Stage Door - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dancin’ Dan here with a quick run through one of the Tony front-runners in preparation for this weekend’s festivities! As a big fan of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I was… concerned when it was announced that there was a stage adaptation in the works. Some books just don’t feel like they would translate to the stage, and this, with its singular first-person narration, certainly felt like one.

I was wrong about that...

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Ten Movies To Watch (To Play Along With Tony Awards At Home)

Gene Kelly and Ann Miller are unofficial Tony Players this yearGiven that not everyone can live in or even visit New York regularly and even those of us who do, can't see all the Tony nominees given our budgets, here's a list of ten plus smart movie choices if you'd like to feel tangentially invested in the upcoming Tony Awards (Sunday night! - should we live blog?) without actually having seen any of the shows! If you only have time for one movie make it an Ann Miller, Leslie Caron, or Gene Kelly movie as they're the unofficial mascots of this Tony season each having starred in two of the movies related to current Broadway hits.

TEN MOVIES
If you can't make it to Broadway

Congratulations! You've already won. You don't have to watch the super dull Finding Neverland (2004) again because it's Broadway adaptation didn't earn a single nomination! On a sadder note if you want to play along at home and you love good movies, the Doctor Zhivago (1965) adaptation has already shuttered since the Tony voters shunned it (yeah, it wasn't good) so you don't get to watch that classic again at home ...at least for this project.

10 Saved! (2004) + Meet the Feebles (1989)
If you can't make it to NYC to see the blasphemous/hilarious Hand To God about a confused young man living with his religious mother who believes his hand puppet is possessed by the devil, try a religious satire and a filthy puppet movie instead. For maximum effect play these movies simultaneously side by side. (You may substitute any preferred religious comedy in place of Saved but dirty puppet movies are hard to come by)

Nine more movies (and Tony thoughts) after the jump...

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The Many Cinematic Lives of Anne Boleyn

479 years ago on May 19th the second and most famous of Henry VIII's six wives, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded. But almost 5 centuries after her death, her life continues to fascinate storytellers. It seems that every couple of years there's a new interpretation of the events that conspired in England all those years ago. The latest version of King Henry and his many wives is Hilary Mantel's award-winning books Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Both books have already been adapted to a miniseries that just aired on PBS over the past month and is currently playing on Broadway in a production that originally was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and played the West End (and recently received 8 Tony nominations including Best New Play). And while Mantel's books and the subsequent adaptations of her work focus on the events from Thomas Cromwell's point of view, there's no doubt that the reason we're still telling this tale is because of that woman that inspired a king to leave his wife and create an entirely new religion just to be with her: Anne Boleyn. (Even the Broadway production's marketing puts Lydia Leonard in her Tony-nominated performance as the one time queen front and center.)   

Inspired by the current influx of entertainment based on Boleyn and her exploits at court, for the anniversary of her infamous death, let's take a look at three famous actresses that have played Boleyn over the years... 

The Private Lives of Henry VIII (1933)

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Stage Door: Hand to God

Dancin' Dan here for one of my favorite times of the year: TONY TIME! When the Tony nominations were announced, I had my usual reactions of shock and awe (congrats to all the supporting ladies from Fun Home, but did we really have to include all of them at the expense of their counterparts from On The Town?), but what made me happiest were the multiple nominations for Hand to God, hands-down the best play I’ve seen on Broadway in ages.

When you walk into the Booth Theater (most recently the home to Bradley Cooper’s Elephant Man), you’re immediately greeted with cheery posters extolling the beauty of the world and God’s hand in creating it, along with heavily southern-fried Christian country-rock. If you’ve ever been in a church school, the set will look freakily familiar… do all of these things look alike? But then the lights go down, and we’re greeted by… a sock puppet. This sock puppet’s name is Tyrone, and despite his adorable appearance, he has some not-so-adorable thoughts on his mind.

More...

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Tony Nominations. With Context!

Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe & Tony Nominee Kelli O'Hara in THE KING AND I Tony/Emmy/Globe winner Mary Louise Parker and perpetually undervalued Bruce Willis announced the Tony nominations for the 2014/2015 theater season this morning with the musicals Fun Home & An American in Paris (which are both pretty great) leading with 12 nominations each. Broadway's "Best" will be honored live on Sunday June 7th on CBS with (this just in!) Tony winners and gargantuan cross-media talents Alan Cumming & Kristin Chenoweth co-hosting.

You can expect to see several movie star faces at the ceremony and you can also expect to see several closing notices before then for the shows that were shunned. The big question mark for the night of June 7th is whether perennial bridesmaid Kelli O'Hara (this is her fifth nomination for Best Actress in a Musical and her sixth overall) will finally take home the gold or if one of the living legends she's up against will win another; Chita Rivera and Kristin Chenoweth are not playin' around, each earning rave reviews.

When Oscar makes their announcements we rarely think to consult the list of 300ish movies that are eligible for Best Picture but because the Tony Awards are selected from a very distinct and small group of productions, it's useful to know what else was eligible, so we're serving you context with this full list of nominations. 

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