Link Runner 2017

Gurus of Gold pundits make some quick assessments as the new awards season begins
Paste Magazine why isn't Billy Eichner a sex symbol yet?
THR the new version of It is already causing real clowns to lose work
Advocate offers up 17 LGBT tropes that need to be retired from entertainment. This list is so wide-ranging they'll be no queer characters left on TV if they follow it!
/Film cool stuff: scratch off poster to track your viewing of 100 classic movies

The Daily collects obituaries and tributes to the acclaimed horror director Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
IndieWire Dunkirk arranges a special screening at Toronto to celebrate IMAX. Consider that Oscar campaign already ignited
Awards Daily new stills for Call Me By Your Name. These are more likely it. The first few were so underwhelming
Towleroad Heathers is getting a TV adaptation. Leslye Headland directs the pilot which has updates for the Heathers for themselves (one of them is genderqueer) 

Off Cinema
• The Cut good deep dive into Kathy Griffin's life post that T***p photo that got her into so much trouble
• Vox winners and losers of MTV Video Music Awards
• ET literal winners of the MTV Video Music Awards (though, like the Gramys, it's not an awards show that's actually about awards)
• AV Club Jason Segel is having a tall person small door problem. Cute
• Playbill the 29 biggest grossing Broadway shows of all time from the Cabaret revival with Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming ($119 million) to Disney's The Lion King $1.3 billion). Hamilton is already at #18 ($242 million) and it's only been open two years! (It should be noted that these are just their Broadway grosses, not touring companies and the like. 

Exit Video
Seems like there's going to be a few short films about the Blade Runner world before Blade Runner 2049 opens. Here's the first one...

Stage Door: "Prince of Broadway"

by Nathaniel R

Though I don't cherish the form I've seen quite a few jukebox musicals in my day. Sometimes they take the biographical route like Jersey Boys. Often they'll sift through the lyrics of some artist's catalogue hoping to yank out phrases and threads from which they can stitch together a frankenstein story. Mammia Mia is either the apotheosis or the nadir of that latter form, depending on your perspective. But what if the jukebox isn't beholden to one composer? Prince of Broadway, which just opened at the Samuel Friedman in NYC, is devoted to the producer Harold Prince who did not write music. So what you have is a greatest hits of, uh, dozens of different composers from a wide range of musicals. If this were a CD it might be called "Now That's What I Call Broadway, Vol. Whatever"

Prince backed a TON of über famous shows in his illustrious career including Phantom of the Opera, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret... you name it! None of the musicals sound alike so there's little hope of cohesion in the show. Wisely Prince of Broadway  doesn't try to create a "story" from these disparate musicals in a career that stretches all the way back to 1950 (Prince is 89 years old and directed this production).What they've come up with instead is much less intrusive even if it doesn't totally work...

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"Sunset Boulevard" Rumors... Again.

by Nathaniel R

She's baaaa-aaack. It's AS IF WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE

You may have heard that plans are afoot (again) to bring Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard musical to the big screen. It will be a Paramount Pictures production. For giggles, I was attempting to find an old article from the last time rumors spread that Glenn Close was going to transfer her Tony success to the big screen and republish it nearly intact "As If We Never Said Goodbye" to this rumor (haha. I'm here all week.) Alas, the article hid itself though I remember writing it. But what year to even search for such a thing? This rumor is perennial...

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Infinity Link

• Coming Soon Glow, Netflix's addictive series about the gorgeous ladies of wrestling has been renewed for a second season - yay!
• Metrograph NYC's coolest repertory movie theater has a series on Fire Island set films this weekend including Barbara Hershey in Last Summer and seminal queer indie Parting Glances
• Show-Score I did a piece for their new series on 'first times' with my experience sitting in the back row at a musical

• Variety here's a new possibility for the animated category at the Oscars this year -- Big Bad Fox and Other Tales from the director of Ernest & Celestine
• Coming Soon filming has begun on Avengers 4 which doesn't have a title yet but will end Marvel's Phase 3 in May of 2019
• Variety looks back at Fast Times at Ridgemont High as it turns 35
• Gold Derby Meryl Streep is an Emmy nominee this year. Whaaaa?
• LA Times New AMPAS president John Bailey "not as boring as you think" (FYI the media has become obsessed with Laura Dern running for this position but she actually declined the nomination)
• EW First look at Jessica Chastain in Molly's Game
• Awards Daily Sasha looks at the Best Actress race, wonders if it's finally Annette Bening's year.
• MNPP Norma Shearer can't scream
• Variety you may have heard that Disney is leaving Netflix when the current contract ends. But Netflix is still trying to get rights to some of their biggies post 2019
• /Film details on Wonder Woman's blu-ray releasese
• Boy Culture meet Carrie Dragshaw, a queen recreating SJP's iconic looks on Sex & the City

Stage Door: Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane in "Angels in America"

by Sean Donovan

 

Roy Cohn, the devilish super-lawyer towering over Tony Kushner’s epic two-part play Angels in America, is introduced to the audience at his favorite place, his office telephone, shifting between various calls, screaming at his clients and associates, and relishing his position of supreme power and influence. In between calls he leans over to his protégé, closeted Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt, and remarks

I wish I was an octopus, a fucking octopus. Eight loving arms and all those suckers, know what I mean?”

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