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Sun Valley is Capital for a Day today
Eaton and Fauth honored
Page 6
Main Street Market Makeover Page 10
Bashaw Inspires Christmas Giving for Homebound Seniors Page 19
read about it on PaGe 5
D e c e m b e r 2 1 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 5 1 • w w w.T h e We e k l y S u n . c o m
Anthony Geffen in 3D BY KAREN BOSSICK
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Jim Jarrett as Vincent.
COURTESY PHOTO
Vincent to Benefit nexStage Theatre BY KAREN BOSSICK
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uring his tortured 37-year life, Vincent Van Gogh knew only failure. But Jim Jarrett’s portrayal of the Dutch artist has proven wildly successful, taking him around the world for 15 years in one of the best attended, most critically acclaimed one-man shows to take the stage. Jarrett will reprise his role in “Vincent” Monday through Thursday, Dec. 29, at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum. The 7 p.m. presentation will benefit the nexStage Theatre where Jarrett serves on the advisory board. Jarrett will field questions from the audience following each performance. StarTrek’s Leonard Nimoy wrote and launched the play on Broadway in the early 1980s. Jarrett first performed it in the Sun Valley area at the invitation of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Since then, he has performed it around the world, including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—the largest theater festival in the world. His performance won nominations for “Best Actor” and “Best Solo Show” at the festival, which features 3,000 performances a day. And that led to a three-week tour of England. “I’ve played it before a quarter million people around the world,” Jarrett said. The play is based on 1,070 pages of letters that Vincent wrote his younger brother, Theo. Theo supported Vincent financially with his work at one of Europe’s leading art dealerships. The tormented letters reveal the soul of a man who as a child was intensely serious, uncommunicative and clumsy. The first of eight children born to a minister, Vincent failed as an art dealer, schoolteacher, lover, pastor, and missionary to Belgian miners. During his lifetime, he even failed as a painter, selling few of his 2,100 works of art before he took his life. Intent on making Vincent and Theo’s lives count for something, Theo’s wife Johanna pushed Vincent’s paintings onto an unsuspecting world and in time they set the stage for a new form of art known as Expressionism. “Jim’s performance is outstanding,” said Jon Kane, who produced Jarrett’s
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nthony Geffen is in the business of telling stories — from the real story behind Cleopatra’s death to Mallory’s attempt at climbing Everest to bringing to life flying monsters from the past. But the story people don’t see is that behind the scenes as Geffen works magic with cutting-edge, three-dimensional technology. The award-winning filmmaker, who has been spending Christmas in Sun Valley for 20-plus years, will discuss how things work at 6 p.m. Tuesday at The Community Library in Ketchum. He’ll offer film clips, as well. “We’re shooting a new ‘Kingdom of Plants 3D’ with a camera no one has ever shot before,” he said, as he described shooting with what essentially is like a periscope that Geffen’s filmmakers can drop inside a plant. “No one else has got this. It’s one of the most spectacular things ever shot in 3D— like being on another planet,” said Geffen, whose Atlantic Productions is considered the world’s leading 3D company. Filming in 3D is not easy. The cameras are complicated, to say the least. Cameramen couldn’t just run up to a penguin and start shooting footage as they filmed their upcoming “Bachelor King 3D.” It took four people and anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour to get the cameras in place and aligned with each other. By then, Geffen said, that penguin was long gone. But eventually their work paid off with stunning 3D cinematography that shows off majestic albatrosses and 6 million penguins on one of the most densely-packed pieces of real estate in the southern hemisphere. If getting the cameras tuned in isn’t difficult enough, Geffen’s 16-member film crews shoot under difficult conditions. For “Flying Monsters 3D,” they shot 85year-old naturalist David Attenborough in a hangglider as a giant winged pterosaur with a 40-foot wingspan flew around him. It was a hair-raising shoot with a helicopter flying within feet of him. The penguin shot meant spending an uncomfortable six months on an uninhabited island in the Antarctic to gather footage for a 3D film following the amorous exploits of a bachelor penguin. Cameramen shot in subzero temperatures, apprehensive of giant elephant seals that occasionally rolled over on and flattened their tents. For their trouble, Geffen and Atlantic Productions are raking in the awards. “First Life with David Attenborough,” in which photo-realistic CGI technology recreated early animals and their
“I love being a part of this community. I love that I can put things back into the community and maybe spark an interest in something like the life of a penguin.”
- ANTHONY GEFFEN This still is from ‘The Bachelor King 3D with David Attenborough’ - King Penguin returns to the colony on Gold Habour - photographed by Danny Spencer. COURTESY PhotoS
Producer Anthony Geffen and David Attenborough on location whilst filming ‘First Life with David Attenborough’.
environments through the help of fossils, won an Emmy hat trick—three Emmy Awards—at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards. And the groundbreaking stereoscopic 3D “Flying Monsters 3D” won a British Academy Award (BAFTA award) for Best TV Documentary, along with an IBC Special Award for its innovative use of 3D. “We did what no one else had done before. No one won three individual Emmys ever,” said Geffen, who also chalked up a Best Imax of the Year.
Geffen is predicting a big year ahead for 3D as 3D becomes common on iPads and viewers no longer have to wear 3D glasses. “There isn’t enough 3D content right now. But it’ll come. And productions like ours will make people think, ‘I’ve got to have it,’ ” he said. “Making 3D is very time-consuming and very expensive. But I feel extremely lucky to be a part of it.”
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