AMERICAN SNIPER keeps firing shots heard round the world. The film's impact has been reverberating ever since its opening weekend--continuing to dominate the box office, breaking box office records (though it was just ex- Sponged from the top slot this weekend by Mr. Squarepants) and igniting a firestorm of controversy among pundits, critics, movie stars, and the public. The movie directed [...]
Here's my take on the Oscar-nominated best-actresses and the movies they star in, STILL playing at a theater near you! See them before the Oscars are handed out on 2/22! TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT Marion Cotillard (Best Actress Oscar winner for LA VIE EN ROSE) stars in “Two Days, One Night” (in French with English subtitles), her glamor (but not her luminosity) tamped [...]
What to see now ONSTAGE? There are a slew of good productions playing, and I am going to give you thumbnail reviews to catch up and let you know where I think your time is best spent beginning with the following DO NOT MISS SHOW: --The miraculous BEDLAM'S ST. JOAN presented by Underground Railway Theater and directed by Eric Tucker [...]
Fiddlehead Theatre Company is giving away 5 PAIRS of tickets to the opening night of The Wiz exclusively through Joyce's Choices! THE WIZ runs from Feb. 13-22nd at the historic Strand Theatre. Enter to win! The Wiz is a modern re-telling of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum that sets Dorothy's adventures in the Land of Oz to music in a [...]
Two nights ago at Boston's Opera House MOTOWN The Musical moved everything-- except me. Sets, settings, singers, dancers, plot lines: race, romance, business, music, internal politics-- it's all up there onstage. Here come the Supremes! What's goin' on with Marvin? Who are these Jackson kids? Smokey is a daily miracle. They're dancing in the streets--Martha and her Vandellas, Gladys and her PIPS! Look out-- [...]
SELMA puts you there--right in the middle of the racism at the heart of these United States. Many of us lived it in the sixties, in the deep south with its segregated restaurants, hotels, and water fountains, and later, on television where the rest of us watched the local vitriol boil over and onto the world stage as the great [...]
The race is on! Actor Chris Pine and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs have let loose the 2015 Oscar nominations! Who's in? Who's out? Here are the top five categories and my very preliminary two cents worth! BEST PICTURE (including total number of nominations for each) Birdman (9) The Grand Budapest Hotel (9) The Imitation Game (8) Boyhood [...]
One can just imagine what the late Molly Ivins' reaction to the murder of French journalists by islamic terrorists bent on silencing Charlie Hebdo's brand of political satire might have been. The late Texas liberal journalist, political humorist/commentator and thorn in the side of those who would, by design or their own imbecility, stifle our [...]
BOYHOOD: Richard Linklater's extraordinary "12 years a film" feat! He directed the same cast over a dozen years and captured the ephemeral truth about one boy's childhood and growing up in a broken home. It's a "meta" experience for filmgoers who watch the actors and the characters they play, age on camera over time, while the boy played by the soulful Ellar Coltrane--expressive and [...]
There's a world premiere onstage right now at SpeakEasy Stage Company that rattled my cage; in fact, it's staged in a cage, the audience peering in from either side as NECESSARY MONSTERS took shape before us. Award- winning actor/playwright John Kuntz and award-winning director David R. Gammons along with a cast of Boston's best actors have [...]
