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Grammy Deadline Approaches: Albums to Vote For

Roger Friedman
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Grammy Deadline Approaches: Albums to Vote For

Oh, the agony of the Grammy Awards. The deadline for membership voting in the Recording Academy is coming up this Friday. Members of the Academy are winnowing down zillions of entries into five slots per category for things like Album, Song, and Record of the Year in general, rock, pop, R&B, country, etc. The nominations will be announced in December, and the awards will be given in February.

Do you have five choices for Best Album? That is, if Best Album were open to everything that’s been released? The front runners right now are Adele‘s “21” and Lady Gaga‘s “Born this Way.” Everything else will just be interesting. My guess is Kanye and Jay Z‘s “Watching the Throne,” Tony Bennett‘s “Duets II,” and two terrific albums by “legacy” artists will be included somewhere–Elton John and Leon Russell’s “The Union,” and Paul Simon‘s “So Beautiful, or So What?” Each of those last two deserve to be not only in Best Pop, but Album of the Year.

From there, the choices are slim and could go anywhere.

Some choices will have to be ferreted out by voters. In Best Rock Album, we can’t stress enough that Garland Jeffreys‘ “The King of In Between” deserves a slot. Jeffreys is a New York cult favorite, with an international following. He first came to popularity in the mid 1970s with “Wild in the Streets,” and later “Matador” in the 1980s. He had a huge cover hit with “96 Tears,” and is often cited by Bruce Springsteen as a favorite singer. “The King of In Between” is a revelation, and issued– of course, in the new paradigm– on his own label. http://www.garlandjeffreys.com 

Also, Aretha Franklin has a ton of Grammy Awards. This year, though, she also released her own album. “Aretha: A Woman Falling Out of Love,” has several delicious tracks. Voters may not know where to find it on their ballots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8DdnmF_Dyo

Some other Grammy worthy releases in 2011: Jennifer Hudson, “I Remember Me”; Raphael Saadiq, “Stone Rollin’,” Alison Krauss, “Paper Airplane,” Foster the People, “Torches.”

 

Johnny Depp: Fear and Loathing at NY Movie Premiere

Roger Friedman
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0
Johnny Depp: Fear and Loathing at NY Movie Premiere

Johnny Depp— I do think the Greta Garbo thing has been carried on a little too far. Imagine my surprise arriving downstairs in the movie theater at the Museum of Modern Art to find a quarter of the seats empty for his “Rum Diary” premiere. “There are four hundred seats. We were told to invite three hundred people,” said someone associated with what would turn out to be a dull concoction. But why? “Johnny Depp said he didn’t want a big crowd.” He didn’t get one. If it hadn’t been for the loyal Keith Richards and Patti Hansen, plus Rob Morrow and Gina Gershon, Zoe Kravitz, John Patrick Shanley, and Matthew Settle, the “Rum Diary” would have been one flat cocktail.

This was all good news if you wanted to take a nap. Directed by Bruce Robinson (who hasn’t made a movie since Hunter S. Thompson actually feared and loathed, in 1992), “Rum Diary” desperately needs a coke–legal or otherwise. Something to perk it up. It’s one of those movies where Depp mumbles, the lighting is low, and not much happens. When something does happen– the character (I use that word loosely) played by model-turned actress Amber Heard is seemingly taken hostage in San Juan, Puerto Rico in a grimy disco–there’s no pay off. After two hours the movie stops, and some type appears on screen explaining the whole thing.

“Rum Diary” was followed by an after party at the Hiro Ballroom. The deal was that eventually Depp would show up, and the rock band he pays for and carts around the world for his personal entertainment would play something. This wasn’t enough for many guests, who exited Hiro when they realized it was 11pm and they hadn’t had dinner. Considering this film has a $60 million price tag, they could have sushi.

My favorite line of the night was from designer Betsy Johnson, who apparently left the theater for the ladies’ room before the movie ended. She was surprised when it had actually concluded before her return. “I thought it was going to go on for another three hours,” Johnson remarked to companion as the audience scampered out of the theater. No kidding, Betsy.

If you’re going to try an indie flick this week, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is a much better bet. And in the cost-conscious era, that film only cost $750,000.

 

Cyndi Lauper Plans All Star Benefit Concert

Roger Friedman
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Cyndi Lauper Plans All Star Benefit Concert

Cyndi Lauper, one of our all time faves, is planning an all -star benefit concert for her True Colors Fund. “Home for the Holidays” will be held at the Beacon Theater, and underwritten by Deutsche Bank.

Lauper has been extremely active for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender teens. Now she’s organizing a show to raise money for her foundation. She’s announced a very artist friendly roster including Norah Jones, Amy Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Carson Kressley, Chely Wright, Skylar Grey, Vanessa Carlton, Angelique Kidjo, Harvey Fierstein, Deluka, Debbie Harry, Alan Cumming and Clay Aiken.

Cyndi says: “When I first learned that up to 40 percent of all homeless youth in this country identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender I was shocked and saddened. For far too long homeless youth have not received the attention, resources and funding necessary to bring an end to this epidemic. My hope is that through this inspiring evening of music and comedy we can raise awareness and much needed funds to help these young people.”

Tickets go on sale through Live Nation and Ticket master on Friday. And good for Cyndi. Her heart is always in the right place.

Casey Affleck to Play “Corrupt Midget” in Whitey Bulger Film

Roger Friedman
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5
Casey Affleck to Play “Corrupt Midget” in Whitey Bulger Film

Exclusive about the Whitey Bulger movie being put together by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Casey Affleck, nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in “Jesse James” a couple of years ago, tells me he will be in the film. Casey is going to play Whitey Bulger’s younger brother, Bill Bulger. Ben Affleck will direct the film, and star in it with Damon and Casey.

And that’s an interesting idea because Bill Bulger, now 77, has been a huge figure in the saga of his brother’s life.  Known as “Billy,” he’s also been dubbed “The Corrupt Midget” by Boston journalist Howie Carr because he stands five foot-five. (Casey will have to scrunch down a bit.) Frankly, the story of Billy is so good, Casey is likely to get another Oscar nomination.

While Whitey Bulger has been a fugitive career criminal and serial killer, brother Bill has long been a Massachusetts politician. Billy Bulger has been president of the Mass. state senate and also president of the University of Massachusetts. He has a law degree from Boston College, and fought in the Korean War. The two brothers managed to co-exist in the world as sort of a public ying and yang. Billy Bulger always maintained a public distance from his brother. But in 2003 he was forced to resign his position with UMass when it was discovered that he’d been in touch with Whitey. He still commands a $200,000 annual pension.

Boston journalists have always questioned Billy Bulger’s walking of a thin line between his world and that of his brother. It’s a little like John Gregory Dunne‘s famous novel (also a movie), “True Confessions.”

You can read all about the Bulgers at http://www.thebrothersbulger.com/ Having loved “The Town,” I can’t wait to see “The Bulgers” on screen. Bring it on.

PS Ironically, Damon was a star of “The Departed,” which told part of the Whitey Bulger story (Jack Nicholson played Whitey, famously). Graham King, who produced that Martin Scorsese movie, had also announced he was going to do a Bulger film. Maybe they can combine their efforts.

 

 

Eddie Murphy Gets a Comedy “Comeback” in “Tower Heist”

Roger Friedman
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0
Eddie Murphy Gets a Comedy “Comeback” in “Tower Heist”

Brett Ratner‘s “Tower Heist” is getting an old fashioned mega push from Universal Pictures, a studio desperate for a hit after a slow year. Will “Tower Heist” be a Universal and universal hit? I think so, judging from last night’s star studded four star no expense forgotten premiere at the Ziegfeld followed by a lavish party at the Museum of Modern Art. Eddie Murphy makes a killer comedy comeback in “Tower Heist,” and Matthew Broderick kind of steals a film that also stars — with lots of presence–Ben Stiller, Casey Affleck, Tea Leoni, Nina Arianda, Alan Alda, Marcia Jean Kurtz, and Judd Hirsch.

And I mean, you know it’s a big deal when both Edward Norton and former flame Courtney Love are in the room. Also present, and loving the whole thing, Sarah Jessica Parker (Mrs. Broderick) with son James, and Stiller’s wife, Christine Taylor, as well as his sister Amy. I spotted Tracy Morgan, the Olsen twins, and screenwriter James Toback.

Universal studio execs and top agents were also in plenitude. Producer Brian Grazer was in deep conversation with ABC News chief Ben Sherwood. (His talented wife, Karen Kehela, is a producer on the film.) New York rock legend Garland Jeffreys kept getting praise from everyone for his new album, “The King of Inbetween.” Gabby Sidibe, who has a hilarious role in the film as a Haitian housekeeper, proved she’s not just “Precious.”

My favorite quote of the night came from Donald Trump. “Tower Heist” uses his Trump International Hotel in Columbus Circle as its locale, but Trump decided not to put his name in the film. “There’s a heist!” he said. Such a thing would never happen on his watch. Alan Alda, playing a Bernie Madoff like tycoon, has a pool on the roof of the movie version of the building, called just The Tower. The movie pool has a gigantic $20 bill painting on its floor, too. “They gave me ideas,” Trump told me with a laugh.

George Clooney, Ben Affleck Steal the Show at Hollywood Film Awards

Roger Friedman
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0
George Clooney, Ben Affleck Steal the Show at Hollywood Film Awards

Our Leah Sydney is sending reports from the 15th Annual Hollywood Film Awards dinner in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton, where George Clooney has made a splash with girlfriend Stacey Keibler, and “everyone is thanking Harvey Weinstein,” Leah reports that Clooney — now the Hollywood vet– fixed the tie of “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius before he got on stage. Jean DuJardin, the movie’s star, joked, “Do I have to talk? It’s a silent movie, my English is  rusty.” It’s the coming out party for DuJardin, Hazanavicius, and Berenice Bejo–they’re meeting and greeting Hollywood establishment.

Starz Channel’s Chris Albrecht and Hollywoodnews.com’s Carlos Abreu have put together the night–with tons of stars. Clooney and Keibler, Glenn Close, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, Paul Haggis, Ewan McGregor, Anne Hathaway–a breath of fresh air, Ben Affleck, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emma Stone and the gang from “The Help,” and so on all over the room.

A big hit of the Hollywood Film Festival is “Beginners,” with Christopher Plummer getting a lot of buzz for Best Supporting Actor. McGregor, presenting Plummer with an award: “I wondered if we would gel as father and son, I wondered if he would like my version of ‘The hills are alive.’ But he had me in tears the whole time.” Plummer was erudite and charming – he cracked the audience up when he looked at the video screen and saw himself large and looming over the hall. He said, with a smirk, “God, that is cruel to the face. I don’t look like that do I?”  Plummer continued, about “Beginners”: “I’ve never been so relaxed in front of a camera. Surely that is prize enough.”

Quentin Tarantino presented to screenwriter Diablo Cody–“When you saw Juno you knew you were in the presence of a new voice. It’s hard being a great writer in Hollywood. She’s in the class of Paddy Chayevsky and Wiliam Goldman.”  Tarantino quoted A.O. Scott’s New York Times review of “Jennifer’s Body.” Well, if you think Quentin Tarantino is a great writer, then Diablo Cody is a great writer.” He agreed.

There were more awards, including a standing ovation for Glenn Close–is this her year, for “Albert Nobbs”? And Hollywood veteran Don Murray presented to Michelle Williams for her work in “My Week with Marilyn.” Murray said: “I’m the last of the onscreen lovers of Marilyn Monroe.” He joked: “I’m just happy to have a body that works.”  Williams, nervous but sweet, said: “All that Marilyn Monroe ever really wanted was to be taken seriously as an actress. She never got the recognition she craved.”

Meantime, a bearded Ben Affleck  got a lot of laughs before he presented cinematographer Emmanuel Llubezki with an award. He told the crowd that just outside the Hilton a guy came up to him and said “Right this way, Mr. Bruckheimer.”

New Shakespeare Film: The Really Bad News, and A Little Good News

Roger Friedman
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4
New Shakespeare Film: The Really Bad News, and A Little Good News

Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous” opens this week. It should be called “Preposterous.” The film makes a case that William Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. Instead, the Earl of Oxford, aka Edward DeVere, is put forth as the playwright. Shakespeare is merely a stooge, who fronts for someone else. Yes, it convoluted. It makes no sense. And in “Anonymous,” DeVere is also the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth I. This is the very bad news.

Shakespeare’s scholarly defenders are on the rampage about the movie, weighing in everywhere, especially the New York Times. I will give you two excellent links that discuss this mess. One was from yesterday’s Times Magazine, which rightly lays out a time line that makes the whole thing impossible. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/wouldnt-it-be-cool-if-shakespeare-wasnt-shakespeare.html?src=me&ref=magazine. The other is from the paper itself. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/opinion/hollywood-dishonors-the-bard.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=shakespeare&st=cse

Honestly, “Anonymous” would seem like a total waste of time except for the actors. Rhys Ifans plays DeVere, and it’s hist first real stab at playing an adult, a person of substance, and nobility. He’s quite wonderful. So are Vanessa Redgrave and her real life actress daughter Joely Richardson playing Elizabeth as an older and younger ruler, respectively. I was especially impressed with Richardson, who has for too laboted in the shadows of her famous family. She’s just great.

And there’s more: Edward Hogg is a real find as Robert Cecil, scowling and scheming around the court. Rafe Spall, son of Timothy Spall, is a fun young Shakespeare. Most especially, there are two major cameos by the Tony Award winning Mark Rylance that make up for all the movie’s crazy historical deficiencies.

But holy moley: what a mess is “Anonymous.” It’s absolutely useless as a historic artifact, taking liberties in every scene. Then there’s the script, which is not possible to follow without GPS. When Ifans, the Redgraves, or Rylance turn up you want to ask them for directions. Listen, kids, Shakespeare wrote his plays and sonnets. Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. And Roland Emmerich, a nice man, should stick to disaster movies. Even the aliens from “Independence Day,” his best film, knew “Romeo and Juliet” and “Macbeth” were not written in one week.

What Bob Dylan Told Steve Jobs About Songwriting

Roger Friedman
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8
What Bob Dylan Told Steve Jobs About Songwriting

Bob Dylan was Steve Jobs‘s idol. In his new authorized biography from Simon & Schuster, Jobs tells Walter Isaacson about his 2004 meeting with Dylan. This led to Jobs becoming Dylan’s unofficial archivist, and issuing Dylan’s massive digital catalog in 2007. Jobs, weirdly, also wound up having a three year romantic relationship with Dylan’s early lover, singer Joan Baez.

Jobs told Isaacson: “We sat on the patio outside his room and talked for two hours. I was really nervous, because he was one of my heroes. And I was also afraid that he wouldn’t be really smart anymore, that he’d be a caricature of himself, like happens to a lot of people. But I was delighted. He was as sharp as a tack. He was everything I’d hoped. He was really open and honest. He was just telling me about his life and about writing his songs. He said, “They just came through me, it wasn’t like I was having to compose them. That doesn’t happen anymore, I just can’t write them that way anymore.” Then he paused and said to me with his raspy voice and little smile, “But I still can sing them.”

John Lennon Was Steve Jobs’s Favorite Beatle, Loved “Strawberry Fields”

Roger Friedman
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17
John Lennon Was Steve Jobs’s Favorite Beatle, Loved “Strawberry Fields”

John Lennon was Steve Jobs‘s favorite Beatle. So says Jobs’s biographer Walter Isaacson in his authorized bio of Jobs, out today from Simon & Schuster. Of course, Jobs named his company Apple after the Beatles’ Apple Corps Records. Then of course, Jobs wound up settling lawsuits with the Beatles by paying them $500 million in 2007 (not for the ITunes downloads, just to settle 23 years of suits regarding the companies’ names and businesses).

Listening to a bootleg of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Jobs told Isaacson: “It’s a complex song, and it’s fascinating to watch the creative process as they went back and forth and finally created it over a few months. Lennon was always my favorite Beatle. [He laughs as Lennon stops during the first take and makes the band go back and revise a chord.] Did you hear that little detour they took? It didn’t work, so they went back and started from where they were. It’s so raw in this version. It actually makes them sound like mere mortals. You could actually imagine other people doing this, up to this version. Maybe not writing and conceiving it, but certainly playing it. Yet they just didn’t stop. They were such perfectionists they kept it going and going.

“This made a big impression on me when I was in my thirties. You could just tell how much they worked at this. They did a bundle of work between each of these recordings. They kept sending it back to make it closer to perfect. [As he listens to the third take, he points out how the instrumentation has gotten more complex.] The way we build stuff at Apple is often this way. Even the number of models we’d make of a new notebook or iPod. We would start off with a version and then begin refining and refining, doing detailed models of the design, or the buttons, or how a function operates. It’s a lot of work, but in the end it just gets better, and soon it’s like, “Wow, how did they do that?!? Where are the screws?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rwsuXHA7RA

Steve Jobs Gave Famous Novelist Sister Fashion Advice, Designer Clothes

Roger Friedman
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1
Steve Jobs Gave Famous Novelist Sister Fashion Advice, Designer Clothes

Much will be coming out from Walter Isaacson‘s authorized biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs today. His full sister was novelist Mona Simpson, whose debut novel, “Anywhere But Here,” chronicled her own strange childhood with their mother. Later, after meeting Jobs in 1986, Simpson based another novel, called “A Regular Guy,” on her newfound brother. Isaacson writes in the new biography that Jobs, who was thrilled to meet Simpson, disapproved of the way she dressed. He didn’t like her to dress like “a struggling novelist.”

One day a box arrived from the designer Issey Miyake.  Isaacson writes: “He’d gone shopping for me,” Simpson said, “and he’d picked out great things, exactly my size, in flattering colors.” There was one pantsuit that he had particularly liked, and the shipment included three of them, all identical. Jobs told Isaacson: “I still remember those first suits I sent Mona. They were linen pants and tops in a pale grayish green that looked beautiful with her reddish hair.”

Jobs had also wanted to improve the looks of his much older girlfriend, famed singer Joan Baez. He once showed her a red dress at a Ralph Lauren  Polo store, Baez tells Isaacson, and told her she should buy it. He didn’t pick it up himself for her, however. He did gift her with an early Apple Macintosh word processor.

PS According to Isaacson, Simpson and Jobs were full siblings, children of Joanne Simpson and Syrian born Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, who abandoned them. Steve was famous put up for adoption. In the end, Isaacson writes, Jobs became close to both his biological sister and mother. As for the father, they never met officially. But Jandali told Mona Simpson that Jobs had once eaten in a restaurant he’d managed, they’d met (not knowing their relationship), and that Jobs had been “a big tipper.”

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