Free Republic

Half-a-century ago this month - April 1969 - Bob Fosse began his career as a Hollywood director with Sweet Charity. It ended barely a decade later, and within the next both Fosse's Broadway bankability and then Fosse himself died too. Yet his name endures: Right now, the FX Network is halfway through a biodrama about him and (which he would have appreciated) with his name in the title - Fosse/Verdon, sharing billing with his missus and muse, Broadway's greatest dancer. Michelle Williams looks eerily like Gwen Verdon, at least from the side on the poster, although Sam Rockwell appears to...

There’s a place for Steven Spielberg, and apparently it’s on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1950s. A casting call has gone out for a remake of “West Side Story,” written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, author of Spielberg’s terrific “Lincoln” screenplay and, of course, “Angels in America.” It’s a pro-forma casting call because, in the end, the new “West Side Story” is going to need stars. Big names. And because of the setting and the time we are in, it’s going to need actual Puerto Ricans or Latinos for the parts of characters like Maria, Anita, and...