Arts bites

Obama bumps up Al

After singing a few bars of the song “Let’s Stay Together” at the Apollo Theatre last month, President Obama sparked a sales surge for the song’s original singer, soul legend Al Green. Apparently Green’s record sales have gone up 500 per cent since the president belted it out. Since then, fellow 70s soul fixtures such as Earth, Wind and Fire and The Commodores have been pestering the White House for them to be next on Obama’s karaoke list.

Sand-y Land (Ha!)

Happy Madison Productions and Columbia Pictures have apparently picked up the option to the once-dead version of Candyland. In picking up the presumed-canned movie, the studio has also attached former funny man Adam Sandler to star in the film. As bad as this sounds, we can at least take comfort in knowing that Rob Schneider will probably show up at some point in the film as well.

I forget how that’s a good thing.

Being Charlie Kaufman
For his sophomore film, writer/director/crazy-talented person Charlie Kaufman landed quite the cast. It was already announced that Steve Carell and Jack Black would play the title characters in the film, Frank or Francis, with Nicolas Cage and Kevin Kline providing support. Recently, it was announced that Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener would add another of the filmmaker’s scripts to their resumés, and Paul Reubens and Elizabeth Banks will break their Kaufman cherries. Long story short, we’re going to get to see a movie with a lot of famous people that will take days for us to understand.