Now Playing: Twelfth Night in Central Park

Now is the Time to Get in Line!

Shakespeare in the Park's Twelfth Night is now underway—through July 12! So prepare for miserable line experiences unless you want to pay for these free performances featuring Anne Hathaway as well as Michael Cumpsty, Raúl Esparza, Audra McDonald, David Pittu, Jay O. Sanders, Stark Sands, and Julie White.

Once again it's possible to get in a virtual line, so good luck with that! While you're waiting, here's a nostalgic look back at the horrors of the line for Hair.

UPDATE According to a security guy, those who got in line by 10:30 this morning were able to at least score vouchers for tonight's performance. I suspect the rate of line growth after that time was relatively slow, because I got there at 12:53 pm and I came fairly close to getting a voucher even though I had joined the line more than 9 lamp posts from the pedestrian crosswalk near the box office. But for those of you who care: I came home to find that the virtual line had come through for me! I just hope it doesn't rain on the show tonight....

UPDATE The stand-by line looked promising around 6:15 pm. At that time it extended back for two lamp posts.

Anne Hathaway News!

BAT favorite Anne Hathaway is to perform Viola this summer in Shakespeare in the Park's Twelfth Night. Be prepared to camp out and get into fistfights over your place in the line: Her co-stars will include Audra McDonald, Raúl Esparza, and Michael Cumpsty, as reported in Wednesday's New York Times. So get ready for a lot of references to Mrs. Shakespeare.

But that's not all! Hathaway is now linked to Get Happy, a Weinstein Company stage and screen project based on a biography of Judy Garland.

Hathaway has great potential as a performer in musicals. Enticing rumors persist of Hathaway performing in a revival of Promises, Promises.

Lately she's been involved in Tim Burton's promising Alice in Wonderland.



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Oscar Follow-Up: A MacLaine-Hathaway Connection

It was gratifying to see Anne Hathaway singing at last weekend's Academy Aware Ceremony, and especially gratifying to see Shirley MacLaine urge Hathaway to use her beautiful singing voice more often. Hathaway's been a BAT favorite ever since her outstanding performance in the Encores! production of Carnival.

There's an interesting potential connection between MacLaine and Hathaway that I hope will develop: MacLaine appeared in the great movie The Apartment, which was later adapted as the great Broadway musical Promises, Promises—and Hathaway appears to be headed to appear with Sean Hayes in a new production of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David-Neil Simon musical.

Here is Hathaway on the red carpet.



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MOVIES FOR CHEAPSKATES: BECOMING JANE. Miramax Films and The New York Observer are offering New York City screening passes to Becoming Jane. Other passes, for other locales, might still be available via the movie's official website.

Becoming Jane is about a man named Jon who is in "transition." The movie stars Anne Hathaway, whom I'd really like to see in musicals on Broadway (or at least Encores!). Another Anne, Newgarden, edited the tie-in book.

Screening Details:

Date Monday, July 30, 2007
Place Uptown
Time Yes

Register here.



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ANNE NEWGARDEN NEWS!

Congratulations to dear friend Anne Newgarden, editor of Becoming Jane: The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen—it's the intellectual beach read of 2007!

And it's a tie-in to the feature film starring another of my favorite Annes: Anne Hathaway!



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POSCARS AND BATTIES: THE RESULTS ARE IN! As I'm sure all of you already know, the Poscar nominations came out during prime time on February 9.

Now that Susan Thea Posnock's final choices are in, I want to stress that I totally respect them. Nevertheless, it's gainsaying time at Blog About Town!

Herewith, a bevy of Battie Awards (drawn from my very spotty viewing of films in 2006).

FAVORITE PICTURE The Poscar winner for Best Picture is the very respectable Volver, yet I'm sorry to see that another movie with a Spanish connection--Pan's Labyrinth--was not even a nominee! For its powerful parallel plotlines and imagery, Pan's Labyrinth earns a Battie for Favorite Picture along with Batties for Unfortunate Title Translation and Justifiable Ickiness.

MOST OVERLOOKED ACTORS The Poscar nods for the Best Actors went to Forest Whitaker and Steve Carell, but Battie wants Michael Caine (Children of Men), Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada), and that Tony Blair guy (okay: Michael Sheen in The Queen) to know their efforts were noticed and admired. In fact, a very democratic MIKE LEIGH BATTIE FOR ENSEMBLE ACTING goes to the cast of The Queen, largely overlooked in the hype over Helen Mirren.

HALFSIES Half of the Battie for the Movie That Falls Apart Midway goes to Little Children; the other half goes to The Last King of Scotland.

NOTEWORTHY SOUND Ah, but the Batties would be remiss in not acknowledging how Forest Whitaker dominated The Last King of Scotland--largely through sound. So here's a Battie for the 14-member Sound Department of The Last King of Scotland for recording and mixing the sound so that Whitaker's voice--justly honored at the Poscars--resonated throughout the movie.

WORST USE OF 3D The intermittent 3D in the IMAX version of Superman Returns was almost perversely used in many scenes when it was negligible anyway.

DUMBEST BEHAVIOR BY A CHARACTER WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER The Poscar nominees in this area were on-target--eating forbidden fruit in Pan's Labyrinth and shtupping the wrong people in The Last King of Scotland and Thank You For Not Smoking were stupid, stupid, stupid--but what about skateboarding in Little Children? For that matter, how about a Special Group Battie for Dumb Behavior in Little Children? (Sorry, Eddie Murphy-- Norbit came out in 2007.)

THROWAWAY CUTAWAY Tobey Maguire's character having "sex" in The Good German. He's supposed to be into violent kink, but the one cutaway that could have illustrated that character point merely shows him bonking away unimaginatively. If it had been omitted (in the censored "style" of movies from the period evoked in The Good German), our own wild imaginations could have done a much better job at filling in the, uh, gap.

GLARING OMISSION Judging by the rules of chick lit, I understood that the original romantic relationship of Anne Hathaway's character in The Devil Wears Prada would wind up on the rocks. Still, I might have liked seeing one or two scenes actually depicting the problem. Instead, the director relied too much on the audience taking the cliché for granted.

MOST SHAMELESS CREDITS Anyone who saw the entirety of Dreamgirls knows that the credits were styled like Oscar ads. Still there's something to be said for paying so much attention to behind-the-scenes people (such as costume, hair, and makeup staff) who labored on the movie.

COSTUME AND MAKEUP Normally, the Oscars favor historical fashion, while the Batties try to recognize the creativity that goes into science fiction and fantasy films. But this year the nod goes to Dreamgirls for using its outfits, wigs, and makeup to communicate loads about the characters as they move from rhythm-and-blues to disco.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION The Battie goes to For Your Consideration for relying heavily on Internet jokes that must have been in comedy's cryogenic deep-freeze for about a decade. (I still liked the movie, by the way.)

REVIVAL All together now: El Topo. Perhaps I'm too ignorant to fully appreciate Army of Shadows.

GENRES Westerns and Mafia Movies, hands down. (Or should it be hands up?)

PROMOTIONAL OVERBOOKING A long line showed up with passes for Woody Allen's Scoop in Chelsea--but virtually no one got in! Not even the consolation prize of a Scoop notebook could take away the hurt. At least the weather was good.

THANKLESS ROLE I'm open to other suggestions, but Emily Blunt comes to mind for her workaholic, ambitious, snotty, pissy, and ultimately frustrated underling in The Devil Wears Prada.

PREDICTABLE PHRASE The reference to Anne Hathaway's character "drinking the Kool-Aid" in The Devil Wears Prada.

MISCAST FOOD ITEM Jarlsberg, presented as a gourmet cheese in The Devil Wears Prada.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ARTICLE OF CLOTHING Once again, a startling omission from the Poscars. Susan considered coats tossed by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada and the push-up bras worn by Penelope Cruz in Volver before assigning top honors to stretchy pants worn by Jack Black in something called Nacho Libre. I would give the BEST SUPPORTING UNDERGARMENTS to the ones worn by Cruz in Volver...but what about Stanley Tucci's oversized ring in The Devil Wears Prada? Oversized ring, Blog About Town wants you to know you were noticed and admired!

Wait for it!



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Photo: David Marc Fischer