Stage Door: "Six Degrees of Separation" Revived

Stage Door bringing you intermittent theater reviews when we manage to get there. Here's Nathaniel R

It's so basic to binge plays during Tony season as opposed to a more sensible and committed once-a-month diet of live theater. Alas, just as the more familiar mainstream obsession of the Oscar circus encourages studios to backload their releases to the last quarter of the year, most of the "big" theater shows open as late as they can for Tony consideration. This makes April and May a madhouse of theater-going for those who care about such things. Because most of the musicals are too expensive, I've been catching up with the plays. We've already covered The Little Foxes (a must see) and the Pulitzer-winning economic tragedy Sweat. So let's talk Six Degrees of Separation nominated for 2 Tonys: Best Revival of a Play and Best Leading Actor (Corey Hawkins).

"Chaos, control. Chaos, control. You like, you like?"

That's Stockard Channing's most sweetly funny line reading (among thousands of exquisite ones) in the 1993 movie adaptation of this stage classic. That was also, roughly, my reaction to the Broadway revival with Allison Janney, John Benjamin Hickey, and Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton), taking over the roles Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Will Smith played onscreen...

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Pedro Party: All About My Mother

It's a Pedro Party all week. Here's Lynn Lee on her introduction to Almodóvar...

To all actresses who have played actresses.  To all women who act.  To men who act and become women.  To all the people who want to be mothers.  To my mother.”

All About My Mother was the first Almodovar film I ever saw, and as it happens, I saw it with my own mother.  I don’t remember why I picked it for us to see together.  It certainly wasn’t because of the title or because I thought it would be something she’d particularly like.  In fact, if I’d thought about it more, I might have been anxious that she would find it too outré.  Or for that matter, that I would; as both a movie lover and a young adult, I was just beginning to learn what was out there and how far it stretched beyond my own personal experience.

To our credit, or rather to Almodovar’s, there was no reason for such trepidation...

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Q&A: Pretty Boys and the best of Tomei / Collette

It's part two of this week's Reader Questions. If you missed the first installment in which we covered topics like Cynthia Erivo's film future and Star Wars favorites, click here.

Six more reader questions? YES PLEASE. Let's go... 

BHURAY: What are your 5 favorite Toni Collette performances?

I love her so much I have to do a top ten. Hers is surely the star career with the single biggest disparity between how much talent she provides versus how often and well deployed she is by Hollywood. My favorite performances are hard to rank as I think she's the same amount of wonderful consistently but it might go something like this...

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Prime for April - Screengrab Roulette

As we do, we've frozen random new to Amazon Prime titles and grabbed the first screengrab that popped up. Though they're leaning heavily on 1990s titles at the moment, their quality of offerings is far outpacing whatever B pictures Netflix has been licensing of late. Comment Party: Which will you be watching and which of the "new" streaming titles would you most want to read a write-up on this month? I'll obey your consensus command. 

Okay on to the random screengrabs.

Every morning the ground is soaked with blood. The workers believe I brought this terror since it didn't begin until my arrival. Whatever I try they seem to know. All the deaths are on me. 

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
Yes, yes, great Vilmos Zsigmond cinematography, a sound Oscar, and killer lions and but on a scale of 1-100 how kissable were Val Kilmer's lips in his prime? My vote: 118.

[no dialogue]

Sliver (1993)
Remember when wealthy perv Billy Baldwin was spying on all his tenants including sexy Sharon Stone who caught on to him? The 90s were THE decade for erotic thrillers, which have gone completely out of fashion, just like romantic comedies. 

more after the jump...

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On this day: Gloria Swanson, Typhoid Mary, and Sacheen Littlefeather

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

Gloria Swanson surrounded by herself in SUNSET BLVD

1898 Oscar winning costume designer Norma Koch is born. She designed the costumes on both of the main movies that Feud: Bette and Joan revolves around, winning for Baby Jane though Feud seems to hand the costuming credit on that movie over to Bette Davis
1899 The iconic Gloria Swanson (Sunset Blvd) is born...

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