One year ago today I was sitting in a terrible college summer dinner theater performance, killing my iPhone battery from relentless under-the-table Googling and scrolling through a deluge of "Michael Jackson is dead" updates on Tweetie.
My mind was blown. It was a weird day. Farrah died. Michael died. Scroll scroll scroll.
So the 2010 Tonys are come and gone, and there were SERIOUS Win/Fail moments. Let's go through the show and see what brought the noise, and what just brought the funk. (That was a terrible joke, I apologize.)
Oh YEAH, people, let's get our theatre geek jam ON!!!! Come right here and hit the comments at 8 PM ET on CBS for the festivities, hosted by Just Jack - I mean, Sean Hayes!
Film/theatre/literature/feminism nerds rejoice! Julie Taymor is adapting William Shakespeare's The Tempest for the screen.
Singer and actress Lena Horne passed away last night in a New York hospital. She was 92.
Plagiarism is infuriating, especially for writers who spend hour upon hour honing each word, each sentence, to fit just so. It makes sense, but it turns out it's equally as infuriating for comedians who have been plagiarized, as the recent Patton Oswalt incident illustrates. And because Oswalt is a comedian and hilarious even when he's not on stage, he calls out his hacker publicly and with a lesson to the young plagiarist: if you're not funny to begin with, stealing won't help.
Poor sweet Susan Sarandon. After separating from long time love Tim Robbins, all she wanted was a night on the town.
Oh Man. I was all set. When it comes to writing about bad movies, the release of a Roland Emmerich film is like Christmas and Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July (Or Independence Day...chuckle) all rolled up in one. This weekend 2012 opened nationwide and I was so happy because movies that look this bad only come once a year. And unlike your stupid parents who totally don't even know what a "He-man Castle Greyskull Action Playset" even IS, so they buy you a Lite-Brite© instead, 2012 looked like it was totally going to come through for me.
Huh. I never saw this one going this way.
A professional arbiter has ruled Jeremy Piven did not breach his contract with the Broadway producers of "Speed-the-Plow" when the actor abruptly left the revival of the play last December. At the time, Piven's doctor said he was suffering from mercury poisoning after eating too much fish. Piven claimed at the time he ate sushi every day. He became the butt of many jokes.
Guess he got the last laugh.
Hey! Remember way back in the late 80s when they made what could be argued was the best black comedy of all time and they called it "Heathers" and it starred Winona Ryder in a monocle? Well surprise! They just stole something else from your childhood, because currently in development at Fox is a TV show based on Heathers.
But wait there's more.
Hey, remember when Madonna set out to adopt Mercy from Malawia but she was delayed by the Malawian courts and it didn't look good for her request to go through?
Then all of the sudden she got the go-ahead and you could almost hear the question popping into heads everywhere "Was that because she is a rich celebrity?"
Yes, well that question certainly crossed the minds of more than just celebrity reporters and now that reaction has translated into a parody stage show, "Mercy Madonna Of Malawi". The play tackles contentious issues like financial influence and loss of culture in foreign adoptions.
Added bonus: the show totally mocks Madonna and her music
Years before Pee-Wee's Playhouse took a prominent place in the Saturday morning roster of children's programs on CBS, the Playhouse characters performed their antics for a live audience at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles.
Paul Reubens, the man behind Pee-Wee Herman, will revive the stage show for a limited engagement in Hollywood.
I love viral marketing because there is no other medium being used today with the philosophy of "Who Effing cares?!" as it's core value. The Producers of Dead Snow, the delicious Norwegian, Nazi Zombie film have decided that to bolster the sales of their upcoming DVD release in their homeland and also the US theatrical run, they would produce a viral marketing piece entitled "My Ass" which features a scantily clad Norwegian supermodel named Linni Meister dancing around and singing about how great her ass looks.
Of course they did.
Did ya know the Tony Awards were on last night? Um, the TONY AWARDS. The ones for Broadway. I know! Even though theatre tickets are like, 75 bucks a pop and we're in a recession, we still have the Tonys, and y'all? It did, as it always does, every year, make me cry. And that's not just because Neil Patrick Harris, our host and MamaPop's official gay boyfriend, had a horrifically ill-fitting suit. We're talking real emoting, dudes.
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