MEDIA MAYHEM...

Media overload? Yes, Please...

THEATRE: Elton John brings BILLY ELLIOT to Broadway. So demanding is the lead role that three young dancer/performers have been hired to play the part on alternate nights. You may recall the 2000 movie about a young boy who is supposed to be boxing, but finds he prefers and excels in ballet. After a successful, high profile London run, Billy Elliot has moved to the Great White Way. The New York Times came early and raved, calling it "one of the freshest, most exciting uses of narrative dance I've seen in years.” Keep an eye on Kiril Kulish, 14, one of the rotating Billys. Had we had the pleasure of seeing the late Rudolph Nuryeuv in early adolescence, he would have been Kiril.

MUSIC: PINK’s new CD FUNHOUSE, is our Fall 2008 guilty pleasure. Only Pink could write a song about breaking up with her husband, and somehow persuade him to appear in the video. And all this while she’s belting out these lyrics: "I guess I just lost my husband, I don't know where he went. So I'm gonna drink my money, I'm not gonna pay his rent." In a musical moment in time populated by the likes of Paris, Lindsay and Jessica (all of whom Pink brilliantly parodied in her 2006 “Stupid Girls” video), Pink is the new Janis Joplin – in heels and with better hair, of course. At 29, the former Alecia Beth Moore of Doylestown, despite performing since she was 14, is still at the starting line. If the music is this hot now, we can’t wait to see what is yet to come.

MOVIES:I saw THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES shortly before Barack Obama was elected, and it easily transported me back to those 1960’s civil rights movement days. It is a movie whose time came just in time, right before Americans went to the polls and altered the course of history. Set against the backdrop of mid-20th century racial division, this is the story of a young teen's search for the truth about the mother she lost when she was a little girl. Performances by Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning and most especially by the astounding Sophie Okonedo, will have Oscar knocking on the door, but the question is – How will the Academy decide whose door?

ONLINE: Editor Tina Brown (left) has the resurrection of Vanity Fair and the total redesign (some would say “rebirth” ) of the New Yorker on her resume. But THE DAILY BEAST is another animal all together. It is, Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington notwithstanding, perhaps the hippest, most sophisticated and most literate of the aggregate web sites. Launched about a year and a half ago, and named after the daily newspaper in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel, SCOOP, this is the site that shows us the true path online journalism is taking. Tina Brown will undoubtedly be considered a digital media pioneer. Tina. Who knew?