Word: extravaganza
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With a sigh of happiness, the photographer returned to her work, only to be interrupted by two passers-by, who wondered about the environmental extravaganza taking place...
Celebrity detection is not difficult here. Felicia Lisle, a beautiful British actress who wins an Oscar just before World War II playing a Southern belle in Hollywood's grandest period extravaganza, sounds a lot like Vivien Leigh. And her lover and frequent co-star, the great Shakespearean actor Sir Robert Vane, would need no letter of introduction to Laurence Olivier. Do we recognize bits of the brassy showman Billy Rose? Is that lovable, tormented, red-haired American comedian a scrap of Danny Kaye? Yoo-hoo, Sir Ralph...
Then what does that Grammy, a little gold-plated Gramophone on a pedestal, represent? A souvenir of a TV extravaganza. A talisman of mainstream commercial success. A bit of show-biz immortality that, since this is show biz, after all, is more tenuous and suspect than other varieties of eternal fame (anyone remember 1980's five-Grammy grand slammer Christopher Cross?). Sinead O'Connor is right: the Grammys probably do "respect mostly material gain." But in the words of a very prominent Grammy wanna-grab, we're living in a material world...
Disney was No. 1 in market share last year, but the studio's profits hit a three-year low. Katzenberg's prescription: smaller budgets and fewer films like Dick Tracy, last summer's comic-book extravaganza starring Beatty and Madonna that cost an estimated $100 million to make and market. While the movie has grossed nearly $200 million in theaters worldwide, Katzenberg complains that it has "static" characters who fail to evolve, and he suspects that it was not worth the expense or the 10 years of development effort. "Thanks to the dictates of the blockbuster mentality," he writes...
Some studios aren't bothering to jump on the new cost-cutting bandwagon. Columbia Pictures is now shooting Hook, a $50 million-plus Stephen Spielberg extravaganza starring Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Julia Roberts. The film's top talent will get a lavish 40% of the gross revenues. To earn a nickel for the studio, Hook will have to become one of the year's highest- grossing films. But the new management team at Columbia, led by Batman producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber, is clearly confident. The company bought two French-made Falcon jets last year, even before...