Variety reports that Spike Lee will create a filmed version of the musical that I recommended in May. He will incorporate footage from a few performances, before the show closes on July 20.

1996: Flash back to the first screening at my first Sundance. Holiday Village Cinemas. "Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud," where I am introduced to the life and work of the visionary designer.

2005: Vacation in Ann Arbor and Deerborn, Michigan. Lost in ginormous Henry Ford Museum until we meet up on a tour through Fuller's utopian, circular Dymaxion House.

2006: At one of my favorite tiny museums, the Noguchi in Queens, for "Best of Friends: Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi" to see collaboration between designer-scientist and sculptor.

2008: At the Whitney for "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe," where a photo illustration of Fuller's imagined "Dome over Manhattan" matches the one above our sofa at home.

I wish more films lived up to the excellence of a show I just saw on Broadway. (And I am so not a lover of Broadway musicals.) Maybe "Passing Strange" is a Broadway musical for independent film lovers. All elements-- story, catchy (rock) music, acting, choreography, lights-- were perfect. It charts the course of a musician, via sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, from his youth in middle class black America to Europe and beyond.

Earlier this week the show was nominated for several Tony's, Broadway's Oscars. I'll be rooting for it on June 15, the night of the awards.

Finally had a chance to check out Takashi Murakami's exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. It does a good job of triggering the shopping reflex, but I live near Canal Street....

Sculptures, paintings, and animated shorts are bursting with juicy colors and textures. I'm looking forward to his live action film in 2009.