News Bits: 'Zero' Wins at NYFCC; Redgrave and Jones to Star in 'Much Ado'; Tyson in 'Bountiful'

Zero Thirty Down won Best Picture and Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle which cast their votes today. Several GoldDerby prognosticators accurately predicted that outcome, but were wrong in their forecast of Zero's Jessica Chastain taking Best Actress. The winner was Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea. Lincoln won for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Supporting Actress (Sally Field), and Screenplay (Tony Kushner). Nobody expected Matthew Maconaughey to take Supporting Actor honors for the male-stripper film Magic Mike and Bernie, the dark comedy starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine which came and went so quickly earlier this year. (Critics group often include multiple films for individual recipients if they are released in the same year.) Zero and Lincoln are definite frontrunners for Oscar and Golden Globe consideration and it will be interesting to see how the explosive action picture fares against the talky history film. But then Les Miz might trump them both.

Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in Driving Miss Daisy
Credit: Annabel Clark

Vanessa Redgrave (75) and James Earl Jones (81) will be playing Beatrice and Benedick in a production of Much Ado About Nothing for the Old Vic Theatre Company in London, next season (Sept.19-Nov. 16, 2013). Sounds like absolutely fascinating casting and if anyone call pull off playing Shakespeare's witty lovers at their shall we say mature ages, these two certainly can. I saw them playing opposite each other in Driving Miss Daisy on Broadway last year and the connection was electric.

Cicely Tyson will mark her return to Broadway after a 30-year absence in a revival of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful which opens at the Sondheim Theatre on April 23 for a limited run (previews begin March 31). Michael Wilson who staged Foote's mammoth three-part The Orphan's Home Cycle at the Signature Theatre Company directs  Geraldine Page won and Oscar and Lois Smith won a Drama Desk Award for their portrayals of the lead character, Carrie Watts, who leaves her Houston home to revisit the gulf town of her youth. Lillian Gish originated the role in 1953 when it was a TV play and then brought to the Broadway stage version the same year. In those days, original, serious, studio-shot dramas were a staple on the airwaves and they were often translated to Broadway and the movies (Marty, Twelve Angry Men, The Days of Wine and Roses are just a few examples.) In today's vast universe of TV channels, not one rebroadcasts these great works or commissions new plays for the small screen.