There’s a reason many Broadway purists turn their noses up at even the slightest whiff of a jukebox musical. The productions often feel a mere step away from Vegas-style celebrity impersonation, with perfunctory plotlines in place to merely move the story from one well-known hit song to the next while also carefully glossing over anything too unseemly from the subject’s past. Wildly original, they do not tend to be. But then again, in a season that has three book-to-film-to-stage adaptations (The Notebook, The Outsiders, Water for Elephants) playing within a roughly 50-foot radius, perhaps complaints regarding a lack of fresh thinking should not be contained to any one particular corner of the Great White Way. Read More...
And so the fourteenth season of The Amazing Race ended justly: With Tammy and Victor victorious, and second-place Jaime standing at the mat berating herself…but only because there wasn’t a cabbie in sight to pin the rap on. Before I go further, I’d like to present a bit of a teaser: With the Race over, I’ll be launching a new column on EW.com later this week that I’m very excited about. Read More...
Tonight, as season 21 of The Amazing Race got underway, we viewers at home learned a great many things. First and foremost, we learned that “abacus” is a really, really challenging word whose mere combination of letters can bring people from all walks of life to their knees. We also learned that this season, contestants will be going to 9 (nine!) countries and will cover more than 25,000 miles during the course of the race. Read More...
