Predictions for the year 2020

I've had it with year-end wrap-ups. It's all about the future, people! Jeff and I sat down over a bottle of Jameson and came up with our top entertainment predictions for the year 2020.

BY THE YEAR 2020:

Christian Bale will win an Oscar (for a role in which he uses his native Welsh accent).

Will Smith will win an Oscar for a daring, controversial role (Brokeback style).

Zac Efron will win an Oscar, following in the footsteps of teen hunks like Ryan Phillipe and Heath Ledger.

Lindsay Lohan will get her act together and begin a prolific career as the next Meryl Streep.

Tom Hanks will win one more Oscar.

Tom Cruise will accidentally come out of the closet during a live interview with Anderson Cooper.

Nicole Kidman will gain 30 pounds for a role and win the Oscar.

Alicia Silverstone will host a season of The Biggest Loser.

Patrick Swayze will make one more comeback, with an amazing, Oscar-nominated performance as a drug dealer.

Jamie Lynn Spears will have an incredible music career and become the queen of pop.

Christopher Meloni will win a Golden Globe for a comedic performance in a mini-series.

Mary-Kate Olsen will get serious, and win two consecutive Golden Globes for dramatic performance in a television series.

Tina Fey will be the new Steve Martin, writing both drama and comedy for film, television, novels, and whatever she likes. People will beg her to run for office, but she will refuse.

A cast member on a season of MTV's The Real World will commit suicide during the show's filming.

The Spice Girls will make a jukebox musical.

Catherine Zeta-Jones will make her Broadway musical debut and receive a Tony nod.

Hugh Jackman will win won more Tony.

Zoe Kazan will win an Oscar AND a Tony.

Claire Danes will also win an Oscar and a Tony, but her Evening co-star Mamie Gummer will receive neither.

A list of celebrities who have peaked and will never match their previous height, but still continue to chug along: Julia Roberts, Annette Bening, Jennifer Hudson, Angelina Jolie, Abigail Breslin.

A list of celebrities we will never hear from again: Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men, Lance Bass, James Van der Beek, Ashley Olsen.

Facts:

Leonardo DiCaprio will be 45 years old.

Jamie Lynn Spears' baby will be 11 years old.

Sarah Jessica Parker will be 54 (but her face will look exactly the same as it does today)

I must be losing it.

ABC is showing The Sound of Music, and every scene makes me cry! I love Julie Andrews! I love Christopher Plummer! My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees! I love musicals!

Sunday To Do

Why don't you watch the fantastic film Once, and then download the soundtrack and listen to it with a nice cup of peppermint tea? I swear to god it is a perfect remedy for the wounded, deflated, or exhausted artistic soul.

The Little Mermaid: So How Bad Is It?

Oh it's bad. So bad, I missed In My Life. Essentially, Disney Theatricals has sunk its rabid teeth into The Little Mermaid, infected it with a terrible disease, and is forcing the maimed, grotesque beast of a show to go on despite being only a shadow of it's glorious former self.

As I watched in shock and horror, I longed for the adorable cartoon I loved in my youth. My heart ached to hear the same refrains that had given me such happiness - but this is not the same The Little Mermaid I loved so well. No, little Moxie, avert your eyes! This Little Mermaid is too sick to be saved, and if anyone at Disney had a heart, they'd put it out of its misery.

To list all that is horribly, horribly wrong with this production would turn this blog into a short novel. Here are just a few highlights:

- The ugliest, most non-sensical sets I've ever seen. I still don't know what all the plastic crap on that stage was supposed to be. Waves? Trees? No idea. Plenty of photos here.

- Humiliating costumes for the poor actors. The mermaid sisters' tails are so out of control, they hit each other in the face whenever they turn around. Norm Lewis looks like the toast of Coney Island. And Heidi Blickenstaff, I'm so sorry they did that to you. You are fabulous and everyone knows it.

- An uninspired, boring book by Doug Wright, delivered with utter lifelessness by a cast who I know can do better. Did they spend any rehearsal time on acting, or character? WTF? And yeah, Sherie Renee Scott is supertalented, but I cringed watching her with those awful, awkward tentacles. Terrible.

- Heelys. They don't look like they're swimming, they look like they're skating. Which makes the whole thing look like exactly what it is: Disney on Ice on Crack.

- They've taken some of the best great Disney songs and staged them with all the conviction of a shitty theme park ride. Under The Sea is mostly about a dancer shakin' it in a day-glo unitard. Kiss The Girl involves giant plastic spinning things, and a frog puppet that likely got rejected by Toys 'R' Us.

To make things even more maddening, there are a number of glaring solutions to the show's problems. For example, would it kill them to use some puppets? The actors are costumed as vague, bizarre ideas of sea creatures, and it is not working. Is that a seahorse? Or a crab? I saw eight-year-olds cocking their heads sideways, thinking, "what is that?" Hey, Disney, I don't know if you've heard of it, but there was this musical that really turned heads a few years back, it is called The Lion King.

As pissed as I am at Disney for being the embodiment of corporate evil in the theater, you can't watch this show and not blame director Francesca Zambello. From top to bottom the thing is a total mess, and what is most dramatically lacking is a cohesive directorial vision. I'm sure that many will have much to say at where she went wrong, but all I can say is failure, failure, failure. It is an utter failure. She has failed everyone who loved that movie.

**It is definitely worth noting, in spite of everything, that Sierra Boggess is a great Ariel. The best part of the show are the minutes she spends alone onstage, and when she sings "Part of Your World" it is, for a minute or two, magical.

What I'm Listening To: Wilco

Wilco's latest album, Sky Blue Sky. It's so beautiful, melancholy yet upbeat and uplifting. It plays like all the great records that end up going perfectly with anything. The quirky Wilco-isms that obfuscate their earlier stuff has been melted away, and the result this awesome whole record of crystal clear, really elegant rock songs. Definitely worth picking up as a last-minute christmas present or cashing in on that itunes gift card.

Happy Holiday Cheery Time, Etc.

My my my. It was like NaBloPoMo ended and everything else in my life suddenly demanded ALL of my attention. Here's the basic layout of my life for the past couple weeks. Work: insanely busy. Personal life: total mess (that's me up there). Family: still no presents bought yet. Blog: neglected. Help! But now I'm home, still wearing pj's at 4:15pm, and happy to be back in Moxie mode after a pretty anemic month on the blog. Thanks to the two readers from Chattanooga and Kalamazoo who are still reading (really, thanks guys).

Here are a few updates on what's been going on while I've been crazy:

I was wrong about something! Zoe Kazan is still in Come Back, Little Sheba. I guess the dates for the Justice League movie must have gotten pushed, allowing her to participate in both. Nobody's seen a script for the movie, so it's quite possible that one hasn't even been written yet, and they'll have to wait for the WGA strike to end for production to move forward. If anybody has actually seen a script (or single piece of dialogue) from the film, let me know.

I still haven't seen August: Osage County, so all you snobs can just click over to the REAL theater blogs right now. I did catch I Am Legend though! And it fucking rocked. Well the first 3/4 of the movie did, and then it goes to crap. Don't get your hopes too high as far as plot and themes go, but it is absolutely worth seeing for two things: Will Smith's performance (I don't care how beloved he is, he is still a hugely underrated actor, oscar nom and all. Underrated.), and the incredible art direction and composition. OH! And the dog. My god I love that dog. Somebody get me a german shepard for christmas, k?

Also caught Enchanted, which isn't lying with that title; it is enchanting! It will make you swoon, sing, smile, and believe in love again! Amy Adams is a delight. For the first time in over a decade, disney has created a film that has all the magic of a great fairy tale, and has also - here's the real achievement - managed to update the old misogynistic ways of those tales, and spin a yarn that incorporates some of the imperfect complexities of true love. Great flick to take your family to over the holidays, and loads of fun appearances from the bway people (many of whom have recorded great disney songs in the past): Judy Kuhn, Tonya Pinkins, Jodi Benson (!!), and more. My only qualm: Idina Menzel. She is a hugely talented, beautiful actress who just doesn't look good in close-up. It's not her fault, and I truly wish it wasn't the case, but she just should stick to stage, or make really sure that makeup softens her up next time she does film, because she looks SO severe in this.

Couple thoughts on Rock 'n' Roll

I know Rock 'n' Roll is supposed to be, like, the crowning achievement of Tom Stoppard or something, but I gotta come out and say it: I was kinda bored. I don't think I was missing a major piece of the puzzle - I just felt ambivalent about a lot of what was happening up there. Okay, ambivalent about the first act, less so about the second act. I saw the show on it's first night back from the stagehands strike, so it might have been a little off or something, but I just didn't click with it the way that it seems like everybody else does.

My first complaint: I'm going to seem extremely dense saying this, but it sort of seemed like the use of the actual Rock 'n' Roll (between the scenes, not within the plot) played like an old dude's nostalgic mix CD. I know Pink Floyd, I love Pink Floyd, I get it. What's your point? I mean, I get the point - it's legendary, ground breaking, incredible, revolutionary. Yes, of course it was. But, what's your point?

And even though the performances were really, really great (especially Rufus Sewell, fucking incredible performance that made me miss British acting terribly), I didn't see any reason to care about the trademark Stoppardian philosophical debates of the play. With Coast of Utopia, the characters were so invested in the philosophies they were discussing - their lives and their country hinged on it, they were practically on fire with the passion they had for the subject. I mean that's why Billy Crudup won his Tony, right? Rock 'n' Roll, on the other hand, spends a lot of time with an aging professor who still believes in communism after everybody else moves on, and another man whose soul lives in music more than politics. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But it's just not very interesting to me to watch those kind of characters go through multiple looong conversations about politics and philosophy. Especially when I feel like I just got 9 hours of similar debates better-achieved in Coast of Utopia. Move on!

The rest of the play, all the stuff about family, love, trust, all of that I loved. In fact, the second act was way more engaging than the first because of how much more it focuses on those themes. Why do we need an hour and a half of philosophy to justify focusing in on matters of the heart? I can't help feeling that in Rock 'n' Roll, the long philosophical debates are nothing than the crutch that Stoppard just can't abandon.

Review: Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary Valentine

You can't argue with the fact that we've got a lot of damn fine theater going on in New York right now. I really hope Doris to Darlene doesn't slip between the cracks, because it's one of the best plays I've seen recently, even if it's not as earth-quaking as some of the high-drama stuff that's getting the spotlight right now.

Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary Valentine is a real ensemble piece, following the entirely distinct yet inextricably linked stories of varyingly fictional characters such as composer Richard Wagner, 60's girl-group star Darlene, and a present-day teenage music lover. The playwright, Jordan Harrison, weaves the three stories together so delicately that further plot description feels altogether beside the point - suffice it to say that Doris to Darlene is my favorite type of play: the kind that makes the audience feel emboldened to somehow get in there. Leaving the theater, I wanted to run home and listen to Wagner and 60's girl groups, and reconnect with that one high school teacher who I'm convinced really got it, without ever saying a word. It also just kinda made me want to be friends with Jordan Harrison, but that's another story.

The play itself is funny and compelling, and deeply moving without ever feeling pretentious or gooey. Harrison's play is an achievement, but the delicacy of it's message would be easily lost without the graceful, economical production surrounding it. The scenes are seamlessly woven together by way of two turntables that allow us to flow from one scene to the next with minimal effort and minimal distraction in shifting the focus between the stories. Designers Takeshi Kata, Jane Cox, Christal Weatherly, and Darron L West deserve so much credit for their work here.

The actors are uniformly fantastic, expertly cast and sensitively directed by Les Waters. Tom Nelis's performance is brutally truthful, hilarious, and heartbreaking. de'Adre Aziza is a perfect, effortless Darlene (look for her in Passing Strange, she was phenomenal in that, too). I was so psyched to see Tobias Segal, who was awesome and adorable in Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen, and proves here that he's going to be a force to be reckoned with in the camp of the young gawky actors - I predict indie film snatches him right up. Is it me, or does Les Waters have a way of accessing the unique beauty and truth in the actors he works with, and allowing that uniqueness to shine? I felt the same way watching Eurydice - his work leaves so much air and space for such sensitive performances.

So, to sum up, I know you're probably perspiring to get your hands on tickets for August: Osage County right now, but please also venture further west on 42nd street, cause Playwrights Horizons has got that good sweet stuff, too.

I. Love. Her. So. Much.

My lady love Eva Green on the next Bond movie:

"I don't know who the Bond girl's gonna be. I'm a bit jealous! I hope it will be terrible."

(via vulture)

Fuerzabruta

Seeing Fuerzabruta is like going to the best dance club in the world - except you don't do much dancing, and you don't need drugs to feel the exciting whirlwind of raw emotion and force swirling all around you.

When I've said this to people who saw the original De La Guarda show, they all respond with, "Oh! So it's like the last show." Apparently, but I recommend seeing it whether you saw De La Guarda or not. Everybody should witness the energy, spark, and deep human connectivity going on in that wild house every night. If you're curious about the title, it means "brute force".

Check out their website for amazing video of some of the crazy, awesome, beautiful shit they do.