Sarah Jae Leiber - Page 5

The Tony Award-winning Best Musical “Dear Evan Hansen” is getting the movie musical treatment! BroadwayWorld collected all the information we could about the upcoming film.

After a long, uncertain spring, TV is back, for the most part!

I'm only recently discovering my own musical identity outside of the things I listened to in my parents' cars growing up. I discovered The Secret Sisters around the same time I discovered horror movies, around the same time I discovered a new kind of higher-stakes storytelling. “You Don't Own Me Anymore” was a masterclass in harmony and tension. It was a collection of those kinds of higher-stakes stories; the haunting beauty of a song about murdering your child taught me more about writing a character than pretty much any play or movie or TV show I've ever watched; naming and admonishing Davey White on “He's Fine” showed me an unapologetic way to channel anger and heartbreak. The whole album shrieks unapology, except it's not shrieking; it's speaking quietly but pointedly, in harmony and in unity. The title song is anthemic. It's feminine angst; less loud but more directly expressive than any other album of its kind I'd ever heard.

On February 15th, Our Lady J will return to her musical roots and the New York stage by participating in Lincoln Center's annual American Songbook series. She is also the first out trans person to write in a Hollywood writers' room.

Comicbook.com reports that Taron Egerton and Scarlett Johansson have been offered roles in the upcoming 'Little Shop of Horrors' film remake. Egerton is in talks to play Seymour Krelborn, with Johansson offered the role of Audrey.

Congratulations are in order! 'Hamilton' director Thomas Kail and 'Fosse/Verdon' star Michelle Williams have announced they are engaged to be married - and they are expecting their first child!

A couple weeks ago, Carrie Fisher shut off the lights at a Rise of Skywalker press conference. Someone asked about how Princess Leia would be integrated into the new movie, and JJ Abrams said something about loving Carrie Fisher and something else about lights, and then there were no more lights. It was a spectral technical malfunction, a prank from beyond the grave, something wholly natural in its unnaturalness. Carrie Fisher, who died three years ago on Friday, was indisputably in the room.

Geneses has released “Desire,” a new single off her upcoming EP “Era II.” Listen below!

A group of students has forcibly taken over a theatre space on their college campus. The room hasn't been touched in a year a?' not since a school shooting rocked the very foundation they're playing to, in the middle of a performance of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The survivors have come together to hold a last hurrah: part vigil, part documentary, part call-to-action. See, the building is scheduled for demolition tomorrow a?' and, while they can, the students want to remind their community of what happened and what is at stake if they don't act.

There's definitely an argument against calling “Dirty Dancing” a music movie. It's a dance movie. It's a romance film. It's a chick flick. But “Dirty Dancing” wouldn't be “Dirty Dancing” without its soundtrack, which has sold more than 32 million copies worldwide and won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. Half the charm of “Dirty Dancing” is the way it sells us a romance through the way Baby and Johnny react to music—the other half is Patrick Swayze's sweet, sweet nose crinkle.

When I was in eighth grade, I got my heart super broken by someone whose name I can't even remember offhand. What I can remember is sitting in my bedroom and blasting “You Belong With Me,” crying and shouting the lyrics and waiting to feel less hurt. It's a silly memory, but the feelings were real, and I think about them every single time I hear that song. Music makes you feel good, to be sure⁠—but there are moments where music hurts. There are songs I used to play on repeat that I can't listen to anymore because they're associated with a bad memory, or they're associated with something or someone I used to love. That moment, where music meets memory, is where we meet our protagonist in “Inside Llewyn Davis.” 

Last week's column was tangentially about the crimes of screenwriter/director Richard Curtis. He was a corollary to the central problem, a footnote in a sea of bad representation. This week, I'm going in. I'm not mincing words. Richard Curtis, your time has come.

There is a version of me that loves this movie. She's about 14 years old. She's grooving to the hypnotic rhythms of “PoP! Goes My Heart,” and she's super charmed by Hugh Grant, and she, like Drew Barrymore, is a young writer looking anywhere for her big break. She thinks grand gestures are super romantic, especially if they're musical grand gestures, and she's obsessed with 80s pop music. All of the pieces are here for an instant classic, for a movie that I would defend to the end of my life. 

This article is the first in a new series by Sarah Jae Leiber exploring a?oemusic moviesa?? and all the beauty and frustration that comes with them!

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as William Shakespeare in ALL IS TRUE, a film that uncovers the man behind the bard and speculates on the final years of his life. Branagh is a celebrated actor, director, and writer, and is perhaps best known for his passionate screen adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. Judi Dench and Ian McKellen also star.

The Grammy Awards, airing this Sunday, February 10th, at 8pm, have recognized five exceptional musical theatre cast albums as worthy of inclusion in their annual celebration of the year's best music. They range from original Broadway cast recordings to revival cast recordings to live concert recordings--and they all feature impressive vocal work from some of the theatre world's biggest and brightest stars. Let's meet the nominees.

This week in comedy pulled all the stops--original, emotionally effective episodes abounded on many of the major networks. Love was tested, hearts were broken, romantic comedy tropes were turned on their head. Oh, and there were a lot of laughs. That too.

“The rest of winter” means a return to our favorite shows--some coming back midseason, others beginning a completely new one. Here's a quick recap of some of this week's best and brightest scripted comedies. Spoilers abound.

“This is Us” returned this week after a midterm-elections-related hiatus, providing a more zeroed-in experience than usual. We focus on Vietnam tonight--the experience of it, the aftermath of it, and a son's putting together the pieces of it.

I spent the months leading up to the release of “Bohemian Rhapsody” in a state of awed anxiety. The release of that first trailer triggered something me--I cried every single time I watched it, and I think I watched it upwards of seven thousand times. I was utterly transfixed by the spectacle, by Rami Malek's uncanny resemblance to the man himself. Freddie Mercury: one of the first non-family voices I can remember recognizing distinctly, a singular talent, and a figure who has informed so much of what I care about and who I choose to be. The best singer to ever live, leading one of the greatest rock bands to ever arrive on the scene. An icon, not only for his talent, but for his identities: a non-white, non-heterosexual, non-Christian superstar who reinvented and mastered the game.