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At this year’s Tony Awards “Suffs” managed to win prizes for Best Musical Book and Best Score, both of which went to Shaina Taub. Historically, winning those two accolades in particular would bode well for a show’s chances at Best Musical. Yet in a shocking turn of events, the top award went to “The Outsiders.” But this is not the first time something like this has happened.

SEETony Awards: Every winner (and nominee) in all 26 competitive categories

In 1978 “On the Twentieth Century” won Tonys for Best Score and Best Book (Comden and Green). It also won Best Actor in a Musical (John Cullum), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Kevin Kline), and Best Scenic Design (Robin Wagner). Yet Best Musical that year went to Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr.‘s revue “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” A tribute to the music of Fats Waller, it also won Tonys for Best...

Hulu’s acclaimed “Only Murders in the Building,” currently vying for 11 Emmys, has gone all razzle dazzle in its third season. Make that rattle dazzle! Beleaguered Broadway director Oliver (Martin Short) was hoping for a comeback on the Great White Way with the mystery thriller “Death Rattle.” But when his leading man (Paul Rudd) is murdered, he decides to turn the straight play into a musical, “Death Rattle Dazzle!” And in the third episode, Meryl Streep’s nervous journeyman actress and Ashley Park’s leading lady performed the show-stopping ballad “Look for the Light” co-written by Sara Bareilles. One almost forgot the prime suspects in “Death Rattle Dazzle!” are the infant Pickwick triplets.

The 1959 multiple Tony winner “Redhead” also has a rather strange plot for a musical: a serial killer is stalking women in London in the 1880s during the time Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the city. Sounds like a real toe-tapper.

When Robert De Niro came out swinging, rhetorically, at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016, it was the most stirring and surprising performance he'd given in years. "He's so blatantly stupid," he said in a campaign ad. "He's a punk. He's a dog. He's a pig. A con. A bulls**t artist. A mutt who doesn't know what he's talking about." Then he lowered the boom: "I'd like to punch him in the face."

Though the actor had long been on the record as a Democrat, he'd never been this emphatic about a political position in his public life. In fact, he'd never been emphatic about much of anything. Anyone who'd watched the actor squirm his way through an interview knew full well that the man wasn't much of a talker. When he did speak, he tended to be soft-spoken. He seemed almost embarrassed to be holding forth on any subject,...

Who knew when the year began that a sequel to a 36-year-old movie starring its 60-year-old actor who headlined the original would be the box office champ so far this year? But “Top Gun: Maverick” starring Tom Cruise, which was released Aug. 23 on digital formats while still flying high in theaters is not only the No. 1 film of the year with a staggering haul of 683.4 million domestically and 720 million overseas. And the acclaimed film didn’t even play in China or Russia. “Top Gun: Maverick” is also the biggest film of Cruise’s career which began in 1981 with Franco Zeffirelli’s “Endless Love.”

And with the digital release, let’s relive 1986, the year we first felt the need for speed and flew into the danger zone. The year the original “Top Gun” took our breath away.

Top 10 Box Office Hits

Top Gun (natch)

Crocodile Dundee

Platoon

The Karate Kid Part...

The fourth season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” is set in 1986. Talk about déjà vu.

The top movie of the year was “Top Gun” starring Tom Cruise and this year, the sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” is the top flick earning nearly 582 million in North America. “Cobra Kai,”the TV sequel to “Karate Kid,” is one of the most popular series on Netflix and several “Star Trek” series have blasted off on “Paramount+.

A handful the top ten TV series including “Cheers,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “The Golden Girls” are living on in repeats. One of the top series, “60 Minutes,” is still chugging away on CBS after 54 seasons making it the longest running primetime series on the small screen. And Michael J. Fox, who won the Emmy that year for “Family Ties,” will receive an honorary Oscar this fall.

So, in honor of “Stranger Things” let’s take the time...

Bob Shaw has scored his first Oscar nomination, as production designer for “The Irishman.” The film looks at U.S. history through the eyes mafia hitman Frank Sheeran and his relationship with Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. The epic entailed 108 shooting days, with several locations each day.

How did you start?

I decided at age 16 that I wanted to design scenery; I was thinking theater. I designed “The Mandrake” at the Public Theatre when I was 20, then at 23, I designed “The Pirates of Penzance” with Linda Ronstadt on Broadway, working with a really won­derful director named Wilford Leach.

“The Irishman” spans 50 years. What did that entail?

We built 28 sets and had 295 sets in all. Our locations were all over the place. There were a lot of locations that are only seen for a few moments.

After agreeing to do it, did you have a moment of doubt?

Usually I do.

Bob Shaw has scored his first Oscar nomination, as production designer for “The Irishman,” one of 10 nominations for the Netflix film. “Irishman” looks at U.S. history through the eyes mafia hitman Frank Sheeran and his relationship with Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. The epic entailed 108 shooting days, with several locations each day.

How did you start?

I decided at age 16 that I wanted to design scenery; I was thinking theater. I designed “The Mandrake” at the Public Theatre when I was 20, then at 23, I designed “The Pirates of Penzance” with Linda Ronstadt on Broadway, working with a really won­derful director named Wilford Leach.

“The Irishman” spans 50 years. What did that entail?

We built 28 sets and had 295 sets in all. Our locations were all over the place. There were a lot of locations that are only seen for a few moments.

After agreeing to do it, did you have a moment of doubt?...

“Young Rebel With A Movie Camera”

By Raymond Benson

Arrow has released an interesting time capsule of a boxed set that features early work by director Brian De Palma and starring a very young Robert De Niro before either of them were significant names in the motion picture industry. The films are The Wedding Party, Greetings (1968), and Hi, Mom! (1970).

De Palma had embarked on a film career in the very early 1960s when he was a student at various institutions. While at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, he collaborated with then-theatre-professor Wilford Leach and Cynthia Munroe (who provided much of the script and funding) to make a feature entitled The Wedding Party. Most accounts (including IMDb) state that the movie was made in 1963; however, an essay by Brad Stevens in the accompanying Blu-ray booklet claims that the film was shot in 1964-65. It was eventually copyrighted in 1966, but wasn...

No 1960s film student had more on the ball than Brian De Palma, who enlisted a smart group of collaborators to pull together his voyeuristic student-filmmaking, Alfred Hitchcock-worshiping early experimental pictures. In these three early features we can feel the director being influenced in multiple directions — do ensemble comedy and Godard-esque minimalism have a future?

De Niro & De Palma The Early Films

The Wedding Party, Greetings and

Hi, Mom!

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1966-1970 / B&W & Color / 1:37 & 1:85 widescreen / 92, 88, 87 min. / Street Date December 11, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video

Directed by Brian De Palma

Brian De Palma fans tend to love his later overdone exercises in Hitchcockian excess and voyeurism, whereas I tend to enjoy his creative student work, his hit & run, improvise-and-hope enterprises. The man certainly had the drive. By 1964 he was co-directing a film on Long Island with the money of a rich student friend. De Palma’s lopsided...

'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl': Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' review: Mostly an enjoyable romp (Oscar Movie Series) Pirate movies were a Hollywood staple for about three decades, from the mid-'20s (The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate) to the mid-to-late '50s (Moonfleet, The Buccaneer), when the genre, by then mostly relegated to B films, began to die down. Sporadic resurrections in the '80s and '90s turned out to be critical and commercial bombs (Pirates, Cutthroat Island), something that didn't bode well for the Walt Disney Company's $140 million-budgeted film "adaptation" of one of their theme-park rides. But Neptune's mood has apparently improved with the arrival of the new century. He smiled – grinned would be a more appropriate word – on the Gore Verbinski-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,...

Kevin Kline is misunderstood. His performances on stage and screen over the past four decades are so seamless that audiences often attribute his characters’ traits to him. That is, of course, a tricky proposition that he observes with a healthy dose of humor.

Kline mused on the topic and several more in an interview leading up to the release of The Extra Man, which opened in several major markets this weekend as part of its continued national rollout. Hit the jump for the audio and transcript, along with tales of his love for Ricky Gervais, why he’d never run for President and John Cleese’s humorous take on Kline’s performance in The Big Chill.

Kevin Kline’s career path started on a piano bench. Born and raised in St. Louis, he entered the University of Indiana as a music major before a freshman year acting class convinced him to switch to theater.