Fosse/Verdon - EP 1: "Life is a Cabaret"

by Chris Feil

FX’s Fosse/Verdon begins with two intriguingly quiet moments for a series founded in musical theatre. First, an older Bob Fosse waits alone in a hotel room, and someone comes knocking. Then we flash back to the genius working in tandem with his wife and partner Gwen Verdon, perfecting a piece of choreography in his iconic style. Gwen offers a slight adjustment to his angular positioning, and they proceed. “Yours is better,” he says decisively. This kind of personal and creative symbiosis, which has made the two depicted here into the stuff of Broadway hallowed history, is sadly only fleeting in the premiere of this new limited series.

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Farewell, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

by Dancin' Dan

When the history of Peak TV is written, there better be a whole chapter devoted to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom's musical comedy managed to last four seasons on The CW is amazing enough. But doing so with a diverse cast, while constantly pushing the boundaries of what network television would allow to be broadcast in prime time, taking anti-feminist tropes and twisting them around until they become feminist, and spotlighting mental health issues in a sensitive, impactful way is a miracle.

On Friday night, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend aired its series finale. Magically, the show was able to end on its own terms, giving us the full four-season arc its creators had always envisioned. And what an arc it's been [SPOILERS AHEAD]...

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April Foolish Predictions #2: Music and Sound Categories

[drumroll] It's Time! Our annual April Foolish Oscar Predictions have begun.

Ad Astra was supposed to be out next month but rumors are that it's not finished yet

First we looked at Animated Features and now we turn our attention to the Sound categories. It's rather perverse to do them second and here's why: Original Songs and Original Scores are among the last things we have confirmed each year. Technically speaking you can wait until your whole film is nearly complete before adding a score or commissioning an original song. It's not always wise to wait of course since songs, especially, can be more effective if they're woven in and some directors prefer to work with some idea of what the score will be like while they're editing. Nevertheless there is much that's completely unknown about this film year in terms of its music...

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Soundtracking: Rock 'n' Roll High School

by Chris Feil

This day and age the jukebox musical has moved firmly into passé territory, a product that plays squarely to a built-in audience usually of the nostalgic variety. It’s hard to imagine anything shaking the subgenre up when it’s now become a factory for your dad’s favorite bands to make a little extra cash. But the jukebox musical didn’t start with your dad’s regular bands, it started with your dad’s cool bands. Reader, how is the Ramones’ Rock ‘n’ Roll High School celebrating it’s 40th anniversary?!

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Stage Door: "The Prom" is a delight

by Dancin' Dan

The Prom caused a big splash at the Thanksgiving Day Parade last year, giving us the first same-sex kiss ever aired as part of the parade broadcast. The uproar that followed almost single-handedly justified the musical's existence, proving that maybe the world does "really need" a musical about a bunch of past-their-prime Broadway stars who travel to Indiana to help a young gay teen who isn't being allowed to bring her girlfriend to prom. If that plotline makes The Prom sound insufferable, a hopelessly pandering piece of liberal agitprop designed to make the Broadway audience feel oh so very good about themselves for having the same morals as the show's creators, well... that's not exactly the case. The Prom has more up its sleeve than that, and it all comes down to the show's tone.

It's clear from The Prom's first scene that the musical's main target is not the people of Edgewater, Indiana, but rather the vainglorious Broadway stars who insert themselves where they don't belong...

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