“Snow White and the Huntsman,” the fairy tale project that begins shooting next week in the U.K. with Kristen Stewart of “Twilight” fame as the lead, has some tough hurdles to overcome. It’s competing with another “Snow White” project from Relativity Media that has already begun filming and features Julia Roberts as the evil queen. It’s also set to come out June 1, three months after Relativity’s “Snow White” movie will debut — and close to two months before a Comic-Con International audience will be back in San Diego.

What’s a studio to do?

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How about recruit fans at Comic-Con 2011 with some stills of the cast in costume, a charming British director with an impressive commercial reel and a crew of good-looking lead actors? That’s what Universal Pictures did Saturday afternoon during a panel featuring Stewart, evil queen Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth as the huntsman and Sam Claflin (“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”) as the prince.

It was one of a number of high-profile pitches from Hollywood, blatantly trying to channel the fan energy pooling in every hall, room and corridor of Comic-Con into buzz and ticket sales for new projects. Along with “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “Cowboys and Aliens” and “Conan the Barbarian” offered up cast members and more to eager audiences at the festival, which closed Sunday.

The fun of the “Snow White” panel came from the cast, with Theron providing most of the comic relief. Since the cast just met each other recently, moderator Dave Karger, from Entertainment Weekly magazine, conducted a series of ice-breakers, questions like “What are you like on the set? Do you like to improv?”

“I’m very well-behaved,” said Stewart, who added she is excited to wear her armor and carry a shield as a Snow White with little resemblance to the Disney princess that sings to the birds. “I take myself very seriously.”

“You’ll be fine, Kristen,” responded Theron, who compared her evil queen to a serial killer, one with a fantastic costume designed by Academy Award winner Colleen Atwood. “I’m an Oscar winner, so I take myself very seriously,” she said with a laugh.

Stewart got into the fun when asked whether she’s like her character. “I’d like to be more like her …. But I am the fairest in the land, and I have a seriously good heart,” she said. Added Hemsworth: “And she really likes apples.”

Sanders also introduced a photo of his eight dwarves — a who’s who of the British acting scene: Nick Frost, Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Eddie Marsan, Eddie Izzard and Stephen Graham. Why there are eight dwarves? “Because there are a few great lines when one of them gets killed,” Sanders said.

One fan asked about the casting challenges Universal had with finding its huntsman, a role Hemsworth took only after a long line of actors, including Viggo Mortensen and Tom Hardy, turned it down. Said Hemsworth, fresh off his role as superhero Thor: “The teaser was impressive, the script was fantastic. I’m pretty simple. Either I like it or I don’t. This sounded like fun…. Plus, there was no one else left.”

‘Glee’s’ graduation quandry

At the “Glee” panel held Sunday, some things got murkier when co-creator and executive producer Brad Falchuk attempted to clear things up. Remember all those reports in which co-creator Ryan Murphy was quoted as saying stars Chris Colfer, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith would be graduating this season and not returning for the show’s fourth? And remember Chris Colfer commenting on it as well? Well, Falchuck is saying the exodus isn’t so.

“Just because they’re graduating, doesn’t mean they are leaving the show,” he said. “It is not our intention to let them go … they are not done with the show.”

Later, Falchuk said the executive producers had explored the option of a spin-off with with Kurt (Colfer) and Rachel (Michele) but are “leaning against doing it.”

Falchuk reiterated that the upcoming season would be less heavy on stunt casting and special episodes. But he didn’t deny that a tribute episode was a possibility.

And don’t cry a river for Mercedes (Amber Riley). She will be getting another love interest whom she will have met over the summer. He’ll drive her arc in the first half of the season.

Garfield is Spidey sensitive

After the teaser trailer for “The Amazing Spider-Man” was released this week to lukewarm reception, Sony was charged with wowing audiences at Comic-Con with its reboot of the web-slinger franchise, this time directed by Marc Webb (“(500) Days of Summer”).

The trailer played well to the packed room Friday, but it was the new Peter Parker himself, Andrew Garfield, who won fans over: He stood up in the audience in Hall H in a low-rent Spider-Man costume and delivered an emotional speech about how much he loved the character.

On a spring evening in this Mississippi town, Jim Walker dug into a plate of roast beef, macaroni and cheese, and green beans at the Palmer Home for Children and tried to swallow his frustration.

The orphanage was hosting an awards dinner for 65 of its charges — some in high chairs, others in high school. The kids, who wore Easter dresses and secondhand ties, accepted prizes for spiritual growth and certificates for artistic excellence. A 22-year-old who arrived at Palmer Home at 8 months old and graduated from the University of Mississippi received a top honor.

As poignant as the evening was, Walker, an orphanage board member and its former development director, couldn’t help but be upset that the accomplishments of the privately funded, 116-year-old institution were unfolding in obscurity. Palmer Home was the sort of place, Walker believed, that would make a heartwarming movie, showing that orphanages weren’t Dickensian warrens of misery.

It was scarcely some Hollywood fantasy.

In fact, a year earlier, cameras were set to roll on “Miracle at Palmer Home.” David Mickey Evans, who directed “The Sandlot,” was preparing to shoot the fictionalized story of three kids who run away from the orphanage to make room for needier children. Walker, who cowrote the movie’s story, said the budget was initially $7 million. But the project collapsed days before filming was to begin, he said, and some of the movie’s investors wonder where their money — some $1 million — went.

A former colleague of the film’s producer, Bret Saxon, thinks he knows: Scott Barbour contends in a lawsuit that Saxon and his companies took the money to finance a “luxury lifestyle.” Saxon, the suit claims, followed the same pattern on other film projects: Create a “falsely exaggerated” budget for a film, then “attempt to produce the movie project for substantially less” and “pocket the difference.”

The Palmer Home movie is one of 10 independently financed film projects — including one starring Woody Harrelson, another with Luke Perry, and one about California con man Barry Minkow — that have sparked a spate of lawsuits in the last year and a half against Saxon. A veteran of the infomercial world, the 45-year-old Saxon has co-written books about how to meet famous people and schmooze the rich and powerful.

Investors have filed six lawsuits against Saxon, alleging that he misappropriated or failed to repay more than $7.8 million in investments, loans and fees. In the first case, filed in February 2010, a Tennessee arbitrator found Saxon liable for fraud and breach of contract and ordered him to pay investor Jon Yarbrough $2.25 million.

A lawyer for Saxon, Andrew Jablon, said, “Mr. Saxon agreed, at the advice of his counsel in Tennessee, to enter into a stipulated judgment as part of a business resolution.” In the other lawsuits, which are all in the early stages of litigation, Jablon said Saxon also did nothing wrong. Jablon argued that Barbour has tried to extort money from Saxon and that others have been motivated to sue him because of money woes not of Saxon’s making.

As for the money invested in “Miracle at Palmer Home,” it was spent on “pre-production and production costs,” Jablon said. “There was no theft of assets — nothing.” The movie, Jablon said, was postponed because a cast member became ill.

Outside the system

The saga of Bret Saxon and the question of whether he is simply an unlucky producer or, as alleged in the lawsuits, a fraud provides a window into film financing in modern Hollywood and the risks of such investments.

Independent producers like Saxon serve as both fundraisers and filmmakers, and the roles are linked more closely than ever. The major studios have cut the number of movies they make, concentrating on extravaganzas such as “Transformers” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Of the 560 films released theatrically in the United States last year, only 104 came from the major studios, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America, down 6% from 111 major studio releases in 2009.

Independent producers are the engines behind the hundreds of other films. They comb the world for financing, pitching their projects at international movie markets, over Beverly Hills lunches, on the decks of yachts moored at the Cannes Film Festival. Many independently produced movies are made with no guarantee of distribution; the completed films are shopped around in the hopes of attracting a sale that will more than cover their budgets.

Cash has flooded into movies from international tax deals, government subsidies, foreign banks, hedge funds and wealthy individuals. Although the investments are highly speculative, they offer investors a chance to mingle with stars, see their names on the big screen, and, in rare cases such as the independent blockbusters “Little Miss Sunshine” or “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” collect a windfall.

Saxon, who according to court records declared personal bankruptcy in 1991 and 1998, has been a producer or executive producer on a number of films, none a major success. The 2005 Costa Rican comedy “Blue Sombrero” and the 2009 thriller “Across the Hall” have no reported box-office receipts. His 2007 poker movie “The Grand” grossed just $115,879 in domestic theaters.

Saxon traveled by private jet, had a Mercedes and a Ferrari, and lived in a 10,900-square-foot Pacific Palisades estate with a movie theater, tennis court and swimming pool, according to interviews and court records. Saxon traveled with a personal trainer and carried an exclusive black American Express card, according to court filings and interviews with former colleagues and movie investors. Jablon said he doesn’t see “anything improper about these facts” and that the trainer accompanied Saxon as a personal friend.

Said Dennis Sonnenschein, a fledgling Tennessee screenwriter whose brother, Thomas, is suing Saxon over a movie Dennis Sonnenschein co-wrote: “He put on the dog when he wanted to put on the dog.”

Former colleagues of Saxon and those who invested with him describe him as a charismatic figure.

Gillian Welch was raised in California, the child of showbiz vets, and found her way to country and bluegrass only after a peripatetic voyage through aimless rock bands and music school. But if you listened to Welch and partner David Rawlings at the Vic Theatre Friday night, you might have been forgiven for believing you’d stepped back in time to another era. Rawlings and Welch made an unassuming pair, he in a suit and cowboy hat, she in a dress and boots, but the music they played often sounded drawn directly from the darkest and deepest wells of American folk.

There’s admittedly an element of the method actor to Welch’s tales of woe and misery, where whiskey and other addictions prove salve, sin and self-destruction in equal amounts; you could just as easily imagine Welch and Rawlings busking on skid row or sitting on a porch in rural Appalachia as headlining theaters and concert halls. Yet never did the duo’s modestly antiquated affectations overwhelm what remained in essence a contemporary performance, downright anachronistic in its austerity but self-aware and smart enough not to revel smugly in the illusion. After all, a song such as “The Way It Will Be” would have been just as at home in a ’70s coffeehouse, when some of the pair’s more modern influences were crafting their own illusions.

“Most of you probably didn’t come here to hear happy songs,” Welch half-joked midway through her set with Rawlings, her intrepid and exceedingly sympathetic collaborator, and dutifully the two offered one downer after the other, songs such as “My Morphine” or “The Way It Goes,” where levity was generally limited to a wry turn of phrase or one of Rawlings’s witty acoustic licks. But Welch and Rawlings could be playful, too, introducing “Elvis Presley Blues” as a song about one of their “favorite dead guys,” or Welch unleashing Rawlings to lead his own twisted “Sweet Tooth,” which was only nominally about sugar.

The typically languid, tragic bent of many of Welch’s compositions contrasted with a surprisingly raucous crowd that cheered on each impeccable harmony or precise daredevil guitar solo, but wielding the twin timeless themes of heartache and hardship, Welch and Rawlings regularly reduced the audience to a rapt, respectful silence with songs such as the autobiographical “Wrecking Ball” or the more enigmatic “Time (The Revelator).” But they could just as easily egg the audience on with songs such as the gospel standard “I’ll Fly Away,” and when in doubt, Welch knew she could always just release Rawlings to ramble and rock. An uncommonly good guitarist, he was like the lightning to Welch’s slow rumble of thunder, the flint to her tinder that allowed even the quietest songs in their repertoire to simmer and spark.

Ctc-arts@tribune.com

“I’m a racehorse,” yelped Wild Flag guitarist/vocalist Carrie Brownstein like an enthusiastic underdog out to beat the odds Friday at a sold-out Subterranean. “You put your money on me,” she dared. Indeed, all the smart bets were on the upstart quartet, which came across as anything but long shots in front of an adoring crowd, most of which hadn’t heard more than one or two of the band’s songs in advance of the exuberant 50-minute set. In all fairness, the ensemble, whose first album sees release in mid-September, has some history on its side.

Comprised of former Sleater-Kinney mates Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss, ex-Helium singer/guitarist Mary Timony and ex-Minders keyboardist Rebecca Cole, Wild Flag passes for an indie supergroup—albeit the rare kind in which egos are checked at the door and the creative slate is wiped clean. Watching Wild Flag’s Chicago debut (the collective also was scheduled to perform Saturday at the Wicker Park Festival), one never got the impression that the individuals onstage claimed impressive pedigrees. A short break, necessary because of the heat, marked the only time the band took its focus off the music.

Playing with something to prove, the uninhibited quartet burned through every track on its forthcoming record with blazing energy and addictive chemistry. Timony and Brownstein traded vocal leads while Weiss and Cole often shared background duties. Wild Flag treated its guitar-driven songs as if they were swerving pinballs, with melodies pushed, tilted and bounced off girl-group harmonies and through open spaces. Clearly, the band is still in the honeymoon phase. Each tune afforded raw opportunities to interact, explore and strive for the sort of liberating freedom that usually evades veteran artists once the newness wears off.

An animated Brownstein frequently went toe-to-toe with Timony, their physical communication reacting to angular lines (“Black Tiles”), pogoing grooves (“Future Crimes”) and percussive garage-rock outbursts (“Short Version”). The duo’s contrasting vocal styles established mood and tension, producing delicious collisions of sweetness and spunk. In particular, Brownstein molded breathless deliveries into falsetto squeals, distressed screams, exasperated hiccups and giddy chants. A directive to “shake shimmy shake” on the hyper-catchy “Romance” summed up the material’s dance appeal. Movement seemed a prerequisite instead of a choice.

Similarly, Wild Flag demanded action, not idle chatter. After declaring its annoyance with the latter on “Endless Talk,” the group encored with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden,” answering its own pleas by proving hard, rough and tough enough for whatever it desires.

ctc-arts@tribune.com

Most people wandering down a tourist promenade such as Navy Pier and seeing a little sign advertising a daytime production of “Pinocchio” probably would expect a tawdry troupe of chirpy, collegiate-level actors performing “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” and channeling the Disney version of Jiminy Cricket.

Well, in this case, that would be a lie. And as the famous little dude with the variably sized hooter surely comes to see, lies don’t make it easy to blow your nose.

In fact, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s family summer musical is a full-on world premiere by a Broadway team (Neil Bartram and Brian Hill, who wrote “The Story of My Life”). The production values rival any adult musical in town, no one sings about strings holding them down — this show is more interested in choices that kids and puppet masters make — and the dominant emotions are anything but chirpy. And no one cares about a chatty cricket.

Bartram’s music is very much au fait with dissonance; he enjoys lingering in the minor key. The self-aware Pinocchio at one point sings lyrics that include the word “demographic.” And the splendiferous look of the show, gorgeously designed by Kevin Depinet, seems to me inspired, consciously or not, by the work of Enrico Mazzanti, who illustrated the first edition of Carlo Collodi’s novel.

And the cast? The uncompromising Heidi Kettenring, who plays the smaller role of the Cat, was a star of the Chicago “Wicked,” and the incisive Derek Hasenstab, who plays the Fox, was in Disney’s “The Lion King.” That is the caliber. Matinees only.

Whatever issues one may have with this new piece — and I’ll get to those in a moment — this is a work of real substance and invention. It is certainly aimed at a family audience, and there are beautiful wooden marionettes, designed by Meredith Miller. But real people predominate. And adults interested in new musicals are just as much the target, if not more so, than pint-sized theatergoers. In fact, this show is not, in my opinion, ideal for kids under about six.

But the slightly older kids who were there Thursday afternoon looked fascinated, proving once again that the best children’s theater is always the most sophisticated children’s theater. This is far from a typical score for a kids’ show; toe-tapping melodies are few and, if you’ll pardon the reductive analogy, the overall style is closer to Andrew Lippa or Michael John LaChiusa than Alan Menken or Stephen Schwartz. I’d re-think the lack of percussion, but still, I watched kid after kid lean into this difficult, powerful music in the most moving way.

Hill, who wrote the musical’s book, should try and make it a little easier to also lean into the story.

The show starts out with a very promising thesis. Melody Betts’ Storyteller (she’s not called the Blue Fairy, as in the Disney version) introduces us to a frustrated young chap who wants to be human rather than kindling. But he makes the mistake of taking his father’s sacrifices for granted (a common error, I find, in my house) and blows his limited resources on the wrong things. With the help of the narrator and a lovely song called “Choices,” he comes to see that these issues are complex and that self-satisfaction does not always serve you best.

“Choices” includes a melody that returns often, suggesting that Hill and Bartram see it as the theme of their little show. It is a fine theme, but the material tends to wander too far away at times, and becomes woolly rather than woody. It’s a common problem with shows based on literary characters who have many adventures, but it could be fixed if everyone just decided to focus on what they wanted to the show to say — and make us feel. We only have 70 minutes. We have to know Pinocchio better. We’re all ready to travel along and learn about his choices, but we must understand his importance in our lives.

The other missed opportunity here involves the true identity of the storyteller, a revelation that could have the place engulfed in tears (and teach a wonderful lesson about how parenting never ends), if only everybody would pause, be still, and commit to the honesty of the moment. Right now, the show blows right past.

Director Rachel Rockwell’s production features a rich staging and skilled actors (the likes of Don Forston, Ron Rains and Liz Pazik) but it also needs to find the courage of its stylistic convictions. There are moments — especially during scenes involving the overly broad and jumpy Skyler Adams, the nonetheless promising young actor in the title role — when it feels like no one quite found the nerve to commit to the subtleties of the music and the nuances of this visual world, and instead felt the pressure to make a conventionally “up” daytime kid’s show.

Banish that like a runny nose, I say. When there is this level of craft involved, kids will go along for an honest ride anywhere you want to take them.

cjones5@tribune.com

Twitter@ChrisJonesTrib

When: Through Aug 28 (daytime shows only)

Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Tickets: $18-$25 at 312-595-5600 or chicagoshakes.com

Amy Winehouse, who was found dead Saturday at her home in London, left behind a small body of celebrated work and immeasurable unfulfilled promise. She was 27.

Authorities were investigating the cause of the British singer’s death. But, sadly, it was a surprise to virtually no one. Winehouse had been waging a very public struggle with substance abuse since her teens, and after the huge success of her 2006 breakthrough album, “Back to Black,” her erratic behavior devolved even further, effectively putting her career on hold.

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In 2008 she became the first British singer to win five Grammy Awards, including best new artist, and record and song of the year for the single “Rehab.”

That hit song was both autobiographical and prescient: “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, ‘No, no, no.’ ” Full of bravado and dark humor – Winehouse once said it was written in response to her first management team who insisted that she clean up while she was still a teenager – it took on a ghastly tinge as the singer’s addictions took hold of her life.

Winehouse, born in 1983 to a pharmacist mother and cab-driver father, grew up in Northern London. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She formed a hip-hop duo in her teens, but soon began writing songs on an acoustic guitar influenced by her extensive listening to her parents’ and grandmother’s collection of jazz and soul singers. She often cited Tony Bennett as her favorite singer, and developed a vocal style of a depth and tonal color beyond her years. Her debut album, “Frank,” was released in 2003, steeped in jazz and soul influences and largely written by Winehouse. It made her a star in Britain, though it was not released in the United States.

On the follow-up, she retooled her approach by hiring pop RB producer Mark Ronson and the New York soul band the Dap-Kings. Her songs reflected the influence of harmonizing ‘60s girl groups such as the Shangri-La’s and the rhythms of Motown. “Back to Black” name-dropped or referenced soul heroes such as Donny Hathaway and Billy Paul, and the production recycled and spiffed up ‘60s sounds. But Winehouse’s lyrics were packed with autobiographical tales of boozing, lusting and losing. That perspective, combined with a voice that veered between street-smart surliness and wounded yearning, established her as a major new voice in pop music.

 “Back to Black” went on to become one of the most popular albums in U.K. history, topping 3 million sales. Unlike its predecessor, it also made a huge impression overseas; it was certified double platinum (2 million sales) by the Recording Industry Association of America. Her sound also paved the way for future U.K. pop-soul singers Adele and Duffy to cross over into the American market.

Her 2007 tour was a different story, hobbled by cancellations and erratic performances. She was a distinctive presence with her beehive hairdo, slinky cocktail dresses and heavily tattooed frame, guzzling drinks on stage and sometimes speaking and singing in slurred tones. At other concerts, she would appear subdued, even nervous. She would insist to interviewers that she sang better and more confidently when she had a few drinks.

She was able to pull it together, however, for what would be the most triumphant musical night of her career, at the 2008 Grammy Awards. She performed at the nationally televised ceremony live via satellite from London, playing her bad-girl image to the hilt as she sang “You Know I’m No Good” and “Rehab.” Her performance, which included a shout out to her then-jailed husband Blake Fielder-Civil, was designed to affirm that her six nominations and five awards were no fluke, and made her case persuasively. It also fostered hope that she had turned her life around; despite the protestations of “Rehab,” she had indeed just checked out of a rehab clinic, and was said to be working on a follow-up album.

Winehouse was unable to finish the album, and performed sporadically in subsequent years. A 12-date tour of Europe last June was cut short when she appeared on stage drunk and incoherent. In announcing the tour’s cancellation, a Winehouse spokesman said, “Everyone involved wishes to do everything they can to help her return to her best and she will be given as long as it takes for this to happen.”

In dying at age 27, she joins a long list of rock and soul performers who died at the same age, including Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, many of whom had a history of substance abuse. Like them, she leaves behind the tragic imponderable of what might have been.

greg@gregkot.com

Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin in a scene from “Fright Night.” (DreamWorks)

Lest any “Twilight” fans were still lurking about in Hall H of the San Diego Convention Center on Friday afternoon, Shawn Phillips of Yahoo Movies had some words of caution.

“This is not the sparkly vampire movie panel,”  he began,  introducing the panel discussion for the upcoming DreamWorks film “Fright Night 3D.” No, this, he said,  was the ”bad-ass, bloodthirsty vampire panel.” A cheer went up from the audience, indicating maybe the “Twilight” fans had, indeed, scattered after the Thursday event for their movie.

Colin Farrell, who plays vampire Jerry, was greeted with lots of love, especially when director Craig Gillespie asked him to go off stage when he called him out too early. Farrell retreated off the stage, walking backward. “He’s good. He’s better in reverse,” quipped Gillespie.

Fellow cast member Anton Yelchin (Chekov in 2009′s “Star Trek”) was met with huge applause and some cheers of “I love you!”  and Chris Sarandon, the vampire from the 1985 original, was on hand to moderate the discussion.

Gillespie, who shot the film in 3-D, said he was interested in directing as soon as he read the script by Marti Noxon. “It was so clearly written for me,” he said. ”I could visualize it instantly.”

Farrell was self-deprecating and, for a Comic-Con event, rather honest.

For instance, after a clip aired of vampire Jerry asking to borrow a six-pack of beer, Farrell quipped, “Some reps you just can’t shake. Of course Marti’s vampire has to drink.” (Farrell has in the last year given interviews discussing his struggles with alcohol and his decision to give up drinking.) He went on during the question-and-answer session to say that his time on Michael Mann’s  2006 movie “Miami Vice” was “a six-month blackout.”

He also commented:  “I thought I was playing a superhero in [Oliver Stone's] ‘Alexander’ and that didn’t work out. No more swords-and-sandals epics for me.”

He said that in the last five years, he’s become more selective in his work and had much more fun.

“Success came really quickly for me. It was insane,” said Farrell, 35. “Recently I reconnected to that Colin who went to his first acting class in Dublin at 17.”

Part of that, he said, involved signing on to play Jerry, a role he was at first reluctant to take because he loved the original and Sarandon’s performance so much.

Writer Noxon was thrilled he did, as she wanted to bring more “viciousness and sexuality” to the vampire genre.  “I didn’t want a vampire who played piano,” quipped Noxon, who used to write for the TV show ”Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

The film opens Aug. 19.

– Nicole Sperling

All it takes to sell “The Black Version,” the consistently overbooked comedy show now running at the Groundlings Theatre, is to state the concept: Audience members shout out titles of iconic movies, the director picks her favorite, and a cast of veteran black comics improvises, with scant regard for political correctness, the “black version” of it.

People start laughing in anticipation alone — “like we’re winning before we even started,” says cast member Keegan-Michael Key.

Consider their most recent show, a parody of “Grease.” Don’t expect the adolescent crooning and swooning of Danny and Sandy as they negotiate the all-American halls of Rydell High.

In the much cruder “black version,” retitled “Sulfur-8″ after a hair care product, Darrell and Shantell are Compton High students who share a meal of fried chicken and biscuits at a Popeyes and, over the course of their fraught courtship, encounter trigger-happy gang members, evil baby mommas and gun-toting golf caddies. All this while singing their own versions of the well-known songs. The title number becomes an RB ode to Sulfur-8 — “only one thing make your hair taste so great,” one cast member improvises, remarkably in tune as part of a respectable four-part harmony.

From the first show a year ago, “The Black Version” has been a winner for the Groundlings Theatre, drawing crowds creator Jordan Black says he never encountered during his seven years at the company (he left in 2007).

Part of the reason for its success might be the novelty of seeing seven black improvisers on the stage at one time. There isn’t as much improv talent in the black comedy world, Black says, because most of the role models are stand-up comics like Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock.

Wayne Brady, who appeared on the old improv TV show “Whose Line Is it Anyway?,” has been a special guest on two of the last 15 or so performances of “The Black Version,” including “Grease.”

“It’s been one of my favorite live improv shows that I’ve been involved in a long time,” Brady says, and he plans to do more.

The brainchild of Black — a running joke is that the show was named after him — the show began in 2007 as a series of Web shorts. Back then, Black and his friends, many of whom are now part of the show’s regular cast, including Gary Anthony Williams (“Boston Legal”), Daniele Gaither (“Mad TV”) and Phil LaMarr (“The Pee Wee Herman Show”), only parodied specific scenes, such as Meg Ryan’s famous fake orgasm in “When Harry Met Sally.”

When the opportunity presented itself, Black and director Karen Maruyama brought the show to the Groundlings, where it’s been playing two or three times a month for the last year. Past movies have included “Back to Future,” inevitably retitled “Black to the Future,” and “Silence of the Lambs,” better known as “Why You Eating People?” — and others such as “Star Wars,” “Forrest Gump,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” “Top Gun” and “E.T.,” their first.

Once a movie is chosen, there’s no time for brainstorming — Maruyama summons the comics to the stage, sets the scene, sometimes asks the audience for a suggestion or two, and then they begin.

To some, “The Black Version” might seem an endorsement of stereotypes — the ghetto-talking pimp, for instance — but Black sees it as, in some sense, freeing.

“There’s no room for political correctness in art,” he says. “These things exist, people talk about these things, but they talk about them behind closed doors. What we’re doing is bringing them all out into the open, which is, I think, a big part of why the show is successful. It gives people a chance to relax about race for a second, because we don’t talk about race, particularly in Los Angeles.”

Black, who also teaches at Groundlings, has noticed that some of his black students “get onstage and don’t want to be black.” The fear, he says, might be rooted in a notion that playing to stereotypes unfairly represents black people.

“Instantly, you have people in the audience going, ‘That’s not us.’ No, that’s not you, but there are some people who behave that way and act that way, and that’s the truth. It’s OK to comment on that,” Black says. “Not every white person acts like Jim Carrey, but he doesn’t have to worry about representing his whole race. I refuse to worry about that.”

Black and his cast take particular joy in luring audiences into certain racially familiar situations and then, in a flash, flipping them on their head, especially in the more open-ended second half of the show, in which the cast presents the would-be DVD extras of the black version they’ve just improvised, featuring Shakespeare, Stevie Wonder and Oprah Winfrey, among others.

Maruyama, the cast’s Japanese American director who the cast has declared an “honorary” black, agrees that “The Black Version’s” kind of comedy gives ethnic comics a certain freedom denied them in more traditional venues. She knows where to draw the line — sometimes an audience suggestion will border on racism — but she’s normally too busy having fun to worry about offending people. A comic herself — like Black, she got her start at Groundlings, and also worked alongside Brady as a featured guest on “Whose Line?” — Maruyama has an ear for the funniest crowd suggestions. Don’t shout out “Weekend at Bernie’s” or “Kindergarten Cop,” or you will be publicly shamed.

Everybody in the cast emphasizes the fun of putting on the show, saying that improvisation, though it might sound difficult, is no real work for trained professionals. Williams mourned the day he had to miss a performance for another job; Key calls it “one of the joys of my life.”

Black is hoping to take “The Black Version” on tour, possibly to Las Vegas or New York, but is only “in talks” at the moment.

Williams has taken on the role of de facto publicist, and he has a marketing approach to new audiences. “If all of Los Angeles does not see this show,” he says, “I will declare the entire place racist.”

calendar@latimes.com

With excitement akin to the sighting of a  bald eagle, the Ministry has stumbled upon rare video of power couple Jay-Z and Beyonce. At the same table. Sitting very close. Just like mortals do.

B and Jay are notoriously private when it comes to their marriage, quality time and, above all else, PDA. But the moguls aren’t sly enough to escape the magic found in a leaked 10-minute documentary about the making of Jay and Kanye West’s joint album “Watch the Throne.”

The clip below shows a heartfelt moment at a luxurious private estate in Australia, where West is presenting Jay with luxurious birthday gifts: framed artwork from their single “Monster” and a major ring that Kanye hunted for in Paris that allows Jay to dip the bauble in hot wax and leave an insignia.

The gift giving is a fantastic look behind the curtain, but we’re taken with the sight of man and wife, nestled at a dinner table smiling over taper candles and an haute cuisine spread.

Start at 1:10 to see Beyonce coach her hubby on how to stamp his ring after it’s dipped in hot wax, and for sweet man-hugging between Jay and Kanye. 

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— Matt Donnelly
twitter.com/MattDonnelly

Photo: Beyonce and Jay-Z in 2006, at the release party for her second studio album “B’Day.” Credit: Frank Micelotta / Getty Images.

All it takes to sell “The Black Version,” the consistently overbooked comedy show now running at the Groundlings Theatre, is to state the concept: Audience members shout out titles of iconic movies, the director picks her favorite, and a cast of veteran black comics improvises, with scant regard for political correctness, the “black version” of it.

People start laughing in anticipation alone — “like we’re winning before we even started,” says cast member Keegan-Michael Key.

Consider their most recent show, a parody of “Grease.” Don’t expect the adolescent crooning and swooning of Danny and Sandy as they negotiate the all-American halls of Rydell High.

In the much cruder “black version,” retitled “Sulfur-8″ after a hair care product, Darrell and Shantell are Compton High students who share a meal of fried chicken and biscuits at a Popeyes and, over the course of their fraught courtship, encounter trigger-happy gang members, evil baby mommas and gun-toting golf caddies. All this while singing their own versions of the well-known songs. The title number becomes an RB ode to Sulfur-8 — “only one thing make your hair taste so great,” one cast member improvises, remarkably in tune as part of a respectable four-part harmony.

From the first show a year ago, “The Black Version” has been a winner for the Groundlings Theatre, drawing crowds creator Jordan Black says he never encountered during his seven years at the company (he left in 2007).

Part of the reason for its success might be the novelty of seeing seven black improvisers on the stage at one time. There isn’t as much improv talent in the black comedy world, Black says, because most of the role models are stand-up comics like Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock.

Wayne Brady, who appeared on the old improv TV show “Whose Line Is it Anyway?,” has been a special guest on two of the last 15 or so performances of “The Black Version,” including “Grease.”

“It’s been one of my favorite live improv shows that I’ve been involved in a long time,” Brady says, and he plans to do more.

The brainchild of Black — a running joke is that the show was named after him — the show began in 2007 as a series of Web shorts. Back then, Black and his friends, many of whom are now part of the show’s regular cast, including Gary Anthony Williams (“Boston Legal”), Daniele Gaither (“Mad TV”) and Phil LaMarr (“The Pee Wee Herman Show”), only parodied specific scenes, such as Meg Ryan’s famous fake orgasm in “When Harry Met Sally.”

When the opportunity presented itself, Black and director Karen Maruyama brought the show to the Groundlings, where it’s been playing two or three times a month for the last year. Past movies have included “Back to Future,” inevitably retitled “Black to the Future,” and “Silence of the Lambs,” better known as “Why You Eating People?” — and others such as “Star Wars,” “Forrest Gump,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” “Top Gun” and “E.T.,” their first.

Once a movie is chosen, there’s no time for brainstorming — Maruyama summons the comics to the stage, sets the scene, sometimes asks the audience for a suggestion or two, and then they begin.

To some, “The Black Version” might seem an endorsement of stereotypes — the ghetto-talking pimp, for instance — but Black sees it as, in some sense, freeing.

“There’s no room for political correctness in art,” he says. “These things exist, people talk about these things, but they talk about them behind closed doors. What we’re doing is bringing them all out into the open, which is, I think, a big part of why the show is successful. It gives people a chance to relax about race for a second, because we don’t talk about race, particularly in Los Angeles.”

Black, who also teaches at Groundlings, has noticed that some of his black students “get onstage and don’t want to be black.” The fear, he says, might be rooted in a notion that playing to stereotypes unfairly represents black people.

“Instantly, you have people in the audience going, ‘That’s not us.’ No, that’s not you, but there are some people who behave that way and act that way, and that’s the truth. It’s OK to comment on that,” Black says. “Not every white person acts like Jim Carrey, but he doesn’t have to worry about representing his whole race. I refuse to worry about that.”

Black and his cast take particular joy in luring audiences into certain racially familiar situations and then, in a flash, flipping them on their head, especially in the more open-ended second half of the show, in which the cast presents the would-be DVD extras of the black version they’ve just improvised, featuring Shakespeare, Stevie Wonder and Oprah Winfrey, among others.

Maruyama, the cast’s Japanese American director who the cast has declared an “honorary” black, agrees that “The Black Version’s” kind of comedy gives ethnic comics a certain freedom denied them in more traditional venues. She knows where to draw the line — sometimes an audience suggestion will border on racism — but she’s normally too busy having fun to worry about offending people. A comic herself — like Black, she got her start at Groundlings, and also worked alongside Brady as a featured guest on “Whose Line?” — Maruyama has an ear for the funniest crowd suggestions. Don’t shout out “Weekend at Bernie’s” or “Kindergarten Cop,” or you will be publicly shamed.

Everybody in the cast emphasizes the fun of putting on the show, saying that improvisation, though it might sound difficult, is no real work for trained professionals. Williams mourned the day he had to miss a performance for another job; Key calls it “one of the joys of my life.”

Black is hoping to take “The Black Version” on tour, possibly to Las Vegas or New York, but is only “in talks” at the moment.

Williams has taken on the role of de facto publicist, and he has a marketing approach to new audiences. “If all of Los Angeles does not see this show,” he says, “I will declare the entire place racist.”

calendar@latimes.com

It’s not easy to convey the full effect of an edgy mood piece such as “Drive” in two minutes of trailer time. But this new spot for the Nicolas Winding Refn-Ryan Gosling collaboration, which was a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival (where it won Refn the director prize) and is garnering buzz at Comic-Con in San Diego this weekend, does a respectable job.

The material begins by tossing out many details of the film’s surprisingly intricate plot (Gosling plays a getaway driver who gets mixed up with an assortment of colorful mob figures while also in a complicated entanglement with a young mom played by Carey Mulligan), then finishes with a musical montage that better suggests the movie’s distinct style.

“Drive” strikes us as the kind of film that will bring in very different sorts of people for very different reasons — some will see it for the thrill-happy car chases, some for the director’s vision, some for the chance to watch Gosling in an entirely different (and laconic) guise. The movie opens Sept. 16; it’s already looking like one of the genre breakouts of the fall.

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– Steven Zeitchik

Twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Christopher Schwarzenegger, the 13-year-old son of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, is recovering after a life-threatening accident at the beach.

The son of the former governor was boogie-boarding in Malibu last weekend when he collided with an object on the beach, face-first, resulting in serious injuries including broken bones and a collapsed lung. 

“While it has been a very scary week, Christopher is surrounded by his family and friends. He is a brave boy and is expected to make a full recovery,” the divorcing pair said in a joint statement. 

The boy was in the intensive care unit for several days, with his mother at his side nonstop since Sunday and his dad a regular visitor, according to TMZ.

Arnold and his daughter Christina were spotted visiting Christopher in the hospital Friday. His older brother Patrick also tweeted, “Thank you everyone for your messages about my brother. This kid is strongest kid I ever seen. Keep praying.” 

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– Matt Donnelly
twitter.com/MattDonnelly

Photo: Maria Shriver and Christopher Schwarzenegger during the NBA All-Stars weekend in February. Credit: Danny Moloshok / Reuters 

Robert Pattinson’s much anticipated “Breaking Dawn” sex scene might not hold an oil lamp to the action in the actor’s upcoming period piece, “Bel Ami,” if a trailer leaked Friday is any indication.

In a web of French intrigue and bedsheets, Pattinson plays a “penniless” soldier who’s trying to break into society. Turns out the young man fortunately has some, um, skill when it comes to entertaining the wives of powerful men at the core of Parisian society.

A trailer for the film, posted early Friday and then taken down, shows RPattz courting beauties played by Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci and Kristin Scott Thomas. His amply notched bedpost soon gets the better of him, and heavy breathing, high stakes and lots of corridor-running ensue.

Worry not, Rob watchers: The dedicated staff of the Ministry’s Gratuitous Beefcake and Cheescake department will keep watch for the clip’s comeback and post it the moment we can.

In the meantime, tell us in comments whether “Bel Ami” sound like something you’d like to see. And for the record — that weird hairstyle he’s been rocking belongs to his “Cosmopolis” character, Eric Packer.

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– Matt Donnelly
twitter.com/MattDonnelly

Photo: Yes, even with hair like this, Robert Pattinson is capable of landing Uma Thurman. Credit: Michael Buckner / Getty Images 

It works and looks like an alterna-world version of iTunes, albeit with different font and color scheme. Launch the app and on the left side of the screen is a list of folders, a combination of libraries and playlists. Click on any of them to access lists of music. For example, a folder called “Local files” contains all of the mp3s on your hard drive — basically, your iTunes music. Another folder is your “inbox,” where any one of your followers can send you songs to hear, and vice versa.

The search engine is where the epiphanies arrive; it’s the portal into the 15 million songs. Search on the song “My Favorite Things” and up pops for your immediate gratification the movie soundtrack recording by Julie Andrews, John Coltrane’s post-bop workout, Barbra Streisand’s 2008 version from “Christmas Collection,” and Brad Mehldau’s pensive solo piano interpretation, among others. Hit shuffle and time vanishes, all these melodic, interpretive and sonic ideas delivered from the past into the present. Like a particular song in the database? Click on a star and it places the song, album or artist into an unlimited storage folder called “Favorites.” 

This genre/chronological equanimity changes the way we digest music, opens up the gates on finding music not through radio, MTV, print, blogs or iTunes charts, but through curious wandering and searching through the vast, seemingly endless bounty like spelunkers looking for cave paintings.

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek said this week that his plan is to expand the company’s library to contain not just western music, but everything. “Our goal is to have all the world’s music — all the African music, all the South American music, all the Asian music,” he told an audience in Aspen, Colo., during an onstage conversation at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference. He’s certainly not there yet; there are still gaping holes — the Beatles being the most obvious — and some songs in the library don’t always load on the first try, early launch quirks that will no doubt be remedied. 

“It certainly has changed things for me,” musician-producer Brian Eno told me a few weeks back regarding cloud services, “because one of the things I notice that often happens now in the studio when I’m working with other people, is that we’ll mention something — ‘Do you remember that song by so-and-so? No, you haven’t heard it? Oh, well, listen.’ We suddenly refer to music a lot in a way that never used to happen.”

It used to take work to track down old recordings, he added. “But now it’s all there, it’s all equally present, equally current, in a sense, so I think that really changes the way people think about the music that they’re doing. They don’t so much think now of certain styles being unacceptably old-fashioned, and certain other styles being wonderfully, interestingly new. You make your own patchwork quilt.”

Spotify, too, features a glorious sharing tool, in the form of personalized playlists that are as easy to swap with all Facebook friends as double clicking. Within seconds you can be listening to a playlist of 100 songs that your boyfriend just made while stationed in Afghanistan. 

You can also subscribe to any public playlist’s feed. I’m on one called “Radiohead Office Charts,” which is just what it says: an ever-evolving selection of songs currently in rotation in Radiohead’s London offices. The list comprises 185 songs and lasts 14 hours. If someone there drops a new track into the folder, I’ll see it and be able to hear it immediately.

But the coolest thing about Spotify and the promise of access and sharing is also the simplest: This morning when I woke up, I had no inkling that I’d be educating myself for the rest of the day on the music of early electronic composer Pierre Schaeffer. I’m in deep, and can’t wait to see what’s around the next corner.

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– Randall Roberts

Images: A shot of Spotify’s homepage. Credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg; A screenshot of Spotify’s playlist features.  

Bradley Cooper (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

If you’re like most people, Bradley Cooper is not necessarily the first actor you might choose to play Lucifer in a grand, epic cinematic telling of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Even Cooper, the handsome leading man perhaps best known for his starring role in the “Hangover” movies, conceded as much during the Legendary Pictures Comic-Con International panel Friday afternoon.

But the actor explained that he was excited by the opportunity to depict Lucifer as a sympathetic character — having studied “Paradise Lost” in college, he sees it as an “intimate family story” about two brothers and a father. Of course, that father just happens to be God.

Granted, there was not a lot of thinking small on display during the presentation, which, in addition to “Paradise Lost” showcased Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming “Pacific Rim” and Sergei Bodrov’s “The Seventh Son.” Casts and the directors from the films were present to greet fans and give a very early glimpse into the movies in a conversation moderated by Hero Complex’s Geoff Boucher.

“Paradise Lost” director Alex Proyas said one of the biggest challenges of the project — apart from translating an epic poem into a more traditional narrative — is rendering the elaborate visuals in a new and exciting way, pointing out that it’s only the advancement of moviemaking technology that’s made it possible for the project to even begin to take shape. “This film couldn’t have been made a few years ago,” he said.

Still, he emphasized that it’s the story and characters that will be central to the film in the end and that the creative team is making every effort to remain as faithful as possible to the initial text, bringing in a Milton scholar to help with that effort.

There’s not too much revered historical text to live up to when it comes to Del Toro’s “Pacific Rim,” which is set to go before cameras later this year. The project, written by Travis Beacham, is about giant robots and giant monsters, but the Mexican moviemaker declined to give away too many more details, saying the concept is “something we need to keep in secrecy.” He did add, though, that the film will be grounded in present-day reality, and moved on to introduce his actors — Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Charlie Day — and mentioning Rinko Kikuchi (“Babel”), who was not present but will play the female lead in the movie. (Del Toro cast Day, he said, largely because of the actor’s performance on the cult TV comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”)

Looking sunny himself in a blue cabana shirt, Oscar winner Jeff Bridges led the presentation for “Seventh Son,” in which he plays a grizzled witch hunter in search of an apprentice (Ben Barnes); actress Alicia Vikander, a self-described “huge fan” of fantasy and science fiction, also stars.

Bridges cited Bodrov’s “Mongol” as one of the reasons he was interested in working with the filmmaker, though he did say that despite a history of special-effects-intensive projects, he usually prefers to act the old-fashioned way. “I like to have costumes and sets… Now, actors wear dots all over their faces and they do everything in post,” Bridges said.

– Gina McIntyre

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Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter invokes “Inglourious Basterds” in describing “Captain America’s” reenvisioning of World War II, just as many other critics do. The film “should satisfy Captain America’s fans, old and new, while Chris Evans’ no-nonsense yet engaging portrayal of a man who doesn’t know how to back away from a fight may cause young women to swoon and young men to join a gym. Yet the film will leave others wondering — especially following the film’s long gestation and marketing buildup — ‘Is this all there is?’ “

In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern says Evans is “quietly engaging” as Rogers. But he feels the film loses its way: “In its early stretches, this revenant from the early days of Marvel Comics brings a spectacular sense of design to the World War II era, and sparkles with ambition; there’s even a production number reminiscent of old Warner Brothers musicals…. Once Captain America goes off to war in his endearingly silly suit, however, the movie, which was directed by Joe Johnston from a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, starts to lose its vibe.”

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times enjoys the film’s “wildly absurd” CGI-driven adventures and explains a bit about Evans’ physique: “CGI makes another invaluable contribution to the movie, by shrinking the 6-foot Chris Evans into a vertically challenged 90-pound weakling, and then expanding him dramatically into the muscular Captain America. This is done seamlessly; I doubted there was a single shot in the movie showing Evans as he really is, but no: I learn the full-size Captain is the real Evans, bulked up.”

A.O. Scott of the New York Times calls the film “enjoyably preposterous, occasionally touching and generally likable,” while praising Evans for his portrayal of the various emotions a guy’s gotta work through after being transformed into a superhero. Ultimately, though, “Mr. Evans is genial and easy on the eyes, but a superhero with a mask, whether bland or brooding, is rarely as interesting as the sidekicks and baddies who surround him.”

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– Scott Sandell

Photo: Chris Evans in Captain America: The First Avenger.” Credit: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios

Rhys Ifans in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1.” (Warner Bros.)

Rhys Ifans is now allowed to say what most fans already knew — he will be portraying the Lizard in next year’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” from Sony.

“I’m out of the reptilian closet,” Ifans said Friday afternoon while smoking a cigarette on a balcony at the Hilton Bayfront at the Comic-Con convention in San Diego. “I’m the Lizard.”

Ifans was getting ready for the film’s big preview panel at Comic-Con but, after director Marc Webb alluded to the Lizard in a press conference, Ifans knew it was time to let the gecko out of the bag. The 43-year-old Welsh actor (“Notting Hill”) said his role as a one-armed scientist named Dr. Connors is “a dream come true.”

The character dates back to the 1960s in Marvel Comics, and (like so many Marvel heroes and villains) there are tragic shadings to his origin tale: His desire to regain his lost limb leads to his reckless decision to inject himself with a regenerative serum that has bio-medical roots in the reptile kingdom.

“He’s not a bad man; far from it, he’s a great man who makes one bad decision,” Ifans says. “One ethical and moral decision leads to terrible things.  The science isn’t evil and the man isn’t evil. It’s one bad decision.”

Ifans said addiction is among the colors his performance — the serum delivers a swooning power, and Connors finds himself pulled toward a dark place. “That gave me a lot to work with,” Ifans said.

– Geoff Boucher

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Paul McCartney isn’t one to undermine his fans’ expectations. With tickets as pricey as $250 plus service fees for his concerts July 31 and Aug. 1 at Wrigley Field, he is certain to deliver plenty of vintage Beatles and Wings-era hits.

McCartney in stadium-pleasing mode remains formidable, a brilliant musician with an excellent band anchored by drummer Abe Laboriel. But he’s also a rare ‘60s icon: one who still is making vital albums.

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One of the frustrating aspects of the modern, over-priced stadium show is that it often precludes risk-taking by veteran performers. In many cases, there’s a good reason for that: Their recent material is drab if not embarrassing. McCartney’s a different story, however. Those who wrote him off in the ‘80s and ‘90s need to take another look. Those who loved the bold experimentation of his Beatles work have some catching up to do.

With McCartney set to hit town for his first shows here since 2005, it’s time to bust some long-standing myths about him and examine the relatively underappreciated corners of his music, including some of the stuff he won’t play at Wrigley.

Myth No. 1: John was the edgy one

John Lennon was the edgy rocker, McCartney the lightweight balladeer. That’s bunk.

Sure, Lennon battered down the doors of perception in Beatles songs such as “Strawberry Fields,” “I Am the Walrus” and “Rain,” and confronted reality with jarring directness in solo tracks such as “Cold Turkey,” “Mother” and “God.” But he also wrote some gloriously sentimental tunes about how “love is all you need,” and later, once he left the Beatles, allowed himself to get positively mushy about his newfound domesticity.

McCartney was more likely to dispense group hugs – rare was the ‘60s rocker who  empathized with the older generation in songs such as “She’s Leaving Home.” His very English tributes to dancehall music (“When I’m 64”) or his sheepdog (“Martha My Dear”) are about as un-rock ‘n’ roll as you can get. But McCartney balanced these moments with more than his share of experimentation, daring and, yes, Lennon-like intensity.

“Helter Skelter,” in many ways a forerunner of heavy metal, was McCartney unhinged – the throat-shredding vocal, the distortion-saturated attack, the clenched-teeth tension in the studio relieved only by drummer Ringo Starr blurting “I got blisters on me fingers!” as the song crashes to a close.

McCartney helped invent progressive rock, too, by conceptualizing and then stitching together (along with producer George Martin) the song fragments that make up Side 2 of the 1969 masterpiece “Abbey Road.”

The gonzo guitar solo in George Harrison’s “Taxman”? McCartney.

That ferocious soul shouter on “I’m Down” – the screams, the demented laugh, the increasingly hysterical outro? McCartney again, giving Little Richard and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins their due. 

But above all, McCartney was a studio-as-instrument chemist of the first order. It was McCartney who gave Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” its mind-blowing atmosphere by creating and altering sound-effect tape loops at his home. He was the Beatle paying closest attention to the experimental fringe of classical and electronic music at the time, lapping up Stockhausen and Cage alongside the Shirelles and Motown as influences. One of the finest examples of McCartney’s ability to bend space, time and minds, the 14-minute collage “Carnival of Light,” remains locked in the Beatles vaults.

After the Beatles broke up, the amiable gentleman of pastoral leisure could still get downright weird amid bouts of schmaltz and indifference; his solo work shows far greater range than Lennon’s, from the whimsical yet dazzling inscrutability of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” to his ahead-of-their-time electronic albums as the Fireman with the producer Youth.

Myth No. 2: Paul’s just the bass player

Sure, and Mozart was just a hack piano player from Salzburg. The bass may be an unsung instrument, but it’s the bedrock of rock ‘n’ roll and soul. What’s more, McCartney reinvented its role in the Beatles, not just laying down a foundation for the song but often playing a strong counterpoint to the lead vocal. One of the reasons the Beatles’ songs sound so rich is the depth of composition, the melodic and harmonic layers – and McCartney’s ability to straddle rhythm and melody on bass was critical.

His flair was already apparent on the band’s earliest hits; on “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1964), the bass is on equal footing with the guitars, and it’s like a song in itself on “Michelle” (1965). By the time of “Paperback Writer” (1966), McCartney is the lead instrumentalist, ushering in each verse like Britain’s answer to Motown’s James Jamerson. He’s nearly in subterranean funk territory with the deep tones of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” (1967) and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” (1968), and stomps likeGodzilla through “Rain” (1966) and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” (1968).

His knack for adapting his approach to whatever the song and the times demanded was key to the Beatles’ wide-ranging catalog, and it’s evident in his post-Beatles recordings as well. Denigrate “Silly Love Songs” (1976) all you want, but that bass line will pull you on the dancefloor everytime. He’s a soul-man extraordinaire on the slow-burn “Let Me Roll It” (1973) and a machine-gunning rocker on “Soily” (1976). He navigates “Lonely Road” (2001) with a thrilling authority; listen closely and you can hear his amplifier buzzing.

Myth No. 3: His music’s gone downhill ever since Wings broke up

After some strong albums with his band Wings in the ‘70s, McCartney put things on cruise control during much of the ‘80s and ‘90s. In that sense, his career followed the arch of many ‘60s greats whose music nose-dived, never to regain its potency. But McCartney rediscovered his mojo in recent years, joining a handful of artists – Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul Simon and Neil Young come immediately to mind – whose late-career work blows past nostalgia.

On “Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard” (2005), McCartney revisited the one-man-band approach he took on his 1970 solo debut and its 1980 follow-up, “McCartney II,” and trumped them both. It’s an album of small, intimate chamber-pop songs, with McCartney playing everything from drums to a flugelhorn. McCartney probably hasn’t heard the word “no” much the last few decades, but in this case producer Nigel Godrich deserves credit for not letting the bassist slide. Cool details abound: piano and strings melting into a dream-like bridge on “Fine Line”; the way two recurring notes on a toy glockenspiel become a beacon on “Riding to Vanity Fair”; the acoustic reverie “Jenny Wren,” with its wordless vocal and mournful duduk melody.

“Memory Almost Full” (2007) is even better, an unusually personal album by McCartney standards. He touches on mortality and his recent divorce without melodrama, and “Nod Your Head” and “Only Mama Knows” rock as hard as anything he’s done. In “The End of the End,” he imagines his own wake, and manages to pull it off with grace, humility and humor.

His third Fireman collaboration with Youth, “Electric Arguments” (2008), is the best of all, an accomplished combination of melody and experimental mirth.

It’s the first Fireman album with vocals, and McCartney role-plays to the hilt: a mischievous elf, a growling blues patriarch, even a hint of Bono-esque bombast. “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight” blows open the album like the son of “Helter Skelter,” and ends with McCartney barking like a dog. No, this is not your cuddly ‘60s icon coasting gracefully on his past accomplishments.

greg@gregkot.com

I hate to ask a question that I already know the answer to, but if you’ve been wondering whether “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ is going to win a best picture award next spring, the simple answer is: No. On paper, you’d think the movie would have a real shot at Oscar glory. After all, it’s a box-office phenomenon, easily on its way to being one of the biggest blockbusters in recent memory. It’s also perhaps the best-reviewed movie of the year so far, having notched a sky-high 97% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with nearly all the top critics gushing with praise.

Being the last, and arguably the best, in a long series of respected films, you’d think that the academy would let its emotions run wild, as they often do when a similarly beloved old actor–think Peter O’Toole in “Venus,” Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station” or Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild”–has one last shot at the Oscar brass ring.

But sentiment will only get you so far with the academy. Even though this looks like an especially weak year for Oscar contenders, it’s hard to imagine the academy suddenly changing its tune when it comes to “Potter” mania. After all, it has shown precious little love for the “Potter” series. Even though the first seven films all scored highly with critics, ranging from a 79% for “Deathly Hallows 1″ to a 91% for “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” the academy doled out only nine nominations for the first seven films combined–and even then only in the technical categories, such as cinematography, art direction, costumes and visual effects.

Even though the Warner Bros.-produced films have been populated with a murderer’s row of stellar British actors and all but one of the movies in the series was written by the noted screenwriter Steve Kloves, the “Potter” series has never earned a major acting, writing or directing nomination. And the films’ batting average, when it comes to actual Oscar wins? 0 for 9.

This is why it’s wrong-headed to compare “Potter” with the seemingly similar “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which racked up all sorts of Oscar nominations during its run, earning three straight best picture nominations and going 11 for 11 in its final outing, including a best picture victory. “Lord of the Rings” had more cachet with the academy, perhaps because it wasn’t seen as a kid’s delight, perhaps because its stories were loaded with what voters viewed as weightier mythic significance.

The “Potter” series has also been burdened, in terms of Oscardom, by its first two movies, which were directed by Chris Columbus, who was viewed as a middlebrow filmmaker, not someone whose work could be taken seriously.

If the academy were still playing by its 2009-10 rules, in which 10 movies would qualify as best picture nominees, you could probably reserve a slot for “Deathly Hallows 2.” But the academy’s new rules require that a film receive at least 5% of first-place votes during the first round of balloting to earn a best picture nomination. That translates into roughly 300 votes from the 6,000-plus member academy.

It’s easy to imagine 300 academy voters viewing “Deathly Hallows 2″ as a worthy best picture candidate. But would 300 academy voters make the film their first choice? That might be an insurmountable obstacle, even in a not especially competitive year, where the leading early contenders include Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar,” Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” the George Clooney-directed political drama “Ides of March” and, ahem, the prospect of something classy from the Harvey Weinstein Oscar hit factory.

When it comes to best picture nods, the “Harry Potter” films are in essentially the same category with Oscar voters as Pixar films. They are great examples of filmmaking craft, even if, for my money, they’ve never quite displayed the humanity or magic of J.K. Rowling’s books. But as Pixar’s creative team has discovered, best picture voters don’t really reward craft anymore, certainly not craft as practiced by films that are geared to youthful moviegoers. 

The academy is far more appreciative of weighty historical drama (“The King’s Speech”), searing antiwar broadsides (“The Hurt Locker”) or broad social statements (“Crash”) than films that can be dismissed as pure entertainment, like the Pixar offerings or the “Potter” series. That doesn’t mean that Warners will give up without a fight. Having made untold hundreds of millions on the series, Warners can surely afford to throw away a little bit of that loot on a classy Oscar campaign.

But will it be money wisely spent? I doubt it. In Hollywood, stereotypes die hard. Once the academy has written your film off as light entertainment, even the most powerful sorcerer in the world would have trouble persuading Oscar voters to change their minds.

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–Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Fans at opening night of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. Credit: David Livingston/Getty Images        

“Sarah’s Key” is more powerful than you expect, maybe even more powerful than it should be. An emotional detective story based on an international bestseller by Tatiana de Rosnay, its Holocaust-connected narrative goes back and forth between moments of strength and those that fall flat. The uninspired elements encourage you to dismiss it, but the compelling sequences won’t allow that to happen.

Starring Kristin Scott Thomas as an American journalist living in Paris, “Sarah’s Key” also goes back and forth between events in 2002 and what happened 60 years earlier during the city’s infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup of July 16, 1942, an event that is little known in this country and for many years was not mentioned in France either.

On that date, French officials and police, not Germans, rounded up 13,000 of the city’s Jews and herded them together for days in horrible conditions in one of the city’s indoor bicycle-racing tracks before dispatching them first to a transit camp and finally to Auschwitz.

The gravity of this event was not fully acknowledged until 1995, when President Jacques Chirac famously apologized for French complicity, so it’s no surprise that (with such exceptions as Marcel Ophüls’ “The Sorrow and the Pity” and Joseph Losey’s “Mr. Klein”) it hasn’t been the concern of many French films.

But it’s not only the newness to movies of these events that gives “Sarah’s Key” its impact, but it’s also the way Gilles Paquet-Brenner, a French director whose projects are ordinarily purely commercial, has conceived of and shot them.

Paquet-Brenner (who co-wrote the adaptation with Serge Joncour) starts the film on that July day in 1942 in the Marais district apartment of the Starzynskis. With the family being rounded up under frightening circumstances, 10-year-old Sarah (an exceptional Mélusine Mayance) impulsively instructs her younger brother to hide in the bedroom cupboard. She then locks him in, instructing him not to leave until she comes to get him.

“Sarah’s Key” is at its best in detailing with great skill what happens to this young girl and her parents over the next several days, starting with the nightmarish situation both at the velodrome, known informally as the Vél d’Hiv, and the transit camp at Beaune-la-Rolande, where Sarah and her family are sent.

The pure maddening chaos of these situations, their urgency, terror and violence, are compellingly conveyed by Paquet-Brenner and his cinematographer, Pascal Ridao, who shot all the 1942 action with a handheld camera to increase intensity. The specificity and the tension of these scenes, especially one where children are separated from their mothers, create an honestly earned connection.

These sequences don’t come at us all at once; they alternate between those set in 2002 involving Scott Thomas’ Julia Jarmond, living in Paris with a French architect husband, who persuades her magazine to let her do a major story on the 60th anniversary of the Vél d’Hiv events.

In the commercial fiction contrivance that is the heart of the novel’s success, Julia soon finds out that her husband’s family has a connection to that Marais apartment forcibly evacuated by the Starzynskis. She becomes understandably obsessed with finding out both the family’s role in that long-ago situation and what finally happened to 10-year-old Sarah and the brother hidden behind the key.

Though Scott Thomas is fluent and on target acting in both English and French, “Sarah’s Key” is not equally involving in both languages. On the one hand, obviously, we can’t help but share journalist and wife Julia’s determination to find the truth, and that want-to-see gives this film an effective engine.

But the 2002 sequences, which feature conversations in English with work colleagues and others, are so conventionally written and directed that they come off as flat and unconvincing. As is often the case with filmmakers working in a language not their own, these scenes feel like they’re not just in another tongue, they’re in another movie.

These sequences are a big part of “Sarah’s Key” and a considerable obstacle in the way of the film’s effectiveness. Finally, however, the historical situations have enough impact to overcome the at times sentimental contrivance of the contemporary material.

It also helps to have strong themes, which this film does. How much do we have to be products of our history? Are there limits to our ability to make new lives? To what extent is escape from the potent pull of the past possible? Just asking these questions, even in the context of melodramatic filmmaking, is something of value.

kennneth.turan@latimes.com

Mark your calendars: There will be blood Oct. 2

Showtime announced Thursday at Comic-Con 2011 that the sixth season of ‘Dexter” will make its fall return then.  

It will be followed by the debut of the new Claire Danes psychological thriller “Homeland,” about a CIA officer (Danes) who becomes convinced that there’s a conspiracy tied to Al Qaeda that led to the rescue of a U.S. soldier (Damian Lewis) who had been missing and presumed dead.

For more dispatches from Comic-Con, check out our sister blog Hero Complex. 

For more on what’s to come in the fall from Showtime, here’s a look:

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– Yvonne Villarreal

twitter.com/villarrealy

 Photo: Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan in ”Dexter.”  Credit: Showtime.

Video credit: Showtime

Caesar and James Franco in a scene from “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” (WETA Digital)

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” returns a storied sci-fi epic to screen but the creative team promised fans at Comic-Con International that they would see an entirely new vision with this seventh “Apes” feature film.

“It’s never been possible to tell this story, technologically,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” director Rupert Wyatt told the audience, explaining why Fox is revisiting the franchise just a decade after Tim Burton interpreted the story about chimps that achieve humanlike levels of intelligence. “We wanted to tell our story without using live apes for any number of reasons. It would be a cruel irony to tell the story of the exploited and repressed and use live apes to do so.”

Andy Serkis, who delivers a motion-capture performance as lead ape Caesar, appeared to explain why he took this role after playing an ostensibly similar one in “King Kong.”

“People said to me, ‘How come you’re playing another monkey?’” Serkis said, going on to describe the appeal of  Caesar’s transformation from “a young, innocent soul” to “a kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”

The Hall H audience saw footage of Caesar getting ensnared in a violent confrontation in the tranquil neighborhood he shares with his scientist owner (James Franco) and recruiting other apes to an uprising, culminating in an action sequence involving an army of chimps rampaging over bridges, freeways and skyscrapers.

– Rebecca Keegan
twitter.com/@thatrebecca

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“Captain America: The First Avenger,” the last of four superhero movies to hit theaters this summer, is hoping its shield will be powerful enough to fend off the all-mighty force that is “Harry Potter.”

After “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2″ grossed more in its worldwide opening last weekend than any film in history, it’s clear that the level of interest in the film is tremendous, with about $215 million in domestic ticket sales. But because so many fans rushed out to see the movie immediately, it’s unclear just how big the drop off in receipts will be during its second weekend in release particulary with the new 3-D entry “Captain America” opening against it.

“Captain America,” starring Chris Evans as a scrawny guy who is later transformed into a superhero through a secret government program, is expected to collect a similar number of ticket sales as “Potter” — about $60 million — putting the two films in a tight race for the weekend’s No. 1 spot.

Meanwhile, the other new film in wide release, the R-rated comedy “Friends With Benefits” with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, will probably open at about $20 million.

“Captain America” is being distributed by Paramount Pictures but was financed for about $140 million by Marvel Entertainment, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co. That means Disney will receive the majority of the profits or incur any losses from the film’s performance.

The film, which is generating strong interest among men, opened Thursday at one theater in San Diego near the Comic-Con International convention in an effort to generate buzz among comic book fans. While the movie is in 3-D, it may not benefit much from ticket surcharges, as audiences have been largely underwhelmed by the number of films released in the format this summer with the exception of “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

The studios behind “Captain America” are hoping that the film will perform like “Thor,” another Paramount/Marvel production that opened to $65.7 million in May. That 3-D film, also based on a comic book and starring a hunky leading man, went on to collect a respectable $444.6 million worldwide.

Overseas, “Captain America” is being released only in Italy this weekend, followed by 23 foreign markets in two weeks.

“Friends With Benefits,” a sexy romp about two buddies who decide to sleep together, is the latest sex-filled comedy to be released this summer — a genre that has resonated with audiences in recent months.

The film was produced by Sony’s Screen Gems label for about $35 million, meaning that if projections are correct, the movie should be off to a solid start this weekend.

In January, another movie with a similar premise, “No Strings Attached,” proved to be a sleeper hit after opening to $19.7 million. The film, starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman as two friends who try (and fail) to have a sexual but non-romantic relationship, cost about $25 million to produce and ultimately grossed $147.8 million worldwide.