Results tagged “voice”

Do you have a silky-smooth voice that sounds great filtered through static, feedback, and screeching train brakes? Then this could be your big, um, break: NYC Transit has allocated funds to expand their Dedicated Announcers Program, which broadcasts announcements through individual sections of the subway system containing between four and 22 stations. And the subway's customer communications director, Termaine Garden, actually seems to believe these announcements are intelligible: "We look for professional voices to make professional sounding announcements. Our goal is perfection." A noble pursuit, but how about a little mediocrity first—with all the garbled static, most of these announcements make as much sense as a Sonic Youth feedback jam. Currently 33 announcers cover 15 posts throughout the system, and 14 more are going to be hired soon. After the Daily News reported on the "elite group" yesterday, some readers even showed up at the MTA building to try auditioning. One hopeful, Anthony Paterson, a 55-year-old unemployed chauffeur from Long Island, explained, "I've been told by many people I have great voice." We hope he gets it, and look forward to not hearing a word he's saying.

Judging from Get Smart’s first remarkably unfunny trailer, you might assume this $80 million remake of the late-‘60s sitcom, starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway and Alan Arkin, would be a guaranteed flop, but it’s actually getting some decent reviews. (It’s a mixed bag, of course.) The Village Voice’s avant garde film buff J. Hoberman, of all people, deems it a “pleasant surprise… an all-purpose (and often quite funny) goofball action comedy.”

           

After last year’s stuffy exile at NYU’s Skirball Center, the Village Voice Obie Awards were back at the raucous, open-bar Webster Hall – or rather the Ritz, as Stew, co-creator of the phenomenal Broadway rock musical Passing Strange recalled. For over fifty years, the Obies have honored the best of Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theater; coming on the heels of last week's Tony nominee announcement, the awards serve as a pointed reminder that the most exciting theater usually happens far away from the big stages in Times Square.