Monday, July 31, 2017 at 7:38PM by Eric Blume
Sam Shepard in the early days of fame
Although it’s been well over a decade since we’ve had a major contribution from Sam Shepard, his death yesterday at age 73 feels momentous. He’s our only American playwright to have won a Pulizer Prize as a writer and then gone on to an Oscar nomination for his acting. He was a symbol of masculinity and a man of great mystery...
Saturday, July 22, 2017 at 1:41PM 
THR's exciting tradition is upon us. They've released the full roundtable of Emmy Drama actress hopefuls. Well, hopefuls at the time. Oprah Winfrey was not nominated as she was expected to be for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The same thing happened to her when she was on the Oscar-seeking roundtable for The Butler. Despite being the former queen of talk, perhaps this format is a curse for her? The other women present were nominated: Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies), Jessica Lange (Feud: Bette and Joan), Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale), and Chrissy Meitz (This Is Us).
The Roundtable in full, and ten favorite moments therein after the jump...
Monday, May 22, 2017 at 12:00PM "The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber ...
All That Jazz (1979) is the only Palme d’Or winner to have won the Oscar for Best Production Design. I do not have an explanation for that. Luck of the draw, really. But, as we await the prizes at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, this odd piece of trivia is an excellent excuse to take a closer look at Bob Fosse’s masterpiece.
There are actually a few odd things about the film’s Oscar record. It’s not only a rare Oscar-winning remake, but a remake of another production design nominee: Federico Fellini’s 8½. The four designers who took home the prize for All That Jazz include not only production designer Philip Rosenberg and art directors Gary Brink and Edward Stewart but also Tony Walton, who was credited as “fantasy designer.”
The “fantasies” in question are a big part of what connects All That Jazz with its predecessor...
Saturday, May 6, 2017 at 6:00PM by Nathaniel R
I got a little verbosely carried away whilst answering reader questions so you get two Q & A columns from your last batch of questions. Thanks for playing. This week I asked for a few Star Wars Questions but that's just three of the six questions answered here. Ready, let's go!
TROY: Within the past year Cynthia Erivo has won a Tony, Grammy, and Daytime Emmy for her work in the recent Broadway revival of The Color Purple, making her only one step away from completing the EGOT. Which type of project do you think would giver her her best chance at winning an Oscar?
NATHANIEL: I hate to get nitpicky but technically should Daytime Emmys even count with the EGOT? If you count any old Emmy as towards the EGOT than about 100,000 people you've never heard of who have local Emmies (seriously they give those statues out like candy) are 1/4th of the way to that showbiz goal. It's only Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Lopez, and their fans that would argue that Daytime Emmys count. No shade!
Anyway my dream for Erivo is that they give her either the film version of The Color Purple musical, though I fear they'd just hand it to a bigger less worthy star (like, oh, Jennifer Hudson, who she and Danielle Brooks, the other Tony nominee from that show, both ran circles around onstage) or a film version of Caroline or Change (if they won't rehire the incredible Tonya Pinkins) as those two roles are powerhouse vehicles for a black woman with giant pipes. But any musical role would be dreamy. That voice!
PEDRO: What is your favorite Star Wars character? And your favorite Star Wars actor?
Monday, April 24, 2017 at 8:45PM In the season one finale, Joan goes to the dentist, Bette gets roasted, and the show answers the question “If you could have any four people over for dinner, dead or alive…?”
Last night, after seven weeks of behind-the-scenes introspections, gargantuan character work, and many, many hats, Feud reached its conclusion. And if it accomplished anything, it was making clear that, underneath the two legends the world knows as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, there were two broken women with an eternal strive for outside validation, left empty once the cameras stopped rolling.
The finale presents the last years in the careers of Joan (Jessica Lange) and Bette (Susan Sarandon). But mostly Joan. Because she seemed to have been the most natural recipient of all the themes Ryan Murphy and company wanted to make evident: ageism, mysogny, merciless sacrifice for Hollywood, estrangement, ingratitude, and, mostly, pain...
