We're puzzled by the Dear Evan Hansen casting...

by Nathaniel R

They could play sisters!

Have you heard the news that Julianne Moore will be play Heidi, the awards-ready role of Evan Hansen's stressed out single mom in the feature adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen? Normally we'd applaud our beloved Julianne getting a juicy part but we find this puzzling given her lack of musical experience. You see there are two mom characters in the melodramatic high school set musical, Heidi and Cynthia, whose children become entangled. The show opens with a duet between them "Anybody Have a Map?" but Cynthia's role recedes thereafter and she never gets a solo while Heidi gets the 11th hour showstopper "So Big / So Small".

Here's the weird part...

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Links: Fletch, Hamilton, most-watched on Netflix

• /Film Exciting project alert: Viola Davis will headline 19th century drama The Woman King from Old Guard director Gina Prince Blythewood
• Deadline Paul Thomas Anderson's 1970s high school drama is shifting studios from Focus to MGM

More after the jump including Hamilton, Nine Perfect Strangers, a streaming stage recommendation, a reboot of the Chevy Chase franchise Fletch, and that 10 most watched Netflix list

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RIP Naya and Kelly and Nick

2020 continues to be a hellscape year. Apologies that we can't give these recently departed talents larger tributes. They will be missed for their contributions to the arts that we love so much here at TFE. 

• CNN As you've probably heard the very talented Naya Rivera ("Santana" on Glee) went missing days ago. Her body has now been found,  police learning that she saved her son just before drowning. She was just 33.
• Pinkvilla The Glee cast came together at Lake Piru as tribute (on the anniversary of another Glee star's death. This is when we lost Cory Monteith in 2013) 
• People Kelly Preston, John Travolta's wife, and an actress of numerous 80s and 90s movies, has also died. She passed away from breast cancer. 
• The Guardian pays tribute to Preston with a photogallery of her biggest movie roles
• NYT Grant Imahara, an engineer who worked on the Star Wars prequels and other Hollywood blockbusters and co-hosted "Mythbusters" has died from a brain aneuryism. He was just 49.
• NYT Ragaa el-Gedaway, Egyptian cinema star, has died from COVID-19
• ABC Tony-nominated Nick Cordero, who we just loved on stage -- for our money he even surpassed Chazz Palminterri's performance in Bullets Over Broadway when he played the Oscar-nominated role in the stage version -- has finally succumbed to COVID-19 after months of a torturous struggle. 

Introducing the Smackdown Panel for '91

Are you enjoying our super-sized Supporting Actress Smackdown season? We've already discussed 1947, 1957 (new!), 1981, and 2002. Ready for the fifth episode this season? It's focused on 1991 and it's coming up in just two weeks on Sunday July 26th so get watching and voting. Ready to meet the panel?  

PLEASE WELCOME IN ALPHA ORDER ... 

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Review: "Hamilton"

by Eric Blume

Disney+ made a shrewd and smart move by releasing the filmed-stage movie musical Hamilton over the July 4 weekend, at a time when the country really needs it.  The themes and ideas of this Pulitzer Prize-winning theater phenomenon from five years ago seem even more relevant and powerful than they did upon arrival, and the movie version, which debuted this weekend, is a stage capture of the principal original Broadway cast, edited together from three live performances filmed in June 2016.  

Filmed versions of staged material always have their limitations:  one can never capture the visceral pump of energy that’s happening in the Richard Rodgers Theater before and during a performance of this show in particular.  As such, the Hamilton movie ultimately succeeds best in preserving an unbeatable group of actors in the biggest show of this century, exactly as the original creators intended it to play...

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