The Stones draw 80,000 in Regina
REGINA (CP) - It was all about Mick and the boys Friday in the Queen City.
Some 80,000 people were set to attend Rolling Stones shows on Friday and Sunday in what officials were calling the city's biggest-ever concerts. Among the thousands who mingled at the site more than three hours before showtime was Brock Montgomery, 25, who drove in from Moose Jaw to see "the greatest rock and roll band of all times - hands down."
"I've been listening to them for a long time," he said.
"The old man, he brought us into them," Montgomery said, referring to his father, who was also at the show.
"It'll be awesome, probably the best thing that ever happens to me."
Some ticket holders could be heard on cellphones, calling friends to say that they were at the show. One group of four, clearly expecting satisfaction from the show, was singing the Stones hit, albeit somewhat off key.
Others hadn't actually scored tickets to the concert but hung around outside Mosaic Stadium in the hope something would materialize.
One woman, who would only identify herself as Joan, waited in front of the ticket office wearing a placard that said: "Wanted: Stones tickets."
"I've never done this before," Joan said. "(But) we thought what the heck, if we can get tickets we'll go - concert of a lifetime."
Officials at Tourism Regina agreed, saying the show was the biggest the city and possibly the province had ever seen.
"There is nobody in Saskatchewan who doesn't know somebody that's going to be at the concert," said Steve McLellan, the agency's executive director.
"In Regina, and indeed throughout Saskatchewan, it's a big deal . . . it's the biggest deal going in our city literally for years."
McLellan said the shows are expected to bring in between $10 million and $15 million in direct tourism spending.
"(It's) the most amount of tickets ever sold in Regina, the biggest band that's ever been here, we think the biggest production that's ever been into the city," he said.
Crews worked for several days to turn Mosaic Stadium - the home of the Saskatchewan Roughriders football team - into the massive stage dubbed by the Stones production crew as "the Big Grey Whale."
"It looks just like this big grey collage of artwork and then when the lights go down, and we turn on our effects, it just lights up," production manager Dale Skjerseth said of the steel structure rising above the field.
The stage rises 27 metres off the ground, is nearly 62 metres wide and more than 30 metres deep, said Skjerseth. It weighs 272 tonnes and also includes a video LED wall that is nearly 15 by 15 metres.
Skjerseth, who has 27 years of touring experience, said the show is "bigger than anything out there on the road right now."
Even the weather co-operated on Friday.
Whereas Stones fans in Halifax endured frigid temperatures and driving rain at a show there last month, it was a balmy 20 C in Regina by mid-afternoon Friday.
Lau gives 'Departed' an 8 out of 10
HONG KONG - Andy Lau gives "The Departed" — an Americanized version of one of his movies — an eight out of 10. The new Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson was inspired by the 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller "Infernal Affairs," which features Lau and Tony Leung.
"It's correct that he gave it eight on a scale of 10," Lau spokeswoman Alice Tam said, confirming remarks published Friday. She added that Lau dislikes the amount of foul language in the film and the fact that it has only one main female character.
"Infernal Affairs" is about a gangster who infiltrates the police (Lau) and a police officer who goes undercover in a gang (Leung). In the original, the two have separate love interests.
In "The Departed," the undercover gangster in the police (Damon) and the undercover policeman in the gang (DiCaprio) both get romantically involved with the police psychiatrist played by Vera Farmiga.
Lau thinks "the effect of combining the two female characters in the original into one isn't as good as in the original," according to Tam.
She also said the veteran Hong Kong actor contrasted his approach to his role with Damon's.
"He said he focused on his character's psychology, and that the character didn't look like a bad guy on the surface," Tam said, whereas Damon's portrayal showed his character as an obvious bad guy.
"Smith," "Kidnapped" Vanishing
The fall TV season has claimed its first victims.
The goners are Smith, the CBS crook series, and Kidnapped, the NBC thriller.
Smith, which aired Tuesdays at 10 p.m., is off the schedule "until further notice," CBS said Friday. In a further sign the network is quite serious, it no longer features the show in its Website navigation bar.
In the short run, Smith's time slot will be filled by reruns of the network's law-and-order shows.
Kidnapped, which aired Wednesdays at 10 p.m., is being dumped in the Saturday-night landfill starting Oct. 21. The NBC announcement, also made Friday, ominously referred to the show's "remaining original broadcasts," apparently saying without saying that the network won't soon be asking for any more episodes beyond the ones already bought and paid for.
Kidnapped's former weeknight time slot will be taken over, as of next week, by Dateline NBC.
Smith and Kidnapped have both suffered the malady that afflicts nearly all doomed series: Viewer-deficiency syndrome.
Smith has been a non-factor on Tuesdays, running third in its hour behind NBC's Law & Order: SVU and ABC's Boston Legal. With 9.7 million viewers last week, it was CBS' least-watched drama series.
With just 6.3 million viewers, Kidnapped, meanwhile, was last week's least-watched drama series, period, among the big four networks.
Smith stars Ray Liotta as a master criminal and family man who promises to go straight after pulling off one last series of jobs. Kidnapped stars Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany as the panicked parents of an abducted 15-year-old boy. With their shows' respective ends near, perhaps both sets of TV families can now get on with their lives.
Overall, the fall season has been short on freshman standouts.
ABC has gotten good starts out of Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters, but neither is a breakout performer, a la Desperate Housewives. NBC's high on Heroes, while CBS' hottest new hit is the cold-blooded Shark, but, again, neither is a Top 10 show.
In other TV tidbits:
Round three of the Grey's Anatomy-CSI bout went to Grey's Anatomy, which was watched by 22.8 million on Thursday night, compared to 21.5 million for its forensic foe, per Nielsen Media Research stats. The win gives Grey's the series edge, 2-1.
Ugly Betty's bid to return to the Top 10 in next week's rankings will fall short thanks, in part, to Survivor: Cook Islands, which bested the new comedy in the 8 p.m. Thursday hour, 15.8 million viewers to 14.3 million.