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Tony Noms Reach Heights, Head South

Posted by Vogt
at June 3, 2008

The Great White Way is gonna paint the town red tonight.

In the Heights, a musical chronicling a group of immigrant dreamers in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, as backed by a salsa and hip-hop score, received a leading 13 nominations today for the 2008 Tony Awards.

Following close on its Capezio'd heels is Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, the much-heralded first ever Broadway revival of the iconic musical, which earned 11 nods.

But Mel Brooks' latest foray, the hugely hyped yet hugely disappointing musical take on Young Frankenstein, failed to register in any of the major categories, aside from featured-acting nods for supporting players Andrea Martin and Christopher Fitzgerald.

A few big names also made the cut: Laurence Fishburne, Patrick Stewart, Rufus Sewell, Laurie Metcalf, Martha Plimpton, Mary McCormack, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tom S. Epatha Merkerson, Tom "Luke Duke" Wopat and Bobby Cannavale were all singled out with individual acting nominations for their work on the boards.

Rounding out the top musical nominees was Stephen Sondheim's equally iconic Sunday in the Park With George, which follows the life of impressionist painter Georges Seurat during the creation of his famous painting, which earned nine nominations.

The top nominated play, meanwhile, was the Pulitzer Prize-sanctioned August: Osage County, a snapshot of a Midwestern family returning home to care for their manipulative and afflicted mother.

The Tonys, currently in its 62nd year, will air live from Radio City Music Hall on CBS June 15. Whoopi Goldberg will host.

Here's the complete list of nominees:

BEST PLAY

BEST MUSICAL

BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC AND/OR LYRICS)

BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY

BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY

BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL

BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY

BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL

BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A PLAY

BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MUSICAL

BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A PLAY

BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A MUSICAL

BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY

BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY

BEST ORCHESTRATIONS

REGIONAL THEATRE TONY AWARD

SPECIAL TONY AWARD

SPECIAL TONY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE THEATRE

Celebrity Stories
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Gore Verbinski To Leave Pirates of The Caribbean 4? Robert Zemeckis to direct Mars Needs Moms!

Posted by Vogt
at May 24, 2008

Pirates

Johnny Depp has told Disney that he would be willing to return for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, but now word comes that director Gore Verbinski (who helmed the three previous films) is uninterested in helming the project.

“Gore’s sick of pirates. If I wrote a scene that had to be shot on water, he’d run the other way.,” said Mars Needs Moms! author Berkeley Breathed on a recent book tour appearance.

Flawed DogsWhat does he know? Berkeley and Gore have been working together to adapt Breathed’s 2003 children’s book, Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton “Last Chance” Dog Pound into a Computer Animated movie for Disney.

The author also revealed that Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis is attached to direct an adaptation of his latest book.

“Robert Zemeckis is doing the movie version of Mars Needs Moms! They’re working on the script now,” Breathed revealed.

Jim Hill speculates that this could be one of the very first projects to be produced by Disney’s new ImageMovers Digital unit.

Mars Needs Moms!

Here is the book description for Mars Needs Moms!:

Milo doesn’t get it: What’s the big deal about moms? They’re just slavedriving broccoli bullies. Yet they are worshipped the world over! Perhaps even the galaxy over—because here come Martians and they’re after one thing only: moms. Milo’s mom in particular. Who better to drive them to soccer practice and to pizza parties? That’s quite a long way to come for a mom—could it be that Milo has been overlooking something special?

From Pulitzer Prize–winning comic strip creator of Bloom County and bestselling author Berkeley Breathed comes a funny, poignant book about how the unique love that binds our families can be overlooked in the rush and tumble of everyday lives . . . especially those of disgruntled little boys.

Celebrity Film
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Mary-Louise Parker Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Mary-Louise Parker Biography.jpg

A versatile and pretty theater veteran with a distinctive voice and delicate features, Mary-Louise Parker was a well-traveled “army brat” who began her stage career in New York City during the mid-1980s. She earned a 1990 Tony nomination for her performance as a young bride who accidentally swaps souls with an old man in Craig Lucas’ “Prelude to a Kiss” and later picked up an OBIE for her riveting portrayal of a victim of child abuse in Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “How I Learned to Drive” (1997). In between, she essayed roles as diverse as a woman driven to madness by the birth of a deformed child in “Babylon Gardens” (1991), a schemingly ambitious actress in the black comedy “Four Dogs and a Bone” (1993) and the vocally-challenged saloon singer Cherie in a 1996 revival of “Bus Stop”, opposite Billy Crudup. In 1998, Parker won critical kudos as a Cockney dominatrix who overhears a dying man’s confession and attempts to save his victims by traveling back in time in Alan Ayckbourn’s razor-sharp comedy “Communicating Doors”. The actress’ next stage appearance saw her offer an acclaimed turn (which netted her a Tony Award) as a mathematician coping with the legacy of her father in the Pulitzer-winning “Proof.”

Parker made her film debut as an abused girlfriend in “Signs of Life” (1989) and was the best friend of a gay man dealing with the AIDS crisis in “Longtime Companion” (1989), scripted by Lucas and directed by Norman Rene. She had a nice turn as a lonely secretary infatuated with her employer (Kevin Kline) in Lawrence Kasdan’s “Grand Canyon”, but it was her breakthrough part as an abused wife empowered by her friendship with a female cafe owner (Mary Stuart Masterson) in the sleeper “Fried Green Tomatoes” (both 1991) that really opened eyes to her facility for complex characterizations.

Parker continued to build her resume with starring roles in the coming-of-age flick “Naked in New York,” (1994) and opposite Matt Dillon in the gritty romantic comedy “Mr. Wonderful” (1993). After portraying the struggling mother of the adolescent title character in the thriller “The Client” and appearing as John Cusack’s girlfriend in Woody Allen’s popular comedy “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994), Parker was a series of sad and delightful revelations in “Boys on the Side” (1995). Her emotionally compelling turn as a young woman with AIDS recalled her work in “Fried Green Tomatoes” and was easily the best thing about the movie which also starred Whoopi Goldberg and Drew Barrymore.

Reuniting with Norman Rene and Craig Lucas, Parker had a showy supporting part as Scott Glenn’s paraplegic, deaf mute wife in their dark comedy “Reckless” (1995). She next appeared as Nicole Kidman’s compatriot in Jane Campion’s film version of the Henry James novel “The Portrait of a Lady” (1996). After Parker’s awkward but attractive secretary romanced Don Johnson in Roland Jaffe’s comic thriller “Goodbye Lover” (1998), she registered as the wonderfully high strung cake maker with no sense of taste in the 1999 Canadian-made “The Five Senses.”

Besides an early stint on the ABC soap “Ryan’s Hope”, Parker had appeared in only one TV-movie, the WWII drama “Too Young the Hero” (CBS, 1988), prior to her 1994 portrayal of a sullen, chain-smoking, AIDS-stricken mother who after a year’s absence returns to legally reclaim her daughter from the pediatrics nurse-turned-foster parent played by Sissy Spacek in “A Place for Annie” (ABC). Since then, she has turned up frequently on the small screen, beginning with a deft performance as singer Phyllis McGuire in the HBO biopic “Sugartime” (1995). She has seduction on her mind in TNT’s “Legalese” (1998), but her very direct legal assistant developed emotionally as the relationship with a young lawyer in the firm became more than just sex. In top form as a flaky, tragic divorcee in the stylish, yet quirky “Anne Tyler’s ‘Saint Maybe’” (CBS, 1998), she landed in another top-notch TV movie, “The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn” (CBS, 1999), portraying a compassionate psychiatrist whose association with the charming, innocent Sidney Poitier makes her re-evaluate her own priorities. The following year she was an unhappy young woman who finds renewed purpose after falling in love with Peter Gallagher in the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” production “Cupid & Cate” (CBS, 2000).

Also in 2000, Parker began acting in the award-winning play “Proof” starring as Catherine, the enigmatic troubled young woman embroiled in a mathematical mystery. Her performance garnered her a Tony Award for Best Actress in 2001 and in 2002, the role was handed down to Anne Heche. Meanwhile, Parker stayed busy working in television where her role on “The West Wing” as Amy Gardner has been applauded by critics and earned the actress an Emmy nomination in 2002. Also in 2002, Parker filmed the “Red Dragon” with Anthony Hopkins and Ed Norton, the prequel to “Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and “Pipe Dream,” a straight-to-video romantic comedy about a hapless plumber who poses as a director in order to meet women. Then in 2003, she joined the A-list ensemble cast of HBO’s acclaimed TV adaptation of the Tony award-winning “Angels In America,” for which she earned an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie and a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.

Parker next starred in the Lifetime movie, “Miracle Run” (2004), a true story about a mother who struggles to raise two autistic sons. After starring in the Showtime drama, “The Best Thief in the World” (2004), she returned to features with a supporting role in “Saved!” (2004), a timid black comedy set at a fictional Christian high school where a young girl (Jena Malone), seeking acceptance into a popular clique, goes on a mission to save her boyfriend (Chad Faust) who thinks he might be gay. Meanwhile, Parker landed the lead role on “Weeds” (Showtime, 2005- ), a stoner comedy about a widowed suburban mom who maintains her lifestyle after her husband’s sudden death by flooding her idyllic community with high-grade pot. Parker won a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy.

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Selma Blair Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

selma_blair.jpg

After training at The Stella Adler Conservatory, pretty dark-haired actress Selma Blair began her career with a series of small roles on film and television. In 1997 she appeared in small roles in the features “In & Out” and “Arresting Gena”, and had a larger part in the independent “Strong Island Boys”. The following year, Blair acted in the series premiere of the Fox comedy “Getting Personal” and had a featured guest role in the CBS drama “Promised Land” as a troubled teenager with a drinking problem. She appeared in the 1998 USA Network TV-movie “No Laughing Matter” before landing a role in the ensemble of the teen comedy feature “Can’t Hardly Wait” (1998).

Blair had her first starring film role in the thriller “Brown’s Requiem” (1998), the little seen adaptation of crime writer James Ellroy’s first novel, and was chosen to head the cast of the coming-of-age midseason replacement series “Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane” (The WB, 1999-2000), playing Zoe Bean, a witty and blunt Manhattan teenager. She was also tapped for the role of shy Cecile in “Cruel Intentions” (1999), a contemporary reworking of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” set in New York starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe. Later, she was featured as Darcy in the music-themed straight-to-video release, “Girl” (also 1999). In 2001, she gave a memorable performance as an uptight Harvard Law student in the hit comedy “Legally Blonde”. Then Blair created a stir as a college student who writes about a degrading sexual encounter with her Pulitzer Prize-winning professor in Todd Solondz’s dark comedy, “Storytelling” (2002).

In 2003, she joined Jason Lee and Julia Stiles for the inept romantic comedy “A Guy Thing”, in which she was a bride-to-be whose wild child cousin (Stiles) gives her fiancé (Lee) second thoughts. Typically cast as the girl who loses the boy in a romantic triangle, Blair changed course and became a leading lady in the comic book adaptation “Hellboy” (2004), playing Liz Sheridan, a paranormal investigator with formidable pyrotechnic power and the potential paramour for the film’s demonic leading man (Ron Perlman). Less successful was her turn in John Waters’ misfire “A Dirty Shame” (2004), for which she donned enormous fake prosthetic breasts to play an exotic dancer named Ursula Udders. In the critically-lauded corporate comedy-drama from Paul Weitz, “In Good Company” (2004), Blair played the wife of a young corporate hotshot (Topher Grace) who walks out on him and leaves him with nothing.

She next had a turn in the briefly released corporate thriller, “The Deal” (2005), playing a tree-hugging graduate student from Harvard asked by a an associate on a Wall Street (Christian Slater) to join his firm amidst an oil crisis with the Middle East. Then in the teen dark comedy “Pretty Persuasion” (2005), she was the wife of a high school drama school teacher (Ron Livingston) accused of sexual assault by three students with personal axes to grind. She also made a foray into horror with a leading role in the murky 2005 remake of the John Carpenter classic “The Fog.”

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