Beauty vs Beast: Weimar Memories

Jason from MNPP here, willkommen and bienvenue, happy to see you! I trust you've all left your troubles outside? Today is the 84th birthday of the Master of Ceremonies himself, Herr Joel Grey, and so we're feeling frisky for some time inside the Kit Kat Club. As an aside, have any of you read Grey's recent autobiography? I highly recommend it if you haven't -- he's lived a hell of a life and doesn't hold back. (I recently shared my favorite tidbit from the book over at my site.)

Grey originated the role of the MC on stage (and won a Tony for it) and was the only person carried over from the cast to the film (much to Bob Fosse's chagrin), which led to him also winning the Oscar for the role. (This came up recently when Patty Duke, who also won both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role,  passed away.) Standing beside him that night and clutching her own statue was of course a little somebody named Liza Minnelli - maybe you've heard of her? But darlings, now we must choose...

PREVIOUSLY The new Captain America movie is out in about three weeks and we gave you guys the chance to make your Civil War wishes known --wellh the titular Captain stomped right over his fellow Avenger Iron Man to the tune of just under 90% of the vote! It's a blow-out for Cappy! Said Sawyer, taking these results to their (logical? harsh?) extreme:

"Cap all the way. I can not abide Tony Stark. I hope he dies in this movie."

The Mad Six

Glenn here helping out with the post-ceremony rush. The highlight of last night’s Oscars was surely the six wins for Mad Max: Fury Road. That haul solidified its place as not just one of the most successful Oscar titles of all time, but no doubt the strangest, too.

We may all say that most people were predicting at least four of five of those, but the path to those six wins has been rather extraordinary in the truest definition of that word. Who among us a year ago truly could have predicted that we would be here a year later celebrating six Oscars to a movie about a renegade road warrior, an amputee heroine, and a group of sex slaves rising up against an evil warlord in a post-apocalyptic future with the aide of a gang of elderly motorcycle ladies? While we can be disappointed – very disappointed – that they didn’t add a seventh for George Miller’s direction, any movie winning six golden statues is not only a rarity, but a moment to be extremely proud of so hats off to the team behind Max. It won as many awards as the last two best picture winners combined and it doubled the amount of awards of the next highest winner (The Revenant) on its big night. You done good, Max! May more films like you spring forth from your imposing shadow.

Mad Max: Fury Road joins some fine company, with only 26 films having ever won more awards. 26 over 88 years ! More impressive still, is that Miller’s post-apocalyptic action spectacle is a member of an even smaller collective of only five films to have won half a dozen golden statues without a Best Picture prize to go with them. It’s an interesting quintet to say the least.

The five classics after the jump...

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Dancing Emma Stone

Here’s Murtada with the latest dose of the Emma Stone Charm Offensive

Emma Stone is the latest movie star to appear in a music video. The video is question is for the song Anna by Will Butler, of Arcade Fire fame. Inspired perhaps by On the Town and Anchors Aweigh, the video is just Emma dancing on a boat with a bunch of sailors.

She’s goofy and funny but the dancing …. is not quite on point. Maybe she’s still playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Bowles of course is famously known for not being a good singer, and it seems Stone took that trait further and is playing a not good dancer in this video. And she's so method in the part!

But who cares when we can watch Emma being silly and funny for 4 minutes.

Enjoy!

Stage Door: Emma Stone in "Cabaret"

Jose here. Earlier this year I reported back from the Kit Kat Club to share my impressions about Michelle Williams’ performance as Sally Bowles in the Roundabout Theatre production of Cabaret. Last night I went back to see what Emma Stone (Spirit-Nominated this morning) brought to the part...

Halfway through the first act of Cabaret, Sally Bowles realizes that life with her naive, new lover Cliff (Bill Heck) might be exactly what she needs. She sits with Cliff on a chaise lounge and for a moment she sees herself living the life of a wife and mother, satisfied with keeping home and raising her child. Suddenly, the Emcee interrupts this precious moment by bringing a microphone, its allure too powerful for Sally to resist, and drawn towards it as if under a spell, she performs “Maybe This Time”.

Onstage, the heartbreaking irony of this moment (Sally selling her soul to showbiz, while fooling herself into thinking she’s doing the opposite) is hard to detect if the actress playing her is too eager, or not eager enough; a delicate balance which I’m thrilled to report was beautifully achieved by Emma Stone.

Having already proved to be a truly magnetic screen presence, Stone brings her unusual sensuality to Sally Bowles by subverting the quirkiness that makes her so much fun to watch in movies. Gone are the traces of the goofy girl from Easy A, or the naivete of her Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man. If anything, she’s taking on the introspective self-destructiveness of her Sam from Birdman, the same volatile qualities that make her appealing and scary. Her Sally is a teenager who has convinced herself she can fool others into thinking she can play with the grown-ups. Her levels of delusion are such that she fails to notice she hasn’t really fooled anyone but herself.

Stone is also smart enough to know that in the stage version, Sally isn’t the star, she’s part of the ensemble. To a certain degree she's also a memory conveyed by Cliff who “writes” the show as it goes by looking back at his Berlin experiences. Stone’s Sally, while not the star of the show, is so seductive that we miss her whenever she’s not onstage, partly because we want to see her again, and partly because we are afraid of what will happen to her when we’re not looking after her. The audience develops caretaker feelings towards her, combined with sexual desire, making for Stone’s most mature performance to date.

And can she sing you ask? While she is obviously no Liza (then again who is?), Stone successfully delivers her numbers, bringing a raspy, sensual quality to them. (She often sounds like Lindsay Lohan did in her pop star moment!). Stone knows that singing isn’t her (or Sally's) true forte, so she lets this be an essential part of the performance, delivering the last third of the title song completely out of pitch, furiously fighting against the notes coming from the band. If a man can’t restrict her, why does this song think it can?

Tony Award Noms 2014: Much Movie-to-Stage Madness

The Tony Award Nominations are upon us. 8:30 AM is, I think, officially my favorite time each day. It's always when award nominations for anything are announced. Plus I've already had a cup of coffee, am wide awake and have usually already written something. The curse of the Early Riser. The 2013/2014 Broadway season  -- at least for the musicals -- was completely dominated by movie-to-stage transfers or classics that have become movies and are back on the stage again but most of the transfers didn't fare as well as you might have expected.

Ever adorable Jonathan Groff and Lucy Liu announced the nominees this morning with A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder leading the tally and Hedwig and the Angry Inch close behind. A complete list with commentary follows

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