Here’s the trailer for George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” starring Clooney, Matt Damon and a big all star cast headed for box office gold and lots of awards. Looks great.
UPDATE Beloved Actress Karen Black (Nashville, Five Easy Pieces) Dead at 74
UPDATE: Karen Black has died at age 74. She ran with a cool crowd when she burst onto the movie scene– Fonda, Nicholson, Hopper, DeNiro, Altman. She was a unique talent. God bless.
Earlier: This is a terrible story. But beloved actress Karen Black is dying of cancer. Her husband has posted a blog and a video updating her deteriorating condition. http://karenblackactress.blogspot.com/2013/08/august-7th-update-from-stephen-karens.html?m=1 Black is living in a nursing facility and the situation sounds pretty dire. If you’re too young to know, Karen Black made a name for herself in the 70s in “Five Easy Pieces,” “Nashville,” “Easy Rider,” and other classics.
Here is Karen from “The Great Gatsby” (1974):
Lady Gaga Gets Completely Naked for Art Video: She Was Born this Way
Lady Gaga: Stephanie Germanotta is back. Here she is, in her birthday suit, in a video for art practitioner Marina Abramovic. Now we know, she was born this way. Her hip surgery must have been very successful. Her leaked single “Burqa” is already on our site. And so we get ready for her official single release, her appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards, the November album, and her duets record with Tony Bennett.
The Abramovic Method Practiced by Lady Gaga from Marina Abramovic Institute on Vimeo.
Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs: Something Does Not Compute
Last night: the premiere at the Museum of Modern Art screening room for “Jobs” or “jOBS” or however you want to spell it. This is the movie starring Ashton Kutcher as Apple founder Steve Jobs. Josh Gad plays Steve Wozniak, Matthew Modine is John Scully, and Dermot Mulroney is their long suffering lawyer.
This is what you get from the movie: Steve Jobs was disloyal to his close friends, horrible to his girlfriend and illegitimate child, and basically a putz who had a gift for design and marketing. Kutcher, an affably guy of limited acting abilities, looks like he’s going to have a cerebral hemorrhage in some scenes as Jobs is supposedly “thinking.”
If only someone connected to the movie had done some of that hard thinking. “Jobs” is like a really long Lifetime movie without any glamorous women. It’s a linear biopic about someone no one likes or is really fond of. You learn a lot about computers and almost nothing about the people who made them. There’s very little insight into the man, Steve Jobs. Instead, Kutcher imitates his walk, his hairstyles, wears his eyeglasses, and eats fruit.
And I am really confused. I thought Jobs named Apple after the Beatles’ Apple because he admired the group. In the movie, it’s Wozniak who likes the Fab Four. Jobs likes Bob Dylan. The producers of the film spent so much money on licensing recordings by Dylan and Cat Stevens, among others, that their instrumental score sounds like it was lifted from Hallmark Hall of Fame Thanksgiving special.
Gad, Modine, Mulroney, and J.K. Simmons are the real winners here. If it weren’t for them, you’d leave the screening room within 30 minutes. Gad lights up the screen as Wozniak. Modine is so good you wonder why we don’t see him more. Mulroney really keeps the scenes moving as Kutcher’s concentration wavers. I also really liked Ahna O’Reilly as the babymama of Jobs’s first kid. She’s also in “Fruitvale Station” this summer. Keep an eye on her.
Joshua Michael Stern directed from a script by Michael Whiteley. They are each in deep water way over their heads. I suppose geeks will be interested in “Jobs.” But this is no “Social Network.” Indeed, this shows us what a great job Aaron Sorkin did humanizing those people and making the material accessible and clever.
Martin Scorsese and Liza Minnelli Reunited in Song for “Boardwalk Empire”
Once upon a time, Martin Scorsese and Liza Minnelli were quite an item. This was in a decade called the 1970s. Scorsese directed Minnelli in his cult musical “New York, New York,'” the film which produced Minnelli’s signature song. Now, thirtysomething years later, director and singer are reunited. Minnelli has just recorded a track for the new collection of songs being issued for Scorsese’s HBO series “Boardwalk Empire.” The second “BE” soundtrack is being released on September 3rd with Minnelli’s version of the 1923 Sophie Tucker classic, “You’ve Gotta See Mama Every Night (Or You Can’t See Mama At All).”
Since Minnelli’s version– which will close a new episode of “BE” this fall– isn’t ready yet, here’s Sophie Tucker. Looking forward to Liza’s take. She’ll be performing at Caesar’s in Atlantic City on September 28th, too– very fitting since that’s where “BE” takes place!
CBGB Movie Shocker: No Music by The Ramones, The Club’s Quintessential Group
The CBGB’s movie is coming, and everyone who ever went there is ducking and hiding. Among them Linda Ramone, widow of Johnny Ramone. She is not happy with the casting of her deceased husband and won’t be coming in from Los Angeles for the premiere at the end of September. We spoke today because the soundtrack listing for “CBGB” came out yesterday and included no songs by the Ramones. There’s just a solo recording by Joey Ramone. But no “Sheena was a Punk Rocker” or “Blitzkrieg Bop” or “I Wanna Be Sedated.” There are tracks by Blonde, Talking Heads, the Police and Television.
This seemed strange since the Ramones were CBGB, basically. They were the group most entwined with Hilly Krystal’s legend. So why no Ramones? Linda isn’t exactly sure. She says she approved one song, but it’s not there. But there’s no love lost between her and the movie’s producers. She’s angry with them for casting Puerto Rican actor Julian Acosta as Johnny. “Johnny was Irish and pale. He was 27 years old. The guy they got is Puerto Rican and looks nothing like him. He’s much older. I asked them to change it, and they said, Too late. Too bad.”
Linda controls the Ramones music with Joey Ramone’s brother, Mickey Leigh. She says the good news is that she and Mickey are on the same page now, and have never been more in agreement about the Ramones’ music. But the CBGB movie, which stars Alan Rickman as Hilly and a variety of young actors as the original rockers who played there, is not for her.
“I just felt so insulted. They didn’t consult us on anything,” Linda says. “The two people who are doing the movie know nothing about CBGBs or the Ramones. They don’t know what they are doing.” Linda is planning a summer tribute to Johnny in L.A. on August 18th.
PS Dave Fine, Mickey Leigh’s attorney, says he is also dumbfounded by the lack of Ramones music in the film.
I’m waiting for more people to chime in here. In the meantime, here’s the new trailer for “CBGB”:
Broadway: Kinky Boots Paying Off, Beatles Blues, Old Jews Turn 500
It’s the mid summer blahs on Broadway, but not for musicals. They are all booming, even “Spider Man” as it hunts for a new lead. (Reeve Carney is finally exiting in September, maybe to do the Jeff Buckley film.) Winning the Tony Award turned “Kinky Boots” into gold. I’m told the show will have made back 65% of its investment by September. That’s quite a feat.
“Kinky Boots” will be in the black by early next year. “Matilda,” “Motown,” and “Pippin” are all doing great. But the dreadful Beatles reenactment thing called “Let it Be” is playing only to 52% capacity houses. That’s including discounts! Even foreign tourists can see how bad it is! …
Meantime one show that’s paid off handsomely off Broadway is “Old Jews Telling Jokes.” They just celebrated their 500th performance. Nearly every celebrity in town has wandered into the Westside Theater to hear the funniest material on Broadway including Woody Allen, Bette Midler, Max Weinberg, Joan Rivers, Kathie Gifford and Hoda Kotb, Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue– the list goes on and on. Even Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones stopped in. He may start doing warm ups for Stones shows. (Just kidding!)
Marilyn Sokol, one of the stars of OJTJ , says that her neighbor (Marty Danoff) has been telling everyone both in and outside of their building to see the show. “I brought my mother-in-law,” he said, “and she put me back in the will.”
Bah-dum-dum!
Exclusive: Liam Neeson May Finally Be LBJ in “Selma” with David Oyelowo
“Selma” was the movie Lee Daniels was trying to put together until “The Butler” set his silver tray down in Daniels’ lap. The rest will be history when “The Butler” opens August 16th.
So what happened to “Selma”? Ava Duvernay, whose debut “Middle of Nowhere” was an indie hit in 2012, is taking over.
“Butler” star David Oyelowo, who plays Forest Whitaker’s son with breadth and imagination in the Daniels film, is set to play Martin Luther King. And I can tell you that Liam Neeson, originally thought of to play Lyndon Johnson when “Selma” was Lee Daniels’ movie, will indeed get that chance. Some of the other actors from Daniels’ cast list, like Robert DeNiro and Hugh Jackman, may be signing up as well.
Duvernay is making a name for herself as a director but when I met her she was Jennifer Hudson’s publicist on “Dreamgirls.” So brava for her. And Oyelowo is a 37 year old overnight sensation. Just watch him get a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in “The Butler.” His character, Louis, drives the story as he experiences the entire civil rights movement.
All these civil rights roles are something of a learning experience for Oyelowo. Even though he carries off a perfect American accent, he is quite British you know, and grew up in London. Six years of living in Los Angeles has helped make him sound and act more American. Tis a pity, I’m sure.
Filming for “Selma” is supposed to begin right after the new year in January 2014.
Ashton Kutcher on Steve Jobs, Fruit Diets, and Creating Efficiencies (Not Studio Apartments)
Taking on the role of Steve Jobs for the biopic “Jobs” landed Ashton Kutcher in the emergency room. Kutcher channeled the tech genius a little too closely he said Monday at a smallish press conference at the Waldorf Astoria.
Kutcher, 35, explained how he landed in the E.R. “I went on this fruitarian diet and I read a book by this guy Arnold Ehret, which was a book that Steve read called ‘The Mucus-less Diet Healing System’ and it was kind of his dietary bible. It talked about the value of grape sugar and that that was the only pure sugar that you could have in your body.”
In a dramatic understatement, Kutcher added, “I think that the guy that wrote that book was pretty misinformed. My insulin levels got pretty messed up and my pancreas kind of went into some crazy, I don’t know, the levels were really off and it was really painful. I didn’t know what was wrong. And we figured out that my insulin levels were really off.”
Ehret died shortly after writing his book in 1922, by the way, at age 56. He fell and hit his head. He may have been weak from hunger, but we’ll never know.
Kutcher, like Job, says he’s also into efficiencies, and he does not mean small apartments. “I love creating efficiencies,” he said, “and I love solving big problems and I love working with people who create efficiencies. I love creating efficiencies in my own life on a day-to-day basis and I think that that’s probably pretty similar.”
What is he talking about? He explained: “I bought a house five minutes away from my work so I didn’t have to drive through traffic. I figured out a way to organize my closet so that I can actually wake up and get dressed in the order that I like to dress and move right down a line in my closet, so I can start at one end and move to the other and by the end I’m done. I kind of have the thing set up so that I can wake up and get out of my house in about four minutes and get to work within 12 minutes from the time I wake up so I try to do a lot and accomplish a lot in a short period of time so I try to create as many efficiencies as I can.”
Jennifer Aniston Comedy “We’re the Millers” Trashed by Critics
I like Jennifer Aniston a lot, but I am baffled by the movies she picks. Tomorrow (Wednesday), “We’re the Millers” opens and it’s being trashed by the critics. So far it has a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. Nearly everyone dislikes it. Jason Sudeikis co-stars. I hope he didn’t decide to leave “Saturday Night Live” based on this film’s success. “Millers” may have worse buzz than “Girl Most Likely”–a comedy with Kristen Wiig that opened Dead on Arrival.
Aniston has made a lot of money. She has excellent comic timing that is not well-suited to these hare-brained comedies directed by hacks. She should seriously think about getting into a hip HBO style comedy for TV. The pile up of her DVDs and airplane films is immense at this point. “Millers” wasn’t expensive– Warner Bros. says $30 million, so let’s say it’s $50 mil all in. But still, with those reviews– every major outlet has panned it– the film could be dead by Saturday morning. Stay tuned…