Roger Ebert News

Prior to BOOK OF MORMON's release in 2011, nuns were easily the most scrutinized religious organization in the entertainment industry. On Broadway, there's THE SOUND OF MUSIC, NUNSENSE, and AGNES OF GOD to name a few while Hollywood has given us a convent full of films with Sisters making appearances in a diverse array of movies including NUNS ON THE RUN, THE BLUES BROTHERS, DOUBT, DEAD MAN WALKING, and A CHANGE OF HABIT among others. There have been singing nuns, flying nuns, pregnant nuns, baby-delivering nuns, justice-seeking nuns, and Nazi-fighting nuns. Producers and directors, need an eccentric religious figure? Get ye to a convent.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra announces a performance of the classic film Casablanca with live orchestral accompaniment at Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown on February 11. The Orchestra also presents the film concert in Newark and New Brunswick as previously announced.

Music is your number one empathizer. Every genre, every song, and every lyric to me represents different people to depend on to find solace or simply as an escapade from ennui. Especially since I associate much of my musical erudition with my parents' and grandparents' upbringing classics along with the new music I grew up with, you're exposed to a whole universe of magic that can really cheer you up at any given time. It's also something I take to heart since I've sung throughout my life and just always look further than just how music makes me feel, such as analyzing the instruments utilized or how harmonies were built to make a fabulous syncopation, and blah-blah-BLAH. I shan't bore you with that since I'm not a music teacher. But, I revel in the fact that music can solely convert itself into an act of leisure to a lengthy encyclopedia of rhythms that I must observe and then learn from.

OPERA UCLA will present the virtual livestream World Premiere of Cesare, Child of Night from composer and film/TV orchestrator Jonathan Beard (Respect, King Richard, Zack Snyder's Justice League, and The Mandalorian) on Sunday, October 31 at 11:00 PM EDT (8:00 PM PDT), presented by UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music.

Raue Center’s diva in residence, Lynne Jordan, weaves a magic spell just in time for Halloween! See Jordan’s special brand of storytelling, raw humor, and performance that has made her a favorite daughter of Chicago for over 30 years on October 30 at 8 pm.

The award-winning Equity professional East Lynne Theater Company presents two events in time for Halloween: 'Nosferatu,' the 1922 silent classic horror film, accompanied by Wayne Zimmerman on the organ on Friday, October 22 at 7:00p.m., and 'Poe by Candlelight' on Saturday, October 23 at 8:00p.m. Both are being presented at The Cape May Presbyterian Church, 500 Hughes Street in Cape May, where the theater is in residence.

Raue Center announces its new Artist Residency Program with the appointment of vocalist Lynne Jordan for the 2021-2022 Season! This new, groundbreaking, year-long residency will allow us to explore Lynne's artistry through a series of 5 concerts, recorded interviews, talkbacks, etc. 

Late Summer Night’s Shakespeare features the cast of Raue Center actors and performers as they drop some knowledge, perform selected scenes and monologues, and share fun and frolic with an evening of Shakespeare. Bringing the Bard to the burbs in an interactive exploration of language and art September 4 and 11. 

Marginal MediaWorks' Founder & CEO Sanjay Sharma today announced the company's official expansion into premium scripted series with “Hummingbird,” an hour long, LatinX genre series.  In a competitive bidding situation, the series was sold to Amazon Studios.

All Light, Everywhere is an exploration of the shared histories of cameras, weapons, policing and justice. As surveillance technologies become a fixture in everyday life, the film interrogates the complexity of an objective point of view, probing the biases inherent in both human perception and the lens. 

IFC Films announced today that they will be digitally releasing Claude Lanzmann’s landmark Holocaust documentary SHOAH on March 2, 2021, marking the first time that the film will be available to own digitally and for rent in the United States and Canada. 

The American Musical Theatre was built on great songwriters whose names can't be said without their partners'. OKLAHOMA!, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and CINDERELLA might as well be credited to one hyphenated name, Rodgers-and-Hammerstein. Today, they take a look at some equally inseparable duos with an emphasis on Lerner & Loewe and their masterpiece, CAMELOT.

How many exclamation points is too many? On Monday's episode of THE BROADWAY GINGER PODCAST, hosts Sally and Ashley explore the answer through the eyes of Lionel Bart, composer and lyricist of OLIVER!

Fear isn't a part of life. It's essential to life. It's one of the foundational emotions which underpins a thousand others. It steers us clear of danger, helps concentrate the mind, and inspires our most boundless and intoxicating creativity.

BAYARD: A New Musical will be presented as part of a four night festival featuring original musicals by Richard Allen and Taran Gray. The virtual festival raises money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA) and Broadway for Racial Justice (BFRJ). 

 The 22nd Annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival, co-founded and hosted by Chaz Ebert and also known as 'Ebertfest”, announced today that this year's event has been cancelled due to the situation with the coronavirus (COVID-19) and has been rescheduled for April 14-17, 2021, and will take place at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign, IL.  The festival was informed by the University of Illinois that all University sponsored events with more than 50 attendees will be suspended indefinitely, effective Friday, March 13.

Today, Clem Snide, the moniker of Eef Barzelay, shares 'Don't Bring No Ladder,' the new single from his first album in five years, Forever Just Beyond, out on March 27 via Ramseur Records/Thirty Tigers. Barzelay has also added new tour dates where the band will be joined by Forever Just Beyond producer Scott Avett.

Raue Center For The Arts has announced the return of one of the world's great blues harmonica masters, writer of unusual songs, composer and pioneer of music that takes audiences to places they have never been before! Blues, jazz and classical musical will mingle with Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues featuring two-time Grammy Award-winning saxophone icon, Ernie Watts, and bodacious vocal diva, Lynne Jordan, at 8 p.m. on February 29, 2020.

Clem Snide will release their new album Forever Just Beyond on March 27 via Ramseur Records/Thirty Tigers. Produced by Scott Avett, Eef Barzelay's stunning new album under the Clem Snide moniker may just be the most miraculous of them all.

San Francisco Ballet has announced Cathy Marston's next creation for the Company: Mrs. Robinson, inspired by the 1960s American novella and film The Graduate and re-told from the perspective of Mrs. Robinson, one of America's most notorious seductresses. Mrs. Robinson is Marston's second work for the Company; her ballet Snowblind, based on Edith Wharton's novella Edith Frome, premiered to critical acclaim at the Company's 2018 Unbound: A Festival of New Works, with repeat performances in the 2019 Repertory Season and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Mrs. Robinson will premiere March 24, 2020 at the War Memorial Opera House on Program 05: Ballet Accelerator, which also includes Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson's 7 For Eight and David Dawson's Anima Animus. Performances will run through April 4, 2020.