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In the news
Compiled from Times wires Cook to head Disney studio divisionRichard Cook, who has spent 31 years with the Walt Disney Co., has been tapped to head its studio division, the company announced Friday. Cook was named chairman of Walt Disney Studios, replacing Peter Schneider, who left the company after just 17 months. His new position will make him one of the most powerful movie executives in Hollywood. Some of his duties will include worldwide production, marketing and distribution of live-action movies for Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures. He also will be responsible for marketing and distributing the studio's animated movies. Cook, 51, has devoted most of his career to the Disney franchise. He began as a ride operator in 1970, running the steam train and monorail at Disneyland, and was later credited for developing the company's distribution and marketing machine. Most recently, he was chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group and was in charge of overseeing marketing and distribution of films and new videos. Farrakhan decries violent music lyricsNation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, joined by Russell Simmons and other prominent hip-hop figures, called on rap artists to move away from explicitly violent lyrics. Farrakhan, who also condemned the U.S. war on terrorism, told a receptive, sometimes raucous audience Thursday that rappers owe poor and minority communities more than many of them have given. "From the suffering of our people came rap," Farrakhan said. "That should make you a servant of those that produced you. That should make you a servant of the 'hood." Children "can't read Dick and Jane, but they can recite your raps," he continued. "The question is, what are you feeding them?" More than 300 people, including rappers Boo-Yaa Tribe, Kurupt and DJ Quik, packed into a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel conference room for Farrakhan's speech, and Simmons and others seconded the message. Simmons organized the Hip Hop Summit as an opportunity for rappers to reassess an industry that draws millions of fans worldwide but is widely blamed for violent and sexually explicit lyrics. It was one of a series of regional gatherings that are to lead to a national meeting this summer. German Conductor Guenter Wand dies at 90German conductor Guenter Wand, who directed orchestras in Hamburg and Cologne and appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, died Thursday at his home in Ulmiz, Switzerland, according to Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the German broadcasting company whose symphony orchestra he was associated with for the past two decades. It did not give his cause of death. He was 90. Wand studied philosophy in Cologne before turning to music, and when he was 20, the opera in the city of Wuppertal took him on as composer and director. Wand led the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg in 1944 and 1945, and in the months after the end of World War II arranged a revue with the orchestra for American troops. He returned to Germany in the fall of 1945 and the following year was appointed musical director for the city of Cologne, focusing on the city's Guerzenich Orchestra. Wand made his U.S. debut in January 1989, conducting four concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Performer falls off stage during operaThe Metropolitan Opera's premiere performance of Prokofiev's War and Peace got a little extra drama when a member of the cast fell off the stage into the orchestra pit, bringing the production to a halt for several minutes The accident happened in the final scene of the 4-hour epic on Thursday night. Simon Deonarian, a nonsinging extra who was playing a French grenadier, slipped and rolled off the steeply sloped stage. Francois Giuliani, director of press and public relations for the Met, said Deonarian landed in a net that had been erected just below the stage for the production. The performer, who was not hurt, then jumped into the orchestra pit. Arts, quiz shows coming to WUSFTwo new shows are coming to WUSF-FM 89.7 beginning this weekend. Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me, a humorous weekly quiz show, will premiere on the Tampa radio station at 11 a.m. today after Car Talk. Studio 360, a new weekly arts and culture program from Public Radio International, will premiere at 6 p.m. Sunday. Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me host Peter Sagal quizzes the show's panel of media folks on how closely they have paid attention the week's news. Call-in participants also play along for a chance to win NPR newscaster Carl Kasall's voice on their home answering machines. Kurt Andersen, novelist, critic, columnist and founder of Inside.com, is the host of Studio 360. The program explores the relationship between art and everyday life, finding connection that aren't always obvious. De Niro to host '9/11' broadcastRobert De Niro will host 9/11, the exclusive insider's account of the World Trade Center attack from French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet. The eyewitness story, featuring extraordinary video that has never been broadcast, will be seen in a two-hour CBS Special Presentation at 9 p.m. March 10. The filmmakers, who were shooting a documentary on firefighters, captured the only known footage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. After the second plane hit, they kept shooting -- even inside the buildings for a while as the rescue operation was under way. That footage has never been seen publicly. De Niro, who has won two Oscars and is a preeminent actor, director and producer living in New York City, is a co-founder of the Tribeca Film Center, which is just a few blocks from ground zero.
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From the wire |
