Musicals Archives - Vanyaland

‘Wicked: For Good’ Review: It isn’t easy being green

Nick Johnston — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 15:08:18 +0000

A year and a few hundred million dollars later, John M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked, itself an adaptation of the Gregory Maguire novel of the same name, which in turn was a revisionist reinterpretation of characters from The Wizard of Oz (both L. Frank Baum’s children’s fable and the 1939 movie), has come to its curtain call. Somehow, it’s even more culturally omnipresent than it was last time around — brand collabs, tie-in merchandise, (apparently decent-tasting) Skittles […]

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‘Wicked’ Review: Well, the fans are gonna love it

Nick Johnston — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:24:46 +0000

Before I go deep as to why I’m not too fond of this on principle, I’d like to go ahead and address Wicked fans to give them the information they’re looking for up top: Jon M. Chu has made an adaptation you’ll probably enjoy quite a bit. This is, of course, Wicked: Part One, which extends the act-break of the Stephen Schwartz-composed musical from 15 minutes to a full year – a good choice, given that the big climax makes […]

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Watch Robbie Williams go bananas in the ‘Better Man’ trailer

Nick Johnston — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:51:36 +0000

Though he’s not as well-known stateside as he is overseas, Robbie Williams is a one-of-a-kind pop star throwback who, like many cut from similar cloth, came up through a boy band and embarked on a successful solo career. The reason he’s a throwback is that he’s spectacularly weird — the dude has visited Skinwalker Ranch, the bizarre place in Utah that’s home to a billion paranormal phenomena, and has seen a UFO — but he’s deliriously charming as well. It’s […]

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Ding-dong, the wicked ‘Wicked’ trailer is here

Nick Johnston — Wed, 15 May 2024 16:15:14 +0000

You know what, we’ve spent way too long complaining about Lucasfilm recently, so we were delightfully surprised when a trailer for Wicket, which we’re assuming is about everybody’s favorite Ewok — played by Warwick Davis, no less — showed up in our inbox on Wednesday morning. Ewoks have gotten a lot of unnecessary shit over the years, and we’re genuinely happy that someone’s finally doing something with them. Will it be a remake of the Ewoks TV show from the […]

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Watch top-tier talent take the screen in the trailer for ‘The Color Purple’

Nick Johnston — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 16:51:46 +0000

Much has been made over the past several months of Warner Bros.’ ongoing financial woes, a terrible bean-counting situation exacerbated by the strikes, which is why we’re not currently writing about Dune: Chapter Two (given that it’s not coming out until March now) and why you can currently watch the first Dune, a once-upon-a-time HBO Max exclusive, on Netflix. But the Christmas corridor seems to be a big chance for them to make something happen at the multiplex, which is […]

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Will Ferrell gets Scrooged by Ryan Reynolds in the ‘Spirited’ teaser

Nick Johnston — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 14:22:06 +0000

One of the all-time great Simpsons insults comes during “Hurricane Neddy,” as Flanders — normally overly polite and pious — loses his shit at the townspeople after a hurricane destroys his home, and they miserably fuck up an attempt at helping him recover. Among many great ones, he tosses this one at Lisa, saying that she’s “Springfield’s answer to a question that nobody asked!” That is almost word-for-word what we thought of when pondering the trailer for Spirited, Apple TV+’s […]

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‘Elvis’ Review: Baz Lurhmann resurrects The King

Nick Johnston — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 19:28:27 +0000

In retrospect, it’s bizarre to consider how widely perceived it was that Baz Lurhmann was a poor choice for an Elvis biopic. If the King is considered the ur-example of gaudy Americana, represented by legions of wigged impersonators stalking the Las Vegas strip with heaving guts stretching the fabric of their jumpsuits following each poorly executed chain of kung-fu strikes, or by the tons of meretricious merchandise littering Cracker Barrel gift shops at every other highway-adjacent strip mall, or by […]

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‘West Side Story’ Review: Even Spielberg can’t recapture the magic

Nick Johnston — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 15:41:51 +0000

It was inevitable, perhaps, that someone would remake director Robert Wise and choreographer/co-director Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story, especially as our volatile national discourse darkened through the Trump era, and we should probably consider ourselves lucky that it was Steven Spielberg who decided to do so. As much as we’d (or perhaps I should just use “I” here, given that the 1961 film holds a special place in my heart) like to think that a Oscar winner — 10 times […]

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Watch Peter Dinklage’s take on ‘Cyrano’ in this new trailer

Nick Johnston — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 17:20:08 +0000

We weren’t totally sure if the world needed a brand new take on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (which itself was based on a real-life though perhaps not nasally-challenged Frenchman), but, honestly, after watching the first trailer for Cyrano, Joe Wright’s luscious-looking musical take on the classic, we’re pretty hyped up for it. As we’ve outlined in the past, Wright’s an excellent director who has taken some unnecessary pratfalls over the last decade or so (if you don’t believe us, […]

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‘Annette’ Review: We love this movie so much

Nick Johnston — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 20:30:04 +0000

There’s nothing more interesting in a director’s filmography than the movie they make after they accidentally hit it big, when, after years of toil and troubled labor in a specific kind of arthouse obscurity, the environment becomes surprisingly and stunningly receptive to their work. It shows you if they’re who you thought they were, or if their goals and designs are malleable enough to continue captivating popular attention. I can think of a few films in the modern era similar […]

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