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NEWSMAKERS | Brand doubles up as ‘Hop,’ ‘Arthur’ lead weekend
AP
Photo
In this handout photo released by Saigon Sound System, US musician Bob Dylan , right, performs with his band in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Sunday, April 10, 2011. After nearly five decades of singing about a war that continues to haunt a generation of Americans, legendary performer Bob Dylan finally got his chance to see Vietnam at peace. Dylan, 69, jammed on stage in a black jacket, purple shirt and white hat in the warm evening air, singing favorites such as "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Highway 61 Revisited."
NEWSMAKERS
Brand doubles up as ‘Hop,’ ‘Arthur’ lead weekend
LOS ANGELES
The good news for Russell Brand is that his animated comedy “Hop” remains the top movie for the second-straight weekend with $21.7 million.
The bad news is that his new live-action comedy “Arthur” could not jump as high as “Hop.”
The Warner Bros. remake of Dudley Moore’s 1981 romance about a rich, drunken man-child finally learning to grow up, “Arthur” was a distant second with a modest debut of $12.6 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Opening close behind at No. 3 with $12.3 million was Focus Features’ “Hanna,” the tale of a teenager trained as a killing machine that stars Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan.
Sony’s “Soul Surfer” debuted at No. 4 with $11.1 million. Rounding out the top 5 was “Insidious” with $9.7 million.
Anti-war icon Dylan jams in a Vietnam at peace
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam
Bob Dylan, whose anti-war anthems made him the face of protest against a war that continues to haunt a generation of Americans, finally got his chance to see Vietnam — at peace.
The 69-year-old Dylan took to the stage in the former Saigon on Sunday, singing such favorites as “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Highway 61 Revisited.”
Only about half of the 8,000 seats were sold to a mix of Vietnamese and foreigners who danced on the grass in the warm evening air as Dylan jammed on guitar, harmonica and the keyboard at RMIT University.
With more than 60 percent of the country’s 86 million people born after the war, many young people here are more familiar with pop stars such as Justin Bieber.
Still, Dylan’s music during the tumultuous 1960s touched thousands of people in both nations.
“Bob Dylan’s music opened up a path where music was used as a weapon to oppose the war in Vietnam” and fight injustice and racism, said Tran Long An, 67, vice president of the Vietnam Composers’ Association. “That was the big thing that he has done for music.”
Blue Man Group’s school gets new stage, permanent home
NEW YORK
In the 20 years since they became a performance art sensation, the Blue Man Group has taken its men with blue heads on the road to stages in New York, Las Vegas and Europe.
The trio is now headed to center stage in the classroom. Blue Man founders Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton are the co-founders of Blue School, a private preschool and elementary school that they started so they could send their own children to a school that was creative enough for them. Blue School began in 2006 as a play group.
After renting space in several Manhattan locations, Blue School is moving to a permanent home near South Street Seaport in the fall. The three original Blue Men will appear on stage Wednesday for the first time in 11 years to raise money for the school.
McCracken, LA artist, dies
John McCracken, an artist whose fusion of painting with geometric sculpture in the mid-1960s embodied an aesthetic distinctive to postwar Los Angeles, died Friday in New York. He was 76.
McCracken had lived in Santa Fe, N.M., since 1994 and, according to a spokesman for his Manhattan gallery, had been in ill health.
McCracken was one of a group of artists whose work was variously described as representing the L.A. Cool School, thanks to its rejection of emotionally expressive gestures; Finish Fetish, in recognition of its pristine color and high-tech surfaces; and Minimalism, because of its reliance on simple geometric forms.
Combined dispatches