Olivier Awards Live Stream. And Other Miscellania

Keyframe an interview with Oscar winner Dorothy Malone (OMG) who is now 92. Mambo!
Pajiba adorable family Force Awakens cosplay from Utah
ENO Glenn Close is starring in the revival of Sunset Blvd through May 7th. If you're in London, please go and tell us how it is! 
The Movie Scene Criterion's blindspot for female filmmakers. (I know it's uncool to be critical of Criterion excpet in these rare cases of agreed upon issues -- but they have other blindspots too, like the musical genre)
DListed Ginger Feud: Susan Sarandon and Debra Messing having words over Sanders/Clinton. (Everyone is fired up of late.)

Comics Alliance argues that the bland costumes in X-Men: Apocalypse are a key problem with that franchise -- it's true you could mistake it for a Hunger Games poster.
BuzzFeed "The Unbearable Sadness of Ben Affleck" a good long read by Anne Helen Petersen who also did that recent history of Jennifer Garner

Everything is Gay
Vulture Why Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some is inadvertently gay
New York Post Smithers finally comes out tonight on The Simpsons in its 28th season (yeesh. it's already the longest running sitcom and scripted prime time series of all time on US television)
MNPP [nsfw] Jason remembers Exit to Eden (1994) -- Dana Delany wasn't the only one obsessed with Paul Mercurio's butt

Signs of the Apocalypse
Vulture an engineer built a life-size replica of Scarlett Johansson. Don't look directly into its dead eyes!
Tom & Lorenzo Jessica Chastain posing with a terrifying baby kangaroo. RIP Jess 
i-d interviews the gender neutral artist illma gore who broke the internet with a painting of nude Donald Trump. Unfortunately this means they extended the conversation about his junk. (sigh. this world)

TODAY'S WATCH
The Olivier Awards (essentially the Tony Awards of the UK) stream at 12 PM EST. Familiar Oscar nominated darlings who are up for West End acting awards this year include Nicole Kidman (in Photograph 51, which she hopes to bring to the screen), Mark Rylance, Benedict Cumberbatch, Imelda Staunton (she'll perform and Gypsy, which we reviewed, has a ton of nominations), Judi Dench and Janet McTeer. Cyndi Lauper will also perform since Kinky Boots is up for New Musical. Because the timetables are different with UK and US theater, Kinky Boots (Tony Winner 2013) is up against Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights (Tony Winner Best Musical 2008) at the Olivier Awards 2016. Strange that Kinky Boots hit the US first since it's adapted from a British film.

TODAY'S WATCH #2
Speaking of Theater. Benjamin Walker -- who is great on stage but has yet to successfully make his mark on the big screen despite a few tries -- is doing Patrick Bateman on stage. Who knows if he'll be Tony Nominated but here he is performing "Selling Out" on the Colbert Show

We really need to see some current Broadway shows before the Tony nominations hit!

Never felt so LIVE!

Filmed stage productions are becoming more and more common with The National Theatre in London finding great success streaming their high production shows across cinemas all over the world. Cinephiles and theatre goers are big overlap on the venn diagram. A live TV production seems like the next logical step. As recently reported, Aaron Sorkin’s play-turned-film A Few Good Men is getting the live TV treatment in 2017 on NBC. This follows in the successful footsteps of live musicals The Sound Of Music, Peter Pan, The Wiz and Grease but is certainly an ambitious task without the razzle dazzle of musicals or the tomfoolery of live comedy to smooth over the awkward edges live TV can contain.

Whilst these filmed non-musical stage productions have found success, particularly when big names are headlining, there is always something missing that makes in an incomparable experience to being in the theatre with them. By tailor making the work for at home audiences, this could be overcome. An Aaron Sorkin script seems the perfect vehicle. The pace of his scripts in the hands of a strong cast is edge of your seat viewing, and anyone familiar with his work on stage on screen will be excited by the prospect of seeing those character sparks fly live. There’s no word on cast yet, but so far NBC have (mostly) done a good job of casting their live productions, and have a particular knack for picking up and coming stars.

Should this prove fruitful, there’s an array of plays and films that could be all the more tantalising with the electricity of live performance. Let’s speculate after the jump on some other plays and even films that could make the transition after the jump...

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Stage Door: The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1985), Steven Spielberg's hit adaptation of the 1982 bestseller by Alice Walker lives in Oscar infamy as one of its two greatest losers with 11 nominations that produced zero wins. Here's a lesser known piece of trivia: The Color Purple, the stage musical adaptation of the same novel, narrowly avoided repeating that exact same trick at the Tony Awards in 2006. It was nominated for  11 Tony Awards but LaChanze won the Best Actress prize that eluded Whoopi Goldberg in the 80s for interpreting the mousy but resilient Celie.

Despite the original production closing only 8 years ago, The Color Purple is back on Broadway in a revival that's been winning raves; it's aiming for a bigger trophy haul this time. [More...]

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Stage Door: Revive This! (a musical lover's list)

This week I caught the Off Broadway hit Red Speedo about a swimmer who thinks he needs performance enhancement drugs. It was a totally solid thought-provoking play and if that sounds like faint praise it's only that because the raves have been so breathless. I had front row seats (not intentional) which is a weird angle with which to see this show because the pool part of the stage looms large in front of you (you do get splashed). I don't mind getting wet so I wished they'd used the pool part of the well designed stage a little more. The actors were uniformly terrific so if you're interested in the topic, by all means go. 

But back to Broadway itself. After finally seeing The King and I, one of last year's Tony winners, and the news that Hello Dolly will finally return (with Bette Midler!) after decades of invisibility, thoughts turned to shows that rarely get revived. Some shows like Les Miz & Gypsy & Fiddler on the Roof and a handful of others seem to return to the big stage every 4 or 5 years.  It begs the question of why others are never revived. So herewith a list!

10 Longest Running Shows That Have Not Been Revived in Over 20 Years 
Not a qualitative list but factual based on how long the show ran.

01 Oh! Calcutta! - the nude musical revue closed in 1989 after two very successful multiple-year runs. Why no third?

02 Life With Father -Broadway's longest running straight play ever closed way back in 1947 the same year the film version came out. Among its 1939 opening night cast was future Oscar winner Teresa Wright. 

more after the jump...

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Stage Door: The King and I

This soundtrack got a lot of play during my childhoodWith Tony season fast approaching, it's time to revive our stage column and try to hit the shows that might be competing this year. But we'll start with a throwback to last season, the revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I which most everyone knows from its 1956 big screen adaptation which won 5 Oscars (albeit in a weird Academy year) and hopefully not from that 1999 Jodie Foster movie Anna and the King.

For those who aren't well versed in Broadway mechanics there's generally a few weeks of performances called "previews" wherein shows are technically not "open" and yet they're playing every night as they approach opening night. It's the easiest time to get tickets to almost anything so if you miss the previews good luck! Other avid theatergoers might have a different take but I've found that as a general rule it's best to see stage shows late in previews through, oh, four months into the initial run. You're late enough that the actors have fine tuned their work and you're early enough that no one on stage is phoning it after having done it 8 times a week for months on end. Sometimes, though, a show is so popular and expensive that you give up trying to see it. This was the case with yours truly and The King and I, winner of 4 Tony Awards in 2015: Best Revival of a Musical, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Costume Design. 

Shall we dance... after the jump? 

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