Stage Door: Tom Sturridge Oscar's it Up in "Orphans"

Jose here. From its start, the new production of Lyle Kessler's famous Orphans, has been plagued with controversy and an aura of pure chaos. First, Shia LaBeouf infamously quit the play during the first week of rehearsals leading members of the press to wonder exactly what had gone wrong. While some blamed Alec Baldwin for his notorious bad temper, others wondered if there was indeed more than met the eye. LaBeouf was handily replaced by Ben Foster in the midst of a Broadway scandal that combined leaked emails, unexpected theater appearances and juicier drama than anyone in Smash could ever come up with.

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Stage Door 'Cast This!' Edition: The Other Place

Ocassionally on Mondays or Tuesday's, we'll talk theater.

Do we have any fans of TV's historic sitcom "Roseanne" in the house? I ended up watching a couple of episodes the other day in syndication which happens to me probably once a year when I chance upon it -- it's hard to click away from. It was a double dose of Laurie Metcalf, Roseanne's sitcom sister Jackie, since I'd just seen her onstage anchoring the psychological drama "The Other Place" in which a brilliant neurologist's life begins to fall apart. Or... is it her life falling apart or (SLIGHT SPOILER) just her mind? That's the crux of the drama and it's a real actor's showcase of a play.

Metcalf won three Emmy Awards (and probably a lifetime supply of bank account) for her work on that famous sitcom but now she's aiming at a Tony. This is a juicy role -- the whole show would be a concave mess if the actress at its epienter couldn't keep it lively -- and I think she's definitely a threat come June for the statue. 

I enjoyed the play -- despite it feeling a bit small for the big stage --  but since I long for more intimate drama films that give actresses this much to work with, I already want to see it as a movie. So let's play...

"CAST THIS!" in the comments

Zoe Perry (Laurie Metcalf's daughter) & Laurie Metcalf in "The Other Place"

The Roles:
• Juliana Smithton, a neurologist who may or may not be lying to herself about all the drama in her life: her husband leaving her, her young daughter running away with her husband's colleague, and her own declining health. 
Who You Need: an actress in her 40s or 50s who can project real intelligence with weird snaps of emotional immaturity and possibly mental illness. 
• The Woman who is several characters including an angry daughter, put upon assistant, and lonely divorcee.
Who You Need: an actress in her 20s or 30s to shapeshift for multiple characters, some actual characters some possibly only projections of actual people. Bonus points if she could believably be your lead's daughter. 

Theater Links To Go
20at20 Off Broadways shows for only $20 for next 20 days only
Playbill Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde musical might be getting the big screen treatment. Ugh of all the stage musicals to adapt?! One that's of a story that's already had a bajillion film versions? Oops, that describes Les Miz too but at least Les Miz has the Les Miz music! This sounds more like a potential Phantom of the Opera problem.

Raven Haired "Mama"

Jose here. By the time this weekend's over, Jessica Chastain will have finished taking over the world her latest movies in the first and second spots of the box office (help me out here, has this happened before?), which might not mean she's a money-making sensation (at least not yet) but will undoubtedly expose her brilliance to a broader audience. The Oscar nominated Zero Dark Thirty, whose commercial success is undoubtedly owed to the torture controversy, dropped to second place, while the horror movie Mama is set to open as number one with a figure in the mid-twenty millions

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2013/1/20/raven-haired-mama.html

The Guillermo del Toro-produced movie seems to be a good 'ole "mediocre January horror flick" but it's actually not half bad. I saw it earlier today and was shocked upon realizing I hadn't rolled my eyes a single time. The Chastainite in me wants to say the movie owes itself to her, but in reality, the direction and cinematography seem like a breath of fresh air compared to what this genre has given us lately. [More Chastain after the jump...]

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Stage Door: "Picnic" Packs a Lot of Starpower

Occasionally on Mondays, Broadway's "dark" night, or uh... It's Wednesday (oops!)... we'll talk theater.

As I sat waiting for the revival of William Inge's "Picnic"  to begin in its new Broadway run, I noticed that I couldn't keep my mitts off of Sebastian Stan. Playbills can get so smudgy if you keep pawing at them but it couldn't be helped with his face so blown up big on the program. The collection of actors onstage was about to experience the same handsy problem with Sebastian Stan as "Hal" the hunky drifter in this classic drama about the power of beauty and the complications of sexual attraction. Only it wasn't his face they wanted to rub themselves all over.

No sooner had the play begun than Ellen Burstyn was talking him out of his clothing (please to note: Sebastian Stan has been working out. A lot. God bless, presumably, Captain America: The Winter Soldier in which he'll square off with Chris Evans as his former friend 'Bucky' now resurrected/brainwashed as an arch enemy.) He spends the better part of the three act play sweaty and shirtless or half sweaty-shirted if you will.

more after the jump...

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The Lord of the Links: The Return of the Link

whoa. no link roundups in forever. time to catch up on movie news and/or must see web droppings

Yahoo Movies Fine Thelma Adams piece on Prometheus' "foreign object" sequence. [shudder]
24 Frames Noomi Rapace and Sigourney Weavers' Alien franchise screen tests
IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...)
Empire Penelope Cruz will star in her fifth Pedro Almodóvar movie Fleeting Lovers (title may change) which starts shooting this summer. Yay! Double Yay! All About My Mother star Cecilia Roth is also in the cast.
YouTube if there's anything I hate about YouTube it's the ability to name your videos "official". But this "Official" Les Miserable trailer starring (gulp) Katie Holmes is kind of a good prank... I mean Nightmare!
In Contention production designer J Michael Riva (Django Unchained, The Color Purple) has passed away at 63.

Awards Daily Singin' in the Rain is getting a 60th anniversary rerelease on July 12th. Just in time for the Gene Kelly Centennial. And yes, if I can manage it here at the Film Experience July and August will house a big Gene Kelly retrospective right here at the Film Experience. He's up there with Montgomery Clift in my favorite (male) movie star charts after all.
Life of Pi the tiger growls memorably for the first time on the official website. Also he looks amazing.
Movie|Line Better three years late than never. Xavier Dolan's award winning debut film (and Canadian Oscar submission in its year) I Killed My Mother is FINALLY getting a US theatrical release. 
Guardian hears that The Avengers might get a three hour version for theatrical rerelease this fall. Considering Joss Whedon's comments on the deleted material (indulgent, killing the rhythm) and his own feelings about different versions of the same story (no) perhaps this is a very bad idea.
Queerty the red band ass abundant Magic Mike trailer.

filmmaking tips
IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...) 
Movie|Line twenty-two pieces of storytelling advice from a Pixar artist
LA Times offers up awards show tips for the Oscars (hey, that's sorta filmmaking tips) via the Tony Awards though I will continue to hate everyone and especially every writer who suggests very publicly that we don't need to see Costume Designers winning their prizes. A pox on all your craft-hating houses!

casting news we don't have much to say about but we should probably share anyway...

Greer takes over for Buckley in the Carrie remake

• Jean Dujardin is in talks to join Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street
• Amy Ryan and Dane DeHaan may join an upcoming non-documentary take on West Memphis Three currently starring Colin Firth and Allesandro Nivola (my god how many movies will this story inspire by 2020?)
• John Madden's "Exotic Marigold" follow up is a comedy called Murder Mystery and may star Charlize Theron
• Judy Greer (recently interviewed right here) wins the gym teacher role in Carrie, previously played by the great Betty Buckley. I only wish I weren't so dreading the movie.

off cinema
Gawker an alligator eating a croc? 
Sound Cloud she may have lost the Tony but Jayne Houdyshell keeps giving it from Follies. She rerecorded "Broadway Baby" as a solo for a compilation. It's wonderful! 
Cinema Blend an amusing piece about that George Bush head on spike story from Game of Thrones 

Zachary Quinto, Claire Danes, Chris Rock, The Fanning Sisters... and that's just a tiny sample.Finally...

 Have you seen the Paramount Pictures celebration? They gathered 116 stars together -- NOT photoshopped, actually there -- for a Centennial Photo.

The photo is so big you have to scroll to get the whole thing on your computer. You can mouse over it to enlarge see who's in the shot but without doing so I spotted George Clooney, Jamie Lee Curtis, George Takei, Julianne Moore, Meryl, Mark & Marty, Jane Fonda and Eddie Murphy straightaway. Watching the video gives you a closer look at the star networking. Watching stars mingle is the best part of starry events... though they never share enough.

It makes you wonder who knows each other and who doesn't. And who really does or doesn't want to be talking to whom. Did the stars who haven't had a good role in decades bee-line to the directors present (Lynch, Fincher, Scorsese, etcetera) or have they given up but for anniversary shindigs to honor their past glories? All I know for sure is that photo events like this make me happy.