Links: Lansbury, Midsommar, Olivier Awards, and "Shallow" at #1
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 11:21AM We haven't done a link roundup in too long. Not all of these are "new" but they might be to you:
• Vanity Fair Edge of Tomorrow (2014) may finally get that sequel that's been hoped for by fans
• Billboard "Shallow" has gone to #1 following that Oscar performance by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. It had previously peaked at #5 on the Hot 100 and it's Gaga's first number one in 8 years!
• People former teen idol and current Riverdale co-star Luke Perry has died at 52
• AV Club Director Joe Wright and star Tom Hanks going back to World War II with a new film In the Garden of the Beasts...
• Tommy Dickie a spoof of the Oscars and film year in which Dickie obviously invested a loooot of time and money (wig budget alert!)
• Broadway World Get well soon to theater and tv funny lady Andrea Martin. She broke ribs rehearsing the new Broadway show Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus so she has to bow out of the production. Kristine Nielsen is taking her role so Julie White is taking Nielsen's role. So many talented women playing musical chairs!
• Rotten Tomatoes Penny Dreadful getting some US set spinoff series called City of Angels with Natalie Dormer in the lead as a shapeshifting demon
• /Film Will Smith to star as the father of Venus & Serena Williams in a movie called King Richard
• THR Josh Gad and Cynthia Erivo to costar in an original screen musical based on the Rip Van Winkle story
• Cartoon Brew corporations sure are corrupt these days. Did you know that post-production companies can launch subsidiaries and those subsidiaries can go under but the parent company doesn't have to pay their bills? Freelancers who did visual fx for Bohemian Rhapsody still haven't been paid! Meanwhile the movie has earned a billion dollars at the global box office.
•/Film Sherlock Holmes 3 pushed back another year to 2021. (We had forgotten they were even doing a third)
• Captain Marvel Goose (the cat) got his own livestream. There's a lot of sleeping which we respect
• Los Angeles Times Emma Thompson resigned from a voice over role in protest of John Lasseter's involvement
• MNPP I can't watch the trailer to Ari Aster's Midsommar because Jason has warned us that they show a lot
• Advocate strange tidbit from a Q&A with Angela Lansbury and Rob Marshall to promote Mary Poppins Returns on DVD. Marshall says their couldn't be a remake of Bedknobs and Broomsticks because you can't replace Angela... she's iconic. Um... but you just replace Julie F***ing Andrews! Think about your words, Mr Marshall. Choose them more carefully!
Stage Door
Oooh, look who got Olivier Award nominations over in the UK.
The British equivalent of the Tonys (though the Tonys precede them by about 30 years) is often exciting in comparison because their time table is so different, sometimes getting shows before us and sometimes after us. For instance this year Fun Home (Tony winner 2015) and Come From Away (which would'a been a Tony winner in 2017 if not for Dear Evan Hansen's dominance) are competing for Best New Musical with two shows we haven't had (yet) here on Broadway Six and Tina - The Tina Turner Musical. Meanwhile the wildly acclaimd gender-flipped production of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece Company hasn't seen Broadway stages (yet) but the Oliviers gave it 9 nominations. The Inheritance sounds like a potential Broadway transfer, too. The Matthew Lopez play, directed by Stephen Daldry, transposes E.M. Forster's classic "Howards End" to modern day New York within the gay community during the peak of the AIDS crisis.
Reader Comments (21)
Come From Away > Dear Evan Hansen (sorry not sorry)
Folks will be able to see All About Eve through the National Theatre Live venues in April.
Sophie Okonedo! Dame Atkins! Queen LaPone! Redgrave!
Any chance All About Eve could transfer to New York? The few reviews I've seen have been startlingly negative, but Gillian Anderson as Margo Channing sounds like amazing casting.
kristine nielson is a BEAST onstage so i could not be more excited for this news!
I'm happy for Sophie Okonedo but really, Oliviers, ignoring her brilliant co-star (Ralph Fiennes)? What do awards bodies have against our greatest living actor?
Stunned to see Gillian Anderson overcome those dreadful ALL ABOUT EVE reviews for a nom here.
Pam: Agreed about Come From Away being the better musical experience!
Company is exquisite. Rosalie Craig, Jonathan Bailey and off course Patti are incredible and all award worthy.
The Inheritance is quite simply one of the most powerful pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen. It has to go to Broadway.
I just found out that Bad Romance was never nº1. Can you believe it?
Poor Andrea! Saw her in Will & Grace last week and she was the only funny thing about it.
Luke Perry played a movie with Ashley Judd that it was quite good. Normal Life, directed by McNaughton.
Come from Away most definitely should've won the Tony Award over Dear Evan Hansen... which was my least favorite (I still liked it!) nominee. The other two were Groundhog Day and Great Comet. I honestly don't get Dear Evan Hansen's dominance. More perplexing when you know which musicals it did beat.
Also... go Emma Thompson!
We're getting a Williams sisters movie and it's going to be... about their father? And they're calling it... King Richard??
Pass.
@Peggy Sue-I'm glad someone here thinks highly of Normal Life which I think is an extremely underrated film and features Luke Perry in one of the best performances ever. It's a shame he passed away at such a young age at 53 and from a stroke. Him, Keith Flint of the Prodigy, and King Kong Bundy all passed away in the span of 24 hours.
RIP Luke Perry.
@Mike in Canada: Agreed. You take two legendary, powerful women, and you focus on the male figure? I'm sceptical
@Andrew Carden - did you see the play in London? I'm so skeptical of critics these days, and some times, theater critics can be the worst of the lot. Gillian Anderson was fantastic in Streetcar at St. Ann's, so I'm looking forward to this performance. Plus Ivo van Hove directing. Plus Monica Dolan.
@Keegan
Talk more about The Inheritance. That and The Lohman Trilogy and Tina: Tina Turner Musical had my two eyes on it and hopes to come to Broadway.
About the nominations: No Ralph Fiennes again? I think he were not nominated for Man and Superman and Richard The Third too. What a shame!
ps: EMMA THOMPSON FOR PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD!
I'm thrilled to see Joe Wright taking on In the Garden of the Beasts. It's a brilliant book. I look forward to seeing who they cast as the daughter - which if the movie follows the book loyally, would be the co-leading role. Should make for an exciting casting process!
Obviously you can't replace Julie Andrews.
Ari's followup is the cult from Hereditary gets its own movie.
@Mike in Canada/@David: I may be showing my age here, but the origin story of Venus and Serena Williams was almost entirely about Richard Williams. He was an outsized personality then, the Lavar Ball of his time, but with the added pressure of breaking into a sport with a lot less diversity than basketball. This has the potential to be interesting.
Also, the linked article seems to suggest that the time frame is fairly early in the lives of Venus and Serena. I wouldn't be surprised if the film barely gets to their pro careers.
Come From Away is effective hokum, but I'd still prefer Dear Evan Hansen. Both are not perfect. Come From Away makes up for bland songs and a hokey concept with effective staging and energetic performances. It's nice to see a feel-good musical that is not so cloying.
I’m happy that Gillian Anderson received this nomination. She’s the only part of that production doing anything different; otherwise it steers so close to the film to feel entirely redundant.
The raves of Company are well-earned. Smart, funny and innovative.
The Inheritance will doubtless get a Broadway transfer, and it’s intelligent, ambitious writing that nonetheless bites off a little more than it can chew at times. Between this and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, though, it proves how versatile Howard’s End is for adaptations.