Rob Marshall

From the creative team behind the Oscar-winning Broadway adaptation of Chicago comes a lavish feature take on the Tony award-winning musical inspired by Federico Fellini's whimsical classic 8 1/2. Directed by Rob Marshall, Nine details the effort made by world-class filmmaker Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) in realizing his latest cinematic vision while simultaneously balancing his relationships with the many passionate and influential women in his life, including his mistress, Carla (Penélope Cruz), and wife, Luisa (Marion Cotillard). Original lyricist and composer Maury Yeston serves as co-executive producer for the filmed version of his own 1982 Broadway hit. Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Fergie, and Judi Dench co-star in the Weinstein Co. production. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

This film, based on the novel by Arthur Golden, unfolds from the perspective of Chiyo (Zhang Ziyi), a girl who, at the age of nine, is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto in the early 1930s. Here, she learns that becoming a geisha can be the single path to wealth and independence for a woman. The head geisha of her house, however, Hatsumomo (Gong Li), is bitterly jealous of Chiyo and abuses her at every opportunity. Eventually Chiyo is taken under the wing of Hatsumomo's rival, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), by far the most famous and successful geisha in their district. Under Mameha's tutelage, Chiyo becomes Sayuri, the most legendary geisha in the nation, skilled in all areas, from conversation to dance, and sought after by seemingly every man alive...except for the one whom she has secretly longed for since she began her training, The Chairman (Ken Watanabe) -- a man who showed her kindness at a time when her view of the world had turned the most bleak. Now as World War II approaches, Japan stands at the brink of a new era and Sayuri must confront the possibility that history will leave all that she has worked for behind. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

This filmed stage production of Victor/Victoria came to be through the collaboration of director Blake Edwards and his wife, singer and actress Julie Andrews. Andrews reprises her role as a female pretending to be a male who is impersonating a female, while Edwards once again directs. As with the 1982 film and 1996 Broadway productions of Victor/Victoria, Andrews' character rises through the entertainment circuit by means of her unique gimmick, leaving a Chicago gangster and the rest of her audience thoroughly confused about her true sexuality and its implications. Filmed shortly before her vocal chords were unfortunately injured, this production of Victor/Victoria marks the last musical performance by Andrews prior to the damage incurred to her singing voice after undergoing subsequent surgery. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Seen on ABC's Wonderful World of Disney, this $12-million production is the only musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote for television. The CBS-TV original, with 21-year-old Julie Andrews in the title role and Edie Adams as the Fairy Godmother, played on live television March 31, 1957 to TV's largest audience ever to that date (107-million viewers). That historic production, captured on kinescope, can still be seen today on library monitors at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York and Los Angeles. Hammerstein died in 1960 and did not get to see 18-year-old Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella in the February 22, 1965 restaged production, repeated annually on CBS until 1977 and later made available on videotape from CBS/Fox Video and Facets Multimedia. Added to the 1965 show was "Loneliness of Evening", a song actually written for South Pacific but cut before the Broadway opening.

Running a half-hour longer, this third interpretation premiered November 2, 1997. Filmed over a 28-day period, it stars Brandy Norwood as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother, with Bernadette Peters as the Stepmother, Whoopi Goldberg as the Queen (wearing $60 million worth of borrowed Harry Winston jewelry), Paolo Montalban as the Prince, and Jason Alexander as the Prince's steward, Lionel. Scripter Robert L. Freedman provided a rewrite of the original Oscar Hammerstein book, and three other Richard Rodgers songs were added to the existing score: "There's Music in You" (from the 1953 movie musical Main Street to Broadway), "The Sweetest Sounds" (a Brandy/Montalban duet), and "Falling in Love with Love". Originally set in motion as a follow-up to the highly successful TV Gypsy (1993) with Bette Midler, this 1997 multicultural version (sometimes referred to as the "rainbow Cinderella") was years in the making, since it was initiated in 1994 when Houston joined executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (the team responsible for the TV Gypsy). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide