Stage Door: The Hilarious Cast of "Desperate Measures"

by Nathaniel R

Before we plunge into the deep end of movie awards season, which tends to consume our every waking moment from right now through Oscar night each year, a wee theater break.

Though we love movies with all our hearts, the one thing live-action movies don't really have an equivalent of is the grand theatrical tradition of the musical comedy. I'm talking inspired silliness as goddamn raison d'etre. I recently fell hard for Desperate Measures, a hilarious wild west riff on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. The show has now been extended three times at the York Theatre in Manhattan and will close on New Year's Eve so get to it! (The York specializes in helping develop new musicals and I'm happy to call attention to this noble cause as a bonafide fanatic of the genre.)

I sat down recently to talk to with two of the musical's stars, strapping Peter Saide and rockstar feisty Lauren Molina, who both really "outta be in pictures" as they say though we're happy they're killing it on stage, don't misunderstand! The interviews are after the jump... 

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Won't Be Ignored, Dan

by Dancin' Dan

The posters for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's third season warned us. In them, Rachel Bloom spoofed iconic imagery from Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Basic Instinct, sending a clear message: Bloom's Rebecca Bunch is one of our great anti-heroes, and she's about to go full-tilt crazy. And those posters didn't even tell the half of it. We're only four episodes into the new season, and already Rebecca's life in West Covina appears to have reached the end of the line. Things are moving so fast that each episode so far has left me breathless, perpetually on the edge of my seat wating for the next installment.

It's the best, most daring show on air right now, and it's even more jam-packed with film references than before. BUT BE WARNED. Lots of spoilers after the jump...

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120 days til Oscar. "Best Dance Direction," anyone?

by Nathaniel R

It's your useless morning trivia! Guess what the 120th Oscar handed out was? If my calculations are correct -- I carefully counted through "Inside Oscar"'s brilliant year-by-year history to determine the order -- it was Best Dance Direction 1936 which went to Seymour Felix for "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" from The Great Ziegfeld. The famous number led up to the film's intermission. The film also won Best Picture. 

"Best Dance Direction" only lasted three years at the Oscars from 1935 through 1937.

Rather hilariously, the genius Busby Berkeley never won it though he was nominated all three years running and is the only man among the 11 nominated for that award that has any name recognition in the 21st century. Remember when Ryan Gosling was going to star as him in a biopic ? Too bad that never materialized! 

Here's Felix's winning number:

Blueprints: "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"

This week on Blueprints, Jorge Molina takes a drive to the pride of the inland empire to talk about musical numbers in screenplays, only two hours from the beach. 

Fundamentally, scripts serve as a blueprint for what has to appear on screen, hence the name of this series. A blueprint that some people choose to follow more closely than others. However, there are instances where following a script meticulously is vital not only for the benefit of the story, but for the costs and efficiency of an entire production. There are times when a script is a literal choreographed dance, gigantic pretzel and all.

So let’s take a look into the idyllic suburban fantasy of the The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where if every location, note, and twirl hadn’t been precisely mentioned in the script, there may have never been a show...

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Soundtracking: "Meet Me In St. Louis"

The 1944 Smackdown is coming, so Chris looks at that year's musical masterpiece...

They don’t get much more timeless than Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me In St. Louis. It’s a musical about the family unit, and fittingly almost all of the numbers take place in the home. Whether in party revelry or the everyday household ubiquity of the title song, music is as much a definitive tradition of the Smith family as anything else. Grandpa may screw up the words, and it may be past the youngest’s bedtime, but music is one of the things that bind them. It also helps when one of the daughters is Judy Garland, I suppose.

Though St. Louis has relatively few musical numbers (unless you count umpteen reprises of that title song), its percentage of classics is nearly as high as its joy levels. “The Trolley Song” is the kind of showstopper that wins by the charm of its performer and its carefree whimsy. The “chug chug chug” silliness is exactly the kind of giddy uplift you have when falling in love, especially when you are in a musical. No matter that it’s actually kind of a strange metaphor for Garland’s Esther to use about her crush. Of all the love songs in Judy Garland’s singular repertoire, it is the sweetest...

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