Posts Tagged ‘Broadway’

Trump – This Week’s Winners

Ace - Ryan Seacrest.  The blonde haired Everyman is apparently on the top of CNN’s short list to replace the veteran newsman Larry King.  With American Idol’s  popularity waning, this could be the perfect opportunity for Seacrest to officially become the King of All Media, hands-down. In addition, King has made it no secret that he wishes for Seacrest to succeed him.  Notable mention to Katie Couric who is apparently in talks as well.

King – Batman 3.  The much anticipated follow up to the Academy Award winning blockbuster The Dark Knight is will officially begin production in April 2011 according to director Christopher Nolan.  While the script is still being polished, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Christopher Bale are all scheduled to return for this installment.  The film is set for release by Warner Brothers on July 20, 2012.

Queen - Taraji P. Henson.  The Academy Award nominated actress, who appeared in this summer’s hit family film The Karate Kid, has signed on to star in a new Lifetime movie, Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story.  She’ll play the titular role, following the real life story of an African American mother whose 7 year old son was kidnapped and taken to Korea in the summer of 2007.

Jack – Judge Judy.  The venerable talk show once again soared to the top of the syndicated show rating chart, trumping none other than the Queen of Daytime herself Oprah Winfrey.  Her show averages 6.6 million viewers, up 7% from a year ago while Queen O is averaging 6.4 million viewers and is down 1%.  Maybe people like more drama and less self-help during their afternoon hours.

10 – Pandemonium: The Lost and Found Orchestra.  The creators of the hit Broadway show Stomphave developed a new show featuring even more innovative music by utilizing such diverse “instruments” as glass bottles, whirly toys, and musical saws.  The show’s debut occurs during the same year as the 40th anniversary of Stomp and kicks off its North American tour in Miami on September 16; stops in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Toronto are all scheduled.

Trick – This Week’s Losers

5 - Big Boi’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty.  One half of the popular Outkast couldn’t muster up blockbuster first week sales like fellow hip hop acts Eminem and Drake, who both sold over 500,000 copies in their debut weeks.  Big Boi didn’t even manage to crack 100,000 copies and landed at #3 behind his aforementioned peers.  He’ll need a strong second single to make sure the album has staying power.

4 - Sheryl Underwood.  Comedienne Underwood is courting much controversy since she jumped ship from “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” to join “The Steve Harvey Morning Show.”  Many are calling her a “sell-out,” along the lines of Lebron James’ recent defection from Cleveland to Miami.  Industry insiders are whispering that Underwood may have done permanent damage to her career by dissing Joyner to join his top rival’s morning radio program but Underwood claims it was not an “out of nowhere” decision and that she had guested on Harvey’s program several times before.  Hmmm, shame on you Sheryl!

3 – Edward Norton.  After spearheading the remake of Hulk, Norton has been dropped from the all-star cast of The Avengers, that includes Robert Downey, Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson.  Adding insult to injury, Marvel Studios didn’t even give a proper explanation for his dismissal.  Word is Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right) is in talks to take on the role of the green colored hero.

2 - Mel Gibson.  Sure, Hollywood seemingly forgave Gibson for his anti-Semitic rant a few years ago but this time, it looks like his career is officially done.  Gibson’s ex-girlfriend released several career-killing voicemails from him, where he wished she would be raped by “n***as” and also spat venom at the Latino community as well.  His management company dropped him this week as well.  The Academy Award winning director and actor will need a miracle of God to save him this time around.  Well at least he has Whoopi Goldberg on his side: The Viewmoderator vehemently denied that Gibson is a racist because she’s hung out with him many times and simply said his words were “boneheaded.”  Boo to you, Whoopi.

Joker - Oprah.  Not only is her talk show not picking up steam in its final months but now comes word that her unauthorized biography (which O personally disowned) will hit the silver screen.  Yep, Kitty Kelley is hammering out a deal to adapt her best selling tell-all tale about Winfrey for the film treatment.  Crazy thing is, which studio will be bold enough to produce and finance it?  And who will play Lady O? To make matters worse, Kelley wants the film to coincide with the finale of O’s talkfest in September 2011.

Last night’s celebration of the theater both on and off Broadway was truly one for the record books as it pertained to African American star power being present and taking to the stage to accept the theater’s highest honor.  The Tony Awards, while rarely watched probably due to the small cultish following of Broadway plays, bestowed nominations on several black actors when the nominations were initially announced. 

With their revered performances in the revival of August Wilson’s Fences, Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington and Academy Award nominated actress Viola Davis scored the coveted lead actor and lead actress in a play honors.  In addition, Fences won the award for Best Revival of a Play. And while Fela! – the musical based on the life of the titular African musical legend - didn’t score the big best musical prize for its superstar producers Jay-Z, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, it did manage to take home three prizes, including Best Choreography.

You may have thought that the Tonys resembled the Oscars last night with all of the stars being present.  Presenters included Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter himself!), Katie Holmes, Cate Blanchett, Antonio Banderas and Will & Jada.  Other winners included Academy Award-winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones (Actress in a Musical for A Little Night Music) and Scarlett Johansson (Featured Actress In A Play for A View from the Top).

The show featured performances from all of the nominated plays and musicals, including American Idiot and the stars of Glee stopped by for a special performance as well.  The Best Musical prize went to Memphis, a rhythm and blues type show set in the American South in the 1950’s.  The Best Play award went to Red, a two-man drama that focused on a painter who has to choose between honesty and a rich commission for the fancy Four Seasons reatuarant.

This year’s Tony Awards nominations could easily be mistaken for the list of nominees of the Academy Awards with Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Catherine Zeta-Jones making the list.

From the Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — Two strikingly different musicals, “Fela!” and “La Cage aux Folles,” dominated the star-laden 2010 Tony Awards nominations.

“Fela!” – the innovative Afro-beat biography of Nigerian superstar Fela Anikulapo-Kuti – and “La Cage aux Folles” – a revival of the classic Jerry Herman-Harvey Fierstein musical celebrating family – each received 11 nods on Tuesday as Jeff Daniels and Lea Michele announced the nominees for the 64th annual awards during a news conference.

They were followed by the revival of August Wilson’s “Fences,” with 10 nominations and the musical “Memphis,” with eight.

“I actually got to call Jerry Herman, ’cause he’s on the West Coast, and break the news to him,” said Fierstein, whose “La Cage” won a best-musical Tony in 1984 and then a best musical-revival Tony in 2005. “We have had this child together since we began writing it in ‘81 or ‘82, so it’s always good when you get to call the other parent and tell them that the child is doing well.”

The critically maligned “Addams Family,” based on the New Yorker cartoons, was one of the most anticipated musicals of the season. It managed only two nominations, for Andrew Lippa’s music and lyrics, and for featured actor Kevin Chamberlin, who plays Uncle Fester in the show.

“Addams” stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth were among the notable omissions for nominations. Also missing in action were Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman, stars of Keith Huff’s police melodrama “A Steady Rain,” the big box-office sensation of last fall. And so were the star, John Gallagher Jr., and director, Michael Mayer, of “American Idiot.”

Best play nominations went to “Red,” John Logan’s incisive look at an artist – Mark Rothko – at work; “Time Stands Still,” Donald Margulies’ examination of a photojournalist’s intense commitment to her craft; Geoffrey Nauffts’ “Next Fall,” a story of belief and non-belief; and Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play),” a comedy about female liberation of a very specific kind.

“Red” received seven nominations. Among its nominees was Alfred Molina, who portrays Rothko. He will compete in what is perhaps the starriest Tony category – actor-play. His challengers: Denzel Washington, who plays an embittered sanitation worker with dashed dreams of baseball glory in “Fences”; Liev Schreiber, an obsessive Brooklyn longshoreman in “A View From the Bridge”; Christopher Walken, a peculiar fellow seeking revenge in “A Behanding in Spokane”; and Jude Law as the melancholy Danish prince in “Hamlet.”

“What a great honor,” Law said. “Bringing our production of Hamlet to New York will always be one of the highlights of my career and to receive this recognition amongst these other brilliant actors only makes this experience sweeter.”

Washington said that being on Broadway again – he last appeared in 2005 in “Julius Caesar” – was “like coming home again for me, and sharing a Tony nomination for ‘Fences’ with so many wonderfully talented people associated with this play makes it seem like one big family reunion.”

For the top musical prize, “Fela!” will go up against “Memphis,” an interracial romance set against the backdrop of the 1950s rhythm ‘n’ blues explosion; “American Idiot,” Green Day’s tale of disaffected slackers;l and “Million Dollar Quartet,” a celebratory jam session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash.

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury were nominated – in different categories – for their roles in “A Little Night Music,” a musical revival nominee against “La Cage” and two shows that already have closed, “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Ragtime.”

“What a thrill to be nominated,” said Zeta-Jones, who plays the amorous Desiree Armfeldt in the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical. “The experience of doing this incredible show and working every night with such a talented group of people has truly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. And now to be nominated for a Tony, in my dreams, I couldn’t imagine a better way to make my Broadway debut.”

Zeta-Jones faces Kate Baldwin, “Finian’s Rainbow”; Montego Glover, “Memphis”; Christiane Noll, “Ragtime”; and Sherie Rene Scott, “Everyday Rapture.” In the featured actress-musical category, Lansbury goes up against Barbara Cook, “Sondheim on Sondheim”; Katie Finneran, “Promises, Promises”; Karine Plantadit, “Come Fly Away,” and Lillias White, “Fela!”

In the actress-play category, the nominees were Viola Davis, “Fences”; Valerie Harper, “Looped”; Linda Lavin, “Collected Stories”; Laura Linney, “Time Stands Still”; and Jan Maxwell, “The Royal Family.”

“I am so happy to be back ‘home’ again on stage, in this play, with these actors and to be recognized is icing on the cake,” said theater veteran Davis, who portrays Washington’s stoic, understanding wife in “Fences.”

“I am very, very grateful!”

Harper said her nomination was “bittersweet” because “Looped” had closed. “That was sad and disappointing but boy does this sweeten the pot,” she said. “And we have a 10-week commitment in Toronto. So there is an afterlife for the play, and that’s exciting.”

The two stars of “La Cage” – Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge – will compete against each other for the actor-musical prize. Their competition will be Sean Hayes, the ambitious young executive in “Promises, Promises”; Chad Kimball, the soul-drenched disc jockey in “Memphis”; and Sahr Ngaujah, the title character in “Fela!”

Among the more unusual twists of the 2010 nominations: Maxwell of “A Royal Family” was also nominated in the featured actress-play category, for her role as an opera singer’s jealous wife in “Lend Me a Tenor.” Competing with Maxwell are Maria Dizzia, “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play”; Rosemary Harris, “The Royal Family”; Jessica Hecht, “A View From the Bridge”; and Scarlett Johansson, “A View From the Bridge.”

“It has been a dream come true to be a part of the Broadway community,” Johansson said. “I am deeply honored to be nominated and so proud to have been a part of this extraordinary production.”

Featured actor in a play nominees included David Alan Grier, “Race”; Stephen McKinley Henderson, “Fences”; Jon Michael Hill, “Superior Donuts”; Stephen Kunken, “Enron”; and Eddie Redmayne as Rothko’s young assistant in “Red.”

Twyla Tharp, who choreographed and conceived the dance musical “Come Fly Away,” set to Frank Sinatra songs, will compete for the best choreography Tony with Rob Ashford, “Promises, Promises”; Bill T. Jones, “Fela!”; and Lynne Page, “La Cage aux Folles.”

Special Tony Awards for lifetime achievement will be given to playwright Alan Ayckbourn (“The Norman Conquests,” a trilogy that won the play-revival Tony last year), and actress Marian Seldes (“A Delicate Balance,” “Equus,” “Deathtrap,” “Three Tall Women”).

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., will receive the regional theater award.

Winners will be announced June 13 during a ceremony televised by CBS from Radio City Music Hall.