When a famous person dies, the immediate reaction is to say good things about that person. That’s what we do. No one wants to stomp on anyone’s grave.
So it wasn’t surprising to me when I called around yesterday to talk to some people that knew Doc Mattioli that they had nothing but good things to say about him. Now here’s the truth — every single one of the good things people said is 100 percent true.
the poconos has lost one of its great men
I didn’t know Doc Mattioli that well, but in the times I spoke with him, he was nothing but straightforward and professional in anything I asked him. I don’t think there was ever a question I asked him, no matter how awkward it might have been, that he didn’t answer directly when others would have told me to stick it. Tom DeSchriver, who’s been around here a lot longer and knows Mattioli better than me, said it just as well as anyone could have in this morning’s paper.
He was also generous with his time with me. For some reason, he always called me back when I needed a quote from him. I tried not to abuse this, limiting the times I called him for quotes on something. But he was a legendary, influential figure around the Poconos. For better or worse — I say better — he and his Pocono Raceway helped build the Poconos as we know it and gave it national recognition and credibility. People wanted to know what he thought on issues that concerned the region. He could have big-timed me anytime he wanted and talked to the New York Times or Philadelphia Inquirer instead, but I always got the call back.
What impressed me the most about Doc Mattioli was the he always asked me what I thought about the Phillies. I never told him I was a Phillies fan — he just knew I was from reading whatever column I had written in the Record about the Phillies. That shows respect, and for that I’ll always be grateful.
Some local links:
nope. i'm not embarassed that i thought this was cool. and you shouldn't be either.
If you’re a fan of the 80s — and really, who isn’t? — then do I have a weekend for you. Not one but two 80s parties this weekend on tap, the first is at the Blue Tequila in Minisink Hills. It’s from 9 to midnight tonight, and they have prizes for 80s look-a-like, biggest hair, tightest jeans, all that good stuff. Isn’t it sad we’re making fun of tightest jeans now, even though skinny jeans have come back? Aren’t they just tight jeans? I wore tight jeans in the 80s because my parents usually made my buy my own clothes, and I had to wear them long past the times I grew out of them. I wasn’t a fashion statement. Now? Skinny jeans on men have the very real potential to kill off the masculine gender. Be warned.
I know you’re now saying, “Wait, just one 80s night? I need more!” You got it. On Saturday, Pub 570 in Marshalls Creek is throwing its own 80s party with prizes and a 50/50 raffle to benefit the Bushkill Ambulance. Is this some kind of 80s anniversary weekend or something? I’d put the odds at about 5-2 that I know every word of every songs that’s going to be played at both places this weekend. My only problem would be if they threw in a Morrisey song or something. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be a steady diet of the typical 80s classics — Take on Me, anything Michael Jackson, Livin’ on a Prayer, Walk Like an Egyptian, Walkin’ on Sunshine, etc., etc. If there will be a video board at either of these parties, here’s the video I want to see on there, officially the cheesiest and most unintentially funny video of the 80s. I’ve posted it before, but it’s always fun to watch again. If you can watch this without laughing, you’re a better person than me.
Feel free to argue with me on cheesiest 80s video, but it’s going to take a monumental entry to beat out Air Supply.
Mauch Chunk Opera House in Jim Thorpe is starting a new thing, Last Friday Stand-Up Comedy Events over the next four months. I gotta be honest — I don’t know the three guys they have on the docket for this month. But if you go to a stand-up show and you don’t have a good time, it’s your fault.
undercover brother was ok.
This name I do know — Eddie Griffin in going to be at Cove Haven Resort in Lakeville Sunday night. Tickets are steep — $65 — but it’s open to the public, something Cove Haven doesn’t always do. His stand-up is pretty darn funny, though I don’t think I’d be in for $65 worth of funny. It’s not exactly the kind of film career that makes you jump out of your seat, but his stand-up is better than his movies.
The annual Winterfest Bluegrass Festival is this weekend, and even though it’s not the kind of music people love, it’s always a pretty cool, fun festival that allows you to get out on Main Street in Stroudsburg and around town to check it out.
Another festival this weekend, the Winter Lights Festival in Milford. I’m not a mac and cheese guy, but one of the festival’s big events if a mac and cheese cook off. Doesn’t it all taste the same? What can you really do with mac and cheese? I’m sure there are answers for that I haven’t even dreamed of.
Some good tour tickets of bands that will be hitting New York City and Philly going on sale today — Spingsteen, Florence and the Machine, Chili Peppers. Also, Foghat tickets go on sale tomorrow for a March 9 show at Penn’s Peak. Can’t imagine that gets sold out, but you can sleep easy at night knowing that just in case it does, you’d have the tickets to see Slow Ride live. Congrats.
People spent Tuesday dissecting the snubs and surprises of the Oscar nominations, but only a few seemed to notice just two songs were nominated for best original song.
You know when else that happened? Never. It was the first time only two original songs were nominated in a category that once was considered one of the most prestigious in both the movie and music industry. That leads to only one logical conclusion:
Popular movie music is dead. Officially.
This year there are two nominations for best original song, one from The Muppets and the other from the already-forgotten animated film Rio. Two freakin’ songs deemed worthy enough to compete for the best original movie song of the year. That gives them the chance to be mentioned in the same breath as classic movie tunes like Moon River, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life, Streets of Philadelphia (yeah, that’s right, I got a Springsteen song in here, got a problem with that?) and Lose Yourself.
Movies and music still mix, they’re just not as essential as they were 25 years ago. It’s an age of the movie-music relationship we’re never getting back, and the Oscars made that clear Tuesday.
Here’s why it happened:
wanna tell me what this is all about?
THE RULES
It’s always been a little sketchy over what is deemed an “original” song. The intensely lousy 1995 movie Dangerous Minds gave us one of the best and most popular movie songs ever, Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise. Wanna know how popular it was? Weird Al made his parody version of the song the first single off one of his albums. Now that’s popular! It should have been a lock to win at the 1996 awards — but it didn’t get nominated because its now-famous, recognize-it-in-a-second beat was sampled from an old Stevie Wonder song. According to Oscar rules, that makes it not “original” and ineligible for the award. The Grammys didn’t give two craps, and showered the song with nominations and awards. At the 1996 Oscars, Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas won. You’re welcome, Vanessa Williams. How can you take that award seriously after such a travesty of movie music justice?
kenny loggins is out of work because of you people. shame on you.
THE LOSS OF VIDEOS ON MTV
Movie music was at its best in the 80s and early 90s, and it’s no coincidence this was also Music Televisions’s heyday of playing, you know, music. Movie studios and record companies deftly took advantage of this new opportunity to meld music and movies together. The songs became videos intertwined with scenes from the movie making something like Take My Breath Away (best original song winner) nothing more than a four-minute ad for Top Gun. Everyone won — the movie became more popular, the soundtrack sold more copies and MTV had a steady diet of movie trailers it could play and call them videos. Then MTV went and effed it all up by becoming Jersey Shore Central. With nowhere to get that kind of airplay, movie music suffered, and now it’s dead. Hope you’re happy, JWoww.
pretty sure this version of eric clapton wouldn't even cop to being on the back to the future soundtrack
THE DEATH OF ALBUMS
Let’s not even bother going over the changes in the music industry yet again. Agreed? Agreed. Instead, we’ll just say that when Steve Jobs revolutionized the music industry, he inadvertently killed movie music. Making a soundtrack wasn’t profitable anymore for a record company. In 1985, if you wanted to hear Power of Love, you had to buy the whole Back to the Future soundtrack for $11.99 or whatever it was. In 2002, you didn’t have to buy the whole 8 Mile soundtrackto hear Lose Yourself. You just had to buy Lose Yourself for 99 cents. That’s an 88 percent loss of revenue, courtesy of my mad math skillz. Loss of revenue means record companies can’t pay for top-flight talent to make crappy, pre-written songs that will never get released. Those songs were only there in the first palce so a movie soundtrack — like Back to the Future — can advertise on its album cover that Eric Clapton has contributed a song. What they don’t tell you is that it’s the uber-crappy Heaven is One Step Away that makes you envision Clapton being tied to a chair at gun point singing ridiculous lines like, “I couldn’t find it … You couldn’t find it …”
NEW BREED OF FILMMAKERS
The 90s gave us the most creative, interesting, radical group of moviemakers we’ve ever seen. All of them had one quality in common — they were dorks who spent their teen years listening to music and watching movies when their friends were getting high and going to football games. People like Quentin Tarantino, Cameron Crowe and Paul Thomas Anderson also made their movies independently, for the most part, so they didn’t have some suit coming in their office and saying, “Hey Wes Anderson, we’re under contract with Ace of Base to make a couple songs for us, think you can squeeze one into Rushmore?” They took their cue from game-changers like Martin Scorsese and already had a solid idea of what music they wanted played in their scenes in their movies. So instead of paying top dollar for musical talent to write, produce and peform 12 songs for a soundtrack, they were just forking over the much cheaper licensing rights to old songs no one remembered or heard of, but worked perfectly in their movies. Can you imagine if someone told Noah Baumbach that he needed to shoehorn in a new Gavin DeGraw song to Squid and the Whale instead of the song he used?
KENNY LOGGINS AND MADONNA GOT OLD
How else can you explain it? The undisputed king and queen of cheesy movie music in the 80s and 90s had to go and get old on us and they stopped doing soundtracks. The next thing you know, bam, the movie music business dies. Madonna had one of the last really big, MTV-backed movie songs — Beautiful Stranger from the second Austin Powers — but poor Kenny never made it out of the 80s. Even though Nobody’s Fool was easily the best part of Caddyshack II. “Back to the shack … nothing suits me better than that.” Amen, Kenny. Amen.
I celebrated the same way I have for a couple years now, by making sure I was on the treadmill at the gym watching the broadcast. That way, I’d be too worried about embarrassing myself to scream out something like, “No Jonah Hill for Moneyball? Screw you Oscars!!!” It’s more peaceful this way.
Here are some random thoughts about the Oscar nominations announced this morning before the Feb. 26 ceremony:
UP TO 10 APPARENTLY MEANS NINE
the bad reviews for this are almost as funny as the bad reviews for jack and jill. almost.
If you haven’t been able to follow the changes in Oscar’s best picture nominee rules, here goes: The best picture nominees were increased to 10 for the 2010 and 2011 awards shows. For whatever reason, that didn’t work so the voting process changed and the new limit was “up to 10 films.” Only movies that ended up on 5 percent of Oscar voting ballots would make the cut. Oooooo, a mystery number! It turned out to be nine. One less than 10, if my math is right. And one of those nine is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which has a 48 (!) on Rotten Tomatoes and ended up on a fair number of well-respected critics’ “worst movies of the year” list. Why not just round it off to 10? What does that say for the movies you would imagine were the final cut? Does that mean Bridesmaids wasn’t good enough even though it received two other major nominations? Or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which beat out War Horse for a best adapted screenplay nomination, suddenly doesn’t belong in the same conversation? It was a weird rule in the first place, and now that we see it in action, it looks plain stupid. Go back to 10.
AGAIN?
geez, thank god for the help
Man, this is a really white bunch of acting nominations. Twenty nominations are available for acting, and three of them went to minorities this year. This comes one year after Spain-born Javier Bardem was the only thing close to a minority. It’s the 21st century. Let’s act like it.
EPIC FAIL OR THEY GOT IT RIGHT?
Every year is going to have snubs, no matter how many best picture nominations there are. But this year, it doesn’t seem like there are too many movies that have legitimate “We should be in there” cases. The Bridesmaids fans will argue, but it had way too many flaws and wasn’t nearly as funny as everyone made it out to be. Since it’s a comedy and everything, it should probably be funny? Young Adult didn’t get nearly the heat people thought it would, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was probably too brutal and Ryan Gosling’s double nominations at the Golden Globes may have been the anomaly, not the norm.
THE OSCARS CAN STILL SURPRISE
what, you've had enough of the nick nolte mugshot? then i'm afraid we can't be friends.
With all of the attention paid to Awards Season, it’s almost impossible for any movie or actor to sneak into the race at the last minute. Nick Nolte’s nomination for best supporting actor at the Screen Actors Guild for the mixed martial arts movie Warrior was thought to be a fluke — until he repeated it with an Oscar nomination. Demian Bichir has a Screen Actors Guild nomination and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for A Better Life (which made a total of $1.8 million at the box office over the summer and is now out on DVD), but an Oscar nomination seemed out of reach — until his name was announced next to George Clooney’s and Brad Pitt’s. I’m convinced Margin Call got a screenplay nomination because it sounded cool when you watch it. Admit it, academy — you didn’t understand all that lingo either.
ORIGINAL MOVIE MUSIC IS DEAD, OFFICIALLY AND PROBABLY FOREVER
If you grew up in the 80s or early 90s, you owned at least one movie soundtrack for your boom box. Chances are you owned about 10. Whether it was Footloose, Top Gun, Do the Right Thing or Singles, you loved movie soundtracks filled with all those cheesy songs and videos that acted as MTV trailers for the movie. Then came 1994, a year that gave us two great movie soundtracks — Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction -- offering exactly no original songs (Urge Overkill’s cover of Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon in Pulp Fiction was the closest). Suddenly, movies stopped making original music as a general rule because it was cheaper, and the exception became songs like My Heart will Go On. Even though the Academy was notorious for skipping the biggest movie music hits — nothing from Purple Rain??? — they at least threw a bone to one or two hits each year. But in this century, I count three best original song nominees that had any kind of Billboard chart action — There You’ll Be (yuck) from Pearl Harbor (yuck squared) at the 2002 awards, Lose Yourself from 8 Mile in 2003 and Accidentally in Love from Shrek 2 in 2005. Not exactly the 1929 Yanks there. And then this year, the Oscars set a record low with only two nominees for best original song. It’s super cool that Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords is one of them — but where has movie music gone? Kenny Loggins needs to make a comeback, pronto, if for no other reason than I just laughed at least 10 times watching this video. No really, watch it. The whole thing. I triple dog dare you. I think I’ve changed my mind, maybe it’s good there are no major soundtracks anymore.
ANY DAY NOW, MELISSA McCARTHY MAY TAKE OVER THE WORLD
who, me?
By April, she had the highest rated new comedy on television with Mike and Molly. In May, she received a lion’s share of the credit for going makeup-less and turning Bridesmaids into a worldwide hit. In July, she announced the Emmy nominations and looked like she was about to have a heart attack when she was on the list. She won that Emmy and now she’s got an Oscar nomination for Bridesmaids. Not too shabby. The lesson here is that going No. 2 in the bathroom sink of a snooty dress shop is always a good idea.
Pats only giving three is a gift. Take it now and tune the next two weeks out. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.
Video-heavy links:
ok, i'll give you this as a good reason to be a fan of the underworld movies
If you went to a big high school, people who went to small high schools are always shocked to hear you say, “I graduated with her, but I’m pretty sure we never said one word to each other.” The explanation is always that “We hung out in different groups.” That’s kinda how I feel about the latest Underworld movie making $25 million this weekend. “We hang out in different groups.” My brother Mark is a big Kate Beckinsale fan, so I just emailed him if he ever saw one. His response was something like “I think I watched part of one on TNT once just because she was running around in that leather outfit.” Wait, I just thought of someone. Let’s hit the text board … and yeah, my buddy Stan says he considers himself a fan of the franchise and plans to see the fourth one, albeit not in the theater. Shoot. I thought I was in the clear. But I had to go completely through my cell phone contacts, yet they just made a fourth one and it led the box office weekend. Tanks for nuttin’, America. Underworld 5, coming to a theater near you. And let’s hope George Lucas sticks with his promise to retire from making blockbusters since Red Tails did much better than anyone predicted.
When random websites come out with movie/TV lists, I’m always interested. That’s probably why people keep coming out with these lists. Usually, when I see the title, one possible entrant on the list gets stuck in my head and I scan the story for that entry. If it’s not there, the list is a failure. If it’s there, the list is cool. Somehow, this list of the best movie monologues fell somewhere in between. The ones that are there are pretty good, with some good ones I would never have thought of (Hugo Weaving in Martix, Heath Ledger in Dark Night, Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream). but it’s missing some of my favorites:
and let's not forget one of the best lines of a sports movie: "strikeouts are boring, and besides that, they're fascist. throw some groundballs, be more democratic."
1. Kevin Costner’s “These are a few of my favorite things” speech in Bull Durham. This is the one I was looking for on the list. When you see it on paper, it looks like a forced, contrite look into the mind of an opinionated loser. But Costner is just so freakin’ cool when he does it that he gives it life. Every woman who saw that did the same thing Susan Sarandon did after she heard it. “Oh my.”
2. Mr. Orange’s commode story in Reservior Dogs. Probably not a true monologue, but hey look everyone, I’ve managed to figure out a way to get a Quentin Tarantino movie on a list! Movie monologues had been done the same way for 50 years with very little variation. It was a guy talking into a camera. Quentin decided to turn it on its butt and put some thought into it to come up with a scene, not just a monologue. I can also mention the Superman/Clark Kent speech in Kill Bill Vol. 2 for another Quentin monologue of awesomeness.
3. Rocky’s “Everybody can change” speech at the end of Rocky 4. The cheesiest monologue ever, ever, ever, but how many other movie monologues have actually ended wars? Going right from the speech to the credits and hearing “Hearts on firrrrrreeeeee … strong desirrrrreeee …” makes that speech in even more special. The funniest part of the whole thing is Rocky made this coherent, heart-tugging speech while his face looked like chop suey and then went in to the locker room and succumbed to irreversible brain damage. Or so the movie timeline would have us believe.
4. Jack Nicholson’s “you can’t handle the truth” scene in A Few Good Men. It holds a special place in my heart. Two buddies of mine in college got busted by our school’s public safety department for carrying a funnel on the street during our annual outdoor drinking day. Which was pretty preposterous. One of those guys decided to make his own version of the Nicholson speech tailored to his situation and hearing him do it remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. I laugh whenever I think about. I just laughed right now. Everytime we get together, we tell him he needs to record it on YouTube so we can preserve it forever. Then we get drunk and forget and now it’s probably too late since I remember it more than he does at this point.“Did you do a funnel?” “I drank beer …” “Did you do a funnel?” “YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!!!”
5. James Earl Jones’ “people will come” in Field of Dreams. Another college memory because I used it to intro my thesis presentation. I still watch Field of Dreams every year on or around opening day to remember why baseball kicks butt. James Earl Jones convinces me.
Another list to comment on! I’m a huge fan of movie music, and I love any list of the best movie music moments. This one has some of the my necessary ones to hit (Bohemian Rhapsody in Wayne’s World, Tiny Dancer in Almost Famous, Stuck in the Middle with You in Reservoir Dogs), but then it tries to go all pretentious on us and it picks the second or third best movie moments from some movies!!! Yes, you need Royal Tenenbaums on there. But it has to be the Ruby Tuesday scene or the understated instrumental of Hey Jude in the opening introduction of characters. You need a Boogie Nights scene in there, but what about the utter hilarity of You Got the Touch? Or Spill the Wine in the pool party scene? Everyone points to the Sister Christian scene, but it’s just not my favorite. You can be crazy a little like that — I would be -- but you have to hit the standbys like this other list did. A combination of both, somehow. I really gotta make the definitive list someday. Feel free to email/comment on what should be included when I do. I just looked and I have a list of about 60 songs saved from the last time I said I would make such a list with about 10 that I never, ever see on any of these kinds of lists even though they should be pretty easy. Maybe that’s the list I’ll do, the Somehow Ignored Movie Music Moments. Good bet for #1:
There’s a decent chance we’re going to lose two PopRox-approved shows this year. Community was stripped from NBC’s winter schedule, and while that’s not an out-and-out sign it’s gone come next season, let’s just say ratings hits don’t get pulled from the schedule at any time of any year. Now we see that Fringe’s Friday ratings are atrocious. They’re embarassing. They can’t continue. Let the posturing begin on both shows, with Fringe up first. It’s obvious that Fringe can’t continue on Fox in its current agreement. Parent company Warner Bros. would have to offer the show to Fox at a deeply, deeply discounted price so that Fox isn’t losing tons of dough just because it’s airing a great show. Warner Bros. could be inclined to do that, since it can possibly make up the lost licensing revenue in syndication rights (Syfy? A&E?). Another year would get it to the magic syndication number of about 100 episodes. Same goes for Community with parent company Sony and its willingness to cut its licensing fee so that it can eek out a fourth season and get to near 100 episodes. But hey, at least we’ll always have the Community board game, right? There should be a space, “Abed’s in charge of the chicken fingers again, move ahead three spaces.”
Looks like Tracy Morgan is OK after collapsing at Sundance over the weekend. Surprised his reps didn’t immediately hit up the diabetes reason/excuse, and instead went with exhaustion and altitude. But that’s why they get paid the big bucks, I guess.
Is it just me, or did Steven Tyler sing the National Anthem the same way he sings every song? It sounded like it would be on Aerosmith’s next album. So why are everyone’s panties in a bunch over how he sang it? Were they expecting him to sing it opera style or something? Don’t blame Tyler, blame whoever had the bright idea to bring him in to sing it. You can’t hire Dane Cook to do a stand-up act then get bent out of shape when you don’t laugh.
But bad news for barhoppers is good news for skiers, so let’s take a look around the ski areas to see what they have going this weekend:
Camelback expects to be 100 percent open for the first time this weekend. They’ve been blowing snow every morning this week, and the extra snow is going to help. They’ve also got a Salomon demo today and tomorrow, a good chance to try out some new gear. On new snow. Lonely Toby is playing in the Thirsty Camel today from 3 to 7 and Nowhere Slow will be there tomorrow from 4 to 8, with a Blue Moon promo. Not sure what said promo is, but I’m sure it has something to do with beer that tastes better with oranges. Joe Franzo is in the Glen Lodge tomorrow afternoon from 1 to 5.
Shawnee has a big day planned. Their NASTAR Racing Series starts, and it’s hosting the 95.5 WPLJ appreciation day. I had to find out where WPLJ is from, apparently it’s from New York City. That means, umm, lots of New York City people. Your call on whether that’s good or bad.
Blue Mountain is opening its family tubing for the first time tomorrow. There will be a Coors Light promo in the Summit Lodge from 2 to 4 p.m., which means two great words — cheap beer. Not as good as free beer, but you’ll make due. Although it is Coors Light, sooooo that’s your call. Last week they had a Lager promo for six hours, so you missed your chance.
Jack Frost Big Boulder is 100 percent open, and has some good entertainment. Kartune is playing from 3 to 7 at Jack Frost, Jimmy and the Parrots (wanna guess what kind of music they play?) is at Big Boulder’s Tbar from 4 to 8 and Mother Nature’s Son is playing at the Cantina from 3 to 7. Not sure where the Cantina is though. OK, I’m taking the bait to see what kind of music Mother Nature’s Son plays and … wow! I thought it was a Grateful Dead cover band or something, but no. At least if this is really their site. No idea if it is or not, but they look OK.
Ski Big Bear has a rail jam going on today and every Friday, but it doesn’t seem like much else.
Whatever Alpine has going on, they don’t have it up on their website or Facebook pages. But at least they’re open.
Some nearby concert news:
When the first show on my weekly Ticketmaster update was a professional looking duo called Conspirator coming to the Sherman Theater in March, at first I felt sad because I had no idea who they were. Then along comes my trusty pal Google to tell me it’s a Disco Biscuits side project — and I didn’t feel as bad anymore. Tickets go on sale at noon today. And a special hats off to the Sherman for moving up in the Pollstar rankings for clubs in the United States.
blink YES! pauly d, no.
Tickets for the 2012 Bamboozle Festival — moving down Jersey Shore way to Asbury Park this year May 18, 19 and 20 — go on sale tomorrow. I’d be partial to the Saturday lineup (Foo Fighters, Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World) by far, although then I’d get stuck seeing Pauly D doing his DJ thing. Soooooo maybe I’ll just skip it altogether and just wait for this whole Jersey Shore thing to go away. It’s gotta be coming soon, right? It’s worth noting that long-time Sherman Theater occupants Patent Pending and Bayside will play the Sunday schedule. Neither of them are local, technically, but they’ve been playing the Sherman for about five years now. So if you wanted to see them before they got big, tough noogies. You had plenty of chances.
No tickets yet for this one — but Bruce … Springsteen … THE BOSS!!! (fans of Wings get it) is going back out on the road this year in support of his new album due out on March 6. He hasn’t even announced any dates yet except for two — Citi Field in Queens (Mets home stadium) and MetLife Stadium (new Meadowlands). Meadowlands was a given, Springsteen owns that place. But Citi Field is a new one and might give some insight for the type of tour he’s planning on. All outdoor, obviously, but bigger venues than his last tour. He played Hershey on his last tour, and that can only fit about 10,000, I think. At least that’s what it seemed like for the shows I’ve been to there. That was the closest he came to Philly, I think. But with Citi Field on the docket, you may see Citizens Bank Park (Philly) and Fenway Park (Boston, he played there last tour) come out on the schedule. Or he may just go really big and play football stadiums. But it looks like outdoor venues for sure. New song is pretty good, not classic. But is it just me, or does the beat kinda sound like Liehouse’s First Time? Ugh. I just put Lifehouse and Springsteen in the same sentence and overtly accused Springsteen of stealing from them. Kill me now. Doubt this is the official video, but since there isn’t one yet, we deal.
This is a preview of Sunday’s PopRox column in the Pocono Record.
now that silly season is over, we can get down to business
Have we all enjoyed the silly portion of Awards Season, reading all those really important stories about movies honored by such cherished and distinguished groups like the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards and the Online Film Critics Society Awards? Or the Golden Collar Awards?
No? Don’t worry. Things get super serious Tuesday when the Academy Awards nominations are announced.
But you don’t have to wait until then. Here are the 10 no-doubt-about-it, bet-the-farm, take-it-to-the-bank, I-can’t-stop-writing-cliches best picture nominees that will be announced Tuesday:
THE SURE THINGS
like it or not, the artist is coming to a oscar nomination ceremony near you
The Artist
The Descendants
Moneyball
Big winners from the Golden Globes. “But wait, Moneyball didn’t win jack!“ No, it didn’t, but when you consider how poorly baseball movies traditionally play overseas, just being nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press is pretty impressive. Any doubts The Artist would score a nomination ended when it cleaned up at the Golden Globes last weekend. If any of these three are kept out of the best picture race, I’ll watch a whole season of Two and a Half Men and laugh along with every joke.
THE PEDIGREE
War Horse
Hugo
You know what would be a good joke? If either Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese were listed as the director for Jack and Jill or some other stinkbomb just to see if it would get a free pass to the Oscars. It probably wouldn’t work. Would it work? It’s a little scary that it might. Anyway, here are two movies that you wouldn’t necessarily associate either with, and both are getting their shots at Oscar gold. That’s not to say either isn’t a good movie — it just seems a little strange seeing Scorsese directing a children’s movie. Does that mean Wes Craven will direct the next Hangover sequel or something?
THE BORN LOSERS
The Help
Midnight in Paris
Thanks for playing, guys! They’re pretty much locked into best picture nominations but their producers are guaranteed to be giving the “It was an honor just to be nominated” interview at a post-party while double-fisting a Jack and Coke and a Heineken. They may be thrown a token award somewhere — both are lock nominees in the screenplay categories — but they don’t stand a chance up against the big boys that already have beaten them soundly at every other awards ceremony.
THE GOLDEN GLOBE SNUBS
Tree of Life
Drive
before he turned into a jerk of a dad
There seems to be a genuine “Aww, poor little movie” sentiment growing around “Tree of Life” since it’s getting shut out at just about every awards ceremony. Have those people pitying it forgotten about how the movie wasted a half-hour of everyone’s life silently droning on about creation, dinosaurs and the history of the world up until now? It’s only been a couple months! But since it will be forever categorized as “A slice of Americana,” the Academy is probably going to throw it the bone it doesn’t deserve. USA! USA! USA! And in the Year of Ryan Gosling, as it should forever be known, shouldn’t at least one of his movies get nominated?
THE WILD CARD
Bridesmaids
isn't this the reason the academy expanded to 10 best picture nominees? to include hits like bridesmaids?
Congratulations, Judd Apatow. You may have whined your way to a best picture nomination by griping about how you want to see the Academy start a best comedy category. Hope you’re happy that you played that card now to get Bridesmaids nominated since it probably won’t be remembered as one of the five funniest movies of 2011 and is in the argument for most overrated movie of the year.
Normally, I’d take any opportunity to stick it to the Hollywood studio machine. So under normal circumstances, this Internet blackout thing would be right up my alley.
But a couple of things intervened:
1. Because of my schedule (took a four-day weekend for my nephew’s first birthday in Virginia Beach, I’m not apologizing for that), I haven’t put anything up since last Thursday, and it’s been a week since I’ve put any links blogs up. That’s too long, and it’s not fair to readers who I’ve asked to come to expect somewhat regular postings.
2. I wrote a regular news piece story about the blackout in today’s paper, and didn’t want to come too far out on one side or the other. That’s bad journalist ethics.
Here’s a pretty good explanation of what’s going on, from the admittedly partial and biased group FightfortheFuture.org:
Hollywood’s arguments and theories are sound — piracy costs billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs — but the execution is inherently flawed. No one with a brain likes piracy. REPEAT: No one with a brain likes Internet piracy. If you do, you’re a jerk. Sorry, you just are. Let’s get something that doesn’t put the future of free thinking on the Internet in jeopardy, shall we?
On to a super-packed links. Just so you know, as per the usual but to let new readers know, you’re in the wrong place if between now and May you’re looking for some American Idol commentary. I have yet to watch more than 30 seconds total of the show. Just an FYI, I’m not in the business of wasting your time. That link there? There’s a good chance that will be the last American Idol link of the year around here.
not a good look, unless she was trying to convince people she has a little soemthing extra up top.
Why couldn’t I get pumped up for the Golden Globes on Sunday? Maybe it’s because I’ve started to come to the realization that they don’t mean crap, and Hollywood will make its own decisions when it comes to the Oscars, the only film awards that matter even a little bit. Or maybe it’s because I’m so behind on movies I’m starting to hate myself for it and I can’t make truly informed decisions about who should be winning. And the TV awards portion was so Homeland-heavy (still haven’t seen it) that I couldn’t get excited about TV either. Anyway, other than Jessica Biel looking like she had a third boob and Angelina Jolie looking like she needs to start hitting the dessert bar to pack one some pounds somewhere, anywhere, it was a pretty borring night at the Globes, from what I saw. Can’t say I was terribly paying attention.
I’m pretty behind in my TV watching — I didn’t even watch last night’s Justified yet, or the returns of The Office or Parks and Rec, though I did watch Fox’s really, really good comedy lineup last night -- so I was thinking of skipping tonight’s ABC comedy lineup to get caught up. Now? I’m watching, thanks to an 18-year-old who doesn’t like good ol’ cussin’ on TV. Hey, I’m with him, for the most part. And now that I’m a parent, I hate having to monitor it more than I ever have. But like it or not, when babies curse, it’s funny. It’s been done on TV before (I’m pretty sure Growing Pains did a whole episode on Chrissy picking up a curse) and it’s going to be done after. Modern Family isn’t a trailblazer here, but it’s a funny show that’s always been apt to experiment. So I’m totally fine with Lilly dropping a bleeped F-bomb. And actually, as a parent, I’m looking forward to seeing how Cam and Mitchell react to it and combat it. I can use all the tips I can get, seeing as it’s only a matter of time before I have to deal with it. So thanks for the heads up, Cussing Guy, and for giving Modern Family some free publicity. Like it needs it.
When it comes to rappers who have moved on to bigger and better things, Will Smith is the pinnacle, by far. But after that, LL Cool J has to be next, right? As if he needed to be legitimized more, he’s hosting the Grammys this year, the first time the show has used a host in the last seven years. I vividly remember seeing him for his cameo in Krush Groove in like 1986 or 87 and thinking he was the coolest thing ever. Then it took him another 10 years or soto start getting noticed. I wouldn’t watch NCIS Los Angeles at gunpoint, but LL Cool J almost makes me want to check it out sometime. Normally it would take another gun-related scenario to get me to watch the Grammys too, but with LL on board, I’m considering it. And because you have to have it, you need it …
eff you. i'm still not watching.
AMC made it official over the weekend and announced that Mad Men is coming back March 25, and added that The Killing will be back with a two-hour premiere April 1. Nice strategy by AMC. No decent show got worse PR than the Killing last year, what with the tricking its fans and all. So instead of making it a stand-alone show that would start airing in June after Mad Men finishes its run, AMC has decided to package it with Mad Men. The logic is probably that there was a huge crossover of Mad Men viewers that watched The Killing, but wouldn’t watch The Killing this year because they feel like they were bent over from last year’s finale. With the two of them on the same night back-to-back, AMC is probably hoping that some Mad Men fans just say, “Eh, why not?” and start watching again. Great tagline for The Killing. “Eh, why not?” If you’re keeping count, that would end The Killing around June 17 or 24, which would presumably be when the network would start Breaking Bad’s fifth and final season.
One of the funniest top movie lists of the year is always Quentin Tarantino’s list. You wanna see a top movie list of a guy who doesn’t give a frigg? It’s his. He has no problem including a largely ignored movie (Three Musketeers), a flawed blockbuster (X-Men) or going with the traditional, critically praised indie (Attack the Block). I’m happy he went with one completely ignored movie, Red State, since it’s going to be in my top 20 and I’ll need justification to my Orange Street compatriots on why I included it. Now I gots some. I’m with Quentin on Meek’s Cutoff (happily fell asleep while watching it) and Sucker Punch (stopped after 45 minutes, couldn’t take it anymore) as two of the worst movies. I’m not with him on giving Green Lantern or Hangover 2 any kind of consideration. An interesting game would be to try at the end of next year to figure out what crazy movie he’ll throw in his list next year.
oh my god! you aren't excited to watch? no, not particularly, no.
Every show has a rabid, crazy fanbase. Normally, I can understand why, even if it’s for the smallest of reasons. But Cougar Town, now coming back Feb. 14? I just can’t get with it. I don’t understand why people go crazy over this show and why there is such a crazy-butt backlash for ABC putzing around with it all year. It’s funny enough, but for me it’s the third-best Bill Lawrence show (out of three) and is the ultimate example for me of “watch if I have time/nothing else better to do.” Like tonight I have to sort my laundry and take out the garbage after I get the kids to bed. If I didn’t, and Cougar Town was on? Then I’d probably watch it. Still, it’s better than the abhorrent and offensive Work It, so at least there’s that.
One of the weirdest sequels proposed lately — Can’t Hardly Wait 2. Wouldn’t that ship have sailed back in the early 2000s when they would have graduated from college? It’s a pretty good movie, one that surprisingly gets high school life pretty close to right. The party is a little much, it doesn’t come close to American Pie for the title of Most Real High School Party. Then again, Underworld just got, what, an eighth sequel or something? You would think/hope the crowd for a Can’t Hardly Wait sequel would be bigger. But that movie should not ever, ever, ever be made without Seth Green coming back. It shouldn’t be allowed.
the movie world is better off. trust me.
Don’t let the door hit you in the butt, Georgie Boy. Lucas is probably never going to understand how deeply and how permanently he scarred the same people that idolized him growing up in the 70s and 80s. Those studio executives that passed up the chance to latch on to Red Tails? There is a good chance they were some of the same people that sat through some of the worst lines of dialogue in movie history in the three Star Wars prequels. Or the same people that are reading about him defending the indefensible “nuke the fridge” moment of the indefensible Crystal Skull. They know that the original three Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies are completely and totally friggin’ awesome. They also know the prequels and Crystal Skull are stir-fried shat. So if those executives feel confident telling their flunkies to go see the screening and report back to them, what’s Lucas’ big beef? He rags on fanboys, but has no perspective on why they hate his most recent works and then refuses to take responsibility for them. He says he wants to go small, then turns around and throws the Star Wars movies back into theaters under the guise of “NOW IN 3-D!!!” so he can steal a couple more of our dollars. It’s frustrating, right? I’m not crazy, am I? No, no I’m not. He is. Let’s just go ahead and designate Lucas the most delusional man in Hollywood.
How does Fringe stay on the air next year? Papal blessing? Cosmic intervention, like an Armageddon meteor hitting the Fox TV studios and only Fringe survives? When a network show is only getting about 2.9 million people to watch like Fringe’s return got Friday, it gets canceled. Period. I don’t want Fringe gone any more than you do. But it’s really hard to imagine it will be back next year, especially since keeping it on the air means Fox is losing money.
There’s no getting around it. Wes Anderson is not everyone’s writer/director. His jokes are subtle, his direction is sometimes heavy-handed with music you’ve more than likely never, ever heard on the radio and because of those things, he’s prone to a complete swing and a miss (looking at you, Life Aquatic). But if you’re a fan of Anderson — and I am — you love him. You get excited when you see he’s ready to make a new movie. But after some so-so live action efforts, you’re a little gun shy. You want to like whatever he’s got coming next, you just don’t know if you should. Then you see the trailer for Moonrise Kingdom. And even though you may not know much about the movie from the trailer, you laugh. More than you laugh at the trailer for any blockbuster comedy coming out in the summer. That’s the kind of writer/director Anderson is, for better or worse. And right now, after seeing the trailer, I’m ready to rank Moonrise Kingdom as my #3 movie to see this year behind Dark Knight Rises and Avengers. Yes, the trailer is that good. Though I think I said the same thing about Life Aquatic. TRAILER GRADE: A
And how could I resist this? Safe to say I will most definitely be watching the replay of Monday Night Raw on UHD this weekend. It’s sad that a random Mr. Belding sighting gets me more excited about wrestling now than any feud the WWE has going on this month. I always thought Mr. Belding was more partial to American Gladiators, but whatever.
(This is a preview of Sunday’s PopRox column in the Pocono Record.)
Winter used to be a TV wasteland.
Networks premiered their best shows in September and used midseason replacements as filler to get them through the year. Not anymore.
The winter season now means more good TV shows starting up than ever before, so here are five premiere dates to watch out for this winter TV season after 30 Rock finally came back to the schedule Thursday (no links, I’m short on time, sorry):
am i the only one who thinks he should be saying "misssterrrr andersonnnnn" in the ads for the show? he sounds exactly like hugo weaving in the matrix, right? am i crazy?
Alcatraz (9 p.m. Mondays, Fox, two-hour premiere Monday): Hearing JJ Abrams’ name attached to any TV show immediately piques people’s interest. I’m just not sure why. He hasn’t been intensely involved in a show since Alias, and networks pretty much just use his name to launch the show. He basically will write the pilot, maybe direct the pilot, and then he just hangs back and collects checks. Pretty good gig. So if you want to watch Alcatraz, do it because you like the concept — past Alcatraz inmates return from the dead and start with the gun shooting — not because you like other Abrams shows. He may not even know he’s producing the show if you asked him. That’s probably a bit much, but you get the point.
Justified (10 p.m. Tuesday, FX): Pivotal season coming up in what surprisingly has become FX’s best show (and it’s not particularly close). There is a new crime boss in town for Raylan Givens to tangle with, but that’s just a bitter reminder that Margo Martindale won’t visit from the great beyond to reprise her Emmy-winning role as Mags Bennett that made the last season of Justified such a tense, enjoyable three months of television.
Luck (10 p.m. Sundays starting Jan. 31, HBO): Not everything is a home run — just ask David Milch. As good as Deadwood was, John from Cincinnati was that nonsensical. So the producer now takes his third shot at HBO with Luck, the story of the dark side of the horse track. All you have to do is hear the cast — Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Farina, Nick Nolte — to get excited. But why fool around with perfection? Wasn’t the 1989 Richard Dreyfuss movie Let It Ride already Hollywood’s perfect look at life at the track? Yes. Yes it was. Can’t they at least bring in Robbie Coltrane as the cynical ticket counter guy as a delicate nod to Let It Ride?
Smash (10 p.m. Mondays starting Feb. 5, NBC): If you’re tired of seeing slushies thrown in people’s faces but you just can’t quit Glee, then there is hope for getting your TV musical fix elsewhere. NBC already tried to ride the coattails of another popular show this season (The Playboy Club was a blatant rip-off of Mad Men), so why not see if the second time is the charm? Smash is the grown-up version of Glee, with the participants trying to make it on Broadway instead of regionals. It seems like everybody who has seen the pilot raves about it.
march 25, you say?
Mad Men (10 p.m. Sundays reportedly starting March 25, AMC): That’s not a mirage. It’s not a typo. Mad Men is supposedly returning to TV on March 25, a short 10 weeks from now. Here’s the problem. That starting date? It was slipped by Jon Hamm, Don Draper himself, in a recent interview and hasn’t been confirmed from AMC yet. That means one of two things. Either the network just wasn’t ready to announce the date and had its own big plans for how to make the announcement, or it isn’t sure it can make that date. I’m going to just say it’s AMC figuring out a new launch date for the new and improved ”Mad Men Yourself” Facebook avatars or something, and that it is coming on that date. It’s a week after Walking Dead ends its season, would lead into season 2 of The Killing, which would then lead seamlessly into the next season of Breaking Bad in July or August. So go ahead and just tell us, AMC. We already know.
Programming note: We might be a little light this week, sorry. Links today, Sunday column preview Thursday, and then I’ll try to fit one in another day, but can’t guarantee it. Hitting the links:
PopRoxers know there isn’t too much in here about music, but I do get excited when Coachella and Bonnaroo announce their lineups every year. Coachella came out with its lineup yesterday — and it’s impressive. What’s more impressive is that for the first time, they’re doing it for two weekends this year, April 13-15 and 20-22. Same performers each weekend. Cry about the economy all you want, but there are smart business people out there in the music industry who are figuring out ways to make money. The best way to do it? Put on good shows, and Coachella is a perfect example. While traditional promoters are doing backflips over dinosaurs like Van Halen touring again, Coachella and its cast of mainly unknowns wouldn’t be expanding to two weekends if it wasn’t making gobs of money. Ranking the days:
not hot, but feist is pretty awesome
1. Saturday: Who knows how long Radiohead will keep touring for? You get the feeling someday Thom Yorke might one day say, “Screw it” and you’ll never hear from him again. Saw Feist at a 2005 taping of the Conan O’Brien show before she got big and loved her. The Shins have finally come down from the push they got off Garden State, going from underrated to overrated and back to underrated again, so that’s fun. I’d also like to see Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Kaiser Chiefs and Big Pink (only because I really like Dominos).
2. Sunday: Second only because I already saw Snoop and Dre on the Up in Smoke Tour in 2000, and it was probably the mostest awesomest concert I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t want to ruin that memory in case some of the other acts don’t cut it. But Florence and the Machine, Fitz and the Tantrums and The Hives likely will make sure that doesn’t happen. Fitz and the Tantrum’s MoneyGrabber would have made my top 10 singles of 2011 if I ever got around to making such a list.
breads like that are cool
3. Friday: Black Keys is one of the few bands I’d pay to see right now. That alone makes it worthwhile for me. Arctic Monkeys is probably one of the few others, but those two bands are out on tour right now and coming to Philly in March, so I don’t have to go the California desert to see them. Nothing else on Friday’s docket really floats my boat. Feel free to drop it in the comments if you think I should be excited for some other band.
Can we make March 25 some kind of national holiday? That’s the day Mad Men comes back after 18 months off the air, so yeah, everyone should be happy. EVERYONE. Now it’s time to rack our brains to figure out what the heck happened in the last season so that we can remember and catch right back up. Don is marrying his secretary … OK, I’m drawing a blank after that. And Don may have married his secretary already anyway. So apparently I need to hit last season up OnDemand or on Netflix Instant or something.
hopefully watching conan o'brien can't stop this week
Yup, I’m in on the month trial of Netflix streaming, and loving it so far. Although at this point, I think it’s only because it’s new and cool. Once I blow through the four or five movies I really want to see, I’m gonna be a little bored, probably. But I was able to add some pretty hard-to-find 2011 movies to my instant queue (Certified Copy, Weekend, Poetry) along with a couple documentaries that are “long wait” in my Blockbuster queue (Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop and Page One: Inside the New York Times) that can help beef up my 2011 top 20 list that will be coming due in a couple weeks. Even with all those movies, what did I watch last night? My favorite episode of Family Ties, 4 rms ocn vu, where Alex turns the house into a hotel. And I laughed like a baboon. Watched Red State on Sunday, and was actually impressed if not worried with Kevin Smith’s change in direction, even though he managed to hold on tightly to that heavy hand that seems to appear every time he gets behind the camera. It’s a good bet for my top 20. So far Netflix streaming is getting thumbs up from me. If you think you know of something that I should be watching on there since I’m still experimenting, drop me a line or leave it in the comments.
Last week I was pretty cheesed off when it looked like Melissa McCarthy might be going ahead with a plan to star in a Bridesmaids sequel whether or not the original’s jilted writer/star Kristen Wiig had anything to do with it. But she called BS on that report over the weekend, so there will be no make-up-less McCarthy to kick around too soon. Maybe the studio could just go with plan B and hire Coach Beast from Glee for the McCarthy role. Am I the only one who couldn’t get her out of my head watching McCarthy in Bridesmaids? Did the director tell McCarthy, “OK hon, do you watch Glee? You do? Great! Well in this scene, we want you to just look, act and sound like her!” Did Coach Beast at least get an audition? Is this the 87th time she’s lost a role to McCarthy? I’ll admit it, this has been bothering me.
wish i can get this image out of my head ...
... for this one. same girl.
At least we won’t have McCarthy announcing the Oscar nominations in two weeks, blathering all over herself if she gets nominated leaving poor Josh Jackson hanging around with a “pull it together, lady” look on his face. No, this year that honor goes to new Hollywood “it” girl Jennifer Lawrence, who probably won’t be snagging a nomination for X-Men: First Class, so we don’t have to worry about a McCarthy-esque bout of self-gratitude. What we may have to worry about is a Harrelson-esque display of self-promotion since that appearance for the nominations will kick off two months of an insane amount of Hunger Games-related press. If you didn’t know who Lawrence was before now, trust me — you’ll know by March 23. It makes me kinda angry that I’ll never be able to see her as hot — even though she is — because I’ll never get the image of the homely hick in Winter’s Bone out of my head.
Careful everyone, be really, really skeptical here and tread lightly. But two of our favorite TV-to-movie projects are supposedly rolling film in the spring — Party Down and 24. Party Down I can totally see since it’s gonna be cheap, easy to make and be an independent thing. 24 … I know they keep saying it’s coming, and I’d love to believe it is. But every single solitary update on any movie keeps coming from Kiefer Sutherland and no one else. The same Sutherland, who, as a producer on the show and the movie, would stand to make millions if the movie ever materialized. Until Fox tells me this thing is a go, I’ll wait til it hits theaters. What, no Arrested Development movie update? Who was asleep at the wheel on this one? Don’t be surprised if some “is this really news?” item hits the web this week so that it keeps its title as the Internet’s TV-to-film darling.
might not be the spiderman you're used to
Normally, I wouldn’t get excited about cartoons. But the Ultimate Spider-Man show coming on Disney XD is pretty promising, right? JK Simmons reprising his Jameson role? Sold. Steven Weber as Norman Osborn? More sold. And with all the secrecy around the new Spider-Man movie, I think this is kind of a clue that it will be following the Ultimate Spider-Man storyline from the comics instead of the traditional route and going with a retread of the first three movies. Which is totally fine by me, the comic is just as good and it gives a fresh feel to the movie.
Soooooo … it would probably be a bad idea to think seriously about getting into this Simpsons contest, right? Be warned — these are the kinds of things you responsibly give up your rights to when you have kids. Whether it’s because of financial, common sense and logistical reasons, having children pretty much ruins any chances of getting in this contest. And I don’t think I can stay up for 86 hours straight anyway. The closest I ever came was 42 hours. By about hour 40 or 41, I was hallucinating. No foolsies.
Allen Gregory won’t be getting to 500 episodes, and barely made it to five. Did it make five? I’m not even sure. Anyway, it’s gone and it ain’t coming back. Normally around this time I’d express my condolences, but I know about three people that tried it, none of them liked it, and there seemed to be as much heat around it as there is in the Pocono Record office right now. For the record, I have to stop typing every couple minutes to sit on my hands to keep them warm. What I’m trying to say is there isn’t much heat in here, and likewise there was no heat on Allen Gregory.
Way too light on local links this week. What, is everyone still hungover?
In the absence of that, let’s hit some links:
wanna see dkr before christmas on dvd? then it'll cost ya
Hollywood studios don’t like being taken advantage of. So when they built a business model in the early 90s that depended on DVD sales, they just didn’t expect things like Netflix, Redbox or OnDemand to become such a huge part of the marketplace and directly result in profit loss. Forget about what’s best for the consumer — these millionaires need money, dammit! So HBO decided to flip the bird to Netflix, and Warner Brothers decided to flip it to everyonein an effort to sell more DVDs. The HBO thing isn’t a big deal, it’s just a pain in the butt for Netflix. Normally they’d just say, “Well, we have to pay more so you have to pay more!” but after the year it had, if they decide to raise their prices again, there could be office firebombings. The Warner Brothers thing, however, is a big deal. Two months is a long time to wait for a DVD to become available for rental. The studio has 17 movies scheduled to come out in 2012, including two of the biggest — Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit. I’m sure Dark Knight will be out on DVD in time for a pre-christmas December release so that every 17-year-old in the country will say, “Man, I can’t get Dark Knight on my phone for another two months, I wish I owned it!” And every parent will be heading out to Best Buy to get one as a Christmas present. And if Hobbit comes out on DVD on, say, Memorial Day 2013, you’ll be waiting until August until you can rent it. That’s a pretty long time. So you have a couple choices: Suck it up and buy them when they come out, deal with it and just rent it when you can, or don’t ever buy a Warner Brothers DVD again and get your friends to do the same thing. I think I’m just going with option 2. Their company, their choice, even though they’re screwing me over royally.
i think i still wanna punch rose byrne a month after seeing bridesmaids
Not signing stars to sequel deals is a risky measure. You can do it, pay the stars extra money because of it, and then get stiffed when Ryan Reynolds got an extra so-and-so million for Green Lantern so that he would sign on for two more sequels, only those sequels probably won’t be made. But then there are the times when you have something like Bridesmaids, a nifty little success story that came from nowhere, a movie no one possibly could have seen as a possible franchise. The stars probably aren’t signed on for sequels — including writer/star Kristen Wiig — and now you’re in a pickle trying to make a sequel to cash in on a potential franchise. If the speculation that Wiig doesn’t want to do it is because she only received a $100,000 bonus for the success of the movie, I’m with her. That amount is bad enough, but she was the star in just about every scene of the movie, and she wrote the sucker. So the chick from The Office who got about a half hour of screen time got the same amount as Wiig? Are you kidding me? What about Wilson Phillips, did they get a $100,000 bonus too? Wiig should be pissed. She should be crazy pissed. And if she can afford to tell Universal where it can stick the eight figures she might have been offered for the sequel, good for her. My respect for Kristen Wiig went up about 200 percent even though I didn’t even like Bridesmaids that much. If they make a sequel without Wiig, I’m boycotting it. And if Melissa McCarthy had any scruples, she would too.
No such problem with a possible Horrible Bosses sequel, another one of the surprises of the summer. Looks like everyone is locked and loaded for a second one. From the tone of that story, this looks like it is a case where the stars were signed for sequels on the off chance there would be one. Normally, you can’t just say in a story the stars are likely coming back when there are no contracts signed. So since they aren’t technically signed, but are under contract to make a sequel, it’s a wink-wink-hush-hush kind of thing where they’re not signed, but unless they wanna pay millions for breach of contract, they’re coming back. Someone else I have a new respect for is Jason Sudekis, who I don’t like that much on SNL but had a great cameo reprising his Always Sunny character Schmitty this year, and who I just found out is dating Olivia Wilde. I’m impressed.
Welcome to the suck of January movies. It’s pretty bad out there with another demonic possession movie as the only wide release of the weekend. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to go back and look, but what is this, like 10 years in a row where there is a demonic possession movie in January? Maybe it just feels that way. On the bright side, there is Oscar bait out there, so choose wisely, everyone.
if you go to a van halen concert expecting this, you're going to be sadly disappointed. eddie does this now and he slips a disc
Sorry, but it’s not cool that Van Halen is back together. It’s sad. How can fans look past the ridiculously toddler-like behavior of the band for the last two decades then go out and see them thinking this isn’t 110 percent about stealing your hard-earned money? That’s what it is, people. Stealing. The members of Van Halen are saying they don’t have enough money, so they want yours. Even though they hate each other and offstage probably can’t even carry on a civil conversation, they’re going out on the road to gleefully deposit your money into their bank accounts to buy a third yacht. And guess what? ”Van Halen” isn’t even back together because Michael Anthony isn’t in the band anymore. He was replaced by Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang a couple years ago. If you really want to bring Van Halen back again, wouldn’t this be the time for Eddie to apologize to Anthony and say, “I’m sorry for trying to start my own musical sweat shop and pushing my son into the business, thereby costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary. My bad. Wanna tour?” If that offer was extended, then I apologize. But I’m willing to bet a good chunk of change it wasn’t even considered as an option.
Further proof that the Poconos is becoming the per capita Reality TV Capital of the World — Gordon Ramsey is coming to Milford to remake the River Rock Inn’s restaurant. You laugh, but there will soon be a Real World: Saylorsburg coming in about 10 years. We can’t get through a week around here without someone calling us to tell us they are someone they know is about to be on a reality show. That doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else our size.
Mike Sadowski is pretty boring, but here's the quick scoop: Lifelong NEPA resident, Abington Heights grad ('93), Elizabethtown College grad ('97), sports reporter ('97-'99), news and cops reporter ('99-'04) and pretty much doing everything at the Read Full
