Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

(This is the last Media Morsels of 2012. In lieu of a new Media Morsels next week, I'll present my Year in Review.) Casting News - The Last Five Years The New York revival of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years has found it Cathy and Jamie : Betsy Wolfe ( The Mystery of Edwin Drood ) and Adam Kantor (Mark in the final Broadway company of Rent ). Wolfe and Kantor will bring to life the roles originated off-Broadway by Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz, and tell the story of Cathy and Jamie's five-year relationship from beginning to end and end to beginning. (The unique structure of the show has us experiencing Cathy's side of the story from end to beginning and Jamie's side of the story from beginning to end.) The Second Stage production, which will be directed by Brown, begins previews on March 7, 2013, and officially opens on April 2. (The show is scheduled to conclude its limited run on April 21, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is extend...

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2013 After a few months of deliberation, the 2013 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been announced. Joining the ranks of Chuck Berry, Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles are Rush , Public Enemy , Heart , Randy Newman , Donna Summer and Albert King . (Summer and King will be inducted posthumously.) Lou Adler and Quincy Jones will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award for non-performers. (Despite being eligible, rocker Joan Jett did not make it this year.) As noted in Rolling Stone 's announcement of the class , Public Enemy will become "only the fourth hip-hop act to be inducted...[joining] Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five...Run DMC...and the Beastie Boys." The induction ceremony will be held on April 18, 2013, and broadcast a month later on HBO. In other rock and roll news, the 12.12.12 concert to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy was held this week and Rolling Stone has a round up of some of the highlights ...

The 18th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards nominations were announced today. Awards will be presented on January 10, 2013 (the day Oscar nominations are announced), and be broadcast on the CW. Herein, the nominees in select categories (reviews are linked to in the first mention). For the full list of nominees, visit criticschoice.com/movie-awards : Best Picture : Argo Beasts of the Southern Wild Django Unchained Les Miserables Life of Pi Lincoln The Master Moonrise Kingdom Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty Expect to see this slate of films throughout the award season, with maybe The Dark Knight slipping in in the place of Life of Pi . Having not seen Django , Les Mis or Zero Dark Thirty yet (that is, of the nominated films I plan to see) I can't reasonably pick a favorite. Best Actor : Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln John Hawkes, The Sessions Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables Joaquin Phoenix, The Master Denz...

Top 50 Showrunners This week, The Hollywood Reporter released its list of the top 50 showrunners. (Showrunners are often, but not always, the creators of shows, and often the head writer and sometimes the chief director.) With separate lists for comedy series and drama series , the list is full of some of the most creative forces working in television today. (Check the main page for bonus video footage.) In candid interviews, the showrunners reveal secrets of their show(s) and let us into their creative processes, both past and present. Check it out to hear from Girls ' Lena Dunham , Veep 's Armando Ianucci , The Newsroom 's Aaron Sorkin , Family Guy 's Team Seth MacFarlane and more! 2012-2013 Theatre Season Update Tom Hanks will make his Broadway debut when the late Nora Ephron 's last play, Lucky Guy , bows on Broadway next spring. Lucky Guy begins previews on March 1, 2013, in advance of an April 1 opening, and will conclude the strictly limit...

Who doesn’t love a good time travel mind bender? That’s just what we have in Rian Johnson’s Looper , starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. (Possible spoilers ahead) Like in any good sci-fi movie, Johnson begins by setting up the rules of his world and then using the rest of the film to follow them. (He does, however, take a moment here and there to dissuade us from analyzing in too-great detail the rules and laws of the space time continuum.) Here are the basics: It’s 2044 and time travel has not yet been invented, but it will be invented in thirty years. It is immediately banned due to its moral implications (think: Old Biff taking the sports almanac back to young Biff in 1955), and so only criminals still use time travel. In addition to time travel, in the future (post-2044), tagging and other identifying measures have made it impossible for thugs to dispose of a dead body and that’s where loopers come in. When criminals in 2074 want someone dead...