Moulin Rouge!'s Stage Life Begins

by Chris Feil

We've long been awaiting Baz Luhrman's masterpiece Moulin Rouge! to fulfill the seemingly ancient prophecy to make its way onto the stage. Well, that day has finally arrived as the musical's pre-Broadway tryout begins tonight at Boston's Emerson Colonial Theatre.

We have already been teased by Aaron Tveit singing the epic love song "Come What May" in a foggy theatre, but now we have the real goods we've been dying to see: Karen Olivo stepping into the large shoes of Nicole Kidman as the sparkling diamond Satine and a theatre completely transformed to Luhrman excess. While Olivo's costume (designed by this year's My Fair Lady Tony winner Catherine Zuber) might be somewhat understated from what we might have been hoping to see, we're confident there is further opulence coming once we see what the rest of the show has in store. As for the set, hold on to your hats...

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Today in Showbiz History: JLo, Moulin Rouge!, and Norma Jean

June will soon be bustin' out all over! If you're a June birthday we're Gemini kindred spirits. If you're not you can still find some event or personality to inspire you today. Here's a look at key showbiz happenings on June 1st in history...

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Link on, Pete

• Vanity Fair Johnny Depp still having legal/financial woes. Being sued again
• IndieWire very thorough wide ranging interview with Vincent Maraval of the French movie production company Wild Bunch and how the arthouse market and Cannes have changed
• IndieWire from the sounds of this article on the visual FX work in Infinity War, the Oscar campaign is already in effect!
• MUBI Notebook a reprint of a 1972 essay about Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows when it was being reevaluated
• Film School Rejects Black Panther blu-ray review

• Gr8er Days awww, i missed this news about Carol Burnett's would be new sitcom, she backed out when the suits wanted a less unique show
• THR Jeffrey Tambor's first interview since being fired from Transparent
• /Film In unneccessary sequels with bad titles news: The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard is coming
• Dread Central Ana Lily Armirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Bad Batch) has annnounced her next film: Blood Moon set in New Orleans
• NYT Ermanno Olmi, director of Cannes-winner Tree of Wooden Clogs dies
• The Guardian an interview with Chloe Sevigny about her 'Queen of the Scene' past, being in her 40s now, why she didn't name names with the Me Too movement, and her new role in Lean on Pete
• IndieWire CinemaScore gets super touchy about Martin Scorsese saying that their polling devalues cinema
• The Hollywood Reporter on CW's renewed and cancelled shows

Offscreen
• The Atlantic "I'm not Black, I'm Kanye" a devastating piece by Ta Nehisi Coates on all sorts of things including: Michael Jackson, Kanye West, the 1980s, and American history.
• Deadline Olivia de Havilland trying to keep her Feud lawsuit alives. Has appealed the ruling against her
• Playbill Meet the cast of Broadway's Moulin Rouge!

Tveit Sings A "Moulin" Tune!

Chris here. Plenty of folks may be ho-hum about this year's Tony nominations and the past season in general, but the good news is that we have major Broadway events just ahead - namely the long awaited stage adaptation of Baz Luhrman's masterpiece Moulin Rouge!

Lucky folks in Boston will get to see its pre-Broadway tryout next month, but theatre lovers elsewhere just got the first sampling of what awaits us on stage.

An opulent music video of star Aaron Tveit singing the musical's signature ballad "Come What May" has arrived. While I'm not a much of a fan of Tveit's voice (sorry!), the video does quite a bit to assuage any doubts that the stage would be cheapening Luhrman's decadence and luxouriousness. Guys, the smoke and paper/rose set dressing and plushy simplicity is simply gorgeous!

Now all that awaits is a glimpse of Karen Olivo filling the very large shoes of Nicole Kidman as grand courtesan Satine - but we're fine with the wait if it makes her arrival half as iconic as Kidman's emergence onscreen. Theatre fans know what an event Olivo's eventual Broadway return will be (for the unawares: post West Side Story Tony win, Olivo left the profession and since has returned via regional theatre and the Chicago production of Hamilton). For now, we await the sparkling diamond. What do you think of Tveit's take?

110 days 'til Oscar. More Lord of the Rings?

It's only eleventy days until Hollywood's High Holy Night. If you aren't familiar with "eleventy" think back to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).

That whole Oscar winning trilogy kicks off with the celebration of Bilbo Baggins eleventy-firth birthday or 111th birthday in human years. Eleventy can refer to 110 or numbers much larger; one stops counting after awhile...

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