The movie's message and character motivations are deliberately vague and fuzzy as well: Frank, presented as a tragic hero, is almost certainly its villain in the most proper sense. Brad, our hero, is indeed a misogynistic asshole. Everything is topsy-turvy.

I think it depends on where and who it's taking place. I've seen really bad, disruptive and witless audience participation; but I'm also a thirteen-year alumni of the local live stage version, and the vibe with the audience is explicitly MST3K inspired. The audience- and even the performers, will boo any hacky…

That's not from smiling!
"And your children turn on you! (And turn you on!) Oh, Rocky's behaving just the way Eddie did! (Straight?) Maybe I made a mistake splitting the brains between the two of them. (Shoulda saved some for Trump!)"

If you believe the dream sequence, Brad's one of the few people in the mansion she DOESN'T run train on.

Curry seems to be the only person to ever play Frank with the understanding that this character is a predator and not a seducer. Like, he rapes a whole lot of people, sexually harasses everyone in his vicinity, and plays the victim every chance he gets. He's more Frank Underwood than Freddie Mercury, but because he…

Ideally I'd dig into both the big hits and the weirder collaborations. If I had the whole Williams catalogue at my disposal, I know there are obvious places for the big hits, but also some left-field choices (both of his Daft Punk collaborations fit both the plot/characters and the style).
For example, isn't it funny…

The early days of the Disney Renaissance musicals were extremely Broadway-oriented: Brad Kane, Paige O'Hara and especially Jodi Benson (who had been in Howard Ashman's beauty pageant tragicomedy "Smile" as a neglected beauty who has made Disneyland her moral center) were Broadway performers known for their ability to…

I'm doing a Complete Shakespeare Read for 2016- I have my Oxford Complete in iBooks, and it has his shows in chronological order. I'm not quite halfway through yet, but I plan to binge if need be. My biggest lesson so far is that no one is infallible: even Shakey wrote a few clunkers.

Yeah I have mixed feelings about the musical. When I saw it it's a great deal of fun, but the aesthetic it shot for was "deliberately stupid and paper thin." It's too meta in the old-fashioned Crosby-Hope "road movies" way. Nothing has any weight, the characters are clearly in on the joke, and everything is just a…

True Showbiz Tales #10: I am actually trying to get the rights to the stage version of "Phantom of the Paradise," with the intent of filling some of the void in the rather short screenplay with other Williams songs and collaborations. Unfortunately there is a lot of red tape; the movie's stage rights went to someone…

One of my favorite pieces of trivia about the Genie (who was inspired in pre-production by Sammy Davis, Jr.; early versions of the film concept and eventually the Broadway musical were inspired by 1940s-1960s movie musical comedies of the Rat Pack/Hope and Crosby style) is that he was designed to be as ethnically…

Back when I worked full time in a paint factory, I had an isolated work space in the basement, completely separate from any other workers. I would spend nine hours a day processing chemicals, washing paint off of filters, and powerblasting things before putting them into the acid bath.
To keep myself sane, I listened…

All three major iterations have taken different interpretations of the titular character. The comic had "insane man creates chaos fighting against chaos;" the cartoon had "kinda like if Superman were on the spectrum;" and the sitcom had "old-school superhero with golden age black-and-white personality, in a…

If they were going for the grandiose, physically diminutive drama queen turned dictator approach of the film, Rupert Everett could pull it off. He doesn't really camp it up much on screen, but when he gets off the chain, he gets WAY off it- he moves from faux-Bond villain suave to deliriously unhinged at the end of…

No, they've just snatched up the movie rights now. They'll cunt up the movie later.

My family always loved Pikachu in the abstract, the same way people in the 1960s and 1970s loved Snoopy or that picture of Kermit the Frog you would see on watches and t-shirts. But they never really got Pokémon (as few parents apparently did)- my mother used to say "I like Pikachu but I just don't get his friends."

Can we get Bruce Willis as Ash, and Mickey Rourke as the voice of Pikachu?
Sin City 3: Pewter City.

I was hoping this was going to be Adam Sandler as alcoholic, philandering doctor-turned-bookie Dr. Wexler, from Ellen Raskin's Wes Anderson-esque YA novel "The Westing Game."

It sounds like what you need is an eloquent dwarf to be your voice of reason and moderation.

If that were the case it should be easier to just go to the mall and find the damned iconic Ash Ketchum hat. They're trying to push his new "swaggier" hat that he's worn for I guess five or six years now… No! People want the hat with the dopey looking calligraphy L on it!