All tagged Vanessa Hudgens
Very much like the differing accounts of the same romance in the song "Summer Lovin'", this review could easily employ a split screen to capture my schizophrenic opinion of last night's production of Grease: Live! on Fox television. It was certainly not a calamity and within its bizarrely, uninspired re-imagining, there were little bursts of wonderful to keep us invested through it's awkward conclusion.
Two Broadway musicals opened this spring, each one set in Paris and each one based on a film directed by Vincenete Minnelli. An American in Paris and Gigi both won Academy Awards for Best Picture, and both boasted the involvement of Alan Jay Lerner as screenwriter (Lerner also provided the lyrics for Gigi). One of these musicals bowled critics and audiences over, receiving awards and ticket sales. The other limped along with mediocre attendance, disappointed critics, and was mostly ignored by the Tony nominating committee.
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe created intoxicating scores for the musical classics Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. The songs from these musicals will sweep you off their feel with their theatricality, emotional sweep, and revealing character pieces. Lerner and Loewe also produced the score for the "Best Picture" winner of 1958, Gigi, also picking up an Oscar for the the title song. Vincente Minnelli directed the elegant musical (based on the story by Colette) about a young french girl groomed for courtesanship by her aunt and grandmother in the hopes of securing Gigi's future by pimping her out to the rich playboy Gaston. Apparently, being a "kept woman" is a family trade, passed down through the generations.
