Entertainment

JESSICA SIMPSON IS HUGE... IN THE UKRAINE!

Apparently the Ukranian people don't know any better or just don't care how bad a movie is, just who is in it.

JESSICA SIMPSON'S nuclear bomb of a movie "BLOND AMBITION" is raking in the money in the Ukraine as it grossed over $250,000 last weekend, that's 142 times more than what it made in it's opening weekend in the US, according to a post that I read.

Ready for something truly frightening news. Conor Bresnan, editor in chief of Box Office Mojo International, told People magazine:

"When these comedies have big name celebrities like Jessica Simpson’s, that’s all that’s needed to sell the movie. Russian and Ukrainian audiences have an even bigger urge for escapism than Americans. So, films like Blonde Ambition will gross more than No Country for Old Men."

What! I'm holding the covers over my head as I think about that quote. Well at least someone appreciates these films and actors and now Jessica knows where audience and fans are. Now, I have yet to see this film which is rather odd cause usually I'll watch anything and everything. But for this film, I took a stand because:
A. I know it will suck!
B. I have no desire to!
C. I don't think I can stand the humiliation and embarrassment I would get from those judging looks of my local video store clerk as I hand him a copy of it .

Man, we Americans are so judgmental and critical.

Movie Review: Death At A Funeral

When a decade or so ago my family went through a streak of deaths that seemed overflowing and harshly unfair, my sister and I got through it with large dollops of gallows humor. Jokes and comments that would have made other people look at us like we were cretins, helped immeasurably in releasing the pain and grief we felt. Death At A Funeral takes a similar wack at death, and while quite good, is not nearly as wickedly funny as I remember my sister being. Farce is tough business, but director Frank Oz does a good job of it here, though its not quite up to his classic Bowfinger. You can't fault the largely British cast though. Daniel (Matthew MacFadyen) is arranging the funeral of his father, to be held at the family home outside London where he resides with his wife Jane (Keeley Hawes), and now only his widowed mother (Jane Asher). Things go wrong from the outset when the mortuary delivers the body, which is one Daniel doesn't recognize. There follows an assortment of family and friends all with their own agendas and peculiarities. Daniel's brother, famous novelist Robert  (Rupert Graves), has flown in first class from New York, but can't pay his half of the funeral. This leaves sad sack, cash strapped would be writer Daniel holding the bag, just when he and his wife are supposed to put money down on a flat and finally move out of his parents house to start an independent life. Cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan) comes with her pharmacology student brother Troy (Kris Marshall) and her fiance Simon (Alan Tudyk), who is loathed by her snooty doctor father. These along, and more so with the additional baggage brought to the affair by others, would be enough. Add in the fact that Daniel is to do the eulogy, and everyone thinks it should be his more famous and successful brother. But writer  Daniel Craig throws in a kitchen sink with the mysterious small guest played by Peter Dinklage, who informs Daniel that he was his late father's lover towards the end of his life (in a scathingly humorous visual scene). And worse, he expects to be paid for it. Now. Or he shows the picture to everyone. A madcap romp ensues where slapstick weaves informally into the farce. The funniest plot line evolves when Martha gives Simon some Valium from a bottle at Troy's apartment, not knowing that it's actually LSD. Alan Tudyk, one of two Americans in the cast, gives a hysterically funny turn as his Simon winds his way through the many stages of psychedelia leading to some of the priceless moments. And there is much more. In fact, the problem here, though its not a huge one, is that there may just be a bit too much. When Death works, it works very very well, but there are more than a few dry moments. The actors are quite throughout. Jane Asher, famously Paul McCartney's girlfriend in the 60s, does a nice job. MacFadyen, who did such a good job as Mr. Darcy in the recent Pride and Prejudice, continues his run here. He gives the film most of its pathos, heart and center. But the two standouts are Tudyk, and Andy Nyman as friend Howard whose facial expressions alone are almost worth the price of admission. For great farce, check out the films of Francis Veber, its current master. But for some great laughs, and better performances from top notch British actors, Death At A Funeral delivers.

What if Elvis Presley had never been born?

Decades down from a seminal event or moment in time, it's hard to appreciate its true worth. In music, a reflection and sometimes motivator of popular culture, this is especially true. Elvis didn't seem all that strange to me bopping around to my aunt Lana's singles of his when I was an infant. Hound Dog and It's Now or Never were favorites. My aunt was a huge fan and had several of his two-per side vinyl singles. But I noticed the change a few years later.  I feel so old sometimes trying to explain to people much younger how revolutionary The Beatles early hits She Loves You and I Want to Hold Your Hand sounded when they came out. Like nothing that had come before them. They look at me with glazed eyes thinking of the gazillion times played old school sounding simple pop songs, while to me they were the clarion call of a new age. Years later when Sgt. Pepper came out it took years before I could hear the individual tracks as song, which seems odd now. When Strawberry Fields came out it sounded downright otherworldly, like something from another dimension. It was a distinct moment in time likely to never be replicated - this strange invitation to another world piped in seductively and subversively through the omnipresent radios in every suburban house in America. So its hard to quantify the impact of Elvis this many years down. We are his children in a sense in that we live in a world that he created. Carl Perkins said that Elvis was the most popular man who ever walked the face of the earth after Jesus, and there is a lot of truth in that. And like a pop cult messiah he impacted the world beyond comprehension. Without Elvis there would be no Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochrane, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, at least not in the popular sense. These were the guys who along with Elvis influenced the Beatles and the Stones. So no British Invasion, no 60s revolution. With no one to open the doors for black music there would likely have been no popular James Brown, hence no Parliament, Michael Jackson. With black music influencing white musicians, and vice versa, attitudes on race in the younger generation were fundamentally changed from that of a majority of their parents which helped open the door to racial reconciliation and advancement of the civil rights movement. And the list goes on and on.

The British newspaper the Telegraph did an excellent piece on how the world has been changed by the birth and being of Elvis called What if Elvis Presley Had Never Been Born? A question well worth pondering. Check out the article.

Elvis is dead, but the King lives on: 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death

Today, August 30, marks the 30th anniversary of the death of one of America's greatest innovators, and arguably its greatest legend of the 20th century. The King is dead, but his coat remains. Elvis continues to earn money, making over $40 million last year, an astounding sum for a man who has released no new music in tree decades. Sure Kurt Cobain slightly out earned him this year, but its an anomaly owing to the one time sale of half his publishing rights. The King indeed remains the King.  Bursting onto the world stage over 50 years ago, Elvis was like nothing the world had ever seen or heard before, so it wasn't just his hips that got the world shaking. Watching video of him its hard to imagine what got all the adults so worked up. As he himself said, the jiggling looks awfully tame through the lens of time. But the music, for anyone with a little knowledge, does not look tame. Most people are unaware how intricately involved Elvis was in the creation of his sound. They think it was Sun owner Sam Phillips, or RCA execs, or perhaps luck. But recent biographies and TV specials have pinpointed clearly the source of that sound and it was the man himself. He knew what he wanted and he played until he got it. Perfection of playing or singing wasn't the goal, but the feel. Elvis often chose take where the singing was flawed because he and the band had nailed the feel and sound he wanted. Starting with Sam Phillips people have consistently misrepresented what Elvis did by saying it was the black man's music with a white face. It's true that Elvis was greatly influenced by the music he heard around him - R 'n B, blues and gospel. He covered songs by many artists working in that field. He famously said of Arthur Cruddup, a hero whose songs he covered, "if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw." But his influences were much larger. He was a  big country and western fan, particularly of Bill Monroe and Ernest Tubb. He took country and bluegrass songs and gave them the same Elvis treatment he gave the blues (see Blue Moon of Kentucky as an example). He was also a big fan of crooners likes  Roy Hamilton and opera singer Mario Lanza. His greatest ambition was to be like his idol Dean Martin, because he saw himself as a singer of ballads. And in that lethal mix is the brew from which Elvis created his sound. It was very much the sounds of America or at least a vision of the America he would help create - many musical styles colliding into one. When he was asked to categorize his style, Elvis said "I sound like nobody". It has become popular in the black community to view Elvis as a racist, most famously epitomized by Public Enemy's Chuck in "Fight the Power". But it is an attitude having more to do with the ignorance and racism of the rapper than the reality. Was Elvis a racist? Elvis was actually a hero in the black community in the early days because of his, for the time very unusual and insistent, self association with black music and it pioneers. He saw no lines between himself and them, he saw only the democratization of music. Much of the antipathy in the black community stems from a false accusation against Elvis in the 50s as biographer and rock writer Peter Guralnick explores in his excellent essay on the subject. One thing is for sure, Elvis opened the flood gates for black artists and now legends like Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, who couldn't work outside the color lines a year before Elvis, and suddenly had access to the mainstream. But none would top the King, who inspired and influenced everything that came after him. His fame was something one cannot even fathom on the personal level. He was a rural Mississippi kid who was thrust onto a world stage beyond the imagination of anyone before him. With the Beatles there were four of them, Elvis just had himself to deal with it. When I interviewed Fats Domino almost he told some great stories about Elvis and the Beatles. Elvis was big fan of Fats and when he played in the big room in Vegas he always tried to get Fats a gig in one of the smaller rooms. When the show was done, Elvis would walk through the casino to Fat's stage to have him play Blueberry Hill (Elvis' favorite song) for him. Fats said when Elvis walked across the crowded and chaotic Vegas casino it would get so quiet you could hear the jewelry jingling on his neck. Elvis did not like to be refereed to as the King of Rock 'n Roll in part because he thought it dismissed the importance of his heroes on whom he had built his sound. On one occasion when called the King he took exception pointing out his friend Fats Domino, who was in the room, as one of his biggest early influences. But forty years later, there is little doubt to the honest viewer that Elvis is indeed the King. It was he who set off the revolutionary explosion that led directly to the Beatles, the Stones,  and believe it or not, to the Sex Pistols and Kurt Cobain. Around the world, to people who may not even know his name, it is Elvis' picture, not the Beatles or the Stones or Kurt, that makes people point and say "Rock 'n Roll". He only traveled abroad once, to Germany during his year in the service. Yet the  seismic shudder he and his music sent rocking out of Tupelo, Mississippi, helped change the world in ways we can't even fully comprehend yet. That's why 30 years after his death, that memory causes us to remember the vitality and energy that was his life.

Film Review: Stardust

Stardust is a fantasy fairy tale with a few too many plot strands for its own good. It starts off in the English town of Wall which is separated by a magic kingdom named Stormhold by, interestingly enough, a wall. Young Tristan (Charlie Cox) lives in Wall and is in love with Victoria (Sienna Miller), a rather pompous girl who is going to marry another. Unless of course Tristan follows through on his pledge to bring her back a star they see falling from the night sky. The star has fallen in Stormhold and Tristan must sneak through a breach in the wall to get it. His father, unbeknownst to Tristan, did the same thing before the lad was born. The star turns into a lovely girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes) when it hits the ground, and of course romantic complications arise. There is plenty more - a deathly battle by brother princes for rule of Stormhold, the identity of Tristan's mother, and the deadly designs of three evil witch sisters led by the still lovely Michelle Pfieffer. Stardust would be some parts Princess Bride, some parts Shrek. It has humor, and loads of great effects, and its quite entertaining. Most so when transvestite pirate Capt. Shakespeare swishes across the deck, played with great panache by Robert De Niro. Director Mathew Vaughn does a great job with vivid and robust camera moves. And its pedigree is great - it comes from a book by young sci-fi/fantasy writing star Neil Gaiman, who also did the script. But it fails to make the move from a good and enjoyable view to great film due to a script too packed with plot webs, faulty dialog lines, and some shaky casting. Charlie Cox is a pleasant and likable persona but he fails to achieve the strength and manhood required of a young man once he becomes a hero. Danes and Miller would have been better off switching roles. Even Michelle Pfieffer feels like stunt casting in this role. But it moves at a brisk pace, has its heart in the right place, and still delivers enough humor and special effects to keep most tuned in until the end. Its after that the problems become more apparent.

Hot Rod: Not so hot

Andy Samberg maybe a TV and Internet star, but by the looks of Hot Rod, he's still a long way from being a movie star. Samberg plays Rod Kimble, an Evil Knievel wannabe on a moped, the next in a long line of losers under the mistaken impression he's cool. He can't seem to hit any of the stunts he tries, and his ultimate failure in life is his inability to beat up his step-father to earn his respect and love. When said step-dad finds he is dying of heart disease and needs a heart transplant he can't afford, Rod vows to jump one more bus than Evil attempted, and earn enough money to pay for the operation. The original premise of a young daredevil on moped who is completely incompetent, seemed to promise some good laughs. And when Hot Rod works is when it sticks closest to that ideal. But the incredibly lame plot turns are regularly matched by film making at least as incompetent as Rod's stunts. It looks like it was shot on a camera phone by your 6-year old neighbor. The sound is some of the worst I've heard in a studio picture - ever. Clearly the Cassio hand held dictation recorder they used had dirty heads. Andy Samberg's performance is limited. His big goofy face is engaging, but his chops fall far short of stardom. So for some good Samberg films, stick with YouTube.

YouTube Today: South Park does Hilary Clinton

Its funny how the media is always trying to interpret the meaning behind South Park episodes. Rather than just taking it as it is. This report on CNN is all the better because it includes a lot of hysterical clips from a South Park episode featuring Hilary Clinton.

This Lowe's is an all-time high

It's amazing that a person as central to the story of rock as Nick Lowe can still be so unknown to the general public. Twenty odd years ago when the really cool things were there only for those interested enough to dig them out, Lowe was, as the British title of his first disk sarcastically called him, the Jesus of Cool. Nowadays media saturation has destroyed the pleasure of being one of the few to know about a really cool thing. In fact, being truly cool means discovering acts from another era that the "now" obsessed culture has forgotten. So let me help you to the cool. Lowe's mark on rock has been made as a performer, producer, and most importantly as a songwriter. His credits cover a who's who of British new wave. He started out his trip to greatness as part of the British pub-rock band Brinsley Schwartz. Other members of that band went on to form the nucleus of Graham Parker's band, whose first two records Lowe produced. He produced the first five Elvis Costello disks. The third of these, Armed Forces, featured Costello's version of the Lowe-penned, Brinsley Schwartz song, "What's So Funny (About Peace Love and Understanding)". Along the way he also produced a score records by Welsh guitar king Dave Edmunds' with whom he eventually formed the band Rockpile. Lowe's own two records the first with the US title Pure Pop for the Now People and Labour of Lust) were a veritable primer on how to write great pop songs with sardonically brilliant lyrics. Songs like "Cruel to Be Kind", "So It Goes", "Heart of the City" made a dent on the collective consciousness of America, but their deeper impact was on people who went on to form more successful bands that then influenced others. Rockpile produced one record which included the semi-hit "Teacher, Teacher", alongside a record full of other great tunes, by one of the best live British combos of all time. Lowe continued to write and record, but his time in the sun was done. His new disk, At My Age,  is rightfully getting renewed attention for its crack song craft and performance. While not as raucous or infectious as his earlier material, the skills are probably as good as they've ever been. The disk shows an artist older and a bit more subdued, but Lowe has made it clear its not a permanent thing - he is just as likely to return to his pure pop roots on the next disk. CNN had a great interview with self-named Basher. And they also had a sidebar of Lowe's comments on the songwriting process. The first two Lowe disks, now out of print, are fetching between $80-$100 each The Rockpile disk, Seconds of Pleasure, can still be had for $11. Or try the excellent compilation Basher: The Best of Nick Lowe. And you might try the later return to form on his 1990 release Party of One. We're waiting for more all-time Lowes.

Free Prince!

How much is a Prince disk worth in Britain? Apparently. not much. The artist currently known as Prince has pulled a fast one on his label BMG by having his latest release come free with copies of the British tabloid the Mail on Sunday. The disk, entitled Planet Earth, makes its tabloid appearance in Britain on July 16. Prince's not so unique deal (releasing old material packaged with newspapers is increasingly common in Britain) has the industry up in arms. Illegal downloads have made a large dent in record industry profits and perhaps hardest hit are the usually unmentioned retailers. Well they're mentioning a lot right now. " "It is an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,"  said Paul Quirk, co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association. In a sly dig at Prince's previous name issues, Quirk also said,    "The Artist formerly known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores." Spokespeople were quick to point out that Prince's move will further erode the dropping value of recorded music. What wasn't clear is how much Prince's own music quality has eroded. The disk contains a couple of new songs, coupled with older tunes like Purple Rain. His label BMG has decided not to release Planet Earth in the UK as a result. Considering the Purple One also plans to give away a copy of the disk with each ticket sold on his upcoming British tour, its probably not a bad idea. I mean how many people are going to buy a Prince disk these days anyway? So does the industry have its head in the sand and is Prince correct in assuming that using the disk to promote his live concerts is the wave of the future? Or is this the desperate ploy of a formerly relevant artists trying to regain some semblance of a career? We think we know...

YouTube Today: Iggy's got a lust for life

Iggy never needed an excuse to string things to their ultimate ends, and appearing on British TV show the White Room, in an outfit that leaves him virtually naked, he doesn't stop there. That's what I call a Lust For Life!