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The French actress Isabelle Huppert will head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival this year, the organizers said. Huppert has become something of a fixture at France's premiere film event, appearing there 25 times in various roles, including as a jury member and master of ceremonies. She has won the festival's best actress award twice, the last time in 2001 for her part in “La Pianiste” (2001) by the Austrian director Michael Haneke. It will be the second year running that the Cannes jury will be headed by an actor. In 2008, the actor and director Sean Penn presided. The 62nd Cannes Festival is scheduled to run from May 13 to 24. (Reuters)
The Public Theater, which has struggled to raise money to mount its critically successful revival of the counterculture musical “Hair” on Broadway, announced that Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel, the producing team behind the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening,” had agreed to serve together as the lead producers. Elizabeth McCann, who had been the show's lead producer since the Public began working to move the production to Broadway, will continue with the project, but in a reduced role. Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, announced that Eden Espinosa would join the Broadway cast in the leading role of Sheila. Opening night, which had been set for March 5, has been delayed to March 31, at the Al Hirschfeld Theater on West 45th Street.
The Grateful Dead opened the new year by setting dates for its first concert tour since 2004, beginning with a show on April 12 in Greensboro, North Carolina. The group these days includes the former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. They will be joined on tour by the guitarist Warren Haynes and the keyboard player Jeff Chimenti. Speculation about a tour had been widespread since the group's October performance at a rally for Barack Obama in State College, Pennsylvania. The tour is to consist of 19 concerts and end on May 10 with a show at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.
The Allman Brothers Band will return to the Beacon Theater in New York for 10 shows from March 9 through March 21. The band's annual run was canceled last year because Gregg Allman was ill.
An automotive industry consultant, Andrew Jones, has started a new Web site, www.dressregistry.com, meant to limit the social nightmare of discovering someone else in the same gown you are wearing at inaugural galas. It allows you to “register” the gown you're wearing to a specific inaugural ball and includes a place to detail the color, length, designer, neckline description and other distinguishing characteristics. You can even upload a photo. Jones got the idea after his wife traveled from their home in West Palm Beach, Florida, to New York City to buy a gown for a charity ball in their hometown - solely to avoid seeing the same dress at the event. Jones cited the first lady Laura Bush's “Oh, no!” moment at the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, when she was one of four women wearing the same red Oscar de la Renta gown. Bush quickly changed into something different. (AP)
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Thieves in Palm Beach, Florida, calling themselves “The Educators” have returned a statue stolen from the Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff. And they hope he's learned his lesson. The Palm Beach Post reports that the $10,000 copper sculpture turned up this week near the country club Madoff belonged to. A note attached read: “Bernie the Swindler, Lesson: Return stolen property to rightful owners. Signed by - The Educators.” The statue was reported missing Dec. 22, about a week after Madoff was arrested on charges that he bilked investors out of billions of dollars. The action mimics activity in the 2004 German film “The Edukators,” which features revolutionary activists who break into people's mansions - but without stealing anything - to protest against capitalist values. (AP)
Prince is planning to release not one but three albums in 2009, all without benefit of a record label. So reports The Los Angeles Times on its Pop & Hiss music blog (latimes.com/music_blog). Prince said he was negotiating with a major retailer, who would distribute the music in physical form while a Web site would sell it online. The first album will be a solo recording that recalls “When Doves Cry,” the Times blog reported.