NEW YORK (Reuters)—The hints came in various formats, but it's now official. After more than four years, Phish, the Vermont born quartet with a loyal fan fol-lowing, will return to the concert stage this March in Virginia.

The band on Wednesday on its Web site, confirmed the reunion concerts this coming March 6, 7, and 8 in Hampton, Virginia, and posted a page addressing what is expected to be strong demand for tickets.

Phish built its reputation in the 1990s mostly for its live shows jam-ming in a free-form style of rock 'n' roll often compared to the Grate-ful Dead, which also enjoyed a strong cult-following over its his-

tory dating back to the 1960s.The relationship between the

two bands was once a sore sub-ject for Phish but has warmed in recent years. Both Anastasio and Gordon have made numerous on stage appearances with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh

Like the Dead, Phish proved that a band without a hit single or massive MTV exposure could consistently sell-out 20,000-seat indoor venues as well as 30,000- to 40,000-seat outdoor summer amphitheaters.

Phish, which has produced thir-teen studio CDs, and seven live re-leases in addition to the 27 volume "Live Phish" series took a break from touring back in 2000, return-

ing once for a high-profile New Years Eve show at New York's Madison Square Garden marking the transition from 2002-2003.

While Phish was at rest, the band members, guitarist Trey Anastasio drummer Jon Fish-man, bassist Mike Gordon, and keyboardist Page McConnell have been far from idle.

Anastasio has released numer-ous songs and premiered an or-chestral work, "Time Turns Elas-tic" with Orchestra Nashville at the storied Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry.

The guitarist also was arrested in December 2006, following a traffic stop outside Albany, New York, for possessing painkillers

without a prescription. He was sentenced to probation.

Fishman has performed with various groups and McConnell re-leased a self-titled solo effort and has been touring with New Or-leans jazz greats George Porter Jr., Russell Batiste Jr., and Brian Stoltz.

Gordon has been touring with his own band, released his second collaboration with guitarist Leo Kottke and just recently released "The Green Sparrow."

As much as they love Anasta-sio, Phish fans are likely glad the front man will have to eat his fa-mous words, posted on the band's Web site in Spring 2004 when he stated "We're done."

NEW YORK (Reuters)—As record albums go, Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" may not by the big-gest seller of all time, but it has in-fluenced generations of jazz and other musicians and is about to celebrate its 50th birthday.

The record has sold more than three million copies since its 1959 release and was named No. 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time in any genre, let alone jazz.

Davis' horn has been silent for 17 years now, but mention the album's five tracks, "So What," "Freddie Freeloader," "Blue in Green," "All Blues," and "Flamenco Sketches" and any jazz fan will hear that haunting, reedy sound again.

"Kind of Blue"—the result of less than ten hours of actual re-cording time at Columbia Records' 30th Street Studio—featured the iconic Davis and his band, Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley on alto sax-ophone, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans or Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and drummer Jimmy Cobb—the only surviving member.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking work, Colum-bia/Legacy, a division of Sony, is putting out a luxury collector's edi-

tion, which went on sale on Tues-day (September 30).

It includes two compact discs of the original album, plus outtakes and alternative versions, a docu-mentary DVD, a book of essays and photos, as well as the original 12-inch LP package pressed on blue vinyl.

"We wanted to commemorate one of the greatest, most influen-tial albums," said Vince Wilburn Jr., Davis' nephew and a manager of the jazz great's estate, along with Davis' son Erin and daughter Cheryl.

Wilburn told Reuters that "Kind of Blue" has been reissued and remastered several times. Al-though it took three decades to sell one million copies, it has sold an-other two million since Davis died in 1991.

‘People Love Miles’"I'm not surprised it's selling still,

this is Miles Davis," said Wilburn. "It's music, groundbreaking and fresh. People love Miles."

Davis' son Erin said the phe-nomenon was astounding because Davis was never one to dwell on the past and always moved on to embrace new styles.

"Maybe he would be scratching

his head wondering why this one? He liked people to like the music he was making at the time, but he was always looking ahead," Erin Davis said.

Wilburn said there was no end to Miles Davis' music that can be released in the future. "There is tons of material, bootleg sessions and endless hours of music. The trouble is deciding what to release.

"The quality is there, but it's a question of respecting the music," said Wilburn, who played drums with the band in his uncle's later years.

In addition to the 50th anni-versary album release, there is a

Miles Davis exhibition planned for the Cite de la Musique complex in Paris and a feature film starring Don Cheadle as the famously idi-osyncratic and contrarian artist.

Erin Davis, who moved in with his father when he was 15, has more personal recollections of the man. "He taught me what class means in different ways. Like it was not wearing an ascot and walking with a cane, but how you carry yourself in public.”

"He taught me how to eat soup with the spoon away from you rather than shovel it in your mouth," he recalled. "When he dressed, he told me 'Always start with the shoes - shoes make the man.'"

Davis' influence can be heard in today's music. "Everybody I run into, they were influenced by Miles—Sting and Keith Richards, Q-Tip and Nazz, Joni Mitchell," said Wilburn. "Everybody was touched by Miles. His spirit lives on."

Asked if people would still be listening to "Kind of Blue" in 2026, the centenary of Davis' birth, his son replied:

"Why not? Definitely, there's such a lack of inspiring music now."

By AMIR TALAIEpoch Times Staff

Teenage rom-com “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” is a modernized version of the classic “Thin Man” films of the 1930s and 1940s. Starring “Superbad” and “Juno” actor Michael Cera, and up-and-comer Kat Den-nings, its playfully whip-smart, and will likely assume a place amongst the classics of teen dat-ing flicks.

Cera plays Nick O’Leary, an introverted, witty, and eccentric musician that struggles to get over a break-up with his recent ex-girlfriend, Tris (Alexis Dz-iena). A chain reaction ensues when Norah Silverberg (Den-nings), an enemy of his ex, asks him to be her boyfriend for 5 minutes.

What was anticipated by No-

rah to be a fake kiss, generates sparks on both sides, making Tris jealous, This convinces Nick’s friend Tom (Aaron Yoo, “The Wackness”) and fellow band-mates that Norah is the perfect girl to set Nick on the right track away from his emotional attach-ment to his flaky ex.

Nick and Norah head down a rough road of first date mo-ments, and then a wild goose chase of driving around the streets of New York City looking for Norah’s girlfriend.

“Nick and Norah’s” certainly has its fair share of laugh-out-loud moments derived from the wit of Cera and Dennings in a “Juno”-esque, indie kind of way. Yet the charm of a cute teenage romance in the making creeps up in the midst of the film, mak-ing it one of the films of its genre to have staying power as a po-tential cult classic.

If you like quick witty come-backs with a love story to boot, “Nick and Nora” is just the ticket.

By OLIVIER CHARTRANDEpoch Times Staff

Starring Julianne Moore, Don McKellar, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, and Sandra Oh, "Blind-ness" is an adaptation of the novel of the same name Nobel prize win-ning author Jose Saramago. The allegory plays out in a fictitious country struck by a mysterious epidemic that causes the entire na-tion to go blind.

At last month’s Toronto Inter-national Film Festival, The Epoch Times sat down with the screen-writer/actor Don McKellar, direc-tor Fernando Meirelles, and actor Danny Glover.

Discussing his interest in adapt-ing Mr. Saramago’s book to film, screenwriter Don McKellar (“The Red Violin”), explained “it sort of excited me on the thematic level but also the book…its amazing. It sort of blew me away, just, how far it went...it was so shocking and yet so undeniably true. I just couldn’t argue with this depiction of hu-manity and this portrait of the world as being so fragile. Civiliza-tion is such a fragile shell that can just crack and then we'd be straight

back to barbarism...The respon-sibility we have is to preserve hu-man dignity even under extreme circumstances. I think that is what the story is really about.”

Director Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”) had a similar reac-tion to the book. “I read the book and I was really, really amazed by the story and immediately I wanted to do it.”

Mr. Meirelles went on to de-scribe how “Blindness” is different from other films about epidem-ics because this film is ultimately about human nature. “This film is quite different because it’s really not about the disease or somebody who is trying to save the world, or finding the cure or being a hero. It’s about how we would react. It’s about who we are, how we see oth-ers. I think the disease here is just an excuse for us to see the behavior of those people. This is a journey of losing and regaining human-ity. There is this group of people, they’re capable of affection because they learned from what they had suffered. They’re able to re-create this little society, this little family and restore their humanity.”

Actor Danny Glover also felt drawn to the novel’s message. “It is significant to try to tell meaningful stories, stories for which the audi-ence has a chance to look inward, introspection. Even ourselves, as artists, we have that chance… It was interesting to make a film showing what emerges from peo-ple when they all become blind.

In desperate moments we begin to communicate with each other and orchestrate solutions”

In preparing to play a blind char-acter, Mr. Glover described the value of a workshop he attended. “It helped me in my thinking about challenges, but it also helped me physically feel the impact of these challenges through the body.

One of the challenges for the cast and crew was communication according to Mr. Meirelles. “We were speaking five languages dur-ing the shooting, because the ward-robe department and the make-up department, they’re from Quebec [French province of Canada]. And we, of course, had people from Toronto who were English; Por-tuguese from Brazil, we had the Spanish crew from Uruguay and Argentina, and we had Japanese. Five languages at the same time (laugh). But it worked really, really well. It was really a great experi-ence. Everybody became friends. It was a friendly environment. From the beginning I thought I should have a multi-ethnical cast, have some Asians, black actors, white, Latinos, a mix which really represents mankind. This is not in the book. In the book, the charac-ters don’t have names, don’t have stories. Saramago doesn’t describe them.”

Frequently films adaptations of novels turn out quite different from the author’s original vision. Despite the challenges, Mr. Sara-mago was quite pleased with the

result of the filmmakers efforts in their adaptation of “Blindness.”

Mr. McKellar discussed the au-thor’s reaction when he first saw the film. “He loved it! We showed it to him in Lisbon. He (Mr. Sar-amago) is an intimidating guy, a

bit scary. It would look really bad if he said he didn’t like the film, which I think he would have had no problem saying. There was this long, long silence at the end… and then we realized he was crying. Fernando (Meirelles, the director)

leaned in and gave him a kiss and he (Mr. Saramago) said that he had the same feeling when the movie finished as when he finished the book. So that was a big, big relief for me. As the writer, I would have been crushed if he didn't like it.

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The Epoch Times Janet Chiu, MBA

Office Address: 1983 Marcus Avenue, Suite 210, Lake Success, NY 11042 (516)327-5833

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Tom Smith, AgentNew York Life Insurance Company51 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10010P. 212.576.7076 F. 212.576.7076tom_smith@newyorklife.com

Talk to your local New York Life Insurance Company agent today about securing your family’s future. Tom Smith, AgentNew York Life Insurance Company 51 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10010 P. 212.576.7076 F. 212.576.7076 tom_smith@newyorklife.com

Since 1845, we’ve been providing financial strength for the most important people in the world. Your loved ones. But what we’re most proud

of is helping you put their needs above your own. Making sure they’ll always be taken care of is the most selfless gift you can ever give them.

NEW YORK LIFE. THE COMPANY YOU KEEP.®

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Tom Smith, AgentNew York Life Insurance Company51 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10010P. 212.576.7076 F. 212.576.7076tom_smith@newyorklife.com

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VISION: A scene from“Blindness,” an allegory film where an epidemic leaves an entire nation of people without sight. MiraMax FilMs

Interview With the Cast of ‘Blindness’Epidemic themed allegory seeks to discuss human nature

YOUNG ROMANCE: Michael Cera and Kat Dennings in a scene from “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist.”

Movie Review: ‘Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist’ Playful comedy is witty and warm

ColuMbia reCords

Miles Davis Classic ‘Kind of Blue’ Still Kicking at 50

Phish to Swim Again in March Concerts