awards. Momentum - the most cherished, carefully sought ingredient in any Oscar campaign - has been elusive, just as the normal parameters of awards season appear to be shifting. “Boyhood” (six nominations) and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (nine nods)…

NO LONGER ARE YOU STUCK WITH JUST PENCILS AND PAINTS For years and years, if you aspired to be a visual artist, at least in the more traditional sense, your task was clear - you needed to buy some pencils, paints and palettes, set up an easel and get practicing. In today's digital age, though, things are much more ambiguous. You now don't need to invest in any artistic tool other than your iDevice, making the most of the many creative apps available in the App Store. When you think about it, it shouldn't be such a big shock that the iPad - in particular - is commanding popularity as a replacement in some quarters for the stretched canvas and easel. After all, digital art is almost old enough to…

Veteran actor-comedian Eddie Murphy is on a different chart these days, with his latest single rising to the top of the most downloaded reggae songs on iTunes. Released Jan. 27, “Oh Jah Jah” was inspired by recent news events, Murphy said. “I was watching CNN about two or three months ago and all this craziness was going on with the terrorism and chopping off people’s heads and then St. Louis, Ferguson. A bunch of police brutality going on (at the) same time and I had that progression, but I didn’t have any lyrics, but I had that groove. I’d been playing that progression for about a month and then I was watching the news and it all came together one day,” he said. Murphy, who will appear on NBC’s “SNL…

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late Drake Is it a mixtape? Is it an album? Whatever status you give it, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is the latest produce from Canadian superstar rapper Drake, its release with zero prior announcement drawing comparisons to the similar stunt that Beyoncé pulled with her self-titled LP in 2013. It has proved itself a quick commercial and critical hit, too. FIVE FACTS: I Love You, Honeybear Father John Misty You may know him better as former Saxon Shore and Fleet Foxes member Joshua Tillman, but for I Love You, Honeybear, the folk star adopts the pseudonym of Father John Misty for the second time. He has described the release as a concept album about himself, focusing on his relationship with his…

The NBC Universal News Group is launching a series of live events where “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski offers empowerment tips to women, a venture that illustrates an effort to find revenue-raising activities outside the traditional definition of news. The tour, loosely based on Brzezinski’s book “Knowing Your Value,” will begin in Philadelphia in April. Subsequent stops will be in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston and Orlando, the network said on Tuesday. Brzezinski said she frequently hears from women inspired by her book, where she describes fighting to close a salary gap between her and co-host Joe Scarborough. She’ll be part of each conference, which will feature women offering strategies to be more successful at work, personal finance, health and wellness. Through its partnership with Kara Swisher and Walter Mossberg’s Re/code,…

Revelers bundled up in winter coats with the occasional glitzy costume filled the streets of New Orleans on Tuesday for the annual Mardi Gras bash, opening a day of partying, parades and good-natured jostling for beads and trinkets tossed from passing floats. Retired clarinetist Pete Fountain rode a mini float decked out as a streetcar as his Half-Fast Walking Club kicked off a day of parades on Fat Tuesday - historically the day when cooking fats would be used up before the austerities of Lent. The Rev. Byron Miller started Fountain’s group on its way with a prayer, invoking “the God of laughter and love” as marchers set out on a miles-long trek after early morning rain cleared out, leaving many buttoning up amid temperatures in the 30s and 40s…

It sounds screwy and yet here it is - a hip-hop-based musical on Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary of the United States. Over-hyped? Perhaps. But this almost three-hour show, with some 50 songs, reprises and song fragments - is also rollicking, messy, and earnest - just like America’s founding. The new musical reunites the team from “In the Heights” - director Thomas Kail, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the show’s book, music and lyrics, and stars in the title role. Structured chronologically and, in a brilliant stroke, narrated by Aaron Burr, the man who would kill Hamilton, the musical opened Tuesday at the Public Theater with money on it finding a bigger home at some point. It stresses the orphan, immigrant roots of “the $10 Founding…

Drake was featured on Beyonce’s surprise album - and now he’s taking a page from her book. The Grammy-winning rapper released a new album called “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” early Friday morning on iTunes. It includes 17 tracks and features Lil Wayne, Travi$ Scott and PARTYNEXTDOOR. The release comes more than a year after Beyonce released her self-titled album on iTunes without announcing it. Others have dropped albums in surprise form, from alternative rapper Kid Cudi to Australian rockers Wolfmother to rap group G Unit. Drake’s last album was 2013’s “Nothing Was the Same,” his third studio album. It sold more than 650,000 units in its debut week. Drake’s hits include “Started from the Bottom,” “Take Care” and “Best I Ever Had.”…

Playing the mad title role in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” was never supposed to be easy. That’s just what Colm Feore wanted. The classical actor chose to make his Lear “absolutely hateful” and “corrosive” for the Stratford Festival in Canada this past summer. He turned 56 in the role and his Lear, recorded on high-definition cameras, is a vigorous, fit monarch. “If you do it properly, you should be legless and speechless from scene to scene. And I decided to do it that way,” Feore said. “It takes an enormous amount of energy and I think a certain amount of balls and daring to do it at all.” The same could be said for what the Stratford Festival intends to do with the movie: It will kick off a massive initiative…

“Satin Island” (Knopf), by Tom McCarthy “Events! If you want those, you’d best stop reading now.” So proclaims Tom McCarthy’s “Satin Island,” a rather dazzling array of sentences and paragraphs and snippets of memory and thought that aren’t quite sure where they are. The cover of “Satin Island” bears a number of possibilities: it could be a treatise, an essay, a manifesto, and so on, but each of these is crossed out, leaving only “A Novel.” Anyone familiar with the history of the novel should get that joke. And “Satin Island” is very funny; intellectually, culturally, uncannily funny, in that way that absurd, dystopian stories about hyper-bureaucracy are funny - think Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” and you’re halfway there. U. (“You”? Or perhaps “Ulysses”?), is a corporate ethnographer, a job title…

The official sign-up season for President Barack Obama’s health care law may be over, but leading congressional Democrats say millions of Americans facing new tax penalties deserve a second chance. Three senior House members strongly urged the administration Monday to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year. The three are Michigan’s Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama’s law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010. The lawmakers say they are concerned that many of their constituents will find out about the penalties after it’s already too late for them to sign up for…

The NBA All-Star Game is not until Sunday, but hip-hop music’s all-star team - featuring Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Dr. Dre, Nas and others - played in top form at a New York City concert Thursday night. Snoop Dogg and Diddy hosted the show for radio station Hot 97 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, which also included Lil Kim, T.I., Doug E. Fresh and The Lox. The multi-hour event kicked off with a video of Marion “Suge” Knight dissing Diddy at the 1995 Source Awards. After, Diddy emerged as the audience roared, performing the late ‘90s hit, “Victory.” Knight has been charged with murder in a deadly hit-and-run last month. “I also came here to set some (expletive) right, as y’all saw on the screen. That negative…

"ALL ABOUT THAT BASS" CAPS REMARKABLE RISE TO STARDOM When it was confirmed in late January that Meghan Trainor had dethroned the previously all-conquering Taylor Swift at the top of Billboard's Artist 100 - a measure of artist activity across the most influential U.S. charts - there was little surprise. After all, it wasn't the first time she had even been ranked the country's top artist in this way. Indeed, it just completed her rise to the top on the basis of what turned out to be one seriously empowering song about body confidence. We are, of course, referring to "All About The Bass", the monster viral hit that has topped singles charts across the world, including the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, in the process accomplishing something much more important: making people…

The Theory of Everything There can be few more inspirational stories than that of the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking - and we aren’t even referring to his colossal achievements in physics. Instead, this biographical romantic drama centers largely on his devastating motor neuron disease diagnosis at age 21 - followed by achievements that would have once seemed inconceivable. FIVE FACTS: The Last Five Years Based on the hit Jason Robert Brown musical of the same name, The Last Five Years retells the five-year love affair of struggling actress Cathy Hiatt, played by Anna Kendrick, and up-and-coming novelist Jamie Wellerstein, whose role is taken by Jeremy Jordan. Or, to be more specific, it is the couple who do the retelling. FIVE FACTS:…

The eNews Magazine is all over New York Fashion Week, from its runway fashions to celebrity-packed events. Here’s what some AP writers are seeing: ZAC POSEN HEARTS NAOMI CAMPBELL What does a runway queen wear? A ruby glitter ballgown, of course. Naomi Campbell had Zac Posen’s crowd collectively uttering that fashion word of all words - wow - when she closed his Monday night show in the flocked taffeta bustier number against the grandeur of Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal. Compared to a sea of muted grays, blues and blacks on other runways- and the gloom of winter’s deep freeze - Posen’s show of color was a welcome sight. It included a range of reds, emerald green, plum, burnt orange and sparkly disco silver in a column gown done…