Rascal Flatts to play at People’s Choice Awards
Rascal Flatts (Associated Press photo)Â
Previous People’s Choice Award winner - and current multiple nominee - Rascal Flatts will perform Wednesday night at the 35th annual People’s Choice Awards. The awards show, the first but certainly not the last of the year, will be hosted by Queen Latifah and air live from 8 to 10 p.m. Wednesday on CBS (KWTV-9 in Oklahoma City).
Country trio Rascal Flatts includes guitarist Joe Don Rooney, who hails from Picher.
At the 35th Annual People’s Choice Awards, Rascal Flatts also will be making an exciting announcement to their fans regarding their upcoming album, according to a news release. This announcement will kick off a contest on www.pcaVOTE.com available exclusively to People’s Choice community members.
-BAM
Box office report
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For the second week, the box office felt the power of the pup.
“Marley & Me,” starring Jennifer Aniston, Owen Wilson and a cute, trouble-making dog, topped the box office for the second straight week, taking in $24.1 million.
The 20th Century Fox film raised its overall total to $106.5 million since it opened on Christmas, according to the Associated Press.
Hollywood didn’t offer any new releases for the weekend or the New Year holiday, so the box office looked much the same as the previous week.
The family-friendly Adam Sandler flick “Bedtime Stories” was again in second place, taking in another $20.3 million for Disney.Â
The rest of the top five also remained the same, with only the numbers changing: Paramount’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” about a man (Brad Pitt) who ages in reverse, made another $18.4 million, MGM’s “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise as the leader of a Nazi plot to assassinate Hitler, $14 million; and the Warner Bros. comedy “Yes Man,” with Jim Carrey as a man who decides to say yes to any idea, $13.9 million.
The holiday season has been loaded with War War II movies - from “The Boy in Striped Pajamas” to “Valkyrie” - and two more Nazi-themed films opened in limited release.
Paramount Vantage’s “Defiance” debuted with $121,000 in two theaters for a huge average of $60,500 a cinema. “Defiance” stars Daniel Craig in the story of Jewish brothers who form a band of freedom fighters who take on the Nazis in Eastern Europe.
ThinkFilm’s “Good” opened with $9,300 in two theaters, averaging $4,650. The film stars Viggo Mortensen as an upright German academic gradually seduced into the Nazi fold as World War II approaches.
Hollywood’s 2008 proved strong. The AP reports that domestic film revenues totaled $9.63 billion for the year, just short of the $9.68 billion record set in 2007, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.
After you take into account 2008’s higher ticket prices, the number of tickets sold fell to 1.35 billion, down 4.3 percent from the year before. Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers, told the AP that those numbers were still solid considering the tough economic ties.
“The movie industry is totally holding its own in the face of the recession, increased competition from other entertainment options and emerging technologies,” Dergarabedian told the AP.
The new year also got off to a good start, with the top 12 movies taking in $130.1 million, up 7.4 percent from the first weekend in 2008.
 Here is the list of the top 10 movies for the weekend, according to the AP:
1. “Marley & Me,” $24.1 million.
2. “Bedtime Stories,” $20.3 million.
3. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” $18.4 million.
4. “Valkyrie,” $14 million.
5. “Yes Man,” $13.9 million.
6. “Seven Pounds,” $10 million.
7. “The Tale of Despereaux,” $7 million.
8. “Doubt,” $5 million.
9. “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” $4.9 million.
10. “Slumdog Millionaire,” $4.8 million.
-BAM
Monday Catchy Quote
A catchy quote from a movie, TV show or other source to brighten the beginning of your week. Can you guess the source? (Feel free to include your guess in the comments.)
Stark: *They* say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it … and it’s worked out pretty well so far.
-Click here to learn the source
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What to do in Oklahoma on Jan. 5
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Today’s featured event:
MIDWEST CITY - See Stephen Sondheim’s murderously comic musical “Sweeney Todd” at 7:30 p.m. today at the Rose State College Performing Arts Theatre, 6420 SE 15. The performance is part of the University of Central Oklahoma’s “Broadway Tonight” series.
For more information, go to www.uco.edu/broadway. For tickets, call 297-2264 or (800) 364-7111.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
What to do in Oklahoma on Jan. 4
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Today’s featured event:
TULSA - See the Harlem Globetrotters perform at 2 p.m. today at the BOK Center, 200 S Denver.
For more information, go to www.bokcenter.com.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
Video: American Indian mural exhibit
Steve Grafe, American Indian curator at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, and I talk about the museum’s exhibit “American Indian Mural Painting in Oklahoma and the Southwest” in this NewsOK video.
If you’re a fan of large-scale American Indian art, and if you’re interested in learning about some of the great artworks in public buildings around Oklahoma, I highly recommend the exhibit.
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Photo Gallery: American Indian mural exhibit
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Jonny Hawk, “Child of the Eagle” (Photo by Jaconna Aguirre/The Oklahoman)Â
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is showing an exhibit called “American Indian Mural Painting in Oklahoma and the Southwest” through May 3.
Along with displaying several murals by American Indian artists, the museum is distributing cards with instructions on touring six state post offices featuring American Indian murals.
See some of the murals in this NewsOK photo gallery.
-BAM
National Cowboy Museum showing exhibit of American Indian murals
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Archie Blackowl, “The Arrow Maker” (Photo by Jaconna Aguirre/The Oklahoman)
From Saturday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
Exhibit displays American Indian works created in Oklahoma in 1930s, ’40s
An exhibit of American Indian murals is not only offering visitors a chance to see the works of famed Oklahoma artists, it is encouraging them to take a road trip to view even more paintings.
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is tracing the mural painting tradition from prehistoric times to present day in the exhibition “American Indian Mural Painting in Oklahoma and the Southwest.” On display through May 3, it is drawn primarily from the museum’s expansive Silberman Collection of American Indian art.
“That was really kind of the inspiration for this exhibit, because we are fortunate to have a number of these large-scale works,” said Steve Grafe, the museum’s American Indian art curator.
The show includes six large-scale paintings from the museum’s collection, including murals by renowned Oklahoma Indian artists Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi), Acee Blue Eagle (Creek/Pawnee) and Archie Blackowl (Cheyenne). Along with smaller sketches, it also features murals by Romando Vigil (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Tonita Pena (San Ildefonso Pueblo) and Jonny Hawk (Creek/Seminole).
In addition, Hopi artist Michael Kabotie has loaned the museum two of his “silver rooms” for the show. With his small silver overlays, he recreates the intricate mural designs on the walls of the kivas, or ceremonial chambers, inside the ancestral Hopi villages of Awat’ovi and Pottery Mound.
But the exhibit focuses primarily on works created in Oklahoma in 1930s and ‘40s, when many cash-strapped artists found work painting murals in public buildings as part of the New Deal.
“When the Indian fine arts movement started, the non-Indian people who were teaching decided that Indian art was supposed to flat, have no horizon line, no perspective … because they were using ledger art and pottery decoration as their templates,” Grafe said. “The style of work they did was really well suited to large murals for public buildings.”
Some of the paintings in the exhibit once hung in public buildings. Blue Eagle’s triptych “Thunderbird & Buffalo Symbols” was painted in 1937 for the Muskogee Public Library and later salvaged when the building fell into disrepair. Blackowl’s “The Arrow Maker” and an untitled Crumbo canvas were created for the boys dormitory at the For Sill Indian School.
“I was astonished as I started doing research. … I didn’t have any idea that the mural-painting tradition, the Depression-era work, had been as important and as expansive as it was,” he said.
People can still see American Indian murals in many Oklahoma institutions, including the community post offices in Seminole, Okemah, Marietta, Coalgate, Nowata and Anadarko.
Visitors to the museum’s mural exhibit can pick up cards detailing the locations of the post offices and the artworks displayed in each one. People are encouraged to travel to each post office and get a postmark on the card in the space provided.
In March, Mark White, associate professor of art history at Oklahoma State University, will lead a museum bus tour to view New Deal-era murals in central Oklahoma.
“Six post offices in this state have murals by Indian artists and there are another 25 who have murals by non-Indian artists … so it’s a pretty rich tradition,” Grafe said.
On exhibit
What: “American Indian Mural Painting in Oklahoma and the Southwest.”
Where: National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63.
When: Through May 3.
Information: 478-2250 or www.nationalcowboymuseum.com.
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What to do in Oklahoma on Jan. 3
Sir Edwin Landseer, “Man Proposes, God Disposes” (1864, oil on canvas)Â
Today’s featured event:
TULSA - See the excellent exhibit of Victorian artwork “Paintings from the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London” before it leaves the Philbrook of Museum of Art. The Tulsa museum has been the first stop on the exhibit’s U.S. tour, and it closes Sunday at the Philbrook.
For more information, go to www.philbrook.org.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
Friday Featured Track
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The song that has been on my brain the most this week:
- “Mona Lisa (When the World Comes Down),” from The All-American Rejects’ 2008 album “When the World Comes Down.”
This introspective slow song from Stillwater’s own pop-rock stars has really started to grow on me. Since 2008 definitely had its rocky moments, as we go into 2009, I find the idea of having some sit beside me while the world comes down very comforting.
-BAM
