Breaking into show business can be a monumental task for entertainers, but as sites like YouTube provide unknown creative types with an outlet, and millions of viewers, the road to stardom is quickly being repaved. Now, people like Justin Bieber can skyrocket to superstardom by creating a homemade video presence...

One man. A 20-member band. A single piano. And a Broadway stage. Quite a potent combination when that man happens to be Harry Connick Jr. The smooth singing star wrapped up a short concert run at the Neil Simon Theater this past weekend, with cameras rolling for a future release.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a film that set the standard for not just animation, but for the art of musical storytelling, garnered such critical praise in its initial theatrical release that it received multiple Academy Award nominations. Had Walt Disney been alive, he would have surely been proud --...

Remember those Pace Picante Sauce television commercials that ran throughout the 1980s. "This stuff is made in New York City," a comical cowboy would say with horror after picking up a jar of salsa. A chorus of outraged cowboys would always follow that quip, screaming "New York City!"...

David Mamet, the often cantankerous playwright and director, has been playing the book circuit while promoting his new page turner, Theatre. He made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show, telling the comedian that theatre is dead. Dead because Broadway is basically producing nothing but revivals of plays that...

With the Tony Awards only a few days away (June 13) and nearly every theatre-oriented website extolling predictions for the ceremony, I thought it appropriate to weigh in on the past Broadway season, and even toss out a few of my own picks for best in show.

It is...

It's no wonder that Jeffrey Katzenberg and the entire DreamWorks team were weary of Nicole LaPorte's new book, The Men Who Would Be King: An almost epic tale of moguls, movies, and a company called DreamWorks, a sweeping look at the tumultuous creation of Hollywood's wunderkind studio. Just five years...

From vampire slaying cheerleaders to middle class suburbia, director and writer Joss Whedon has tackled a wide range of characters in his Hollywood career, but it's quirky misfit angst that often works best for the 40-something artist, and this week's episode of Glee has given him the opportunity to delve...

It's Friday night. 8 p.m. After scanning Facebook for last minute status updates from friends and scrolling through a nearly endless number of tweets, it's time to figure out what to do around New York City. My iPhone lights up with an alert message. A friend has just checked in...

Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Burnham, consider yourself warned. Playwright Donald Margulies has assumed the role of a publishing soothsayer, and what he predicts isn't pretty.

Margulies has been all but taking a midnight ride up and down Broadway's Shubert Alley on horseback, warning all in earshot, "The end of modern...

As the current Broadway season draws to a close -- shows must open by April 29 to be eligible for the coveted Tony Award this year -- it looks like it might be the year of rock and roll, or at least a season that took some chances on heavier...

Fox's Glee is a hit, again.

Tuesday night's return of the singing and dancing series scored its best ratings ever, pulling in 13.7 million viewers, which is a vast improvement over its series premiere numbers last year (9.6 million).

News of a ratings smash should come as no...

With Waking Sleeping Beauty currently playing in a limited release at movie theaters around the country, interest in a behind-the-scenes look at Disney animation is high. The documentary is both entertaining and educational, as it depicts the business side of studio production and how not everyone working at Disney...

Musical theatre old timers have been circling the proverbial wagons for quite sometime now, grasping at revival after revival in hopes of retaining the fading glory of yesteryear song and dance shows. Over the course of the past couple seasons on and off Broadway, a rebellion of sorts has been...

Since first joining Twitter back in 2008, under the handle @columbiajames, after learning of the social media tool while studying at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism (hence the "columbia" part of my Twitter account), I have spent much time branding myself on Twitter and nearly every other social...

U2 has never been a band to shy away from spectacle, from the blitzkrieg-like barrage of TV screens during the band's Zoo TV tour in the early 1990s to the megalomania of the PopMart Tour, complete with a 100-foot-high golden McDonald's-like arch, in 1997. Since kicking off a now 34-year...

I originally wrote the following op-ed last year when news broke that Variety, the L.A. Daily News and various other Los Angeles publications were firing theatre critics. I'm not one to rehash old articles, but when I read news of Variety once again committing a crime against the...

There was a time when Broadway melodies would play on radio stations across the country, a time when showtunes were part of a crooner's nightly set list at the club. Those were the days of musical heavyweights like Oscar Hammerstein II, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and

In an age when television programming is scattered across what often seems like thousands of channels, the idea of one channel ruling them all is a joke. There was a time when the three networks, NBC, ABC and CBS commanded the airwaves, but those days are tucked away in the...

While many New Yorkers stick their noses up at the thought of a "theatre scene" in Los Angeles, there is plenty of live theatre going on in the spread-out city. Some of it is actually worth watching. Having covered the Los Angeles theatre beat for a long while, it was...