Sundance Archives | Nicholas Kralev

Cheap airfares endure

Who says that cheap plane tickets are a thing of the past? How would you like to go skiing in Utah this winter for less than $150 round trip from the East coast, including all taxes? Rather visit a warmer place? How about a ticket to Hawaii for less than $300?

Yes, these are real prices, but you might need to do some homework to get them. Airlines now publish low fares less frequently and often pull them off the market within hours. We’ve all heard travel experts warning that air fares have nowhere else to go but up, mainly because of record-high jet-fuel prices, as well as predictions that the era of affordable air travel is over. That may well be what the future holds. The present, however, begs to differ…

The junger brother

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — David Hyde Pierce is already thinking post- “Frasier”, even though the popular TV show, in which he plays the title character’s snobbish psychiatrist brother Niles, has just been renewed for another three seasons. After long and at times painful negotiations, Paramount, the studio that produces “Frasier”, reached an agreement with NBC earlier this month to keep the hit series on the network.

But the new contract is no reason for Pierce to stop exploring other artistic opportunities — in fact, since he had a “blast“ in a two-week run of the musical “The Boys from Syracuse” in LA a year and a half ago, he has decided to look seriously into musical theatre as his next potential career move…

Seeing John Malkovich

John Malkovich fails all attempts to describe him, even though he is not necessarily an enigma. The moment you utter a word supposed to illustrate a certain part of his character, you realise that another one, with quite a different meaning, would suit him much better. The most common adjective people use to express their opinions of him — both complimentary and dismissive — is “weird”, but, with a little imagination, most of what he says and does makes sense.

In fact, imagination and creativity are key to understanding an actor who has starred in nearly 40 films over only 18 years, including “Empire of the Sun”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “Of Mice and Men” and “Being John Malkovich”, and just directed his first, “The Dancer Upstairs”, yet still claims to have “no knowledge of what a real movie is”…