Broadway: The American Musical

Broadway: The American Musical Review

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 09/23/2005

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Broadway Version)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Broadway Version) Review

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Broadway Version) Feature

• Times are hard in 1846 London and one must make do. So Nellie Lovett adds something extra to the meat pies she peddles on Fleet Street. The secret ingredient: freshly murdered victims of her partner in crime, barber Sweeney Todd.Composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim refashions a macabre tale into a musical masterwork in this dazzling performance of the 1979 Broadway hit originally staged by Harold Pr

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/01/2008 Run time: 140 minutes Rating: Nr

TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Broadway Musicals (Show Boat / Annie Get Your Gun / Kiss Me Kate / Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)

TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Broadway Musicals (Show Boat / Annie Get Your Gun / Kiss Me Kate / Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) Review

SHOW BOAT (1951) A vivid and vibrant saga of riverboat lives and loves has glorious stars (Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Marge and Gower Champion) in Technicolor radiance, timeless Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II songs and an equally timeless outcry against racial bigotry. Like Ol' Man River, its delights just keep rollin' along. ANNIE GET YOUR GUN Betty Hutton (as Annie Oakley) and Howard Keel (as Frank Butler) star in this sharpshootin' funfest an Oscar winner for adaptation scoring based on the Broadway smash boasting Irving Berlins beloved songs, including Doin' What Comes Naturally, I Got Lost in His Arms and the anthemic There's No Business like Show Business. SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS The perfect marriage of song and dance! Backwoods boys inspired by romance and the lure of hot biscuits raid the local town for brides. Un-uh: The would-be brides insist the fellas first become respectable! Howard Keel and Jane Powell head a leaping whoop for joy in this exuberant Oscar winner. KISS ME KATE When squabbling ex-married's Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel are cast as squabbling Renaissance romantics in a musical The Taming of the Shrew, life imitates art, art imitates life and it all proves no musical comedy imitates this backstage/onstage delight from the Broadway hit with 14 peerless Cole Porter songs. It's all Too Darn Hot!

Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway

Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway Review

Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway Feature

• Actors: Will Chase, Adam Kantor, Michael McElroy, Rodney Hicks, Tracie Thoms.
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC.
• Language: English. Subtitles: English, French.
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only).
• Not Rated. Run Time: 165 minutes.

For passionate fans of Rent--the popular Broadway rock musical that updated La Boheme with electric guitars, steel drums, strippers, and drag queens--Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway is a must-have.Written and composed by Jonathan Larson (who died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm just before the show premiered), Rent follows an absurdly clean-cut gaggle of hipster artists who, after having been squatting in a run-down building for a year, are now being told they have to pay that rent by the building's owner, a former friend. At least, that's the plot point that launches everything; really, the musical is about modern romance, grappling with AIDS, and celebrating the creative spirit. This film documents the last performance of the Broadway production, which ran for 12 years. Though the aggressive camera moves and sometimes frenetic editing seem intended to make the film feel less stagebound, this Rent first and foremost captures the stage experience. The production's raw set and self-conscious theatricality (which highfalutin' theater folk might call "Brechtian") creates genuine show-biz razzle-dazzle and helps distract from some of the cliches in the musical itself. There are no famous faces (the closest is Tracie Thoms, who played the same role, the lesbian lover of a performance artist, in the movie version), but the cast is solid and exuberant, throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the show's unapologetically sincere paeans to life and love. --Bret Fetzer

Stills from Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway (Click for larger image)

Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic. RENT is Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical, one of the longest running shows on Broadway.