THE DEB is a throwback of a musical comedy executed to perfection by director Rebel Wilson. It has a mid-century heart and a modern sensibility combined seamlessly into a rollicking good time that isn’t afraid to drop the F-bomb. Based on the Australian stage play, it makes its transition to the big screen without missing… Read More »
STOP! THAT! TRAIN!
Click here for the flashback interview with director Adam Shankman for ROCK OF AGES. STOP! THAT! TRAIN! continues the fine tradition of AIRPLANE! and POLICE SQUAD delivering so many jokes per second that the sheer volume becomes the best joke of all. That’s saying a great deal for a film that is a drag queen… Read More »
ANACONDA
Ever since TROPIC THUNDER, I have longed to see Jack Black once again running through a jungle in a state of hysteria. I love that film and I have similarly good feelings about his return to the jungle in ANACONDA. I have been using “Don’t judge me”, his plaintive cry during a fraught moment in… Read More »
WICKED: FOR GOOD
The one thing you can say about WICKED: FOR GOOD without fear of contradiction is that there is a lot of it. Not just the running time, which feels like so much more than 138 minutes, but in the Rococo exuberance of the production design. So much production design. It goes beyond mere attention to… Read More »
HURRY UP TOMORROW
The phrase that floats to mind most relentlessly while watching HURRY UP TOMORROW is self-indulgent. The film, which follows a musician over the course of a fraught few days, lingers insistently on its star, Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd, a handsome man with a fine stage presence caught in a script he co-authored that seeks… Read More »
WICKED
There is nothing quite so thrilling as a revisionist theory of a well-known story when it works, and no better example of that than WICKED. First a book, then a theatrical musical, it has now made its way to the silver screen giving us The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the… Read More »
AMERICAN DREAMS (WAS DEMOCRACY JUST A DREAM?) from the San Francisco Mime Troupe
Click here for the interview with Andre Amarotico. The San Francisco Mime Troupe once again comes through with a thought-provoking musical comedy about the state of the nation with AMERICAN DREAMS (WAS DEMOCRACY JUST A DREAM?). The tripartite focus is on what the fallout will be from the 2024 election, and what is happening now… Read More »
MUSICA
Rudy Mancuso (played by . . . Rudy Mancuso) lives in a slightly different universe than the rest of us. Where we hear the rumble of city life, Rudy hears rhythm and music. Where we see people going about their daily lives, Rudy sees syncopated choreography. And that’s the universe that Mancuso, as director and… Read More »
MEAN GIRLS: THE MUSICAL
As we are warned in the opening number of MEAN GIRLS, this is a cautionary tale of lust, greed, and corruption. What we are not warned about is the seductive power of being the eponymous Queen Bee of the high school clique hierarchy. That is the real story, though screenwriter Tina Fey, who co-stars as… Read More »
BREAKDOWN
As summer comes to a close, so does the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s 2023 season of free live performances of its scathingly scintillating production of BREAKDOWN. This year, you can also enjoy it as VOD here through 9/4, password PowerToThePeople!, yes the exclamation point is part of the password). Every year the Troupe takes on… Read More »