Word: mel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Producers" was the musical theater's last megahit. The Nathan Lane starrer, which opened in April 2001, was also the first show in ages to break the unwritten 20-year rule for Broadway shows: be dramatic, tragic if possible, and always brown. Mel Brooks, who wrote the score and co-wrote the libretto from his fondly-recalled old film, reminded theatergoers that there used to be something, a very agreeable thing, called "musical comedy" - emphasis on the comedy. Audiences devoured "The Producers" like the first spoonful of chocolate sundae after Yom Kippur. If the show wasn't quite the laugh...
...matter how well they pout and grin, there's one thing all child actors have to be able to do: relax. If you place an ordinary kid opposite Mel Gibson or Susan Sarandon and yell "action," he'll get as stiff and shaky as a screen door in a gale. Rory and Kieran Culkin, younger brothers of Home Alone star Macaulay, don't know from stiff. In this month's Igby Goes Down, in which they play the same prep-school rebel at different points in his life, they seem as at ease on camera as most people...
Working opposite Hollywood superstar Mel Gibson was a dream job for Vietnamese actor Don Duong. Too bad it might be his last. Duong's role as a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) commander in the blockbuster war film We Were Soldiers has perturbed Vietnam's censors. Authorities may bar Duong from acting for five years for taking part in the movie, which is banned in the communist country because it paints the North Vietnamese as merciless killers. Duong is guilty of "distorting the history of Vietnam," according to Ho Chi Minh City Culture and Information Department officials, who dislike the movie...
...brother's been doing this for a few summers now, so I thought it was time I had a go," she says. At Surfrider beach in Malibu, Calif., Megan Stone, 16, says she surfs because "it's something that isn't ordinary." And up the coast in Santa Cruz, Mel Hanson, 42, a mother of two, got hooked last year after a friend taught her how. Not even a couple of wipeouts that left her scratched up and seeing stars have dimmed her enthusiasm. "I think about it all the time. It's an addiction," she says...
...that are too patently silly for any sentient adult to pay attention (Mamma Mia!). Even The Producers, for all its pleasures, gets much of its comedy from Friars Club jokes about big bazooms and limp-wristed homosexuals, gags that passed muster only because they came from a revered master, Mel Brooks...