7 years since Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” began going where no sci-fi franchise has boldly gone before. With the release of “Into Darkness,” director JJ Abrams returns to the series he helped revive in 2009.
The most adorable character on the New York stage this season isn’t a freckle-faced orphan, but a widowed septuagenarian, Carrie Watts, the lead character of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” now showing at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.
Many “American Idol” winners and runners-up are compromised by underwhelming pop tunes that are hastily waxed to cash in on postseason hubris—a lesson that isn’t lost on gravelly voiced Season Nine winner, Lee DeWyze, whose first studio album, 2010’s “Live It Up,” hardly lived up to his followers’ expectations.
There’s a lot of great singing and disco-dancing in “Here Lies Love,” David Byrne, Fatboy Slim and director Alex Timbers’ cautionary musical about former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos (played by Ruthie Ann Miles) that’s currently dazzling audiences at The Public Theatre in New York.
May ushers in a diverse lineup of new releases—from Danny Boyle’s sleek and trippy mind-bender, “Trance,” and Scott Charles Stewart’s creepy chiller, “Dark Skies,” to Joel Lamangan’s ludicrous dramedy, “The Bride and The Lover.” This week’s must-see movie, “At Any Price,” starring Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid, goes beyond genre-dictated, viewer-hooking gimmicks.
Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe—or, more appropriately, Carol Kane and Louisa Bradshaw, who played the legendary actresses—had a lot of gasp-inducing revelations when we watched the stage productions, “The Lying Lesson” and “Siren’s Heart,” in New York.
As he marks his 50th year in the comic-book universe, Iron Man aka Tony Stark comes full circle in the satisfying third installment of Marvel’s blockbuster movie franchise—a remarkable feat that wouldn’t be possible without Robert Downey Jr.
We weren’t surprised when it was reported last December that, with more than 12 million viewers and a billion dollars in revenue, Broadway’s 2011-2012 season had turned out to be its best year ever. Even Hollywood’s superstars and A-listers are making a beeline for New York’s stage productions, hoping that its “unconventional” challenges would boost their thespic stock.
Megan Hilty has made a name for herself on Broadway, playing Glinda the Good Witch in “Wicked” and Doralee Rhodes in “9 to 5: The Musical” to great acclaim. But, for couch potatoes who have yet to discover the heady pleasures of live singing and the legitimate stage, she’s more known as Ivy Lynn, Katharine McPhee’s fiercest competitor on “Smash.”
Our recent trips to New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Chicago included a lot of indelible theatergoing moments—and it’s impossible to pick just one favorite from among the 26 shows we viewed during our 24-day cultural adventure in the United States.
After a phenomenon like “The Twilight Saga,” what do you do for an encore? Even as she continues to appear in big-budget films like the controversial “Snow White and the Huntsman,” Kristen Stewart hasn’t forgotten about her indie roots (“Into the Wild,” “The Runaways”), where she’s proven that she can do more than just whine, sulk and brood.
Get ready to take a roller-coaster ride with Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum as they investigate the issues tackled in the sophisticated thriller, “Side Effects,” said to be retiring director Steven Soderbergh’s final film.
