Stephen Sondheim

Arthur Laurents, West Side Story and Gypsy Writer, Dies at 93

• May 6, 2011 09:58 AM ET
• by Robyn Ross

Arthur Laurents, the Tony-winning playwright of Broadway's West Side Story and Gypsy, has died. He was 93.

Laurents died Thursday in New York of complications from pneumonia, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Remember other celebrities who died this year

Matt's Picks: November 22-25

• Nov 21, 2010 07:51 PM ET
• by Matt Roush

LennoNYC (Monday, 9/8c, PBS)
While you're busy downloading the Beatles catalog from iTunes, make time for this excellent American Masters documentary about the last decade in the life of Beatle extraordinaire John Lennon, whose life was cut short 30 years ago next month. LennoNYC uses rare archival material including home movies and revealing audio outtakes from ... read more

Your Oscar Questions Answered!

• Feb 27, 2008 10:31 PM ET
• by Maitland McDonagh

Ask FlickChick Oscar rules Oscar history Oscar procedures your questions answeredQuestion Debate about the Oscars why werent any of the songs of Sweeney Todd nominated Its Sondheim after all Could there be a reason like a regulation or something Dreamgirls was on Broadway first and had songs nominated didnt it We dont understand Love you all at TV Guide though Thanks LilaFlickChick None of Stephen Sondheims songs could be nominated because of rules In order for a song from Tim Burtons film version of Sweeney Todd to have been eligible for an Academy Award it would have to have been written specifically for the film Youre absolutely right Dreamgirls 2006 was a Broadway musical before it was filmed but the three count em three nominated songs Listen Love You I Do and Patience were all new And they all lost Thats also how Chicago 2002 picked up its best-song nomination John Kander and Fred Ebb who wrote a read more

Housewives and Sisters: Good Neighbors

• Nov 6, 2006 02:11 PM ET
• by Matt Roush

While some of us still miss Grey's Anatomy on Sundays, a perfectly entertaining bit of escapism to charge our batteries for the week ahead, ABC's new Brothers & Sisters has been growing on me. Week by week, culminating in this Sunday's most enjoyable episode yet, the show has become both lighter in tone and more emotionally compelling, proving to be a suitably compatible companion piece to Desperate Housewives — which, by sweeps coincidence or not, also enjoyed on Sunday its finest hour since the heights of its first breakthrough season.Housewives' much-touted supermarket-hostage crisis lives up to its billing, in no small measure thanks to killer performances (in one case literally) by Laurie Metcalf as a deranged wronged wife who takes over her cheating husband's store at gunpoint, and by Felicity Huffman's Lynette, whose final hysterical showdown with the mad Carolyn Grisby in the wake of Nora's fatal shooting (Yay!) was the sort of galvanizing moment we'd long been wait... read more