Stay updated with breaking news from Herbert Ross. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Sure, big-budget road-show musicals are on their way out. But that's no reason to dislike them on principle, and some of the silliest reviews of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" have criticized it for costing too much. That would make sense if the millions had been spent to buy vulgarity (as they were in "Star!") or offensive overproduction ("Camelot").
Stephen Sondheim, titan of the American musical, is dead at 91
He was the theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century and the driving force behind some of Broadway’s most beloved and celebrated shows.
I attended the world premiere of Paul Cox's "The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky" in September 2001 at the Toronto Film Festival. It was not a serene event. The film started very late, some audience members found it difficult, and there were walk-outs and even audible complaints. Cox took the microphone afterward to castigate those who had left (and could therefore not hear him) and to explain passionately why he had made the film.
"Funny Lady" is a big, messy flop of a movie that's almost cruel in the way it invites our memories of "Funny Girl" and doesn't match them. It's the sequel, of course, giving us Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice in the years after she divorced the gambler Nicky Arnstein, married the showman Billy Rose and lost touch with whatever it was that excited us in the earlier movie.