Tonight is the 3 hour NBC live presentation of The Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood as Maria. I’ll be putting up a discussion post before the presentation begins. Watch out for Windmills review!
Two contestants will leave The X Factor 3 Top 6 tonight! Plus Little Mix and Emblem3 perform. FOX 8/7c pm.
Tonight the Glee winter finale features a Christmas themed episode titled “Previously Unaired Christmas” on FOX 9/8 c PM.
STFU theatre snobs: Carrie is perfect choice for Maria – And guess what, theater “experts”? Ted Chapin, president of Rodgers and Hammerstein — who administers the copyrights for R&H productions from “high schools to colleges to dinner theaters to Broadway to West End to China to Moscow” — signed off on Underwood when producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said they wanted to cast her as Maria. In an interview with The Post, Chapin said, “Part of my job is to find ways to keep the Rodgers & Hammerstein properties alive for new generations and I’m interested in ideas that will do that. Carrie’s talented and she’s spirited.” Chapin saw the first run-through yesterday at Grumman studios in Bethpage, NY, and says, “She’s just thrown herself into it. Clearly, Carrie Underwood will not be imitating Julie Andrews. It’s a bold move for her.” – Read more at The New York Post
‘The Sound of Music’: Carrie Underwood on tonight’s live show and hate tweets from Julie Andrews fans – They were telling me as soon as you got this role, you just immediately started working on this. I did. I’m not stupid — I know I have the farthest to go in terms of acting. I feel like nobody has ever done anything like this, so we’re all newbies at this particular project. But we all kind of have our fortes, you know what I mean? I’m used to live television, that’s what I do, and being in the studio for the soundtrack. And then we have all these incredible Broadway veterans — that’s their forte. Then you have Stephen, who of course has done musical theater, but you know, hasn’t really been in the studio that much and doing that on live TV, I mean that’s newer for him, and so we’re all bringin’ what we got to this. But I knew I had the furthest to go, and I’ve never tried to memorize lines like that before, so I was like, “I better get started early.” – Read more at Entertainment Weekly
NBC’s ‘The Sound of Music Live!’ set for do-re-mi with no do-overs – Needless to say, there will be no such do-overs Thursday, even if something truly catastrophic happens — like, say, a blackout suddenly strikes the East Coast or one of the Von Trapp kids breaks a limb during “The Lonely Goatherd.” (The show will air on tape delay in the Pacific and Mountain time zones.) “We told everybody, ‘Just keep going, no matter what happens. You can’t start over,'” says Craig Zadan, who is producing the show with his creative partner, Neil Meron. In an era when time-delayed viewing is increasingly the norm, “The Sound of Music Live!” is the latest — and easily the riskiest — effort by network television to create DVR-proof programming. – Read more at The LA Times
NBC’s ‘Sound of Music’ Producers on Live Show Fears and Big Expectations (Q&A) – Neil Meron: The challenges are finding the cast that aren’t afraid to do it. Also the way to block it out so there is kind of a hyper feeling of film, theater and TV in so far as we have multiple cameras and the editing and shooting is done as is airing even though we are rehearsing so everybody is going to be fully rehearsed for that night. So it is challenging to get all of that set in a way that we only have one opportunity to do it. – Read more at The Hollywood Reporter
Ousted ‘Voice’ singer Matthew Schuler chalks up loss to bottom-three ‘curse’ – “I guess no one has broken the curse of the bottom three yet,” Schuler told TODAY after the results were announced. “Once you’re in the bottom three, you’re like doomed to go home the next week.” It’s a surprising turnaround for the 20-year-old from Christina Aguilera’s team who prompted all four of the coaches to turn their chairs around for him in the blind auditions. And less than a month ago, his performance of “Hallelujah” earned high praise and a spot in the top 10 on the iTunes singles chart. – Read more at Today
Kellie Pickler Plays Truth or Dare
‘X Factor’ U.S. Boosts Results at TV Unit of Simon Cowell, Sony Venture – LONDON – Fox may have seen weaker ratings at The X Factor this season, but the show last year boosted the financials of the TV production business of Syco Entertainment, the joint venture of Simon Cowell and Sony that produces The X Factor and Got Talent formats. Pre-tax earnings for its latest fiscal year ended in March rose thanks to higher U.S. contributions. The profit for the year rose 15 percent to $60.6 million (£37 million) thanks to a profit increase at The X Factor in the U.S. and higher international sales of America’s Got Talent, the Guardian reported, citing a financial filing it obtained. – Read more at The Hollywood Reporter
