Swollen Members top Western Cdn. Music nods
REGINA (CP) -- Swollen Members topped the list of nominees for the first annual Western Canadian Music Awards with four nods, including one for entertainer of the year.
The Vancouver hip-hop crew also picked up nominations for best rap/hip-hop recording, best independent album and best video for their song Breathe.
The British Columbia group The Be Good Tanyas also did well. Their rustic mix of old-time country, blues and folk netted the all-girl trio three nominations: outstanding independent album, outstanding roots recording and best video for their song It's Not Happening.
The Members will be up against pop-rocker Bif Naked, Spirit of the West front-man John Mann, rock heavyweight Nickelback and the Watchmen for best entertainer honours.
The awards, formerly known as the Prairie Music Awards, will be held Sept. 25-28 in Regina. They celebrate the best in pop music from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and -- for the first time -- British Columbia and the Yukon.
The awards will feature days of workshops on everything from writing songs to getting started in the industry. All genres of pop music, from hip-hop to jazz to country, will be featured.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose songwriting credits include an Academy Award for her movie theme song Up Where We Belong, will deliver the keynote address.
Sainte-Marie is originally from the Piapot reserve in Saskatchewan.
Participants from Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States will attend. About 60 bands are slated to perform over three nights.
Calgary is slated to host the awards in 2004 and Vancouver in 2005.
Weezer Getting Personal On New Album
The next Weezer album may include some of the most personal songs frontman Rivers Cuomo has written to date. Producer Rick Rubin, who has been doing preproduction on the set for months, tells Billboard.com that on potential songs for the record, Cuomo "is really getting to a very personal place with writing and it's, I think, deeper than he's ever gone."
Does that mean the band will be revisiting some of the darker territory it explored on its sophomore set, "Pinkerton," which has over the years become a cult favorite? "It's hard to say," Rubin says. "But, lyrically, I would say that since 'Pinkerton,' he's never really gone in that direction. And I know that from the beginning of this project, he was open to all those places that he hasn't gone since. And that was something he brought up."
Now demoing and rehearsing tracks, the band plans to start the formal recording of the album with Rubin late this summer or in the fall. Loosely slated to be issued sometime next year by Geffen, the album will be the band's fifth and the follow-up to last year's "Maladroit," which debuted at No. 3 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 546,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.
As previously reported, a number of previously unreleased Weezer cuts have surfaced of late. A 1995 demo, "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" can be found on the "Gimme Skelter" compilation, due Oct. 21 via Buddyhead/Nettwerk.
A live recording of "Why Bother" was included on the Petra Haden benefit double 7" on Vegas Records, while a cover of "Worry Rock" appeared on the Green Day tribute "A Different Shade of Green," released last month by Skunk Ape Records.
Weezer is also working on a DVD, tentatively due in December, as well as an expanded reissue of its 1994 Geffen debut, "Weezer" ("The Blue Album").
Poll: 99 Cents Too Expensive For Downloads
A single song download is too pricey at 99 cents, according to a Billboard.com poll. Of 9,034 voters, 61% said that the base price at such online outlets as Apple's iTunes is too expensive for them.
The largest group, 32%, said 99 cents was simply too much for just one song. Another 29% preferred a less legal approach, agreeing with the statement "Why pay for it when I can download it elsewhere online for free?"
On the other hand, of the 39% who are in favor of the sub-$1 price structure, 22% felt 99 cents was OK if the quality and selection of the service offering the tracks is good. An additional 17% considered the cost a fair amount, "based on what you have to pay for an album."
Toronto Film Fest Promises Plenty of Star Power
TORONTO (Reuters) - The Toronto International Film Festival pledged on Tuesday to deliver plenty of star power, with Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan set to help the city shake off a SARS and blackout-induced slowdown.
Unveiling the final lineup for the Sept 4-13 event, organizers said the recent SARS outbreak failed to scare off stars or filmmakers and ticket sales were already ahead of last year's record levels.
"The fact they're here is obviously for us a great sigh of relief ... their presence at the festival is going to electrify this city," Toronto festival director Piers Handling told reporters.
"I think it's just a recognition of how important the festival has become in the eyes of the international industry."
Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen, Sean Penn, Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Cate Blanchett, Tim Robbins, Isabella Rossellini and Omar Sharif were also confirmed to attend, Handling said.
Ridley Scott will present his director's cut of science fiction classic "Alien," complete with never before seen footage. Francis Ford Coppola will also attend to show and discuss his 1982 film, "One from the Heart."
This year's festival will present 336 films from 55 countries, including 252 features, about 60 percent of which are in a language other than English.
NO BLACKOUT FEARS
The event will be a much welcomed injection of tourism and business for a city hit hard by the SARS outbreak, which ran from mid-March until early May in Toronto. The city remains the only place outside Asia where people have died from the disease.
Organizers said they had no fears about further power outages during the festival even as Ontario remained under the threat of power blackouts on Tuesday. Supplies remain low in the province five days after the worst outage in North American history, even though U.S. cities were fully recovered.
"We've been through some pretty major crises over the last little while as a festival. Air strikes and postal strikes and projectionist strikes and we went through 9/11 in the middle of our festival. I think we'll roll with the punches," Handling said.
Organizers said they will close off this year's festival with "Danny Deckchair," an Australian film about a man whose life changes after he takes flight in a deck chair tied to balloons.
Other gala films announced on Tuesday included "Girl With a Pearl Earring," based on the popular novel, Richard Linklater's "The School of Rock," with comedian Jack Black and Joan Cusack, Ireland's "The Boys from County Clare" and "Nathalie" and "Bon Voyage" from France.
Welcome Back Sarah!
It is rumoured that the new Sarah McLachlan disc will be called "Fallen." Upon its release it will be issued as a Limited Edition with a bonus DVD as well as the standard CD release.
"Fallen" is expected on November 4.
Also, Pink's upcoming album, with a title to be determined, will hit shelves on November 11 as both a Limited Edition with bonus DVD and a standard CD issue as well.
United They Stand
The mutants are coming, the mutants are coming! One of the only sequels of the summer not to disappoint, X2: X-Men United will hit DVD on November 25th from Fox Home Entertainment. Just in time for Thanksgiving, the Bryan Singer-directed mutant-fest will be released in separate anamorphic widescreen and full screen versions, each a two disc set with plenty of extras: audio commentary by Singer and cinematographer Tom Sigel and a second commentary with writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty and producers Lauren Shuller-Donner and Tom DeSanto, plus . 11 new featurettes and 11 deleted/extended scenes, a still gallery, trailers and more.
Seven Seas
While it failed to sail the high seas this past summer, the animated adventure Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas will get another chance on November 18th courtesy of DreamWorks Home Entertainment. In the hopes of repeating Spirit-like DVD sales, DreamWorks will load up the flick, which features the voices of Brad Pitt, Michelle Pfeiffer and recent Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, with plenty of extras: audio commentary with directors Patrick Gilmore and Tim Johnson, 2 featurettes, the "Cyclops Island" 6-minute short exclusive to DVD, production notes, trailers and plenty of PC-enabled extras including games, printable masks and a color book. The set will include both anamorphic widescreen and full screen transfers, and there is no set retail price: MAP is $19.95.