Blog

Category: Music

Mixed Media

2 July 2009

I’m pressed for time—I’m planning to attend this year’s Objectivist Conference (OCON) in Boston, which starts in a few days—and I know I’m backlogged on posts. I have to report that Fox’s third Ice Age installment is harmless and happily dialed down, so it’s suitable for smaller kids.

Sid the sloth has something of an identity crisis and thinks he’s a surrogate mother, so he’s off and wandering into a subterranean world of dinosaurs and, sparing the details, the regulars are back in action and re-bonding when one of them has a child. The series’ innocuous theme that a loving family is made, not born, comes through with fine results and an adventurous new character. Recommended for young families and those with low expectations. Again, it’s not disgusting and the 3D technology works very well. Scrat’s back in the picture, too, falling for a female equivalent and forgetting about the acorn for a while.

I will probably write a review of Warner Bros.’ My Sister’s Keeper, one of the best movies this year if you can stand its subject: a young girl dying of cancer. More on this picture by Nick Cassavetes later but the well-made movie is poignant, thoughtful, and honest. I also saw two movies at the Los Angeles Film Festival: The Stoning of Soraya M, an indictment of Iran’s Islamic fundamentalism, and an absolutely dreadful attack on a great American business, Dole Foods, called Bananas. I’m still thinking about Soraya M. But the anti-capitalist latter movie, thoroughly discredited by a judge’s ruling, is a disgrace to the L.A. Film Festival, which should have shown this trash the door.

I’m reading interesting new books and I am working on several writing projects that I am enjoying. For now, I’m off to OCON 2009 but not before I happily endorse my favorite new pop album this summer: Lionel Richie’s Just Go, a collection of 14 new tunes, mostly ballads. It’s an infectious batch of romantic piano songs, with strings, synthesizers, and softly manipulated vocals, and I’m finding it irresistible. The perfect summer album. I have more to say later—on the loss of Farrah, Michael Jackson and more—and look forward to posting.

Permalink | Posted in Movies, Music

Pop Shots: Billy, Marx & Olivia

9 June 2009

Billy Joel’s Storm Front (1989) is an underappreciated collection of ten songs that showcase some of his most interesting work. With rich rock-n-roll in piano, guitar, and horns, and of course his robust vocals, Billy Joel bursts with an angry and buoyant nostalgic anthem, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which, in retrospect, traces America’s decline. He sails into the fisherman’s “Downeaster “Alexa”, he goes to extremes, observes the fall of Communist Russia in “Leningrad”, and he wraps with a poignant acknowledgement of reality in “And So It Goes.”

One of Storm Front’s background singers created an album of his own at the turn of the century which is itself an excellent piece of pop music. Though it is a bit too polished, a crisp production of country and rock is on display in Days of Avalon by Richard Marx of Highland Park, Illinois. These 12 mostly romantic tunes cover a range of emotions—always with the talented Marx’s sincerity in top form.

His sappy 2000 song with Olivia Newton-John (ONJ), “Never Far Away,” is part of Olivia’s 2008 duets CD, Olivia Newton-John & Friends: A Celebration in Song. I highly recommend this album for anyone battling cancer or any of life’s difficulties. From the opening anthem, “Right Here with You” to the acoustic guitar-driven last track, Belinda Emmett’s (1974-2006) “Beautiful Thing,” this is one of ONJ’s best recent efforts. The powerful motivational song, “Courageous,” is the perfect jolt for these lousy times. But each old and new song, featuring pairings with Keith Urban, Jann Arden and one of modern pop music’s best songwriters, longtime ONJ producer John Farrar (“You’re the One That I Want”) offer melodic shots of optimism fueled by a positive sense of life and the type of encouragement that only comes from a true friend.

Permalink | Posted in Music

Screen & Pop Shots

11 February 2009

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Avoid Confessions of a Shopaholic like a government handout with strings attached. This stinker feels as if was swiped through a credit card machine a zillion times and it’s chiefly the fault of an atrocious script and a lead character (played by someone named Isla Fisher, apparently Borat’s real-life girlfriend, which explains everything) who’s as appealing as a root canal. The dishonest character is utterly irredeemable and Fisher’s bland presence sinks the movie.

Confessions is a rehash of every tart-with-a-heart-of-gold pic in the past five years and this ditz—who’s supposed to be a fashion genius—dresses like a trollop. She looks like a cross between Pebbles on The Flintstones and one of those plain Janes who overdoes every part of her ensemble. My screening companion, Laurie, tells me this stuff is designer-made and highly popular but it still looks like crap to me. Fishnet stockings—chain-link necklaces—a magazine journalist who writes one column and becomes the toast of the town—a bank that actually loans money to a businessman—hair that goes from straight to curly in a millisecond—this movie, which gets a second wind thanks to director P.J. Hogan, desperately trying to create something of quality, is awful. You know you’re in trouble when the bridesmaid’s dress is better than anything else on screen. The talents of Joan Cusack, John Lithgow, and—in the only part that works—Kristin Scott Thomas are wasted. The same goes for poor Hugh Dancy as the love interest. Hogan, a fine director who gave us Universal’s wonderful live action Peter Pan, indie gem Unconditional Love and the irresistible My Best Friend’s Wedding, deserves better. A textbook case of unwarranted above-the-title billing, Confessions of a Shopaholic runs counter to its attempted theme of earning it.

I hear from composer Nile Rodgers that the guitarist who wrote the infectious tunes “Upside Down” and “I’m Coming Out” for Diana Ross is working on new material for the singer (see 26 July 2008 post for her concert review). Mr. Rodgers’ impeccable work has lasted for decades, from his band CHIC’s popular records and “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge through his albums for David Bowie (Let’s Dance), Madonna (Like a Virgin) and Duran Duran. One of my favorite songs is his idealistic “Original Sin” by INXS, which harmoniously blends horns and riffs into an uplifting anthem. I can hardly wait to hear—and dance to—what he makes for Miss Ross.

Permalink | Posted in Movies, Music

Screen, Pop and Book Shots

6 February 2009

He's Just Not That Into You

Amid the bad news—and the Senate is reportedly assembling to approve the largest spending package in American history, a disgraceful piece of legislation—including hundreds of thousands out of work, I was predisposed for a light picture show. The vacuous He’s Just Not That Into You hit the spot. The romantic comedy, featuring an ensemble cast led by Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long, is a plotless, interconnected affair. Relatively young people do scenes in mini-monologues—several to the camera, breaking the wall—about relationships. Though it is trite, cloying and a pinch brighter than an episode of Love, American Style, it beats watching Congress and the White House decimate what’s left of American capitalism.

The multiple member cast includes Goodwin as a desperate female who learns from barkeep Long that men mean what they say (hence the title). The most involving couples are played by these two, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck and, showing self, home and marriage as works in progress, Jennifer Connelly (nicely spinning her Little Children character) and Bradley Cooper. This trivial movie represents what might be called imitation romanticism and there is no excuse for some of the script’s trash but some of it’s insightful and—despite what pompous Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert says—the happy endings are plausible. One, in particular, delivers a Valentine’s Day reminder that happiness can be found in being alone. I found things to like here, with an old-fashioned, big city feel (the setting is Baltimore, Maryland) made of cubicles, coffeehouses, and gigantic neon signs for American business.

Of course, as soon as I heard that Scarlett Johansson was in the picture, I knew her voluptuous body would be featured in half the movie (it is), and I brought ear plugs in case she’d successfully negotiated a contract in which Warner Bros. was required to let her sing (see my post about her album on 22 August 2008). Thank goodness this was not permitted, though she has a singing scene in which her voice is not heard (or I blocked it out). But they sent the soundtrack and I am sorry to say she won that battle, hacking up Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” and sending children and dogs running for cover. The rest of the CD, with tunes by The Black Crowes, R.E.M. and a smattering of mid-range artists I’ve never heard of, is mediocre and the best tracks—The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” and Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”—have been around for a while. Most songs from the movie are forgettable.

A better buy is a new paperback from Lexington Books, Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, which I’m reading in spots. The 270-page edition includes 32 interviews with Ayn Rand (1905-1982), a 1999 radio interview with Leonard Peikoff as an epilogue and an index. Between 1962 and 1966, she conducted a series of radio broadcast interviews for Columbia University on certain subjects and these are especially interesting, particularly her thoughts on the American Constitution and law. Here, at last, are transcripts from her two 1967 appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—a glimpse of the author of Atlas Shrugged at her peak—and interviews by CBS News’ Mike Wallace, NBC News journalist Edwin Newman and the late financial reporter Louis Rukeyser. Now if only someone will publish her interviews on NBC’s Today Show, with Tomorrow’s Tom Snyder and with talk show host Phil Donahue. Reading what the self-proclaimed radical for capitalism had to say is more captivating, and urgently relevant, than ever.

Permalink | Posted in Books, Movies, Music

Spot & Pop Shots

26 January 2009

Between recent earthquakes, I managed to hike in the neighborhoods near Lake Hollywood, the man-made Hollywood Reservoir beneath the Hollywood sign. Rain cleared the air—you could see Redondo Beach—and brought the coyotes out in daylight. While backtracking down the Hollywood Hills, one broke away from the pack, swooping down a narrow street and darting toward a small dog—whose owner scared the coyote off in the nick of time. A few blocks later, another one dashed near a woman walking her pint-sized pooch with baby in tow. By then, word had traveled that two other coyotes were spotted. Coyotes are bold when they’re hungry—and dog owners ought to keep their pets on a leash—and it made for an exciting afternoon.

I’m thrilled to have discovered Duke Ellington’s (1899-1975) Piano in the Background, digitally remastered from the 1960 recording and an exciting 14-song collection. “[I]t is as a pianist that Duke exists as a musician,” wrote Irving Townsend in the original liner notes, included here. “He composes at the piano, and he teaches the band at the piano. He heads for the piano in any room he enters, and no hotel room he ever lived in is without one.” With new arrangements of Duke Ellington’s best known compositions—“Rockin’ in Rhythm,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” “Take the ‘A’ Train”)—and new liner notes by his longtime publicist, this jazz session practically bursts from the speakers. Played on his special 91-key (not the usual 88) piano.

Permalink | Posted in Music, Travel

Pop, TV and Screen Shots

14 January 2009

Listening to Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, a good, continuous stream of ten rock tunes produced by Brian Eno. A driving, searching title track’s the best by far and the cover is a reproduction of French artist Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

Having recently been asked to name my favorite non-fiction writer, I was hard-pressed to come up with anyone who’s alive. That got me thinking about favorite journalists—also hard to come by—which leads to sharp Carol Marin, a Chicago broadcast reporter who recently pointed out in her Sun-Times column that President-elect Obama pre-selects journalists permitted to ask questions at his press conferences. Marin blithely wonders why the press is compliant with this presumptuous and journalistically improper practice.

Other fine voices of reason in the media: Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, the only reporter to ask whether—not how—the government should intervene in the economy, Hardball’s persistently thoughtful Chris Matthews and MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, who offers an objective and often unique perspective on politics. On CNN, I gain value from straightforward work by Ali Velshi, Don Lemon and, when it comes to weather, meteorologist Rob Marciano.

Ernest Borgnine

Outside of news, television doesn’t offer much, though Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an exception. I can’t resist anything hosted by Robert Osborne, one of the most knowledgeable and, incidentally, distinguished persons on TV. His Private Screenings interview with Ernest Borgnine, which airs at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday, January 26, is outstanding. If you love movies, you’ll want to watch.

Mr. Borgnine, an American Navy veteran (he rose to Gunner’s Mate, First Class) whose career in pictures spans 50 years, talks about his work—including his roles in Best Picture winners Marty (1955) and From Here to Eternity (1953)—his colleagues and his marriages to Katy Jurado (High Noon) and Ethel Merman (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World). The unassuming star of TV’s McHale’s Navy turns 92 this month. With Osborne covering the essentials—a deft not deferential interviewer—Mr. Borgnine covers his life in New York, Italy, Virginia, where he worked at the Barter Theatre, Broadway and Hollywood, where he was first cast in the Louis de Rouchemont film Whistle at Eaton Falls, opposite Lloyd Bridges and Dorothy Gish.

Ernest Borgnine

Known for his role as brutal Sergeant Fatso Judson in From Here To Eternity with Sinatra, Lancaster, Clift and Deborah Kerr, the character actor snagged an Oscar® for his portrayal of a New York City butcher in Marty, an underrated classic about an ordinary man who chooses to break free from traditionalism and sameness and pursue his values on his own terms. Marty, part of TCM’s tribute slate, is a deserving winner. Others include The Catered Affair (written, like Marty, by the inimitable Paddy Chayefsky) with Bette Davis and the classic Bad Day at Black Rock with Spencer Tracy. Other credits include Torpedo Run, Ice Station Zebra, Flight of The Phoenix, The Dirty Dozen and The Poseidon Adventure.

Here’s TCM’s Jan. 26 schedule for the tribute to Ernest Borgnine:

8 p.m. Private Screenings: Ernest Borgnine (2008) – premiere
9 p.m. Marty (1955) – starring Betsy Blair
11 p.m. Private Screenings: Ernest Borgnine (2008) – encore
Midnight The Last Command (1955) – starring Sterling Hayden
2:45 a.m. From Here to Eternity (1953) – starring Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed
5 a.m. Torpedo Run (1958) – Glenn Ford, Diane Brewster and Dean Jones

Gran Torino

I finally saw Warner Bros.’ Gran Torino. I admit that I held off seeing it, figuring it would be another case for moral relativism from Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers), who tends to play anti-heroism as an ideal. Encouraged by Mr. Eastwood’s entertaining The Changeling (see earlier post), also released last year, I decided to take Gran Torino for a spin.

Consider this a qualified endorsement. Not a perfect movie, and, of course, not remotely heroic, it is involving as an arc of a fallen man’s attempt to restore value to his life. With a 1972 motor vehicle as a symbol of self-interest—with an undeniably benevolent depiction of Catholicism—Gran Torino putters and purrs toward the best redemptive treat in a long time. Coax Gramps or, perhaps better, a favorite older man of no genetic relation, out of the house and enjoy.

Beginning in a church, the picture weaves a conditional, not anything-goes, tale of forgiveness—an unspectacular relay race for a pair of loners. One is played by Mr. Eastwood, a stubborn old man afflicted by racism, and the other is played by an actor named Bee Vang—he dominates every scene—a bright, withdrawn young man tormented by an Asian gang.

Without spoiling the plot, the youngster, like the oldster, walks alone, reading a book and trying to be left alone in a cold, brutal subculture that destroys the one in the many. The mystical, collectivist Hmong people worship tradition and then wonder why their boys become brain-dead thugs in packs. As his spirited, Western-minded sister (excellent Ahney Her) puts it: “girls go to college, boys go to prison.” Clint Eastwood’s old man, growling while pushing his manual lawnmower, enters the fray with dramatic, appalling results.

This is post-Ford Motor Company Michigan, where sirens constantly blare in the distance and civilization everywhere is falling apart—in bones and in buildings, and on every block—which echoes the nation’s current demise. Amid the coot’s name-calling, an unending flow of low, vulgar terms, a glimmer of enlightenment emanates from the next-door neighbors. That it comes from immigrants, not natives or relatives, is not really surprising to this writer (who fervently holds that America’s best often come from the outside), and it lures the geriatrician into kind acts of selfishness.

Gran Torino is not a formula picture and his actions spring from a gentle awakening, stirred by a priest, of his better values. Responding to the virtues of his neighbors, Mr. Eastwood’s loner fixes himself, and, as a byproduct—not as moral obligation or government-mandated mentoring—he causes the young male to fix himself, too. He does it with tools—reason, restraint, reward—and the result is an engaging morality play.

Make no mistake, Clint Eastwood’s character is part pig and the anachronistically racist barbershop scenes, in particular, fail to function as valves of humor, but when it’s shined and ready to roll, Gran Torino provides a polished ride about a material possession which is purely selfish—with, for once, a nod toward an American, which is to say optimistic and individualistic, sense of life.

Permalink | Posted in Interviews, Movies, Music, Television

Movie Site Sale & Merry Christmas Tunes

30 December 2008

Lifetime Intimate Portraits: Christmas Belles

On a personal note, this year’s Christmas (my favorite holiday), coming after a final exam and surgery, was especially rewarding. I had planned to post here before December 25 to wish you, dear reader, a merry Christmas. I wasn’t up for it. For now, the tree stands and the smell of pine and firewood fills the air. Besides classic Christmas albums by Ella Fitzgerald—18 tracks of Ella’s smooth voice (with liner notes)—and a cheery country Christmas CD by George Strait, I can’t stop listening to Sarah McLachlan’s enchanting Wintersong. The ethereal singer’s gentle renditions of Gordon Lightfoot’s Song for a Winter’s Night and In the Bleak Mid-Winter notch how I feel this year. One of the most enduring Christmas songs is Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt—whom we just lost—which I have on Rhino’s 14-tune collection, Lifetime Presents Christmas Belles CD, which I also recommend. Decades ago, I had the pleasure of serving Miss Kitt when I worked at a café on the Upper East Side. That doll was always dressed to the nines, and, let me tell you, she was a class act.

Speaking of days gone by, I’m re-connecting with my club scene pals on Facebook, which incidentally offers a neat method of keeping abreast of posts on this blog. The most direct means is my e-mail bulletin, which highlights new content.

My former business partners at Box Office Mojo announced that the Web site sold this summer to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb, which is owned by Amazon.com). With the new boss pledging to bring what he calls IMDb’s passion for getting things right to BOM, crunching box office numbers may continue to thrive online.

Permalink | Posted in Announcements, Movies, Music

Peikoff, Pop and Screen Shots

8 December 2008

Soul

Do dogs have some degree of freedom of the will? Dr. Leonard Peikoff, experimenting with a roundtable format, addresses this question and another in answer to an excellent letter from a truck driver—whom I think has a good point—about whether Objectivists tend to denigrate and dismiss middle class values and those who hold them. I don’t like this new format as a replacement of the usual podcast—I prefer Dr. Peikoff’s solo work as a rule—and I don’t think the participants get to the core of this correspondent’s concerns. Listen to the podcast and judge for yourself.

Shine Through It

Sorry to say that pop singer Seal’s new album, Soul, is a bust. His relaxed vocal style does not suit these original rhythm and blues tunes, which require more intensity than Seal can muster. Seal, it turns out, lacks soul. But Seal managed to inspire actor Terrence Howard to write a song for his new album, Shine Through It. The soulful tune is called “Sanctuary,” and, while the album is mixed, Howard’s an honest artist whose sincerity comes through on every track. He wrote the tender, lush and romantic “Sanctuary” after hearing Seal and his wife, model Heidi Klum, talk about how they met and fell in love.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

After hearing it compared to the brilliant German picture, The Lives of Others, I finally got around to seeing the Romanian picture 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). The movie concerns two young college students in communist Romania in 1987; it is completely non-intellectual and, therefore, not comparable to The Lives of Others, an excellent dramatization of life under dictatorship. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a crude, naturalistic picture about young woman’s illegal abortion that manages to avoid any of the relevant issues surrounding her unwanted pregnancy, such as Catholicism, communism and the motives of the woman who helps her (how she wound up pregnant and by whom is not addressed). One can only suppose about various motives in this stark, subtitled movie, and one inevitably does fill in the blanks, but ultimately this is a graphic slice of life about getting an abortion.

Permalink | Posted in Movies, Music, Philosophy

Pop Shots

25 September 2008

If you think Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette is something of a grand slam (I do) and her follow-up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, at least a third base hit, then don’t miss her latest effort, Flavors of Entanglement. Underneath her familiar stream of consciousness style and the Yoda-like syntax lies a talented pop songwriter. This 11-song collection of electronic pop rock definitely includes some noise, but nothing that’s a complete blank-out and several tunes are among her best yet. Anyone taming the beast of codependency—or emerging from a breakup—will relate to her simple anthem “Not as We” and “Moratorium” taps the same self-aware spirit of independence. Songs on the lilting Flavors of Entanglement, a phrase from “Moratorium,” generally rock and roll, neither blasting nor sleepwalking. Expect some mildly induced distortion on various tracks, usually worth the insights young Miss Morissette makes in melody. There’s a light, clean slate sensibility like that of a California newcomer throughout the recording—“Giggling Again for No Reason” comes to mind—and the best song, the rising, thoughtfully written “In Praise of the Vulnerable Man,” with perfect phrasing and arrangements, sweetens everything embittered about her previous work. A fine piece of enlightened pop music.

Permalink | Posted in Music

Pop Shots

22 August 2008

Judging by her new album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, Scarlett Johansson sings as well as she acts, which is to say, she is awful. Of course, she chose to record a collection of Tom Waits tunes, so one could not expect much from that flat material. The result—and she’s reportedly planning a second album—is some of the worst wailers ever recorded.

The Cab’s Whisper War offers tame power pop with nice, bass-laden hooks that tend to overpower thin rock vocals. This production could have been crisper. Country crooner Allison Moorer’s Mockingbird is decent, though several recordings are mediocre. The title cut and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” fare better and the solemn “Where is My Love” is easily the highlight here.

Home Before Dark by Neil Diamond continues the singer’s acoustic approach, which I like as much as his melodramatic stuff. Favorites include “Another Day (That Time Forgot)” featuring Natalie Maines (Dixie Chicks), “Slow it Down,” and “Act Like a Man”. Diamond’s best effort—“If I Don’t See You Again”—shows his maturity and it is rewarding to listen to an artist in rock who lets himself grow older with honest dignity.

The original recordings on Nothing But the Best by Frank Sinatra are happily remastered and, while I was skeptical of yet another Sinatra release, this one is an excellent compilation for the non-diehard fan. Packaged in electric blue with exceptionally written and compiled liner notes that provide an appreciative recording history, the compact disc also includes rare photographs. These 22 tunes include the previously unreleased “Body and Soul”.

Music Archives: http://www.scottholleran.com/music/

Permalink | Posted in Music

« Previous Posts

Newer Posts »