Word: show-biz
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Dominating the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in Beverly Hills, CAA's forbidding I.M. Pei-designed headquarters stands as a Zen fortress guarding entry to the city's sparkling business district. For years the building has been show-biz ground zero, a hot zone where Ovitz--routinely referred to as "the most powerful man in Hollywood"--built up the town's most imposing list of talent. His masterful, softly menacing style, along with his courtship of nontraditional clients like Coca-Cola and Credit Lyonnais, transformed the old stereotype of the talent agent as a hustling flesh peddler into...
Never before has a network been subsumed by another media company with as polished an image and as relentlessly focused a way of doing business; how this plays out, both financially and contentwise, will be one of the most watched show-biz stories of the '90s. Of course, ABC hasn't become the Disney Network just yet--and most sources insist it never will--but even casual viewers will start noticing little mouse footprints soon. Along with Roseanne, two other ABC shows--Boy Meets World and Step by Step--have traveled to Disney's Orlando theme park to tape episodes...
Movies like this used to have lots of singing and dancing, not to mention Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. But if you love show-biz fables in which the desperate improvisations of sweet-souled egomaniacs are rewarded by improbable last-minute success, writer-director Kenneth Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale is a very acceptable update. Especially if you like Woody Allen too. For Branagh has adopted a number of Allen's mannerisms: shooting in black and white, using old songs for the score--in this case, frugally, just one song, Noel Coward's great anti-show biz anthem...
...Movies like this used to have lots of singing and dancing, not to mention Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland," says TIME's Richard Schickel. "But if you love show-biz fables in which the desperate improvisations of sweet-souled egomaniacs are rewarded by improbable last-minute success, writer-director Kenneth Branagh's 'A Midwinter's Tale' is a very acceptable update." Especially if you like Woody Allen. Branagh has adopted a number of Allen's mannerisms in shooting this story of a half a dozen profoundly marginalized English actors determined to put on a play. "Branagh sometimes sacrifices bite...
Martin lasted so long by embracing show-biz contradictions, then shrugging them off. For a start, he was a traditional crooner who learned intonation from Crosby and salesmanship from Jolson. Yet there was a hint in his gestures (eyes closed in ecstasy, arms stretched out imploringly) that he was parodying the very idea of crooner; he was a mellow modernist. You could also peg Dino as an anachronism, a Joe E. Lewis saloon-lush type, the party animal in a tux. Or maybe he was the first slacker, elevating sloth to a Zen art. The stupefaction he radiated...