Category: Diversions

Diversions

At the Speed this weekend: Sundance Festival short film tour; here’s the program

The tour’s eight films are being screened at the new Speed Museum Cinema.

Each year, Sundance receives more than 8,000 short film submissions, selecting 60 to 80 to screen during the January festival, with eight picked for the tour traveling to more than 50 cities nationwide. This is one of very few theatrical releases of short films in America. Recommended for audiences over 13 due to thematic elements.

Tickets: $7 for members, $9 for non-members. Buy tickets here. Here’s the lineup: Continue reading “At the Speed this weekend: Sundance Festival short film tour; here’s the program” →

Diversions

Yo-Yo Ma’s biggest fear isn’t stage fright

Yo Yo MaThe world-renowned cellist, who’s performing with the Louisville Orchestra in October, tackles Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire today. A sampling reveals a recurring theme:

What is your greatest fear? Very large bugs.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? A bird. I could travel for free and then eat the bugs.

Ma will play Oct. 30 at 4:30 p.m. at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $50 to $400, for a post-concert party  at the Muhammad Ali Center with cocktails, dinner, and live entertainment to celebrate the 2016-2017 season opening.

The orchestra has been led by music director Teddy Abrams since 2014. Read more about the orchestra’s history.

Diversions

Once the nation’s glittering disco ball star, Omega’s now barely stayin’ alive
Disco ball
$25 at Amazon.

During the late 1970s, when the Bee Gees made Saturday Night Fever a box-office hit, Louisville’s Omega National Products factory on Baxter Avenue nearly cornered the market, churning out 90% of the spinning dance floor ornaments in the U.S.

“That was the heyday, I’m telling you,” said Yolanda Baker, now 69, and the last of dozens of women still making the mirrored globes by hand at Omega, according to The Wall Street Journal. These days, production is down to about 15 or 20 a month, nearly all Baker’s work. The culprit: overseas competition has cut prices; a 12-inch Omega ball retails for about $135 vs. one made in China that’s $25 on Amazon. (Of course, Boulevard notes, it doesn’t help that mirror balls are nowhere on Omega’s product list.)

As for the Bee Gees, the city’s still breakin’ and everybody’s shakin‘ — on video.

Diversions

Starting Wednesday in Louisville: Phantom of the Opera, in five big numbers

No, not musical numbers — these kind:

e1933e936ff5cd965410c8e359a8ea1b_400x400U.S. tours since the blockbuster musical debuted 30 years ago in London have grossed more than $1.5 billion and played 216 engagements in Louisville and 76 other cities for more than 14,500 performances before 31 million people, according to The Voice-Tribune.

It opens at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday for a 12-day run. Tickets are $54 to $114. It’s the longest running show in Broadway history by a wide margin, and celebrated its 10,000th Broadway performance on Feb. 11, 2012 — the first production ever to do so.

Related: The U.S. tour’s Twitter feed, and the production’s worldwide site.

Diversions

Speed museum weekend film: ‘It’s the Super Bowl of social fashion events’

The recently completed Speed Art Museum‘s expansion included a first-ever 142-seat cinema equipped with state-of-the-art technology. This weekend’s film, “The First Monday in May,” is about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Gala, an annual event that’s surged in popularity under the direction of top Vogue magazine editor Anna Winter. It got a 79% on movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

Movie times, with links to buy tickets: