March 02, 2006

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello has kept his fans on their toes by zig-zagging musically over the last twenty-five years, taking detours into chamber music, jazz and creamy pop. For his latest recording, My Flame Burns Blue, Costello teams up with a Dutch big band called Metropole Orkest. They play new songs and reinterpret old hits like "Watching the Detectives" and "Almost Blue." Kurt Andersen has been a fan since Costello's debut in the '70s and he talks with Elvis Costello about why his aim is always true.

Crash

L.A. Stories

The movie Crash, by writer-director Paul Haggis, is one of the big contenders for Best Picture at this weekend's Academy Awards. Crash follows a diverse group of strangers in Los Angeles who literally and figuratively crash into one another, altering their lives forever. That premise will sound familiar to fans of Short Cuts or Magnolia or Grand Canyon. Studio 360's Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles for a decade. He thinks there's something about The City of Angels that inspires a new kind of storytelling.

Roger Rosenblatt

Lapham Rising

The main character in Roger Rosenblatt's new novel lives in the Hamptons -- the summer playground for New York's insultingly rich. There is no shortage of annoyances to fuel Harry March's rants, but his anger overloads when his neighbor Lapham air conditions the lawn of his super-sized house. Kurt Andersen asks Rosenblatt, who is best known as an essayist and commentator, why a McMansion (and a talking dog) inspired him to write his first novel.

Michael Chorost

Bionic Hearing

Michael Chorost was born with a severe hearing impairment, the result of a rubella epidemic in the 1960s. He used hearing aids, learned to speak, went to regular schools and got his Ph.D. in English. Then, a few years ago, Michael's residual hearing abruptly gave out. His world went silent. Jocelyn Gonzales has the story of how Chorost replaced his lost sense of hearing with an amazing machine.

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd

Once again, audiences on Broadway are attending the tale of Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim's musical masterpiece, which first shocked audiences back in 1979. This innovative revival shifts the setting of the musical from the streets of Victorian London to an insane asylum. Another strange thing: there is no orchestra. As the actors perform the story for each other, they play all the instruments. Cast members Manoel Felciano and Alexander Gemignani stopped by Studio 360 to chat with Kurt Andersen and perform two of the show's songs.

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