(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)
Musicals have been an absolute staple of Hollywood pretty much ever since people started selling tickets to watch moving pictures on a large screen. But, like every other tried and true genre in filmmaking, it has had its ups and downs. There was, at one point, a tremendously long down period for musicals, roughly from the '70s up through the early 2000s, where several other trends dominated multiplexes, leaving song and dance pictures largely out in the cold.
Be that as it may, everything seems to come back around again eventually. For musicals, that happened 20 years ago when Rob Marshall made his feature directorial debut. Marshall is the man who brought the long-running stage musical "Chicago" to the big screen, and...
Musicals have been an absolute staple of Hollywood pretty much ever since people started selling tickets to watch moving pictures on a large screen. But, like every other tried and true genre in filmmaking, it has had its ups and downs. There was, at one point, a tremendously long down period for musicals, roughly from the '70s up through the early 2000s, where several other trends dominated multiplexes, leaving song and dance pictures largely out in the cold.
Be that as it may, everything seems to come back around again eventually. For musicals, that happened 20 years ago when Rob Marshall made his feature directorial debut. Marshall is the man who brought the long-running stage musical "Chicago" to the big screen, and...
- 12/31/2022
- by Ryan Scott
- Slash Film
At first glance, Netflix's new original series Ginny & Georgia can be seen as the modern Gilmore Girls, or, as the titular Georgia Miller (portrayed by Brianne Howey) unabashedly puts it, "We are like the Gilmore girls, but with bigger boobs." The show follows the story of a single mother, Georgia, and her two kids - a teenage daughter, Ginny (played by Antonia Gentry), and her sweet 9-year-old half-brother, Austin (Diesel La Torraca) - as they try to fit into a picturesque New England town, Wellsbury, Ma, in a bid to escape the horrors of Georgia's past. While the central premise is highly reminiscent of Amy Sherman-Palladino's comforting dramedy brimful with witty back-and-forth, Ginny & Georgia, for most parts, paves its own path as it injects several themes and plot points into the story, including a high school musical, "Sing Sing: A Musical of Love Behind Bars."
Ginny's...
Ginny's...
- 3/1/2021
- by Divya Meena
- Popsugar.com
“Women will understand!” read one of the many various taglines associated with The Story of Temple Drake, the pre-code rape and revenge talkie the release of which, despite its box office success, pushed Hollywood into the vicious enforcement of the Production code a year later, the moral censorship developed in 1930 which would plague American cinema until its complete collapse at the end of the 1960s. But would they (women) understand? And if so, what exactly is Faulkner’s treatment (here adapted by Oliver H.P. Garrett and Maurine Dallas Watkins) saying about women, or at least a certain kind of ‘woman’ as this is a tale preoccupied with rich, desirable, privileged (i.e.,…...
- 1/8/2020
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die. This week’s Old Ass Movie celebrates one of the funniest flicks about capital punishment ever made. Roxie Hart takes the wrap for killing her lover so she can make it big in Chicago. Her smooth-talking lawyer promises to get her off and get her out on the town as a starlet, and everyone from the judge to the press seems to be in on the gag. What? You trust everything you read in the papers? What’s a newspaper? Go look it up first and come back to discover how funny hanging someone can be. Roxie Hart (1942) Directed By: William A. Wellman Written By: Nunnally Johnson, adapted from the play “Chicago” by Maurine Dallas Watkins Starring: Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, William Frawley, and Lynne Overman In a modern context, Roxie Hart...
- 3/27/2011
- by Cole Abaius
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
A look at what's new on DVD today:
"Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy"
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Released by Universal Home Entertainment
Yes, we're finally getting the footage of the original Marty McFly, Eric Stoltz, for the first time, but for many simply having the hi-def version of Robert Zemeckis' time-travel franchise will be good enough. Commentaries, deleted scenes, a full-length documentary and much, much more come on this new set of the trilogy.
"Alien Anthology"
Directed by Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Released by Fox Home Entertainment
While not as much of an upgrade over its previous DVD release as "Back to the Future," the Blu-ray update of the four "Alien" films worth owning now boasts isolated scores for each film, all of Ridley Scott's sketches for the first "Alien," the uncut documentary of David Fincher's ill-fated "Alien 3" as...
"Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy"
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Released by Universal Home Entertainment
Yes, we're finally getting the footage of the original Marty McFly, Eric Stoltz, for the first time, but for many simply having the hi-def version of Robert Zemeckis' time-travel franchise will be good enough. Commentaries, deleted scenes, a full-length documentary and much, much more come on this new set of the trilogy.
"Alien Anthology"
Directed by Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Released by Fox Home Entertainment
While not as much of an upgrade over its previous DVD release as "Back to the Future," the Blu-ray update of the four "Alien" films worth owning now boasts isolated scores for each film, all of Ridley Scott's sketches for the first "Alien," the uncut documentary of David Fincher's ill-fated "Alien 3" as...
- 10/26/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
The big question about Chicago (1927), the first version of the famous play which later gave us Ginger Rogers as Roxie Hart and, ahem, some other people in a musical, is, "Did credited director Frank Urson really direct it, or is producer Cecil B. DeMille the film's true controller?"
I'm inclined to credit Urson, although I haven't seen any of his other fourteen films (he never made it into talkies, dying in 1928 just as the writing became visible on the wall, and the actors started reading it aloud). Possibly because the film's too good. But it certainly has a DeMille touch about it too, notably a reveling in sinful excess, followed by a bludgeoning morality play ending. Anybody who's enjoyed the crawling hypocrisy of a DeMille bible story will recognize the same mentality in Jazz Age drag.
Phyllis Haver is Roxie Hart, the most convincing if not the most charming embodiment of that particular fictionalized person.
I'm inclined to credit Urson, although I haven't seen any of his other fourteen films (he never made it into talkies, dying in 1928 just as the writing became visible on the wall, and the actors started reading it aloud). Possibly because the film's too good. But it certainly has a DeMille touch about it too, notably a reveling in sinful excess, followed by a bludgeoning morality play ending. Anybody who's enjoyed the crawling hypocrisy of a DeMille bible story will recognize the same mentality in Jazz Age drag.
Phyllis Haver is Roxie Hart, the most convincing if not the most charming embodiment of that particular fictionalized person.
- 9/2/2010
- MUBI
Chicago, the restored 1927 silent (unofficially) directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring perky Phyllis Haver (right, with Victor Varconi) as Roxie Hart, is being released on DVD by Flicker Alley, in collaboration with The Blackhawk Films Collection. The 2002 Chicago remake, based on Bob Fosse’s musical which itself was taken from Maurine Watkins‘ stage play, starred Renee Zellweger (as Roxie), Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere. It was a good-sized box-office and critical hit. Directed by Rob Marshall from a screenplay by Bill Condon (who’ll next be directing The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn), Chicago won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Zeta-Jones). I’m probably in the minority here, but I thought the Chicago remake was all [...]...
- 5/19/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Mint Theater Company today announced that its second offering of the season, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins (the author of Chicago, the play upon which the musical is based), directed by Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank, will begin as scheduled on Wednesday, November 18th, with opening night set for December 7th at the Lucille Lortel Theater (121 Christopher Street). Kristen Johnston, two-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in "3rd Rock from the Sun," will perform the role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy, played by Anna Chlumsky (My Girl films).
- 12/3/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Mint Theater Company will present a reading of the backstage farce, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins on Monday, June 8th at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street). Kristen Johnston, three-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in "Third Rock from the Sun" will read the leading role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy.
- 6/6/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Mint Theater Company will present a reading of the backstage farce, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins on Monday, June 8th at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street). Kristen Johnston, three-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in "Third Rock from the Sun" will read the leading role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy.
- 5/13/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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