ENTERTAINMENT
By David Zurawik and The Baltimore Sun | May 7, 2013
Country singer Carrie Underwood will replace Faith Hill this fall in singing "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night," the anthem of NBC's top-rated weekly football telecast. The Sunday night broadcast, which averaged an audience of 21.8 million to become prime-time TV's highest rated show, is one the most skillfully and carefully packaged events in popular culture. "It's going to be the same song, same lyrics, but it's going to be with my flair," the Grammy-Award-winning singer said in a teleconference Tuesday.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Mary Carole McCauley, The Baltimore Sun | April 12, 2013
There's something about "Les Miserables" that keeps me coming back. It's not that "Les Miz," running through Sunday at the Hippodrome Theatre , is my favorite musical. Far from it. It's all too easy to point out the technical flaws in Claude-Michel Schonberg's melodies (bombastic) and Herbert Kretzmer's lyrics (unsurprising). The critics have been making these arguments for the past 27 years, and for the past 27 years, audiences have been ignoring the critics. Producer Cameron Mackintosh's much-hyped new staging incorporates brighter costumes and screen projections to simulate such effects as Paris' underground sewers.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Lexie Mountain and Midnight Sun contributor | April 10, 2013
I have to admit that even though "Second Hand News" is a great way to kick off a night of what was clearly going to be hit after hit of A+, No. 1, solid-gold Fleetwood Mac tunes, hearing Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks sing the first few measures put a little stone in my throat. Lindsey sounded ragged and rough: Did he give too much to Madison Square Garden the night before? Perhaps over-carousing? Does Lindsey deign to carouse? And Stevie, oh Stevie, the top range of her uniquely fluid yet meaty voice clipped.
NEWS
By Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun | April 9, 2013
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a Baltimore audience Tuesday night that the world's challenges have never been greater, nor come with such speed, and he advocated intervention in struggling countries by powers such as Great Britain and the United States. "I don't think there's been a more difficult time to be a political leader than now," Blair, who left office in 2007, told an audience of 2,800 at Loyola University Maryland. He described challenges posed by globalization and ever-evolving technology and said that "often the best short-term politics is in collision with the best long-term policy.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Luke Broadwater and The Baltimore Sun | April 7, 2013
There's a meme going around the Internet that compares “Game of Thrones” with “The Walking Dead.” The zombie show, the meme says, makes you hate its characters before killing them. “Thrones,” however, makes you like them. And that is, I think, objectively true. Even this show's vilest characters (the Lannisters, for instance) all have redeeming qualities. After spending enough time with them, you being to surprise yourself by gravitating toward characters you once reviled.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Wesley Case, The Baltimore Sun | March 27, 2013
Here's an all-too common scenario at a bar: A random topic - be it essential new-wave albums or Martin Scorsese's best films - comes up and an expert suddenly emerges. The know-it-all rapidly cites a dizzying array of research and anecdotes, all in the name of appearing smarter than everyone else. The person also usually hopes no one double-checks the claims. "You always have somebody who knows way too much about something, but then they hope you're not going to look [facts] up," said Patrick Storck, a 37-year-old living in Belair-Edison.