someone please tell me what is going on here

Actress Stacy Haiduk brought a special guest to the Daytime Emmys yesterday. Is it her purse, or her plus one? I can't make heads or tails of it... more photos here.

I'm working on adapting this into a fringe show

"A little town with a really big secret."

Buzz on the heart wrenching documentary The Cove started at Sundance, and has continued to grow as the film screened at other festivals this year. In fact, it seemed like every film festival wanted to screen the doc that exposes animal abuse and threats to human health in a highly-guarded cove near Taijii, Japan - well, every festival but one. Despite having an ecology theme this year, and despite rolling out a "green carpet," the Tokyo Film Festival refused to screen The Cove. See, in order to film the "fishery" where thousands of dolphins are brutally killed each year, the filmmakers had to go guerrilla. They infiltrated the highly-guarded cove using cameras disguised as rocks, underwater microphones, and other secretive and risky techniques to capture and expose the horrifying truth. In one part of the trailer, one of the filmmakers says, "I do want to say, we tried making this story legally." Japan wants the filmmakers behind bars for exposing the largest slaughter of dolphins on the planet, and naturally, the Tokyo Film Festival wants no part of it.

Doesn't mean you can't see the film though - it's currently playing in New York at the Angelika. Watch the trailer here.

Sorry Spidey

Julie Taymor's big-concept, bigger-budget musical Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark is running into some significant misadventure. Michael Riedel reports that the musical, currently budgeted at a whopping $45 million, is "in chaos," of both the financial and managerial variety. The center of the problem seems to be failure of leadership on the part of producer David Garfinkle, who may be ousted by Sony and Marvel as soon as this weekend. Riedel has the whole saga of how Garfinkle, with little previous experience as a theatre producer, came to preside over what may turn out to be Broadway's most expensive musical ever. Oh and Bono and The Edge are pissed, too. You can read all the dirt here.

Now let me just say that I love a big, glitzy musical full of technical effects. Razzle-dazzle could be my middle name. But in spite of my appreciation of the flashy stuff, there's something about the idea of a 45-million dollar superhero musical that reminds me of a dude driving around hard-times Wall Street in his brand-new Maserati. It's gross. What's happened to us as theatergoers that we require this incredible level of spending to entertain us in a theater? What can you possibly put on a stage that costs 45 million, even if you're Julie Taymor? The current Broadway revival of HAIR cost an initial investment of 5.76 million, allowing it to recoup in about 6 months. It would seem that Spiderman would require years and years to break even, unless producers plan to supersize ticket prices.

I'd love to see what Taymor is plotting. But I hope she has the support to do it in a way that makes sense. The last thing we need is another Young Frankenstein, bursting with production and void of substance.