Showbiz History: Evita, Black Widow, and Fred & Ginger

six random things that happened on this day in showbiz history

1919 Maria Eva Duarte de Peron is born in Argentina. She will later be known globally by just one nickname "Evita." Her story will inspire a 1979 Andrew Lloyd Webber stage sensation (starring Patti LuPone) which wins 7 Tony Awards including Best Musical. Later it becomes a successful 1996 movie musical with Madonna (picture above in a promotional photoshoot for the film) in the leading role, which everyone including Michelle Pfeiffer and Meryl Streep wanted at the time. Madonna takes the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical...

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Box Office Special - Broadway Grosses Post Tony Nominations

by Nathaniel R

With the movie box office being so boring these past two weeks (surprise: Avengers: Endgame is still sucking up all the money in the world) we're turning to Broadway grosses, which we never discuss, for a detour. Why? Well, just to see how quickly the Tony nominations make a difference. This is purely anecdotal but on the various discount apps and sites that you can belong to you start noticing the shows that fared poorly on each year's nomination morning almost immediately popping up at discounted rates. If a show sells out, even through heavily discounted tickets, it surely kills the sting of being shunned for awards.

If you aren't well-versed in Broadway the grosses are a bit complicated so bear with us as we try to explain...

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Review: Dead to Me (Season 1)

By Spencer Coile 

In recent years, Netflix has held the honor and burden of bringing to life countless TV series – giving a voice to talent previously under or unseen. While it has become impossible to keep up with everything the platform currently has to offer, it also allows its creators, writers, and directors to tell their stories on their terms. Gone are the days where television was situated comfortably in the binary of comedy and drama. Now we have space carved out for shows that subvert our expectations, make us uncomfortable, and if we’re lucky, invite us into the artist’s vision. 

Liz Feldman takes complete advantage of this genre fluidity. Her Netflix creation, Dead to Me (streaming now), is a darkly comic meditation on grief and the ways it manifests within our interpersonal relationships. Featuring especially remarkable turns from two typically underutilized actresses, Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, Dead to Me is a prickly, but surprisingly personal examination into how we process trauma... 

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Tribeca 2019: "The Place of No Words"

Here's Jason Adams reporting from Tribeca once more...

Do you remember the moment you first realized what death is? The goldfish speech from Kill Bill: Volume II comes to mind -- "A fish flapping on the carpet, and a fish not flapping on the carpet." I remember a dead squirrel in the middle of the road, personally. But I think for most of us, the lucky ones who didn't experience an early loss, it's too gradual a process to recollect. The idea of a before and an after, heck even the concept of time itself, was less defined. Of course then we get older. Now I'm watching my friends have to explain these ideas to their kids, putting walls and definitions around boundless ideas.

Mark Webber's The Place of Lost Words attempts to straddle both of those places...

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Beauty vs Beast: Napalm Mornings

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now has been coming up in conversation a lot lately, and not just because my boyfriend kept accidentily getting the title of Gregg Araki's TV show Now Apocalypse backwards. The film is celebrating its 40th anniversary this Friday, and besides doing a screening and conversation about the film at the Tribeca Film Fest last week Coppola's putting out what he's calling a "Final Cut" in August, in theaters and on blu-ray. It falls somewhere between the original release and the 2001 Redux cut, apparently. But no matter the cut it's the tension between Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) that remains the the backbone of the film, and that's what we're investigating today...

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PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back most of us still hadn't seen Avengers Endgame, and now two billion dollars worth of us have. But all that money couldn't help Chris Pratt, who lost the contest against Thanos 70 to 30%. Suck it, Star-lord. Said Tom G:

"Just like Jennifer Lawrence ran circles around [Pratt] in Passengers, Brolin literally ran galaxies around him."