The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Two Must Reads @ Vulture In this moment I really must bow down. Vulture just slayed all this week. I'm sure it helps to have a huge budget and access to hundreds of talented writers but still. I am regularly in awe. Particularly of these two pieces:
"The 30 Best Broadway Songs of the Past 40 Years" insightful fun writeups in shows stretching from Annie in 1977 through Hamilton in 2015 with a ton of Stephen Sondheim near the top (as well they should be)
The Tony Awards are this Sunday, so all week we’ve been talking stage-to-film adaptations. Here’s Goody Jorge with the mother of all allegorical plays…
At this point everyone knows that The Crucible is not about the Salem Witch trials.
Arthur Miller’s 1953 play is a very straightforward and less-than-obvious allegory for the McCarthy era and the prosecution of believed Communists in the U.S. It has become a staple of American theater and inspired dozens of generations to think twice before finger-pointing.
Underneath even its Red Scare themes, the play is about much more...
Broadway has never seen anything quite like Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. Oh, pieces of it have been seen before - the modern-meets-traditional costumes were done in Hamilton, ensemble members have been playing their own instruments since at least John Doyle's landmark revival of Sweeney Todd, and actors have been performing in the aisles since time immemorial. But still, it's never been done quite like this.
For one thing, for an adaptation of mammoth Russian novel War and Peace, it's amazingly entertaining.
It's impossible to keep up these days. So herewith a bunch of news we haven't covered and other enjoyable places to go on the web today...
News Baz Lurhmann has written a letter to fans about the cancellation of The Get Down, his Netflix series. My favorite bit because I like having him on the big screen in 2 hour doses:
All sorts of things have been thrown around for the future... even a stage show (can you imagine that? I can, concert version anyone? Next summer? Just saying.) But the simple truth is, I make movies. And the thing with movies is, that when you direct them, there can be nothing else in your life. Since The Get Down stopped, I have actually been spending the last few months preparing my new cinematic work...
Variety IFC is on a buying spree at Cannes, including Lars Von Trier's latest, a serial killer drama named The House That Jack Built starring Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman BBC Star Wars' John Boyega hits the London stage in Woyzeck. Reviews are a bit mixed but everyone seems to love that he challenged himself to such an extent post stardom Cartoon Brew Pixar has a new experimental shorts division without executive oversight. This sounds like a great idea for the company, fostering new creative visions without much investment or interference Kenneth in the (212) Jeffrey Schwarz, who specializes in documentaries about gay or gay-interest historical figures (I Am Divine, Vito, etcetera) has a new documentary on Producer Allan Car (Grease 2, Can't Stop the Music) Broadway World Glenn Close stops a performance of Sunset Blvd to address a rude audience member:
We can have a show or we can have a photo shoot
Variety Kirsten Dunst gets emotional at The Beguiled premiere Variety Gina Prince-Blythewood (Beyond the Lights) tapped to direct Spider-Man spinoff Silver and Black about the characters Silver Sable and Black Cat. Angry Asian Man there's a Joy Luck Club tv series in the work and they're looking for Chinese American women
Good Reads Vanity Fair on that new unforgivably hideous Spider-Man Homecoming poster Jezebel on the terrible Dirty Dancing TV remake. (I have to ask though, why do people keep watching TV remakes of movies. They're all just t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e... remember that trainwreck that was Beaches recently?)
For Fun Gay Comic Geek [nsfw site] Wonder Woman cosplay... by men The New Yorker Joe Dator draws a comic about his fortieth anniversary with Star Wars. Cute.
Exit Video Dynasty is getting a reboot.
I object that Krystle isn't a blonde and doesn't look that much different than Fallon (why does the CW have such trouble varying haircolors/styles and overall looks in their casts in all their shows?) but otherwise some of the changes are fun. The most potentially interesting touch being that trashy golddigger Sammy Joe (the Heather Locklear role) is a gay man this time but still after the same mark, Steven Carrington (the family's gay son). But, is this really the right era to idolize the super wealthy? Not sure it will sit as well in 2017 as it did in the 80s when people were more naive about the 1%'s havoc-wreaking on the economy of everyone else.
Stage Door bringing you intermittent theater reviews when we manage to get there. Here's Nathaniel R
Awards have a way of hyping certain creations, especially the modest kind, to a point where disappointment is an obvious risk. The gifted playwright Lynn Nottage is only 52 but Sweat is already her second Pulitzer winner for Drama (the first was for Ruined). This places her in the rather astonishing company of prolific geniuses Tennessee Williams and August Wilson, and just one prize away from Edward Albee (!) and marks her as the most awarded living playwright and the most awarded female playwright, living or dead. As a result I spent the first act of Sweat wondering what the fuss was about. The Fuss does not identify itself in the second act but by then you can meet the play halfway with its likeable flawed characters and appreciate Nottage's earnest thematic thrust as the play mourns the loss of intersectional solidarity, without clumsily naming it as such...
Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 7:00PM 
Two Must Reads @ Vulture
