Month: January 2005

Categories
DVD

“Better late than never!”

The Couch Potato Report – January 7th, 2005
In The Couch Potato Report this week there are 4 of my favourite films of last year, but this isn’t a best of list!
No, it isn’t a best of list as I am not a fan of best of lists. It is just a coincidence that between the last Couch Potato Report and this one four of my favourite films of 2004 have been released.
Now, if you have been spending time with loved ones and enjoying the holidays, as I have, think of this week as a look at some of the films you may have missed over the past fourteen days.
And you have missed some good movies. Four of my favourite films of last year in fact.
So lets get to those four, two other films that you might have missed, starting with ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY.
After DODGEBALL, ANCHORMAN was the funniest film of 2004.
Will Farrell from OLD SCHOOL and ELF is Ron Burgundy, a macho, self centered news anchor from the 1970s.
The fact that it is set in the 1970’s provides some laughs, but it is the supporting cast, and their idiotic male chauvinist attitude that offers the majority of the films many humourous moments, especially when a woman arrives with ambitions to become an anchor herself, she threatens the male-dominated newsroom.
Remember it is the male chauvinistic 1970’s here.
At times ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY is hit and miss with it’s comedy, but it was more hit than miss for me.
As I said it was the second funniest film of 2004, and one of my favourites.
OPEN WATER isn’t funny, but it is one of the most suspenseful films of
the year, and another one of my favourites.
If you have ever been looking for an excuse not to go Scuba diving, OPEN WATER is it!
In the film a young couple is accidentally abandoned during an open-sea diving excursion.
Eventually the couple realizes that they are in the midst of some unwanted company and they end up treading water for most of the film’s brisk 79-minute running time.
It might not be as scary as JAWS was the first time you saw that classic shark film, but OPEN WATER has a few great scares all it’s own.
OPEN WATER is a perfect excuse to stay on land.
DE-LOVELY, on the other hand, can’t be described by using the word perfect in any context, but I still found myself thoroughly entertained by this musical portrait of American composer Cole Porter.
Kevin Kline plays Porter as he looks back on his life as if it was one of his spectacular stage shows, with the people and events of his life becoming the actors and action onstage.
The always radiant Ashley Judd shines as Linda Lee, one of the many loves of Cole Porter’s life, and singers Elvis Costello, Alanis Morissette, Diana Krall and Robbie Williams appear in the film singing Porter’s timeless songs.
No, DE-LOVELY isn’t perfect, but does every good movie have to be?
So, you have now heard about three of my favourite films of 2004, so let me get to the movie that I enjoyed the most last year.
GARDEN STATE may be one of the smallest films of 2004, in terms of how much exposure it received, but I still loved it.
Zach Braff from TV’s SCRUBS is an scarred young actor who travels back to New Jersey – the Garden State – after nine years away for his mother’s funeral.
While there he avoids his bitter father, choosing instead to party with old friends.
Along the way he meets a woman with more than a few problems of her own and the two are able to provide each other with a little comfort.
Natalie Portman from CLOSER and BEAUTIFUL GIRLS is superb as the woman and, without trying to be cliche, I both laughed and cried at her performance, and the entire movie.
GARDEN STATE has tremendous visual images, realistic, lively dialogue, and a great cast. It is a fresh and funny movie that is my favourite film of 2004..
The fact that I have just highly recommended GARDEN STATE might cause you to have raised expectations when you see it. I hope it lives up to what you expect it to be.
Because as I’ve mentioned before, low expectations can sometimes make a movie seem better than it is.
That is certainly the case with WIMBLEDON, the new romantic comedy from the folks who gave us NOTTING HILL and BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY.
My low expectations of the picture allowed me to enjoy it more than I ever thought I would, and subsequently, now allow me to recommend it to you.
In WIMBLEDON, Paul Bettany from A BEAUTIFUL MIND and KIRSTEN DUNST from the SPIDER-MAN movies are professional tennis players who fall in love at the All England Tennis Championships in Wimbledon.
Even though the film isn’t as good as it could be, it has more laughs and more genuine suspense that you will ever expect, and you will find yourself enjoying it.
Yes, I liked WIMBLEDON.
But I didn’t like TROY, and I doubt you will either.
TROY stars Hollywood’s hunky hunks Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom and is based on Homer’s The Iliad.
In the book, and the film, Trojan prince Paris makes off with Helen, the wife of a Spartan ruler. The ruler’s brother Agamemnon then prods him into enraged retaliation.
But the actress they cast as Helen is so poorly underwritten that there is no reason to believe that anyone would want to take her away, or go to war to get her back.
So the movie stalls there, and Pitt does what he can as the warrior Achilles, but after many, many, many fight scenes the film just starts to drag.
And the last thing you want is to have a film that is almost three hours dragging.
But drag it does and the result is a film that is just a waste of time.
It might take a bit longer that three hours to read Homer’s The Iliad, but the end result is something that isn’t a waste of time.
I also don’t feel that ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, OPEN WATER, DE-LOVELY, GARDEN STATE and WIMBLEDON are a waste of your time. They are all available now, along with TROY at your local movie store.
COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT
The man who thrilled us with THE SIXTH SENSE and SIGNS bores us with
THE VILLAGE. In M. Night Shyamalan’s latest a rural village is
attacked by potentially menacing creatures.
WITHOUT A PADDLE won’t bore you, but this comedic story about three
friends who go on canoe trip to find a treasure won’t make you laugh
either.
On the other hand, PAPARAZZI won’t bore you or make you laugh, but it
might entertain you. In the movie some menacing paparazzi photographers
injure a movie star’s wife and he takes revenge.
I’m Dan Reynish and I’ll have more on those, and some other releases,
in seven days.
For now, that’s this week’s COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I’ll see you back here next week on The Couch!

Categories
Star Wars

Save me a spot, dude!!

‘I’m Having The Time Of My Life Out Here’
SEATTLE – Are you ready for Star Wars: Episode Three? Don’t get excited just yet, the new movie doesn’t open until May.
But for one Seattle fan, it’s never too early, or too cold, to start the wait.
Jeff Twieden doesn’t care that it’s freezing outside. He’s camping out in front of the Cinerama Theater in downtown Seattle, waiting for Episode Three to open. It’s only 22 weeks away.
“I’ve got another sleeping bag coming, so that’s sleeping bag number three,” he says. “It’s better to be too hot than too cold.”
In 1999, Twieden made international headlines when he and another fan camped out for months in this same spot to see the first of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy.
“A lot of people say ‘Get a life,’ stuff like that. But I’m having the time of my life out here.”
Twieden thinks prequel episodes one and two were a mixed bag, but he can sum up the potential of Episode Three in one word.
“Vader, baby. Vader.”
In the film, the villainous Darth Vader makes his first onscreen appearance in over 20 years.
“We all want to see Vader kick some ass,” he says.
There’s a potential problem in the long wait. Twieden isn’t even sure Episode Three will play the Cinerama.
“That’s the assumption I’m going on,” he says. “If it isn’t, I’ll be more than happy to move to a different theater. It’s really about the wait.”
Rain or shine, through sleet or snow, the wait will last another 134 days.
“Star Wars is about independence and freedom,” Twieden says. “And that’s really what this wait is about. That complete and utter independence.”

Categories
DVD

Eventually the vaults will run dry!

DVD continues spinning success
LAS VEGAS รณ DVD may have driven the home video industry to a record year in 2004, but some industry observers see hurdles ahead in 2005.
Overall home video revenue rose to nearly $24.5 billion, up 9% from 2003. But prices continued to drop, reducing hit titles to commodities sold at supermarkets and truck stops.
An estimated 1.2 billion DVDs were sold last year, but no individual title could match the pace set in 2003 by Finding Nemo.
These trends have led some to question whether DVD has peaked. If so, that has ramifications for the studios, which rely on DVD to carry some movies to the break-even plateau or over it to profitability.
As DVD reaches new converts (about 70% of homes have players), those newcomers are expected to buy fewer DVDs than early adopters of the format. And those who have had DVD players for a while may be getting pickier about their purchases even as prices of some new releases drop below $15.
“In the past several years, you could just about throw out anything and everything, and it would sell,” says Scott Hettrick, editor in chief of DVD Exclusive, a trade publication. “Now, I think it is going to require a lot more thought and careful strategy on the part of studio executives, because we’re in a mature market that is saturated with DVD programming.”
Has DVD peaked? That depends on your point of view. Based on numbers of homes with players and total number of DVDs and players sold, the format’s popularity continues to rise.
But if you look at the average number of DVDs bought by the DVD homes, the peak of 25 was in 1998; the past few years it has been about 15. Annual sales growth in 2000 was 136%; last year’s growth was about 23%.
And sales of the average new feature DVD dropped 6%, says Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research. Still, “DVD continues to grow at double-digit rates, and we see no reason to expect that there will be an actual decline in video sales in the foreseeable future.”
With more than 20,000 DVD titles released in the past two years, “the glut of product not only created price erosion but also an issue of shelf space,” Hettrick says. “If it’s not selling in the first week, it’s gone.”
Bulky DVD sets of TV series added to crowding but were snatched up. That category’s big hit of the holiday shopping season was the first Seinfeld DVDs. About 4 million copies of the first three seasons of the show were sold, making it the highest-grossing and fastest-selling TV DVD so far, says Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president Benjamin Feingold.
“Seinfeld became a huge event as opposed to a normal TV DVD where you ship a couple of hundred thousand units,” Feingold says. “And Dave Chappelle (Chappelle’s Show Season One) did fantastic.”
A problem is that “when you buy a six-disc set of a TV series, you have to spend a lot more time watching that before you are buying another one,” Hettrick says. “It might be cutting into the business of selling other DVDs.”
Studios could stoke revenue with new DVDs that deliver high-definition video that’s crisper and more three-dimensional than current DVD. Early adopters might spring for expensive new disc players and, once again, buy new versions of their favorite films.
But there are plans for two different high-definition video disc formats, the Blu-Ray Disc championed by Sony, Disney, Panasonic and others, and the HD-DVD, supported by Warner Home Video, Universal, Paramount and Toshiba.
A format war probably will confuse consumers.
“I’m still hopeful that we are going to find a way to get to one format,” says Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. “If not, it would be a real shame.”
Top selling titles of 2004
1. Shrek 2
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
3. The Passion of the Christ
4. Star Wars Trilogy
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban
6. Spider-Man 2
7. The Day After Tomorrow
8. Elf
9. Brother Bear
10. American Wedding
Top selling DVDs of all time
1. Finding Nemo, 2003, 28 million
2. Shrek 2, 2004, 4 million
Top-selling TV DVD
Seinfeld, 4 million

Categories
Movies

Cool!!

BIG GIG
Natalie Portman set to star in the Wachowski brothers’ upcoming film, V Is for Vendetta. The film is expected to be released in fall 2005.

Categories
Music

That is because the majority of the music that was released last year was good.

Album Sales Post First Yearly Gain in Four Years
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Led by Usher’s blockbuster release “Confessions,” U.S. album sales rose nearly 2 percent in 2004 — posting their first gain in four years even as digital music downloads continued to explode, Nielsen SoundScan reported on Wednesday.
The upswing in sales of recorded music followed a three-year slump marked by costly litigation, rampant piracy and consolidation among the major labels.
The year’s best-selling albums came from a diverse range of acts, led by pop singer Usher, whose album “Confessions” spent nine weeks at the top of the charts and sold nearly 8 million copies, according to the retail tracking service.
Rounding out the top five were jazz/pop vocalist Norah Jones, rap artist Eminem and country artists Kenny Chesney and Gretchen Wilson. By comparison, the best-selling live music tours last year were by veteran performers like Prince, Madonna and Celine Dion.
U.S. album sales for the 52-week period ended Jan. 2, 2005, totaled 666.7 million units, up 1.6 percent from 656.2 million the year before, Nielsen SoundScan said. Sales of the CD format alone, accounting for 98 percent of the total, rose 2.3 percent compared to 2003.
Moreover, CD sales grew despite a quantum leap in sales of music downloaded from the Internet during the past year — more than 140 million digital tracks in all — a figure roughly equivalent to 14 million albums.
Downloads of whole albums in 2004 topped 5.5 million copies.
For the second half of the year alone, SoundScan reported downloads of 91.4 million singles, well over three times the 19.2 million digital tracks sold in the same period of 2003.
And for the final sales week of 2004, digital downloads hit a record 6.7 million tracks, a massive increase from the weekly average of 300,000 counted by SoundScan when it first began tracking Internet sales in mid-2003.
Rock band Hoobastank led the pack for online song sales, with nearly 380,000 downloads of its hit single “The Reason” last year, followed by Maroon 5’s “This Love” and the Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started..”
In terms of album sales, SoundScan said the musical genres showing the hottest year-to-year growth in 2004 were Latin and country, each posting double-digit increases.
Among the major record labels, Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi Universal remained No. 1 in market share, accounting for nearly 30 percent of total album sales in 2004.
The growth in music sales contrasted with a lackluster year for the live touring industry, which saw a decline of nearly 3 percent in the number of tickets purchased in 2004 as the average price of concert seats rose 3.5 percent to top $52, according to trade publication Pollstar.

Categories
Sports

We are the champions, my friends!

Canada wins first WJHC gold since 1997
GRAND FORKS, N.D. (CP) – The Canadian junior men’s hockey team put on a dominating display to win the gold medal at the world junior championship Tuesday with a 6-1 win over Russia.
After finishing a heartbreaking second the last three years in this tournament, Canada left nothing in doubt by scoring four times in the second period for a five-goal lead heading into the final 20 minutes.
The sellout crowd of 11,862 at the Ralph Engelstad Arena – the majority of them Canadian – began singing goodbye to the Russian team midway through the third period.
They erupted at the final buzzer as the Canadian players mobbed goaltender Jeff Glass, hugging each other after throwing their sticks and gloves in the air while Queen’s classic song We Are The Champions blared.
IIHF president Rene Fasel and Wayne Gretzky then presented captain Michael Richards with the championship trophy. Richards promptly skated it over to his teammates, who took turns thrusting it in the air.
Gretzky handed out the gold medals before players linked arms and sang O Canada in a tradition that began in 1982, when the Canadian team won in Minnesota, but had to sing the national anthem when it went missing.
”I’m so happy for the kids,” coach Brent Sutter told TSN. ”They played a hell of a tournament right from the get go.”
Russia had no answer for a Canadian defence that gave up only 19 shots on Glass.
It was the first world junior title for Canada since 1997, when the country capped a run of five straight gold medals.
Canada scored three power-play goals and its penalty killers held the vaunted Russian power-play to one lone goal in the first period.
The Canadian team played with controlled emotion and relentless determination.
Ryan Getzlaf, Danny Syvret, Jeff Carter, Patrice Bergeron, Anthony Stewart and Dion Phaneuf scored for Canada, which lost the 2002 and 2003 championship games to Russia.
”It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Carter told TSN. ”This is what we were going for and we got it now.”
Getzlaf, who was a standout in the game for Canada, and Andrew Ladd each had two assists.
”It’s amazing,” Getzlaf told TSN. ”We were the team on the other side last year. This is our time now.”
Bergeron was named tournament MVP while Phaneuf was chosen the top defenceman. Both were named to the all-star team, too, along with Carter.
Russian defenceman Alexei Emelin scored a power-play goal for Russia in the first period.
Star Alexander Ovechkin was used sparingly in the second period and at the start of the third period, he was out of his skates and in his track pants on the Russian bench because of a right shoulder injury.
Canada put the game away in the second period with four unanswered goals – two of them on the power play – and chased Russian goaltender Anton Khudobin at 3:33 after the Minnesota Wild draft pick gave up three goals on 15 shots. He was replaced by Andrei Kuznetsov.
Phaneuf’s shot from the blue-line beat Kuznetsov’s outstretched glove at 13:19 to make it 6-1 for Canada. Stewart tipped in a Nigel Dawes pass at 8:54.
Kuznetsov gave up a long rebound on a Sidney Crosby blast and Corey Perry chipped it over to Bergeron who had an open net at 7:53.
Carter whipped a sharp-angled shot from the boards by Khudobin to spark Canada’s outburst and send the Russian goaltender to the bench.
Canadian goaltender Jeff Glass didn’t face a lot of shots again behind a formidable defence, but he did make a glove same from close range on Enver Lisin after Carter’s goal.
Canada had a five-minute man advantage late in the second period after Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick Dimitri Vorobiev put his stick in Dawes’ face and was given a major and a game misconduct.
Emelin pulled Russia within a goal before the first period expired. His shot through traffic with 32 seconds remaining gave Russia a power-play goal.
Canada had taken a 2-0 lead on Syvret’s power-play goal at eight minutes. Braydon Coburn’s shot on net hit the end boards and Syvret collected it and banked it off Anton Khudobin.
Getzlaf scored 51 seconds into the game when he took a Carter drop pass and blasted it by Khudobin.
Canada killed off a 1:12 worth of a two-man Russian advantage early in the first period after Perry took an interference minor and Shea Weber hauled down Evgeni Malkin for a tripping penalty.
This Canadian junior team was the country’s best in a long time and arguably the best ever. The NHL lockout combined with spike in talent in Canadian players born in 1985 made the 2005 team a formidable one. Players who might not have otherwise been available to the Canadian team from their NHL clubs were still playing in the junior ranks.
The closest team in depth and talent to this one may have been the team in 1995 – the last time there was an NHL labour disruption – and Canada dominated that tournament in Red Deer, Alta.
Canada outscored the opposition 32-5 during the round-robin portion of this tournament to finish first in Pool B. A 3-1 semifinal win over the Czech Republic, in which Glass faced only 11 shots and fewer quality scoring chances, sent Canada to the final of this tournament for the fourth straight year.
While the team’s road to the final looked easy on paper, it wasn’t without adversity as defence Cam Barker was sent home after three games with mononucleosis, forward Jeremy Colliton was able to play just over one period with a knee injury and defenceman Brent Seabrook played through a shoulder injury he suffered on the first day of selection camp.
Sutter, a Stanley Cup winner during his 18-year NHL career and a former international player for Canada, guided the team with a firm, but intelligent hand.
This was Canada’s oldest team at the world juniors and with a record number of returning players from last year’s tournament in Helsinki, they knew the drill and what was at stake.
A dozen players on this squad played for Canada last year and suffered the disappointment of wasting a two-goal lead in the third period. The U.S. scored three times in the period to win 4-3.
Attendance at the 2005 tournament was 195,771, which fell short of the record set by Halifax in 2003 at 242,173. The hundreds of Canadians who made the trek to Grand Forks, two hours south of the Manitoba border, swelled the number of spectators in the stands.
Tuesday’s gold-medal game was as close to a home game for the Canadian team as it could be without actually being in the country.
The 2006 world junior hockey championship will be held in Vancouver, Kamloops and Kelowna, B.C.

Categories
Television

Sunday, baby!! Sunday!!

’24’ offers usual surprises
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Surprise is what makes 24 tick, and there should be plenty of it as Jack Bauer embarks on a fourth season of saving the world from terrorists.
Or maybe this time he won’t. With Agent Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, you can never be sure.
“There’s a sort of roiling internal conflict put into the body of a hero,” says executive producer Evan Katz, describing Bauer’s “dark corners” as being more traditional for a villain. “You’re not sure what he will do, not sure how far he will go.”
Last season, Bauer shot up heroin, cut off the arm of his Counter Terrorist Unit partner, shot a man in custody to get him to hand over information more quickly and threatened to expose a terrorist’s daughter to a deadly virus, just to name a few. But he also saved the world from that killer virus.
This season, set 18 months later, Bauer has kicked his drug habit. Booted out of CTU, he has a new job working for Secretary of Defence James Heller, played by William Devane.
Most of the series’ previous villains, including President David Palmer’s scheming wife, Sherry, are no more. Gone too, at least for now, are cast members Dennis Haysbert, who portrayed Palmer for three seasons, and Elisha Cuthbert, who played Bauer’s constantly imperilled daughter, Kim.
Palmer decided not to run for re-election after the death of his evil wife. Katz would not discuss where Kim went, although both characters are still alive and therefore could return at any time.
Fox is premiering the new season of 24 as a “2”-day, “4”-hour event. In Canada, the show airs Sunday, Jan. 9 on Global, and Monday, Jan. 10 on CH stations. Then, beginning Jan. 17, the remaining hour-long episodes – each consisting of an hour in the life of Bauer – will air Monday nights without repeats or pre-emptions.
New this season, along with veteran character actor Devane, are Kim Raver as Heller’s daughter and Bauer’s new love interest, Audrey, and Alberta Watson as CTU chief Erin Driscoll, who of course totally disapproves of Bauer.
There are also spanking new CTU headquarters and a whole slew of new villains, including Nestor Serrano and Shohreh Aghdashloo (Oscar-nominated for 2003’s The House of Sand and Fog) as a Middle Eastern husband and wife plotting something dastardly.
“There’s no question there are more wholesale changes than usual,” Katz said.
He noted the story lines involving President Palmer and Kim Bauer had “run their course” and that “catching the audience by surprise” remains a critical element of the series.
Not wanting to give away those surprises, Katz can’t offer much elaboration. He does say the new season – “Day 4” as it’s called, because each season covers 24 hours – will be “big emotionally,” but that it’s important to avoid making the action too fanciful – like over-the-top James Bond-style thrillers.
It’s vital for the tension of the series that “it stay true to the real-time format,” Katz explains. Yet that can be a challenge to the show’s authenticity, particularly because the action takes place in Los Angeles, where traffic can be snarled around the clock.
“We stretch things as much as we can. We have helicopters and, don’t forget, we count the time in commercial breaks,” laughs Katz, whose previous credits include the quirky monster-chasing series Special Unit 2, which aired on UPN several years ago.
The new CTU headquarters set – an elaborate, multistorey maze of steel, glass and concrete with splashes of peacock blue and ruby red brightening its sleek design – looks like something any Bond movie would be proud to feature.
On this day, Raver’s Audrey was challenging the methods and motivations of the CTU staff, while Devane waited off-camera for a later scene.
Wry and tough, Devane has the perfect manner for someone who’s not supposed to give too much away.
“I’m the kind of secretary of defence the country needs,” is about all he’d say about his character.
Devane’s take on the plot?
“Jack works for me. I have a daughter who’s my aide, and son who’s kind of a hippie guy. We came to L.A. for something – I forget what – and all hell breaks loose and Jack takes charge.”
He grins. “That’s the one thing I’ve learned: Jack takes charge and he gets it done!”

Categories
People

So “Elektra” is that bad that she isn’t going to promote it, huh? Well, get well soon, Jen!

Jennifer Garner Ill With Viral Infection
NEW YORK – Actress Jennifer Garner is ill with a viral infection, forcing her to cancel TV appearances promoting her new film, “Elektra,” according to reports.
Publicist Nicole King said she didn’t know if Garner would attend the premiere of the film in Las Vegas Saturday, USA Today reported.
King said Garner, 32, was seeing a doctor Tuesday. The season premiere of her TV series “Alias” was set for 9 p.m. Wednesday on ABC.

Categories
Music

I’m in line already!!

Sheryl Crow Hatching Two Albums This Year
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) – Sheryl Crow is coming back with a vengeance. After sitting out much of 2004, she has not one, but two albums ready to go for 2005.
“I want to put out an artist record first and then a pop record in the fall,” she says. “I’m going to hand both my records in (to Interscope) probably in the last bit of January.”
So what makes an “artist” record different from a “pop” record? Crow laughs and says, “Probably the art record will never get any airplay. It’s just a really heartfelt, stripped-down, no-bells-and-whistles record that lyrically probably has heavier content than maybe a pop record does.”
She adds that she still loves writing pop songs, “but for me, just for a long time, I’ve been wanting to sit down and write songs that I feel compelled to write.”
She figures that the success of 2003’s “The Very Best of Sheryl Crow” (which has sold 3.2 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan) allows her “to put out a record that’s maybe not as commercial.”
Given her very public romantic relationship with cyclist Lance Armstrong, she says it is no surprise that her mood is upbeat these days — and it shows in her music.
“I am writing a lot more love songs because I’m really happy in my life, and I’m in a really positive relationship, but there’s also so much stuff to write about in the world. It’s a really interesting time to be an artist.”
She adds that any performer now has to guard against the cult of celebrity. “People are having such an adverse reaction to celebrities that to be a celebrity is a negative term, and to be an artist, you have to fight that part of it. For me, in order to find a way to reach people in a medium that’s based on commerciality, but to also say something, is a real interesting question and really exciting.”

Categories
People

Whatever he is, we love him! We love ya, Bill!!

Bill Murray Scoffs at ‘Difficult’ Label
NEW YORK – Bill Murray gets defensive when told he has a reputation for being difficult. “If it keeps obnoxious people away, that’s fine,” he tells Time magazine in its editions on sale Monday. “It makes me think of that line you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. People say this to you with a straight face, and I always say, ‘Who. Wants. Flies?'”
Murray, the star of “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” grew up in a blue-collar family and suggested his outbursts are generally spurred by an empathy for the underdog.
Recently on the set of his still-untitled film for director Jim Jarmusch, Murray got into a fracas with the location manager when he arrived at a rented house for a scene with child actors and discovered that there was no heat. When he started a fire in the fireplace, the location manager told him to stop.
“‘Who are you?'” Murray told her. “She said, ‘I’m locations.’ I said, ‘Well, if locations had done their job and made sure it was warm enough for these people, we wouldn’t be lighting a fire in the fireplace.'”
But at the wrap party, Murray approached the woman again. “I said, ‘You know, we had our moment, and I don’t apologize for that for a second.'” But she had excelled at other aspects of her job, and Murray told her so. “I wanted to let her know I could see it both ways.”