Is anyone happier on Broadway than the cast of Finian's Rainbow? It's doubtful. The musical once considered as problematic as South Pacific -- despite boasting at least two standards with "Old Devil Moon" and "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" -- appeared in Encores and then transferred to...

Actor Bobby Steggert was fated to star in a revival of Ragtime, though "fate" might not be putting it strongly enough.

As a kid growing up in Maryland (high school valedictorian, by the way), Steggert was already doing professional theater. His first...

Peanuts, arguably the most popular and influential comic strip of all time, continues to flourish -- especially during the holidays. From Halloween through Christmas, Peanuts TV specials pepper the airwaves and are watched endlessly on DVD. The music of Vince Guaraldi is a constant on the radio. Peanuts-related merchandise like...

Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view, do children smell good? If before you now, would you...

Heading out to the video store and looking for some DVDs to rent or buy? Here's a roundup of recent releases. You can always, of course, rent The Bride Of Frankenstein or Psycho. But why not take a gander at these less obvious choices?

Il Divo is one of the best and funniest films of the year, a tour de force in which director Paolo Sorrentino (previously known for static if admirable films) uses every cinematic trick in the book a la GoodFellas to tell a convoluted, wickedly satirical tale about corruption in Italian...

My friend David went to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremonies year after year, much to my burning jealousy. The next day, I would pump him for information on who said what and which performances were great, which were a mess, who seemed out of it and...

Singer, songwriter, comedienne, actress and all around career gal Nellie McKay likes to give off an air of scatter-brained goofiness. But in fact she doesn't have just the comic timing of Gracie Allen of Burns & Allen fame. She also has Allen's smarts. (George Burns always insisted Gracie was...

The good news is piling up for musician Cory Chisel. Death Won't Send A Letter -- his first proper album for a major label (RCA's Black Seal) -- is out in stores. Rolling Stone pegged him as one to watch. He and his band The Wandering Sons...

Rosanne Cash has never been more naked as an artist than she is today. Her new album The List isn't the record of a deteriorating relationship like Interiors, that people can pick apart for clues to her private life. It's not a meditation on love and loss like...

The Toronto Film Festival ended over the weekend. My first experience there after a decade of covering Cannes was very pleasant: it's a press friendly event and the stress level is much lower than the Wimbledon of film fests. I saw some Oscar hopefuls that actually delivered, some 24 films...

I'm hitting the homestretch on Toronto. Six films in the last two days I'm here.

LEBANON ** out of **** -- The top winner at Venice, I was really looking forward to Lebanon, a film about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as seen through the eyes of soldiers in one...

Just three movies on Tuesday, thanks to the combination of awkward times and the happy need to go out to dinner with my cousin Jonathon and his girlfriend. When you are determined to see one movie, that immediately eliminates several others. And when the next movie you want to see...

Another jam-packed day at the Toronto International Film Festival. Several more differences have popped up between Toronto and Cannes, the other main film festival I've attended for a decade. First, it's hard to get a read on the buzz for films. The venues are relatively scattered around and there's no...

You could spend an entire film festival going from press conference to round table to one-on-one interviews. I'd rather see the films and worry about interviews some other time. Besides, at festivals there are so many reporters milling about that 20 minutes one-on-one is akin to an hour together at...

A lot of hard choices today. I didn't go to the only screening of The Road (based on the Cormac McCarthy novel) because it's already played at other festivals and I know I can see it when it opens commercially in November. I also missed both the Francois Ozon and...

Day 2 of the Toronto Film Festival and I'm still waiting for my friends' dog Momo to get used to me. He went into a frenzy when I came home last night, laid in wait outside my room in the morning, leaped at me when I hugged my friend Noriko...

Is there something in the air? Not since the Sixties has there been such an explosion of duet albums (at least in rock and roll). Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward with She & Him. Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson. Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris. And...

The Toronto Film Festival kicked off on Thursday. This is my first time at the festival after covering Cannes for a decade. I have a good feel for a lot of the other festivals: Sundance is over-crowded and people get into a frenzy over a lot of films that end...

Criterion is a peerless company when it comes to preserving and presenting classic films. But don't be surprised if some day they're remembered even more for the relative obscurities unearthed and presented on their "budget" Eclipse line, in which great films without the name recognition of The Seventh Seal or...