Day: May 8, 2008

Categories
Music

Enjoy the Wazoo!!!

Frank Zappa concert headed for CD release
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Frank Zappa fans can soon enjoy a previously unreleased 1972 concert recording, the latest material from the deceased rock star’s archives to be unveiled.
“Wazoo,” a two-disc set documenting Zappa’s September 24, 1972, show at the Boston Music Hall, will be released May 27 via Vaulternative Records, a label run by the Zappa Family Trust.
“Wazoo” is the third concert release from the trust, which is headed by Zappa’s widow, Gail. Zappa died of prostate cancer in 1993.
The show marks the final performance by Zappa’s 20-piece Grand Wazoo/Hot Rats/Mothers of Invention band. The set includes liner notes by Wazoo member Malcolm McNab and Gail Zappa, as well as photos from the era. It also marks the 35th anniversary of Zappa’s studio album “The Grand Wazoo.” The album will be available at Zappa.com.

Categories
Games

And think, some people even did both!!

How Iron Man was trounced by a scruffy car thief
LOS ANGELES – Niko Bellic is richer than Tony Stark.
While vying for similar audiences at the same time, “Grand Theft Auto IV” bested “Iron Man” by about $300 million in their respective first weeks on the small and big screens. The highly anticipated video game about immigrant gangster Bellic drove away with over $500 million, while the movie about Marvel billionaire superhero Stark blasted off with over $200 million worldwide.
Each figure is a history-maker in its own right: The supercharged “GTA IV” launch topped last year’s blockbuster “Halo 3” release, making it the most lucrative debut video games ó and, by all accounts, entertainment in general. Meanwhile, “Iron Man” can claim the second-best non-sequel movie opening ever as a consolation prize.
Software publisher Take-Two Interactive bandied the behemoth sales figures on Wednesday, days after “Iron Man” vaunted an unexpectedly huge opening weekend box office. The eye-popping digits left many wondering how such a blockbuster could be so soundly trounced by a controverisal video game.
The simple answer: “GTA IV” costs more to buy.
“‘GTA IV”s first-week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date,” Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said in an official statement on Wednesday.
Such comparisons aren’t entirely fair. Bellic and Stark, for example, play by different rules. Video games are sold online and in stores, a distribution model more like CDs and DVDs than newly released films. However, such similarities end there, because DVDs don’t usually involve completely original fare. And CDs typically only contain, well, music.
The reach is vastly different, too: “Iron Man” was released on over 7,000 movie screens while “GTA IV” was available for about 24 million Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles at launch, according to Wedbush Morgan video game analyst Michael Pachter. But to achieve its $100 million weekend milestone, “Iron Man” had to sell more than twice the number of tickets as “GTA IV” units were moved ó about six million ó in the first week.
Janco Parters video game analyst Mike Hickey originally suspected “GTA IV” could dampen the success of “Iron Man” since both properties were setting their targets on young adults and were being released at about the same time. That doesn’t seem to have been the case.
What “GTA IV” did impact was the sale of consoles. Microsoft said Xbox 360 sales jumped 54 percent in the week following the game’s launch, compared with the prior week. Sony didn’t reveal similar specifics but said there has been a significant spike in PS3 sales.
The contradictions extend beyond distribution. The running time of “Iron Man” is two hours and six minutes. “GTA IV” isn’t nearly that linear; the game’s criminal missions ó which players can stop and start anytime ó can take 60 hours to complete, not counting hours of multiplayer matches or exploration of Liberty City, the highly detailed virtual urban locale where “GTA IV” takes place.
But undoubtedly, the most influential contrast is cost. The standard edition of “GTA IV” is $59.99, while a special edition goes for $89.99 and comes with a soundtrack, art book, duffel bag and safety deposit box. Either way, every time a copy of the game is rung up, what’s added to the week’s tally is significantly more than the $7 average ticket price to see a movie in the U.S.
Quantifying the game’s lucrative launch is trickier against other mediums. The book “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” sold more than 10 million copies at launch. That’s acutally four million more than Bellic, but the Hogwarts student’s final adventure cost about half as much as Bellic’s mature-rated exploits.
There’s one group that Bellic, Stark and Potter all individually reign supreme over: ‘Nsync.
The pop quintet’s “No Strings Attached” holds the record for biggest first-week CD sales with 2.4 million copies when it was released in 2000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That’s far meeker than the first-week success of “Iron Man,” “Deathly Hallows” and “GTA IV.”
Maybe the Eastern European gangster, boozy billionaire and boy wizard should form a boy band.

Categories
SCTV

11300 – It was a spectacular, surreal show!!

Dan’s Note: I didn’t write this, but I agree with every word!!
———————
All the hits, as good as we remember
It was 1974 all over again, and thankfully so, as SCTV veterans did their thing
Richard Ouzounian – Toronto Star Theatre Critic
Anybody searching for the Fountain of Youth is advised to pay a visit to the Second City on Mercer St. where The Benefit of Laughter opened last night for a two-performance run.
The five cast members from the iconic series SCTV ñ Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short ñ hadn’t appeared together on a stage in 24 years, but you’d never know it.
They showed us without a doubt that they had the talent, the panache and that inexpressible larger-than-life quality called stardom that still makes them unique.
Nothing could make that clearer than a moment in the first sketch they performed, where O’Hara played a teacher summoning the worst parents of her class. All was going fine and then suddenly, a door flung open and there was Martin, a.k.a. Edith Prickley, in her leopard-clothed glory.
It was like someone had pulled an electric switch on the stage. Everything seemed brighter, funnier and the audience cheered their approval. And the first time Martin uncorked that incredible cackle of hers, all of us felt like it was 1974 all over again … and boy, were we glad it was.
Miracles like that were in plentiful supply last night. Let Levy’s clueless Earl Camembert do his slow burn through a news report where stolid partner Floyd Robertson (Flaherty, the king of deadpan) got all the good headlines and you practically fell apart with glee waiting for the final eruption that you knew would come.
When Martin’s twitching, preening Ed Grimley triumphed over a superior candidate at a job interview and went into a dance that looked like a cobra squirming through a sea of Vaseline, everything seemed right with the world.
By the time Act II began with an episode of the Sammy Maudlin Show, bliss reigned supreme.
Flaherty sleazed his way through the talk show host with vintage grease, Levy’s Bobby Bittman hit new heights of self-promotional hilarity and then the Earth stopped on its axis as O’Hara’s bleached blond and white-spangled Lola Heatherton slunk into view, offering to bear all our children.
The medley of Canadian songs she did with Levy hit new heights of hilarity, ending with his ad-libbed “I don’t know those kookie, crazy Canadian clouds after all.”
The hits kept on a comin’, as they used to say, with Short stopping the show as the loathsome Jackie Rogers Jr. and a gossipy hairdresser who uncorks lines like, “John McCain is so old, the only time he doesn’t have to pee is when he pees.”
There was also first-rate work from the inventive Colin Mochrie and the daffy, delectable Women Fully Clothed, but this evening belonged to the gang from SCTV.
They subtly saluted their absent friend John Candy by saying how much they missed his William B. Williams character during the Maudlin show but otherwise, it was laughter all the way.
Were they great in the past? Undoubtedly. Were they great last night? Absolutely. Will they ever be that great in person again? Only God and Guy Caballero know for sure.

Categories
Movies

11299 – My sister is in this film…so I hope it isn’t what the RCMP thought it was!!

Canuck film suspected as porn
TORONTO – The film “Love and Savagery” tells a romantic tale of passion and longing set in Ireland and Newfoundland, yet Canada Border Services officials recently held up footage from the movie because they suspected it was pornography.
The movie’s producers shot scenes in Ireland last month, including some in a Catholic church, and had sent footage for processing to Montreal. The film was held by border officials for days at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.
“All of a sudden this batch of rushes got held up day after day after day at Canadian Customs,” a bemused John N. Smith said in an interview from St. John’s, where shooting on the Ireland-Canada co-production continues.
“There was a big kerfuffle and they suspected us of being involved in the pornography trade. They were insisting they were going to send it off to the RCMP lab to develop it to see if we were engaged in pornography.”
Both Smith, who directed “The Englishman’s Boy” and the award-winning “The Boys of St. Vincent,” and Kevin Tierney, the producer of “Love and Savagery,” suspect the menacing arm of Bill C-10 was at play.
The controversial bill, currently being debated in the Senate, would allow the government to withhold tax credits to film and television productions it deems offensive.
“There’s now a kind of attitude that permeates the bureaucracy based on the signals they’re getting from the elected ministers,” Tierney said.
Border Services Agency officials said Wednesday they couldn’t comment on specific cases, but noted they may choose to examine any shipment if they suspect it contains prohibited or restricted items, including pornography.
Tierney said Montreal border officials were suspicious based on the film’s title, something he found amusing.
“As if we’re going to make pornography in Ireland, and then label it ‘Love and Savagery’ – very subtle – and then send it to the porn capital of Canada. It’s like bringing communion to the Pope. Are they out of their minds?” Tierney said incredulously.
Smith said the spectre of C-10, even though it isn’t law yet, is looming large.
“The insidious C-10 rears its head in all these odd little ways,” he said. “I don’t think people realize how incredibly difficult this nonsense makes it for Canadian producers because if you don’t have a guarantee that you’re going to be able to make the movie, then it’s going to screw up the financing. It’s absolutely insane right now.”
The threat from border officials to send the rushes to an RCMP lab for processing caused a tense few days for the filmmakers.
“This was 35-millimetre negative film – it’s very, very critical, you can’t just have any old lab go and process it,” Smith said.
Tierney said he was ready to put his lawyers on the case, since the footage could have been ruined had it gone to the Mountie lab for processing. In the end, that wasn’t necessary.
And Smith says there might be an added benefit to the misunderstanding about the film, which stars Newfoundland actor Allan Hawco and Irish actress Sarah Greene as star-crossed lovers.
“Who knows, we may get the raincoat crowd now,” he said with a laugh.

Categories
People

11298 – May he rest in peace!!

Biographer: Country superstar Eddy Arnold dies at 89
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A biographer for country music superstar Eddy Arnold says the singer has died at the age of 89.
Belmont University Professor Don Cusic says Arnold died at a care facility near Nashville Thursday morning. Arnold was just days short of his 90th birthday.
Arnold’s mellow baritone on songs like “Make the World Go Away” ó a crossover hit on the pop charts in 1965 ó made him one of the most successful country singers in history.
He became a pioneer of “The Nashville Sound,” also called “countrypolitan,” a mixture of country and pop styles.
He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966. The following year he was the first person to receive the entertainer of the year award from the Country Music Association.