CliqueClack

Sister Act will take you to musical heaven

Way back in 1992, Whoopi Goldberg and Disney’s Touchstone Pictures had a huge comedy hit on their hands with Sister Act, the story of a Vegas lounge singer with big dreams and a terrible boyfriend. Said boyfriend is a mobster who rubs someone out just as Deloris walks in the door but pretends that she saw nothing. She goes to the police and is put under protective custody at St. Katherine’s Parish in San Francisco where she turns the choir into a musical sensation, much to the chagrin of the Reverend Mother.

The film, made for about $31 million, was a smash, grossing over $231 million worldwide. By 2011, Broadway was making a killing by turning Hollywood movies into big stage musicals and Sister Act, which had started life in 2006 at the Pasadena Playhouse, was no exception. A newly revised adaptation of the show opened on Broadway in April 2011 and ran for 561 performances, garnering multiple Tony Award nominations including Best Musical.

Now, Sister Act has hit the road, crossing the country and winding down its tour with a stop at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre (the last show of the Baltimore season). If you’re familiar with the movie, you’ll be pretty familiar with the show even though the location has been changed to Philadelphia and the time has been set back to the 1970s, and adding a bit of an unrequited love interest for Deloris.

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Beyond the Wall: Smash the beetles! Smash ‘em!

Game of Thrones returned from it’s annual Memorial Day week off, delivering an incredible episode. Jorah? Ejected from the friendzone. Mole’s Town? Raided. Missandei’s innocence? Lost (Well, a little). Ramsay? No longer a (recognized) bastard. And the bout between the Mountain and the Viper lived up to it’s billing. It was big. It was brutal. And it was the ongoing Princess Bride reference it was always intended to be.

A new piece of material introduced into the show had book readers and show watchers alike scratching their heads. The conversation between Jaime and Tyrion Lannister before the battle that would determine the later’s fate was more than a bit of a swerve. We were all champing at the bit to see the showdown … what was this extended monologue? But that conversation, as much of a non-sequitur as it might have seemed, was a bit of a microcosm of one of the series’ central themes.

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Win Movie Money to see Jersey Boys in Los Angeles

The life and times of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons is making the leap from the musical stage to the big screen, and we want to give you the opportunity to see the new movie Jersey Boys directed by Clint Eastwood.

The film tells the story of four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. The story of their trials and triumphs are accompanied by the songs that influenced a generation, including “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Dawn,” “Rag Doll,” “Bye Bye Baby,” “Who Loves You,” and many more. These classic hits are now being embraced by a new generation of fans through the stage musical, which has been running on Broadway for more than eight years and has also enjoyed successful tours around the globe.

Starring in the film, John Lloyd Young reprises his Tony Award-winning portrayal of the legendary lead singer of The Four Seasons, Frankie Valli. Erich Bergen stars as Bob Gaudio, who wrote or co-wrote all of the group’s biggest hits. Michael Lomenda and Vincent Piazza star respectively as Nick Massi and Tommy DeVito, two original members of The Four Seasons. Oscar winner Christopher Walken stars as mobster Gyp DeCarlo.

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Win passes to see 22 Jump Street in Baltimore, DC or Virginia

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CliqueClack has partnered with Sony Pictures to offer readers in Baltimore, DC and Virginia Beach an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new comedy 22 Jump Street starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Peter Stormare and Ice Cube.

After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) when they go deep undercover at a local college. But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the football team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don’t have to just crack the case — they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.

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Win passes to see How To Train Your Dragon 2 in Indianapolis or Chicago

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CliqueClack has partnered with DreamWorks Animation to offer readers in Indianapolis and Chicago an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new animated movie How To Train Your Dragon 2 starring Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Kit Harington, Cate Blanchett, Djimon Honsou, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller and Kristen Wiig.

The thrilling second chapter of the epic How To Train Your Dragon trilogy returns to the fantastical world of the heroic Viking Hiccup and his faithful dragon Toothless. The inseparable duo must protect the peace – and save the future of men and dragons from the power-hungry Drago.

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Win free passes to see The Signal in Washington, DC

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CliqueClack has partnered with Focus Features to offer readers in Washington, DC an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new sci-fi thriller The Signal, starring Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, and Laurence Fishburne.

Nic (Thwaites), Haley (Cooke), and Jonah (Knapp) are three college students pondering the future. Haley is relocating for a year, and her devoted boyfriend Nic and his pal Jonah are helping in the cross-country move. But their road trip across the Southwest experiences a detour: the tracking of a computer genius who has already hacked into MIT and exposed security faults. Nic and Jonah have piqued this mysterious hacker’s interest, and vice versa. The trail heats up, provocations are traded online, and the trio find themselves drawn to an isolated area. Night falls, contact is made, and suddenly everything goes dark.

When Nic regains consciousness, he is in a waking nightmare. His friends are nowhere to be seen, but he is determined to locate them – in whatever form they may still be alive. His only lead is the man who now meticulously interrogates him, Dr. Wallace Damon (Fishburne). Damon voices concern for Nic’s safety, and tries to evaluate the younger man’s sense of reality. As the two match wits, Nic looks to break free.

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Win free passes to see Obvious Child in New York or Ohio

CliqueClack has partnered with A24 Films to offer readers in New York and Ohio an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new comedy Obvious Child starring Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, Gabe Liedman, Polly Draper, Richard Kind, and David Cross.

For aspiring comedian Donna Stern (Slate), everyday life as a female twenty-something provides ample material for her hysterical and relatable brand of humor. On stage, Donna is unapologetically herself, joking about topics as intimate as her sex life and as crude as her day-old underwear. But when Donna winds up unexpectedly pregnant after a one-night stand, she is forced to face the uncomfortable realities of independent womanhood for the first time. Donna’s drunken hookup – and epic lapse in prophylactic judgment – turns out to be the beginning of a hilarious and totally unplanned journey of self-discovery and empowerment.

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Angelina Jolie works her magic in Maleficent

Walt Disney created a classic animated fairy tale in 1959 with the release of Sleeping Beauty, the first animated film to be shot in 70mm widescreen with 6-channel stereo sound. The classic tale of a cursed princess also gave the world one of the most famous cartoon villains (and for many, including John Waters, the favorite cartoon villain of all), the evil Maleficent.

In the animated film, Maleficent, offended at not being invited to the christening of King Stefan’s baby Aurora, places a curse on the child: she will grow and be loved by all, but will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday and die (one of the fairies in attendance is able to weaken the curse so that she just falls into a deep sleep and can only be awakened by true love’s kiss).

In Maleficent, the new live action re-telling of the story, we learn that what we know from Sleeping Beauty isn’t exactly the full story. Angelina Jolie stars as Maleficent, whom we learn is a powerful fairy protective of her domain and all the creatures that dwell within the land. In the human world, a king means to ransack her world and claim it all as his own but his army is no match for Maleficent and her magic. But she also has a connection to the human world in the form of Stefan, whom she met as a boy and who comes to warn her about the king’s plan to kill her. But Stefan also has his eyes on the throne and drugs Maleficent so that he may amputate her wings to bring to the king as a trophy.

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Laughter is not one of A Million Ways To Die in the West

People think that the genre of comedy westerns contains just a handful of films, but the comedic western goes back to the dawn of cinema including 1918’s Out West and 1922’s The Paleface, with movies featuring comedy legends from Bob Hope (The Paleface) to the Marx Brothers (Go West) to Don Knotts (The Shakiest Gun in the West). More recent comedic westerns include Back to the Future Part III, City Slickers, The Lone Ranger, Lust in the Dust and Three Amigos. There are even animated comedic westerns starring Bugs Bunny, Speedy Gonzales, Fievel and Rango.

And then there is the benchmark for all western comedies that have come since 1974 – Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. Brooks’ film satirized racism that was often obscured in Hollywood films about the American West, and was full of anachronisms from a reference to the Wide World of Sports to the German army of World War II. The film literally broke the fourth wall by spilling onto the Warner Brothers lot to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, And, of course, there was the infamous campfire scene which set the standard for fart jokes.

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Win free passes to see The Fault In Our Stars in Baltimore, DC, Chicago or Indianapolis

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CliqueClack has partnered with Twentieth Century Fox to offer readers in Baltimore, DC, Chicago and Indianapolis an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new drama The Fault In Our Stars, starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Nat Wolff, Sam Trammell, and Mike Birbiglia.

Hazel and Gus are two extraordinary teenagers who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for the conventional, and a love that sweeps them — and us – on an unforgettable journey. Their relationship is all the more miraculous, given that they met and fell in love at a cancer support group. The Fault In Our Stars, based upon the number-one bestselling novel by John Green, explores the funny, thrilling and tragic business of being alive and in love.

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