NEW YORK (Reuters) – He’s not quite Susan Boyle.

But one of America’s first viral videos of 2011 has propelled a homeless man, who was filmed begging for money with a baritone-rich radio voice, to national attention and job offers.

Ted Williams, a 53 year-old former radio announcer who became homeless after battling drugs and alcohol, attracted millions of YouTube hits after The Columbus Dispatch newspaper posted a video on Monday of Williams begging on the side of a road in Columbus, Ohio, using his radio emcee imitations.(here)

By Thursday, Williams appeared on morning news programs including “The Today Show” to talk about new voice-over job offers with the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team and foodmaker Kraft and his stunning instant rise from begging on the streets.

“I feel like Susan Boyle,” Williams, 53, said in The Columbus Dispatch, “Or Justin Bieber.”

Boyle, of course, is the British woman whose strong voice was discovered on a TV talent show, and Canadian Bieber has become one of North America’s biggest pop stars after getting his start by posting his own videos on YouTube.

On Thursday, Williams told ‘Today’ he was astounded by the attention. “Outrageous, it’s just phenomenal. There is no way in the world that I could ever have imagined … all of this,” he said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – On Broadway, bad press doesn’t necessarily spell failure, and the struggling “Spider-Man” musical is still luring tourists and theater goers into seats as it deals with persistent technical problems.

The ambitious, high-tech $65 million musical — the most expensive Broadway show ever — has endured four delays in its opening and four injuries to its cast. By some accounts, it is shaping up as the biggest entertainment flop since Kevin Costner’s movie “Waterworld” or Warren Beatty’s “Ishtar.”

This week the latest mishap involved a stuntman falling off a high platform and being hospitalized with broken ribs. It marked a new low point for “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” as a show was canceled and New York officials caused new safety measures to be put in place.

But through all the bad buzz, ticket sales for the musical, written by U2′s Bono and The Edge, during preview performances have remained strong. And Broadway, perhaps more than any other entertainment genre, has a history of overcoming bad reviews and turning profits for tourist-friendly, big-budget shows.

Seth Gelblum, an entertainment lawyer who represents the show’s director and co-creator Julie Taymor, as well as three major financiers, said investors were not jittery and predicted the key audience, tourists, would not be turned off.

There is precedent for Gelblum’s confidence. Hit musicals such as “The Addams Family,” “Wicked” and “The Phantom of the Opera” experienced problems in previews, underwent changes, then succeeded with long, profitable runs.

Still, some industry watchers predict the demise of “Spider-Man,” including New York Post columnist Michael Riedel, who said that even when the acrobatics work, the show suffers from a lack of leadership, a confusing story and bad music.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The beleaguered “Spider-Man” musical canceled its performance on Wednesday in order to put in place new safety measures for its complicated stage maneuvers, the show’s publicists said.

The show was stopped after New York state safety inspectors and producer and director Julie Taymor agreed on Wednesday to additional safety measures after a leading stuntman was rushed to hospital when he fell from a high platform during a performance earlier this week.

It was the fourth injury to an actor in the $65 million musical, causing the inspectors to force new rules on the production that require a second stagehand and stage manager to back up all of the show’s 38 stunts involving harnesses and ropes.

Much of the ambitious production’s cost has been devoted to its hi-tech effects, unprecedented on Broadway, with actors flying through the air and at times over the audience.

“All of these accidents are a result of safety and health systems failures,” Maureen Cox, Director of Safety and Health for the New York State Department of Labor, told reporters.

A spokesman for the show, whose full title is “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and which has music written by U2′s Bono and The Edge, said the actors and crew were currently practicing the new measures. New performances were due to resume on Thursday and all ticket-holders for the canceled performance would receive refunds.

The cancellation of Wednesday’s show was the latest setback for the musical whose official opening date has been delayed several times with a latest date of February 7. Early in development, the show was plagued by financial and technical issues, before finally making it into previews. Ticket sales nevertheless have been strong, so far.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A leading stuntman in the Broadway musical “Spider-Man” was recovering in hospital on Tuesday after falling from a high platform during a preview performance in yet another setback for the troubled musical.

An aerialist and stunt double for the title character in the show, Christopher Tierney, was taken to a nearby hospital after he fell about seven minutes before the end of the performance on Monday night, the show’s spokesman Rick Miramontez said in a statement.

The show has temporarily stopped production and will return to its normal schedule from Wednesday night, Miramontez added.

Show producers agreed to new safety protocols on Tuesday after meeting with the labor union Actors’ Equity, as well as several government work and safety bodies.

Specifics of the new safety measures were not given.

Another show spokesman declined to comment on Tierney’s condition or reveal how the actor, who was performing as a stunt double for the masked “Spider-Man” character, plunged off the platform during a tense moment in the show.

After the performance, audience member Charlie Bernard told television station NY1 that he saw the cord or cable that was supposed to hold the actor was either not attached properly or snapped in a scene with Spider-Man’s love interest, Mary Jane.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rock is dead? Long live rock. The Who sang it in 1974, but they might have been talking about 2011, at least according to MTV.

The cable TV music channel on Monday releases its “2011 Artists to Watch” list of the next big acts in music, and after years of seeing rap and hip-hop acts dominate the chart, a movement back to rock ‘n’ roll is afoot.

Groups including U.S. pop punk band A Day To Remember, Danish rockers New Politics and retro-flavored British act The Vaccines featured prominently on the list of nine, which last year predicted the rise of rappers Nicki Minaj and B.o.B.

Singer Jeremy McKinnon from A Day To Remember said rock could still break new ground by keeping the music “honest,” even in an era defined by the global influence of hip-hop.

“You have to connect with people. We write real songs, about everyday situations people can relate to,” he said via e-mail while on tour in Australia.

He called making the list “crazy” and added, “We’re just normal guys playing music that we want to play, and having a good time with it.”

The list is compiled by a committee of experts who are part or MTV’s music and talent team, headed by Amy Doyle.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – At age 63 Australian acting stalwart Jacki Weaver still sees herself as “just a nice girl” from a leafy suburb of Sydney who never really contemplated gracing the red carpets of the Hollywood awards season.

A household name down under after decades in television and movies, Weaver is unknown across the seas but is now featuring in the U.S. film awards season after scoring a best supporting actress Golden Globe nomination on Tuesday for independent Australian crime drama, “Animal Kingdom.”

“My main emotion right now is bewilderment. I am thrilled, I am absolutely knocked out,” Weaver said in reaction to the nomination, speaking by phone in the wee morning hours from her home city of Sydney where she is currently starring in a play with fellow Aussie actress Cate Blanchett.

In her standout performance in low-budget “Animal Kingdom,” Weaver plays iron-fisted but eerily nurturing grandmother Janine “Smurf” Cody. She is the matriarch of a volatile Melbourne crime family who introduces her alienated teenage grandson into their world of robbery, drug-dealing and murder.

Weaver, who has won several acting awards in Australia dating back to the 1971 film “Stork” after appearing in television since the 1960s, said she lived in Melbourne when some of the real-life crime events in the film truly occurred.

But her villainous role, which was specifically written for Weaver by Australian director David Michod for his award-winning debut feature film, was far from her upbringing in the safe Sydney suburb of Pymble and her usual acting fare.

“It was fascinating because it is so different from me, I mean, I am a nice girl from Pymble and my father is a lawyer and my brother is a lawyer, I don’t know any criminals,” she said. “It was a gift as a role, really.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It isn’t stirring the same buzz as that ‘gay cowboy film’, but Oscar contender “The Kids Are All Right” may give portrayals of lesbians in Hollywood a positive boost the way “Brokeback Mountain” shattered previous depictions of gay men.

“Kids,” is the most prominent American film yet to hit cinemas centered on the lives of a lesbian couple, powered by two big stars, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, a clever script and classy directing, critics agree.

In “Kids,” audiences encounter a funny, touching tale of a long-term lesbian couple whose children locate their sperm donor father. Mark Ruffalo plays the dad who rattles the lives of the couple portrayed by Moore and Bening.

Yet, the issues faced by the parents and their two kids could occur in any modern American family, and audiences seem to understand that. “Kids” has churned up $24 million at box offices, which is serious money for an independent film that cost only $4 million to make.

Add to that the exposure of likely Oscar nominations — Bening for best actress and a possible spot among the 10 best film nominees — and “Kids” should broaden its influence.

“It’s a real step forward for Hollywood,” said Deadline Hollywood columnist Pete Hammond. “(It) is the most mainstream I have seen in the genre and doesn’t wear its politics on its sleeve.” Like others, Hammond noted that in more than 100 years of movie history, lesbians have existed mostly on the fringe.

Lesbian subplots or sex scenes have been included in Hollywood films for years. There was 1961′s “The Children’s Hour” with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, and more recently “The Hours”, “The Hunger,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and this year, “Black Swan.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Robert Crumb and his daughter Sophie may lovingly squabble about the life they have shared, but they can agree on one thing: the underground scene that allowed the elder Crumb to become a comic book cult hero hardly exists anymore.

Crumb, better known as R. Crumb, emerged in the late 1960s as founder of the alternative movement known as comix — self-published comic books with explicit adult content — and his 29-year-old daughter is now entering the market with her first title, “Sophie Crumb: Evolution of a Crazy Artist.”

“Now there is a spectrum, from the most weird, crazy, psycho pornographic stuff to pop mainstream superheroes and all that crap,” R. Crumb told Reuters in a rare interview with Sophie. “There isn’t really an underground in the old sense.”

His daughter, sitting opposite him in a small New York art gallery where some of her drawings are being shown, was more emphatic: “I don’t think the underground exists any more. It’s all a big mish mash now.”

She and her famous parents — R. Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb — have collaborated on “Sophie Crumb: Evolution of a Crazy Artist,” a collection of more than 250 sketches saved from her life growing up, starting at the age of two.

“It’s not crazy like psychotic, it’s crazy like zany,” she said of the book, while her father quickly deadpanned: “You are not psychotic.”

Both say Sophie’s book, which follows her life from growing up in France to living in New York and becoming a mother, was not influenced by drugs, such as LSD, that her father has long admitted affected his work.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Anne Hathaway teams up again in romantic comedy drama “Love and Other Drugs” with her “Brokeback Mountain” co-star Jake Gyllenhaal.

Her performance as Maggie, an sexually overt free spirit who meets a pharmaceutical sales rep and finds herself surprisingly falling in love, has garnered Oscar talk heading into the Hollywood awards season.

Hathaway, 28, talked to Reuters about the film — based on the nonfiction book, “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman” — about topics ranging from pharmaceuticals to the movie’s main drug: love.

Q: How much has changed in both yours and Jake’s lives since ‘Brokeback Mountain’?

A: “Gosh, I think everything except for our families and friends have changed in our lives since then. We are basically the same people, just older and wiser.”

Q: Apparently in shooting this movie, you cried every day?

A: “I did, I had a bit of a roller coaster experience on this movie…I was playing a character way out of my comfort zone. All that overt sexuality is just not me.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rocker Patti Smith was among the major winners of the U.S. National Book Awards on Wednesday for her memoir “Just Kids,” choking up with tears before urging book publishers not to let technology kill traditional books.

Tom Wolfe, whose list of best-sellers includes “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” “The Right Stuff” and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Jaimy Gordon beat authors such as Peter Carey and Nicole Krauss to won the fiction award for “Lord of Misrule,” published by McPherson & Co. It is the story of a horseman’s scheme to rescue his failing stable.

The night featured a sprinkling of jokes about the state of the book publishing industry, which is going through a tumultuous period as it deals with the nascent market for electronic books.

Smith, a 63-year-old American singer-songwriter and poet, turned emotional as she accepted the nonfiction award for “Just Kids,” which chronicles her struggles in her youth and relationship with American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

“There is nothing more beautiful than the book, the paper, the font, the cloth,” said Smith, whose book was published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please never abandon the book.”

Wolfe, 79, one of the early proponents of the free-wheeling “new journalism” in the 1960s, recounted his early reporting assignments and offered advice for future novelists: “First, leave the building and then sit down and write.”