From Screen to Stage: Spidey, Shrek, Slumdog and More

A certain wall-crawler's Broadway bow leads off the latest round of all things From Screen to Stage:

- Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark is the official title (really) of the comic page to stage adaptation that will spin its first web on the Great White Way starting February 18, 2010.

- The next month will see the Big Apple premiere of The Addams Family musical as well, with performances starting March 5, 2010.

- Damn Yankees is returning to the silver screen, with Jim Carrey as Applegate (a.k.a. the devil) and Jake Gyllenhaal (!) as Shoeless Joe (from Hannibal, MO). Now who will play Lola? We say Catherine Zeta-Jones.

- The screen adaptation of the Tony Award winning musical Nine (which now features six Academy Award winners following Penélope Cruz's victory on Sunday) now has an official opening date: November 25.

- The original Broadway cast recording of Shrek the Musical, which will be released on March 24, is now available for pre-orderfrom Amazon.com.

- Universal Studios wants Billy Elliot to dance back on the big screen as a movie musical.

- Having won every film award in site, Slumdog Millionaire is now setting its sites on the stage. Another recent Oscar winner, A.R. Rahman, will pen more songs for the potential new tuner.

- And finally: it looks like our idea for a sequel to Mamma Mia! may actually happen.

Monthly Wallpaper - December 2008: Super Heroes

2008 was the unofficial "year of the superhero", so it is only fitting that the final Movie Dearest calendar wallpaper of the year is a salute to our favorite celluloid supers.

From the classic Christopher Reeve Superman and Michael Keaton Batman to more recent editions to the ranks such as Iron Man and the upcoming Watchmen, this legion of superheroes will keep your desktop nice and safe from marauding super villains, at least for the next few weeks.

All you have to do is click on the picture above to enlarge it, then simply right click your mouse and select "Set as Background". (You can also save it to your computer and set it up from there if you prefer.) The size is 1024 x 768, but you can modify it if needed in your own photo-editing program.

Cinematic Crush: James Franco

Crush object: James Franco, actor.

- He first caught our attention as one of the Freaks and Geeks in that short-lived but still fondly remembered television series.

- Critical acclaim and a Golden Globe came with his strong performance as legendary rebel James Dean in the 2001 TV movie of the same name, for which he was also nominated for Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

- Originally considered for Peter Parker, he ended up cast as his best friend/future nemesis Harry Osborn in Spider-Man and its two sequels.

- Other notable films include Sonny, City by the Sea, The Company, Tristan & Isolde, Annapolis, Flyboys and In the Valley of Elah.

- In the tradition of Brad Pitt in True Romance, this pretty boy goes to pot in this weekend's Pineapple Express. Next up, two high profile gay biographic roles: this December's Milk (as Harvey Milk's lover Scott Smith) and next year's Howl (as beat poet Allen Ginsberg).

Brick-A-Brack

Apparently, those who are inclined to elaborately recreate their favorite obsessions with LEGO Play Sets fall into two camps: comic book geeks and musical theater geeks. To wit, two examples from each:

• The complete trailer for The Dark Knight.
• Spidey versus Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2.
• "Pretty Woman" from Sweeney Todd (love the Cruella de Vil do on the demon barber).
• And the complete Les Miserables ... in four minutes.

Awards Watch: The Saturn Awards

The Oscars may have snubbed it, but 300 scored a field best ten nominations from the Saturn Awards, the kudos handed out to genre flicks by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street also did well, with nine and eight nods each. On the TV side, Lost leads with seven, and newbie Pushing Daisies scored three.

Most interesting is the appearance of Oscar favorites No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood in the mix (along with 300) for the group's Best Action/ Adventure/Thriller Film prize - as if these two haven't dominated this year's races enough. And three of the Best Actors (Blood's Daniel Day-Lewis, Sweeney's Johnny Depp and Eastern Promises' Viggo Mortensen) and one Supporting Actor (No Country's Javier Bardem) are also Academy Award nominees.

One thing puzzles me though: how exactly is August Rush a sci fi, fantasy or horror movie? Oh yeah, maybe it's because Robin Williams appears in it wearing a cowboy hat and sideburns and plays the guitar. Now that's horrifying.

The Saturns will be handed out June 24. For a quick look at the film nominees, see the comments section below.

Awards Watch: Coens Win DGA & More

No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood each added one more trophy to their respective cases last night.

Joel and Ethan Coen won the Directors Guild of America award for No Country, thereby more or less ensuring their eventual victory come Oscar night (in its 60 year history, the DGA and AMPAAS have only not matched 6 times). And Blood's Robert Elswit was anointed the best of the year by his peers in the American Society of Cinematographers.

Also, the last of the guilds has chimed in with their nominations: the Motion Picture Sound Editors. Leading the pack are American Gangster and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End with three nods each. See the comments section below for a quick look at the nominees; winners of the Golden Reels will be announced February 23.

Awards Watch: BAFTA Nominations

Maybe Atonement isn't out of the Oscar running after all: The Golden Globe Award winner, severely lacking in any major guild support on this side of the pond, racked up an impressive 14 nominations today from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film and Best British Film.

Joining it in the former are the two Oscar front-runners, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, plus American Gangster (also pretty much MIA in key precursors stateside) and last year's Oscar winner for Foreign Language Film, The Lives of Others, which picked up four other nominations, including a posthumous one for the late Ulrich Mühe.

See the comments section below for a quick look at the BAFTA nominees; the awards will be handed out on February 10.

Awards Watch: Sound and Fury

Critics loathed it, but the Visual Effects Society loved Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, at least enough to give it a field's best six nominations. Transformers and I Am Legend follow with five each, with all three competing with The Golden Compass and Spider-Man 3 for the top prize. See the comments below for a quick look at the nominees.

Meanwhile, the Cinema Audio Society sounds off with their picks for outstanding achievements in sound mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum, Into the Wild, No Country for Old Men, 300 and Transformers.

The VES will hand out their awards on February 10, with the CAS following suit on the 16th.

Awards Watch: The Annies

And a rat shall lead them: the International Animated Film Society revealed today the nominations for their 35th annual Annie Awards, which recognize the art of animation in film, television and other media. Setting the pace for the toons in this year's awards derby is, as expected, Disney/ Pixar's Ratatouille, which netted 13 total nominations. In a surprise showing, Sony's Surf's Up followed with ten nods. Joining those two in the Best Animated Feature category is DreamWorks' Bee Movie, Fox's The Simpsons Movie and the French import Persepolis. In keeping with the Annies' bizarre history of head-scratchers, Shrek the Third's directors were nominated ... and that was it for the ogre (although his recent Christmas special did get two noms itself on the TV side). Also left almost completely out of the running was Beowulf, with one lonely design nomination.

What does this mean for the Oscar race? Well, we already knew the three strongest competitors would be Ratatouille, Persepolis and The Simpsons, but I wouldn't count out the generally well-reviewed Surf's Up, although it didn't exactly light the box office on fire. Bee Movie, even with a Best Feature nod, isn't up for directing or writing, so you can pretty much consider that one a slot-filler. And as for that mythical warrior, it is pretty apparent now what those in the animation industry think of him and all his mo-cap-ness.

Back to the Annies, it's great to see the delightful Pixar short Your Friend the Rat up for an award, as well as the return of Goofy in How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, which will screen with National Treasure: Book of Secrets. And although Ratatouille nabbed three out of the five Voice Acting nominations, none were for Peter O'Toole's tour de force as bitter foodie Anton Ego (no Oscar, now no Annie ... what is the world coming to?). Honorary award winners will include Disney animation giant Glen Keane (responsible for Ariel, the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, the list goes on) and John Canemaker, animation historian and Oscar-winning short subject director (The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation).

The Annie Awards will be presented February 8. See the comments section below for a quick look at the full list of movie nominations.

Links via AnnieAwards.org.

Trivial Pursuits: I Scream, You Scream

In all of cinematic history, there has never been a more recognizable -- or revered -- sound effect then that of the so-called "Wilhelm Scream". Even if you have never heard that term before, believe me, you've heard the scream; just watch one of the many video montages collecting some of the many movie scenes the infamous yelp is featured in, and chances are you'll recognize the distinctive cry.

Named after the character "Private Wilhelm" in the low budget 50's western The Charge at Feather River (who emits the signature screech when he is shot in the leg with an arrow), the prerecorded sound effect actually originated in another western, the Gary Cooper oater Distant Drums. Character actor Sheb Wooley (best known for his song "The Purple People Eater") was believed to have recorded it, when a scream was needed for a character being attacked by an alligator (yeah, it was a western ... set in Florida). Sound designer Ben Burtt rediscovered it, and used it in Star Wars when a stormtrooper falls into the Death Star chasm. It has since become an in-joke among soundmen and genre directors (and has even developed a sort-of cult-like following amongst sharp-eared cinephiles), appearing in over 140 movies, including virtually all of producer George Lucas', notably all six episodes of Star Wars and the first three Indiana Jones adventures (we'll have to wait and see ... uh, hear ... if it makes it into his next one).

Other classic and contemporary movies that feature the "Wilhelm Scream" include: Them!, George Cukor's A Star is Born, The Green Berets, The Wild Bunch, Poltergeist, Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, Batman Returns, Reservoir Dogs, Toy Story, the second and third chapters of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spider-Man, Kill Bill: Volume 1, all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Hellboy, Troy, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Sin City, Superman Returns, 300, Transformers, The Simpsons Movie and even as recent as The Mist, which just opened last week, proof positive that you can't keep a good scream (or sound effect) down.

Links via HollywoodLostandFound.com and YouTube.com.

Bring On the Divas

The above three characters have more in common then fabulous outfits and world-class portrayers. Googie Gomez, Ursula and Angela Arden all want stardom (on the stage, on the throne, on film). So that makes them more "wannabe divas" then actual divas, but I wouldn't tell them that. Another thing in common they all share is they're all featured in this week's From Screen to Stage:

- The Ritz is now open for business! Check out all the opening night party pix and video, plus some more backstage shots of all the actors in towels (Ryan Idol rocks a pair of cowboy boots with his). Over at Playbill.com, they chat with Googie herself, Rosie Perez, and Seth Rudetsky tells you all about his prop mishaps, plus playwright Terrence McNally takes a look back at the original 1975 production. And while AfterElton.com gave the revival a positive review, the notices from the trades are decidedly mixed.

- Playbill offers a couple new pictures of The Little Mermaid, including Sherie Rene Scott in full Ursula drag. Head over to the show's official site for more of the cast in costume (King Triton is ripped!). In related news, Disney Theatrical's Thomas Schumacher has written a new book, aimed at kids, on how to put on a Broadway show. Also: the Waldorf-Astoria is now hosting a Mary Poppins "Practically Perfect" afternoon tea.

- Charles Busch assays the tour de force role of Angela Arden in his Die Mommie Die!, now playing Off-Broadway. My pal Dean's Charles Busch Page has some great pix from the show, as well as everything you could ever need on all things Busch.

- Young Frankenstein has started previews, but apparently the gay techies working on the show are not happy with it. On a lighter note, Broadway.com has video interviews with stars Sutton Foster and Shuler Hensley. Meanwhile, Sutton's brother Hunter opened the other Frankenstein musical Off-Broadway.

- As Hairspray opens in London, the Broadway Blog ruminates on the hit movie version. Also from London, Chicago's youngest Mama Morton, Kelly Osbourne, meets the press. Speaking of the matron, the Big Apple production will be getting a new one: Aida Turturro. Her Sopranos co-star Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore also joins the cast as Amos Hart, a.k.a. Mr. Cellophane.

- Julie Taymor's Across the Universe stars Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood played Peter Parker and Mary Jane in a recent reading of her in-the-works Spider-Man musical. The Tony Award-winning director also plans to turn her partner Elliot Goldenthal's opera Grendel into a major motion picture.

- In movie star news: George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio are eyeing a movie version of Farragut North, which will hit Broadway with Jake Gyllenhaal next season. The Cyrano de Bergerac revival, with Kevin Kline, Jennifer Garner and humpy Daniel Sunjata, has opened on the Great White Way. And what's this? Javier Bardem says news reports of his starring in the Nine movie are premature.

- On the TV faves front: The Grumpy Old Men musical has a star-studded reading, including Taxi alum Christopher Lloyd and Carol Kane. Barry "Greg Brady" Williams will headline the new disco era review, Growing Up 70s and Peter "Emmett Honeycutt" Paige joins The History Boys in L.A. And Garry Marshall talks up his Happy Days musical and hints at a ... Pretty Woman musical?

- A stage version of Snow Falling on Cedars has fallen on Seattle.

- The eagerly awaited Sweeney Todd movie has been rated R by the MPAA. Slitting people's throats and then cooking their remains in meat pies will do that to you.

- If you missed the don't miss television debut of Legally Blonde - The Musical, MTV will re-air the three-hour event this Sunday night. Broadway World has some more video clips to tide you over until then.

- And finally: congratulations to Harvey Fierstein, Jack O'Brien, John Cullum, Dana Ivey, Lois Smith, Peter Shaffer and Joseph Stein. They are the latest inductees into the Theater Hall of Fame.

Links via Playbill.com, Broadway.com, Advocate.com, AfterElton.com, GoldDerby.LATimes.com, Disney.go.com, CharlesBusch.blogspot.com, BroadwayWorld.com, NewYorkPost.com, BroadwayMouth.blogspot.com, HollywoodReporter.com, MTV.com and SGN.org.

This is Halloween

All Hallow's Eve is fast approaching, and theme parks around the world are trotting out all manner of ghoulish delights for fearless guests:

- Hong Kong Disneyland may be hurting for attendance at all other times of the year, but their new "Glow in the Dark" Parade (led by Nightmare Before Christmas' Jack Skellington) seems to be drawing in the crowds eager for a fun-filled scare or two.

- At Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, kiddie-flavored thrills can be found at Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, which includes a nightly visit from the Headless Horseman. You can also check out the newly updated Haunted Mansion, complete with floating Madame Leota head.

- But if it's real scares you're looking for, skip Disney's family friendly fare and head over to Universal Studios Hollywood or Universal Studios Orlando for their annual fright fests, Halloween Horror Nights. This year's events feature three monster movie icons as your hosts: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface, Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees and A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, as well as a live stage show based on The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The must-see show at any HHN is Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure, and this year's appears to be no different. A schmorgasboard of all the latest in pop culture, this time our two favorite surfer dudes stumble into all manner of recent movie characters, from the likes of Saw, 300, Spider-Man 3, Grindhouse and Transformers, not too mention a Hero or two. It even looks like Rosie O'Donnell and Chris Crocker make appearances. Gee, I'm sure they handle that well.

Links via LosAngeles.bizjournals.com, HKDLSource.com, Blogs.OrlandoSentinel.com, Screamscape.com, LaughingPlace.com and HalloweenHorrorNights.com.