Categories
Letterman

He was fun to watch!!

Letterman putting life back together after scandal
NEW YORK ñ David Letterman says the scandal surrounding his workplace dalliances “knocked him down” and depressed him, but that he’s putting the pieces of his life back together.
During a guest appearance on Friday’s “Live with Regis and Kelly,” the CBS late-night star said his behavior hurt his family and himself. But he sounded hopeful that life with his wife and young son can “even be better, in a different way” than before the explosive revelations that he had had sex with co-workers.
Letterman made no reference to the $2 million shakedown attempt over his sex life that spurred him to acknowledge the affairs on his show last October.
Former television producer Robert Halderman, who pleaded guilty to the blackmail attempt, is scheduled to be sentenced next week.

Categories
Music

Coolio!!

Neil Young Hits the Studio With Producer Daniel Lanois
Neil Young recently announced a solo acoustic tour, but his buddy David Crosby is handling the job of letting fans know his old bandmate is back in the studio. Crosby tells Rolling Stone that Young is recording a new album with producer Daniel Lanois, best known for his work with U2 and Bob Dylan. “Neil told me last week that he was having a great time talking music with him and just relating to him,” David Crosby says, adding that he volunteered his services for any upcoming sessions. “I said to him, ‘If you want a harmony, I’m volunteering.’ He said, ‘You know, if I need one you’ll be the first guy I call.’ ”
Young has rarely worked with big-name producers throughout his four-decade career. “I think that Neil’s been a little lonely for someone to interact that way because his best buddy [L.A. Johnson] died and that just really left a hole there,” says Crosby. “The guy’s paid an awful lot of dues, man. I suspect this will be a very heartfelt record. I expect it will be a very special record.” Fans will likely hear a preview of songs destined for the in-progress LP when Young hits the road May 18th for his three-week American theater tour.
“He does that [solo acoustic] thing probably better than anybody,” adds Crosby. “One of my most favorite concerts of his was him at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. He had a circle of his guitars around him and a chair, and he walked out there and sang. It was mesmerizing. He’s a fantastic musician, but also a great storyteller. I was standing there in the wings with Bob Dylan. He and I are huge Neil fans, and we didn’t move. We stood there the entire concert and just watched. We were as mesmerized as much as the audience was.”

Categories
Television

I think he would have!!

O’Brien: I wouldn’t have done what Jay Leno did
NEW YORK ñ In his first post-“Tonight” show interview, Conan O’Brien said that if he had been in Jay Leno’s shoes, he would not have taken back the show less than a year after publicly handing it off to someone else.
“That’s me, you know,” O’Brien told Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” in an interview to be broadcast Sunday, excerpts of which were released Thursday by CBS. “Everyone’s got their own way … of doing things.”
O’Brien, in the midst of a sold-out concert tour, said he decided to leave NBC because “this relationship is going to be toxic and maybe we just need to go our separate ways.”
It was the comic’s first interview about the late-night television drama that played out this winter.
He has since been hired by TBS, where he will launch a talk show in November.
In a transition laid out five years earlier, Leno left “Tonight” last year and O’Brien took over. NBC worried about losing Leno to a competitor so the network gave him a prime-time show five nights a week.
That failed on two fronts: affiliates objected to Leno’s low ratings and threatened to pull the show, and O’Brien’s poor “Tonight” show ratings enabled CBS’ David Letterman to surge ahead to first place.
NBC tried to please both comics by offering Leno a half-hour show at 11:35 p.m. and letting O’Brien keep the “Tonight” show name and begin a half hour later. O’Brien said no and Leno, who never wanted to leave “Tonight” in the first place, slipped back into his old home.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” O’Brien said.
Asked by Kroft what he would have done, O’Brien said, “Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that’s just me.”
O’Brien said he didn’t see the point in giving everything to a relationship with NBC that seemed to have no future.
“I’m not sure these people even really want me here,” he said.
During the few weeks between his public decision and actual exit, O’Brien became something of a folk hero. An Internet “Team Coco” tribe rose up to support him, and O’Brien’s ratings soared for shows with pointed jabs about his bosses.
NBC and a Leno spokesman had no comment about O’Brien’s statements.
His buyout by NBC forbade O’Brien from giving interviews that could be printed or telecast before May 1; the “60 Minutes” telecast will be May 2.
CBS’ release of the interview excerpts may be a technical violation of that deal, but NBC wasn’t expected to pursue it.

Categories
Bruuuuuuuuce!!

Go back to The Boss, Max!! Who needs Conan?!?!

OíBrien, Weinberg part ways?
Conan O’Brien’s Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television tour has been delighting audiences with all the usual players like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Andy Richter, and of course, Conan himself. The only person who hasn’t joined the party is O’Brien’s long-time bandleader, Max Weinberg.
His absence from the tour has sparked rumors that Weinberg doesn’t plan to join O’Brien’s TBS show when it premieres in November.
In an interview with CityPages, music legend Al Kooper said that Weinberg and O’Brien have parted ways. “That’s a name you can’t say anymore,” Kooper said when O’Brien was brought up. “He’s not in that band anymore. They let him go. This is a big transition, and they’re all signing new contracts and everything so they replaced him, as far as I know.”
Movieline reported earlier this month that Weinberg met with Jay Leno to discuss the possiblity of returning to “The Tonight Show” bandleader Kevin Eubanks, who’s leaving this month. Those rumors didn’t pan out — the show hired “American Idol” music director Rickey Minor as Eubanks’ replacement — but Kooper also notes that there was a “lotta conflict” between Weinberg’s work with O’Brien and his other steady gig as Bruce Springsteen’s drummer.

Categories
Movies

Just get them done!!

‘The Hobbit’ not delayed; on track for 2012
ìThe Hobbitî is coming to theaters sooner than you think, but later than you initially thought.
Let’s clear it up.
Warner Bros. is scheduling Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toroís two-part adaptation of ìThe Hobbitî for December 2012 and December 2013.
A confusion over release dates surfaced earlier today when Imax announced an overall, 20-film, three-year deal with Warners. In outlining which films would be included, Imax incorrectly gave 2013 as the release date for the first ìHobbitî movie.
But 2013 is two years later than the 2011 release date that New Line and MGM targeted for the first installment when the two companies originally announced the movies in December 2007.
However, 2011 proved not to be a realistic date and instead served more as a guideline, according to insiders, because when it was first announced, no scripts were written, nor schedules or budgets drawn up.
While the project is taking a bit longer than the filmmakers anticipated, it is now on track for 2012 — rather than the 2013 date mentioned in the Imax release.
The second movieís script was turned in to the studio a couple of weeks ago, and all parties are starting to break down the financials for the movies now.
Warners moved quickly to set the calendar straight in the wake of the Imax release, and by midday, the giant-screen-format company said it was going to send out a correction, officially making 2012 the new date for the first ìHobbitî movie.

Categories
Music

New music and the reunion would be awesome!!!

Roger Waters still looking to record new music
NEW YORK ñ Roger Waters has kept up a steady performing schedule, and this fall, he’s launching a big spectacle with a 30th anniversary tour for Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” But fans won’t be hearing any new music from Waters ó he hasn’t put out an album in almost two decades.
That’s not because of a lack of creativity, Waters insists.
“I have a ton of songs,” he said in a recent interview.
“Some of them are recorded, and some of them are half-recorded, and I keep promising myself that I’m gonna find a collaborator and work on them and put them together in some kind of coherent form,” he continued. “I suspect I will do that in some time in the near future. But it’s strange how time keeps clicking away. And each page turns faster then the last, in my experience.”
Whether the 66-year-old Waters puts out a new album remains to be seen, but he has plenty of other things to occupy his time. He spoke with The Associated Press about “The Wall,” politics and more.
AP: There had been talk about bringing “The Wall” to Broadway. Is that still going to happen?
Waters: That’s still very much in the cards. I have been working on and off for the last year or so with an English writer named Lee Hall, who has become greatly celebrated over here and in London, because he wrote “Billy Elliot,” which is one of the most successful musicals out there at the moment. … Lee’s become a close friend of mine, and I’m touching wood but we think we’ve finally found a director that we want to work with, so that’s another project that’s in the pipeline. We’re on the fourth or fifth version of the book, and trying to write some laughs into it. My one disappointment with the original rock ‘n’ roll show that we did, and to some extent with the movie as well, there weren’t just not many laughs in it. … Humor is a very important part of my life, so part of the reason for wanting to do a production on Broadway is to express the funny side of the characters.
AP: Green Day’s “American Idiot” is in the vein of “The Wall.” Do you plan to check out the Broadway play version?
Waters: It would be remiss of me not to check it out. I don’t know the work very well. I am not a very good audience. … My taste in music is very broad, but it’s not very much popular music that I listen to. But when I got this invitation, I did check out some bits of Green Day, and you know, there’s some very strong melodies in there.
AP: What were your inspirations for “The Wall”?
Waters: My early manhood was troubled by all kinds of feelings of inferiority, and inconsequence, I was that guy at parties who only ever dressed in black and stood in the corner and scowled at people. Very often those attempts by the young to be cool are just because they’re absolutely scared. I certainly was. The writing of “The Wall” was part of a process that I used to free myself from some of those neuroses, and some of those fears. Fear is a very pernicious element in many of our lives … (It) is in lots of ways similar to the fear that is engendered in nations and ideologies. … We build up these defenses and the fear that we establish about other, anybody that’s not us.
AP: What is your impression on the political divide in the United States?
Waters: The United states is very insular and parochial, and resists the idea of seeing yourselves they way others see you, the way you’re seem in Europe, and the resistance is enormous, I think, to taking a straight forward look at this stuff. … Obviously many, many American citizens are aware of these problems in society and how deeply important they are. … I remember my mother, who traveled here before the second World War, used to say to me, ‘Americans are so friendly, and so generous,” but she also said, “And so naive.” But I think there’s a huge well of wanting to do good and wanting to help, but it is subverted by the power of commerce.
AP: It’s always asked of you, so we will ask it again ó any chance of another Pink Floyd reunion?
Waters: David (Gilmour) is completely disinterested in anything like that. After Live 8, I could have probably gone for doing some more stuff, but he’s not interested, so it is what it is.

Categories
Concerts

Now I really can’t go as I will be on Prince Edward Island!!

Simon & Garfunkel shows postponed 2 months
A vocal strain affecting Art Garfunkel has delayed the start of a tour by the legendary 1960s folk duo Simon & Garfunkel, pushing back by two months shows from Vancouver to Halifax.
In Saskatchewan, a Saskatoon performance that had been set for next Tuesday has been rescheduled to July 9, the promoter announced Wednesday night.
In a media release, organizers said Garfunkel suffered a vocal strain.
“In an effort to provide the highest quality performance for their audience, Paul and Art decided it would be best to move the scheduled concert dates,” the release said.
Garfunkel and Paul Simon will still perform at Credit Union Place, Saskatoon’s hockey arena and concert venue on the new date.
“The dates have been rescheduled to allow for an adequate period of rest and rehabilitation, after which Art is expected to make a complete recovery,” the release added.
The singer-songwriters had many hit songs in the 1960s that continued to be played long after the duo broke up in 1970, including Bridge Over Troubled Water, Cecilia, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, The Boxer and Mrs. Robinson.
Simon went on to a successful solo career, and the two have reunited intermittently over the years for performances and tours.
The complete list of new dates is:
July 3, Vancouver General Motors Place
July 5, Calgary Pengrowth Saddledome
July 6, Edmonton Rexall Place
July 8, Winnipeg MTS Centre
July 9, Saskatoon Credit Union Centre
July 11, Fargo, N.D.. Fargodome
July 12, St. Paul, Minn., Xcel Energy Center
July 14, Madison, Wis., venue TBA
July 17, Auburn Hills, Mich., Palace of Auburn Hills
July 19, Toronto Air Canada Centre
July 21, Ottawa Scotiabank Place
July 22, Montreal Bell Centre
July 24 and 25, Halifax Halifax Metro Centre
July 29, Uncasville, Conn., Mohegan Sun Arena
July 31, Atlantic City Trump Taj Mahal Etess Arena

Categories
Music

I happily gave them my money!!!

K’naan’s Wavin’ Flag raises $1M for Haiti relief
A star-studded, remixed version of K’naan’s ubiquitous track Wavin’ Flag has raised more than $1 million for victims of the Haitian earthquake.
Since its release on March 12, the benefit single racked up seven consecutive weeks atop Canadian radio charts, sold more than 160,000 copies on online music retailer iTunes and its accompanying music video viewed more than 4.5 million times, organizers announced on Wednesday.
Drake, Justin Bieber, Kardinal Offishall, Nelly Furtado and Nikki Yanofsky were among the dozens of Canadian artists who joined K’naan on the charity single, which was quickly organized and recorded in early February.
“What happened was, we were watching the [fundraising remake of] We Are the World in the United States the day after the Grammy awards, and the instinct was ‘We want to do something as Canadians,'” Randy Lennox, the president and CEO of Universal Music Canada, told CBC in March.
“The moment of this song ó watching these 57 artists come together in Vancouver ó was unbelievable. A really rewarding moment for our history,” he said.
The money raised from the single is earmarked for several charities with on-the-ground efforts in Haiti, including Free the Children, War Child Canada and World Vision.
Wavin’ Flag, a track off Somali-born, Toronto-based K’naan’s 2009 album Troubadour, was also selected to be the official song of the World Cup Trophy Tour, which made its sole Canadian stop in Toronto on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, K’naan was named artist and songwriter of the year at the 2010 Juno Awards in St. John’s.
Drake, Bieber and Yanofsky joined him onstage to sing the benefit single version of Wavin’ Flag to close the televised awards gala.

Categories
Television

That isn’t really that much of a surprise, is it?!?

Steve Carell leaving ëThe Officeí?
Dunder Mifflin Scranton may be on the hunt for a new manager this time next year.
Steve Carell, who’s played Michael Scott on “The Office” for the past six seasons, says that the 2010-11 season will “probably” be his last on the show. In a BBC radio interview with his “Date Night” co-star Tina Fey (which Office Tally picked up; it also has audio of the interview), he notes that his contract runs out next season. Here’s the full exchange:
Interviewer: How long will you stay with ‘The Office’ for? How many more series? How long does your contract run?
Carell: Contract through next season.
Interviewer: And will you stay after that?
Carell: I don’t think so. I think that will probably be my last year.
That’s potentially huge news for the show, which is NBC’s second-highest-rated series (after “Sunday Night Football”) among adults 18-49; it’s averaging a 4.6 rating in the demographic this season, which places it in the Top 20 among all shows, and just under 9 million viewers per week, the most by far of anything in NBC’s Thursday lineup.

Categories
Rumours

We’ll always have the original!!

Bill Murray Calls Ghostbusters 3 Hogwash And A Myth
A couple weeks ago, a story broke that Dan Aykroyd called Bill Murray and asked him to “stop acting like a jerk” in reference to the proposed Ghostbusters 3. Since rumors first began as early as 2007, the man who was Peter Venkman has been nay-saying the project the entire way, and, apparently, a scolding from Aykroyd isn’t going to be enough to stop it.
Cinemablend.com had the chance to sit with Murray at a press junket for his newest film, Get Low, which is currently being screened as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, and the subject was brought up yet again. First deferreing to Sissy Spacek, who was sitting next to him, saying “Sissy knows my answer to this, she can handle it,” Murray not only said that he was sick of the conversation, but that the whole thing is a pipe dream:
ìItís just a myth. Itís like the white alligator in the sewer, you know? Whoís seen it, really?î
ìItís just really the movie studio. They love the franchise, theyíd just like to re-create it again. All this talk is just talk. It drives me nuts, itís just people talking. And now, itís like, on the street people go ëhey, hey, hey,í you know, why donít you go back to high school? Quit bothering me. Until someone actually creates a great script itís just hogwash, it doesnít mean anything. Itís interesting that people are interested in it, theyíd like to see it. It was a great thing, it really was fun. Maybe it should. And if itís such a good idea, then someone will write the screenplay.î
As much as some people may really want to see a third Ghostbusters movie, it’s nearly impossible to argue with his logic. The franchise means so much to so many people, Murray included, but are we willing to sacrifice quality just for another two hours of gray jump suits and ectoplasm? The quote also raises questions regarding the script written Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, but, then again, considering those are the same guy’s who wrote Year One, perhaps that’s why Murray used “great” as a modifier.