Our pals at hitsdailydouble.com have made up an unofficial chart for the last week of 2014. Taylor Swift has just sold boatloads of that 1989 album. Look at the numbers. But I think it’s more significant that Barbra Streisand has hung in and is still at number 15 with her “Partners” album. Good for her. And all told, it’s not a bad mix: Sondheim (Into the Woods) and AC/DC and hits from the 70s (Guardians of the Galaxy). Not bad! Happy New Year!
“Begin Again” had the best songs, best score, and best soundtrack of 2014. Here’s Keira Knightly singing “Lost Stars” by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois. My runner up would the “Selma” theme song from John Legend and Common.
In the Middle East, Israel is off the map– at least according to Rupert Murdoch owned Harper Collins. According to the Tablet, a Catholic website in the UK, Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of Harper Collins, has left Israel off the map in Arab countries. The maps are made for school kids all over the Middle East.
Bishop Declan Lang, chairman of the Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs, told The Tablet: “The publication of this atlas will confirm Israel’s belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world. It will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful co-existence.”
On the maps, Jordan and Syria run right to the Mediterranean Sea. Tel Aviv and all other Israeli cities are gone.
A HarperCollins spokesperson said: “HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas. This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.”
George Stevens Jr. goes out with a bang: the Kennedy Center Honors garned big ratings and a good gain from last year. They added 200,000 viewers– up to 9.2 million total viewers. More importantly, the key demo was up to 1.2 from 0.9. That’s very good. And a nice tribute to George and Michael Stevens, who put together a great show with Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, Bruno Mars, Jane Fonda, David Letterman and host Stephen Colbert among others. Shame on the Kennedy Center for chucking the Stevenses because they thought they’d get better ratings or something. Ridiculous.
Some clips:
You won’t see this tonight on the show:
This was the video from the Kennedy Center honors taping on December 7th. But it’s not shown on the program, it was only inside the auditorium. Toward the end when George Stevens Jr. says David Rubenstein came to him and said it was time to go, there was an audible gasp in the room. Stevens is a class act.
And now it turns out that the Kennedy Center under David Rubenstein is launching something new next month: The Lincoln Awards. It’s to honor people who’ve supported the military. Bruce Springsteen is the only celebrity getting the award. But there are tons scheduled to perform. So as I said before, get ready, because tonight may be the last Kennedy Center Honors as we knew them.
What you won’t see tonight during the Kennedy Center Honors (9pm CBS) is what happened when we all returned from the intermission break at the December 7th taping. The group’s CEO, David Rubenstein, who is also head of the Caryle Group, the largest hedge fund in the world, came out and made some perfunctory comments. Then he thought he was introducing the show’s founding producer, George Stevens Jr., who created the Kennedy Center Honors 37 years ago with Nick Vanoff.
Stevens, who is a very spry 82, on his game, with lovely patrician manners, stepped on stage. He then shocked the audience with the emotional news that, essentially, he’d been ousted after 37 years. “This will be our last show,” he said. He thanked his son Michael who’s worked with him for years and whom he credits for really being the main producer of late. There was literally a gasp in the room. No one knew.
The Kennedy Center Honors was the last bastion of civility on broadcast TV. In a culture now where nothing is taboo, and the lowest of the lowest gets a reality show, it’s hard to believe that once there was theater, ballet, classical music, jazz and opera on regular channels. Now it’s relegated to PBS. The Kennedy Center Honors was the only PBS-like program on a main network. But Rubenstein and new president Deborah Rutter aren’t interested in that, sources say.
“They want something more like the Grammys, but the worst aspects of it,” says a source. “The glitz and the glamor. And young people.” In other words: Taylor Swift presenting an award to Jennifer Aniston. You get the picture.
Tense negotiations were said to having been ongoing since August between Stevens and Rubenstein-Rutter. A few days before the taping, Stevens staff had stopped using Kennedy Center email addresses. Most of the staff did not know the end was coming before Stevens’ speech. Rubenstein didn’t know Stevens was going to address the audience with the news. But George Stevens Jr Productions had already been told they had to be out of the building by the end of the month.
After the show, at an informal gathering in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on the 8th floor, the usual post- celebration was like a wake. When Stevens and son finally arrived, all the new honorees (Sting, Lily Tomlin, Tom Hanks, Patricia McBride) rushed to his side, as did many stalwarts who’d been involved with the show and Stevens for years. Steven Spielberg, upon hearing the news, said: “But isn’t the show supposed to be about honoring people who’ve achieved something?” Among many the sentiment was, if it’s called the Kennedy Center Honors, it’s not going to attract the MTV-Facebook-TMZ crowd.
The word now is that CBS and Rubenstein may indeed have brought in Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich, who excels at that show, a different kind of animal. The announcement should come soon. Of course, the producer of the show isn’t in charge of who gets in– that’s a whole separate committee. But watch for a total rebranding, like Kennedy Center specials akin to the new (and poorly rated) Grammy Christmas nominations show, one source suggested to me. We might be far away from LLCoolJ (perpetual Grammy host) giving Kennedy Center awards to Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.
EXCLUSIVE Michael Jackson– the beloved version, from the 1980s– will not be making a film comeback anytime soon. According to emails culled from the voluminous Sony hack, Sony Pictures wanted use of Michael’s likeness for their summer 2015 3D Adam Sandler movie “Pixels.” They were turned down flat.
The emails turned up in a group found by musician Val Broeksmit, who’s been releasing his findings much to Sony’s chagrin on Twitter. Sony has vowed to sue Twitter and Broeksmit. But so much of the material is already coursing its way through the internet that it might be difficult to rebottle this genie.
According to the emails, a production exec reached out to Sony’s Amy Pascal for help persuading Jackson estate lawyers John Branca and Karen Langford in their quest to include Jackson with a bunch of 80s icons including — this is from the email– Bruce Springsteen, Mr. T, Ronald Reagan and Hall & Oates.
Langford tells Jonathan Kadin that, off the record, she might consider letting them use Jackson’s image if the fee were in the high six figures. But Kadin says the studio usually pays $20,000 for cameos such as these, and the budget allows for a maximum of $25,000. So it’s not going to happen even though Kadin says “Sandler is anxious for this to happen.” Kadin notes that the request for such a high fee was a polite way for the Jackson estate to turn them down.
Langford, Kadin says, recalls Jackson’s infamous cameo in “Men in Black 2” and that it wasn’t received well. You may recall that Michael wouldn’t give Sony Music the final master tapes for the “Invincible” album to release until they secured him this role.
Is this really the way they do it? The FBI is posting help wanted ads looking for special agents who are cyber specialists.
The ads implore potential employees: “Discover why, more than ever, an FBI cyber career is for you.”
Special Agent Minimum Requirements:
Must be between the ages of 23 and 36 1/2
Must have a bachelor’s degree from a U.S accredited college/university
Must have three (3) years of full-time work experience in one or more of the area(s) listed below**
Must be available for assignment anywhere in the FBI’s jurisdiction
Must be in excellent physical condition with the ability to pass a rigorous physical fitness test
Must meet all other requirements for the Special Agent position
There’s no mention of typing skills. But I’d guess a minimum of 20 words a minute.
Computer Scientist:
Highlights:
8-week training course in Quantico, VA
Legal and ethical training for investigations
Advanced malware reverse engineering analysis
Intrusion detection and investigation techniques
Digital forensic and evidence gathering techniques
Computer Scientist Minimum Requirements:
Must have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or any degree with 30 semester hours in a combination of mathematics, statistics, and computer science. Fifteen of those hours must include differential and integral calculus.
Internship Requirements:
Must be enrolled full-time in an accredited school or university
Must be a college sophomore, junior, senior or graduate student at the time of hire. (A participant cannot be graduating before the program begins)
Must have a 3.0 GPA at the time of application
Not sure if this is paid or unpaid. Must know Windows Vista and xywrite*. (*this an inside joke for writers who used computers in the late 1980s.)
Christmas weekend is over and the numbers are in: Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken” took in $48 million and won hands down. In its very small release– just 4 theatres– Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” raked in a whopping $850,000. Each is a very American movie, and very very good despite efforts from all sides to snark them down.
Meanwhile, the final “Hobbit” movie picked up steam after a slow start and now has $168 million in the bank. After running behind its predecessors, “Hobbit” is now ahead of them. The Tolkien gang took a few moments before it was energized. Both “Sniper” and “Hobbit” are from Warner Bros. where co-chief Sue Kroll is her very own Lord of the Ring. She works magic.
With “Sniper,” Bradley Cooper keeps looming larger for an Oscar nom. I told you this 10 days ago.
And what about “The Interview”? In 330 theaters it made $2.85 million. Most of it came on Thursday, opening day. Every day since has shown a decrease as word of mouth spread. Who knows about the digital side? It’s number 2 at the Google Play store.
And keep an eye on “Selma”: the most important movie of the year scored $912,000 in 19 theaters from Thursday to Sunday. The big roll out isn’t until mid January. Very exciting.
“The Interview” already has a lot of problems including being banned, batted around by President Obama, a million leaked copies online and so on. But there are some other things going on.
During the scene where Kim Jong Un parties with James Franco and topless call girls director Seth Rogen used some rap disco music. It’s called “Pay Day.” And now the singer and songwriter want their payday. According to reports, Feel Ghood Music is considering legal action. They say they were in negotiations with Sony for the use of “Pay Day” by Yoon Mi Rae (she’s Texas born half-Korean, half African American, real name Natasha Reid) but nothing was ever signed. Now while Champagne is being spritzed, “Pay Day” is playing for free. I can’t believe Sony didn’t clear all the music in the film regardless of the controversy.
Meantime, it turns out all the Katy Perry music used in “The Interview” is not real. When Kim first reveals his Katy obsession to James Franco’s Dave Skylark, that’s a real clip of “Firework.” But I guess it was too expensive to use it twice. Or maybe it was that they needed a slow version of “Firework” during the scene in which Kim is killed and his face melts. Producers used a fake Katy– a singer named Jenny Lane who seems to specialize in covers. Her work is all over the web.
Frankly, Jenny Lane– whoever she is– has the looks and pipes to have her own career. Here’s her “Firework” that appears in the movie:
and here’s how it’s used in the movie