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Every dog has its day, someone once said. And now that dog is “Billions.”
Showtime’s highly entertaining but awards-starved drama is in its 6th season. One of its stars left at the end of last season. But now “Billions” has become a go-to for Sunday night cable fans.
Two nights ago “Billions” pulled in a respectable 330K viewers. And it beat, once again, HBO’s offering– “Euphoria.” Even thought “Euphoria” jumped 16% from its previous week, the hardcore sex and tech teen marathon drew only 310K viewers.
The Daily Beast has a good piece today about the collapse of “Euphoria” from cult darling to most ridiculed show on social media. I tried watching the first two episodes on HBO on Demand, and, wow, it’s too much. If high school had really been the way it is in “Euphoria,” we’d all be dead, and in hell.
But kudos to “Billions.” Their 6th season is a winner. Corey Stoll is doing a great job as Mike Prince. Paul Giamatti is a gift, and he deserves an Emmy Award. The whole cast is sterling and the writing is impeccable. All the incredible hard work of Brian Koppleman and David Levien is paying off.
The first two parts of the Janet Jackson documentary aired Friday night, and they were hits.
Lifetime-A&E played the two parts across both networks about nine times, and the numbers seem to add up to around 9 million viewers. The biggest audience was Lifetime at 9pm with 2.114 million viewers.
(UPDATE TUES 2:15PM) Lifetime says the total for the whole weekend was over 15.7 million viewers counting in Saturday, Sunday, on TV and streaming platforms.)
The Friday night installments were the best because Janet’s got the two husbands in the rear view mirror, didn’t have NDA’s with them, and the filmmakers weren’t constrained in their story telling.
The Saturday night chapters, 3 and 4, were more problematic. Part 3 was mellow and trod old ground. Part 4 was just filled with lies, fabrications, and half-truths.
Completely scrubbed from the documentary is Janet’s third marriage, to the father of her son, Wissam Al Mana. He simply doesn’t exist in this account of Janet’s life. She brags about being a mother but how did she acquire this child? There’s no explanation.
al Mana split from Janet two months after the baby was born. During the short marriage, Janet was seen wearing Muslim garb and was rumored to be converting from Jehovah’s Witness to her husband’s religion. The doc never addresses any of this, or the enormous settlement she is said to have received in the divorce. We can surmise that the money came with a legally zipped lip.
So Part 4 especially feels like an infomercial and not a documentary. We learn nothing about Janet’s career after the split. the fact that some tours didn’t happen or were canceled, that records didn’t sell anymore, nothing.
The worst part of all this is Janet not being real about her abusive father, Joseph. She feared him, and hated him. He had a mistress for a long time, and illegitimate daughter. When Janet and her mother found out, they went after Joseph physically.
Right before he died, Joseph went to Brazil for an 88th birthday bash put together by one of his many lackeys. He expected to party hard. Instead whatever he did caused a heart attack and strokes. It was Janet who had fly to Sao Paolo and bring him back on a plane that was likely paid for by al Mana. Is any of this in the four hour doc? NO.
But A&E-Lifetime did very well on Friday night. We’ll see soon if that carried over to Saturday and Sunday.
SPOILER ALERT James Bond is temporarily dead, but that doesn’t stop the Oscar hopeful machine. With Academy voting ending tomorrow night and COVID still a factor, Hollywood is trying to reach the voters as best as they can. The # 1 tastemaker and actress/producer Colleen Camp hosted a Virtual Q and A with the team behind “No Time To Die” Barbara Broccoli, Cary Joji Fukunaga and Rami Malek. Director Amy Heckerling was the moderator.
Barbara first gave kudos to Daniel Craig’s swan song as Bond. “What he’s done over these 16 years, what he’s given to this franchise is amazing. Daniel was so committed to re-inventing Bond, to give him more humanity. This movie is really about love, which is unusual for Bond.”
Broccoli, along with her half-brother, Michael Wilson, controls the franchise. Cary Jo then remarked. “Even though it’s a large franchise, the core team was really a mom-and-pop thing, and telling the studio what we wanted instead of asking.” Amy mentioned that this film gives Bond a second chance at love. Cary Jo said, “With this tragic love story and the complexity and the layers, to come back for the final chapter and reexamine that relationship and that part of his heart, was all by design. We wanted this to feel like an arc over the course of the five films, with “Skyfall” in the middle, and have this feeling at the end that he’s come full circle.”
Broccoli noted that, “When Bond thinks Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) betrays him, it hits a button with him, it’s heartbreaking to him. Heckerling mused that. “it’s so satisfying yet heartbreaking to see Bond be in love and then sacrifice himself at the end.” Barbara also noted of the sensational of Ana de Armas, “She’s sort of like Ginger Rodgers, she does everything that Daniel does except backwards and in heels. “
Rami Malek said of his character, the evil Lyutsifer Safin, “The best way to get under Bond’s skin is to have a relationship with the woman he loves the most.” Rami also explained that he was intent on not meeting Craig before they worked together. “I didn’t want to meet Daniel until we had our first scene together. Of course, I stepped out of make-up trailer and we saw each other. He threw his arms around me and gave me a hug and said as any great leader does, ‘it’s going to be a great ride.” Here’s hoping “No Time To Die” gets some deserved Oscar love.
January 31, 1972– the release of Al Green’s album, “Let’s Stay Together.” The next day came Todd Rundgren’s double album, “Something/Anything.”
I was 14, not quite 15. We depended on the radio to tell us what was being released: 77 WABC for top 40 and R&B singles, WNEW-FM and WPLJ-FM for the cool album stuff.
Looking back now thanks to Wikipedia, it’s hard to imagine I got any homework done. Loving music in 1971 and 1972 was a full time job. There was too much going on. Constantly. Did we think it would become classic music? No one thought about it.
So Al Green had had already put “Tired of Being Alone” on the radio, we were singing along with it, but white kids in the northeast didn’t really grasp who he was yet. When the next Willie Mitchell produced album, “Let’s Stay Together,” arrived, it was madness. The Hi! Records horns, the rhythm section, were nirvana. There are only 9 tracks on the album, which wasn’t a big hit. For Al, it was the 45s. The title track was effortlessly romantic. Plus, as with “Tired of Being Alone,” Al’s falsetto spins spiraling through the main vocal was undeniable. The song remains his crowning achievement. And the album also features Al delivering his immortal treatment of the Bee Gee’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”
Then there was Todd Rundgren. I can remember sitting in my room listening to the radio when probably Cousin Brucie played “I Saw the Light” for the first time. It was if I had seen the light. There was nothing else like it. We were in the era of perfect post-Beatles pop that started with Harry Nilsson’s “Without You.” (I wrote about all of this a short time ago.) Todd had already had minor hits with “We Gotta Get You a Woman” and a slow version of “Hello, It’s Me.” But now, what was this?
“Something/Anything” was like a visit to outer space. Electronic Moog music was ‘in’ so Todd including it as interstitials etc was very cool. Then, there were all these potential singles– “Couldn’t I Just Tell You” was the main one after “Light” and “Hello It’s Me.” then were was “Wolfman Jack”–Todd sort of revived him from cult into main stream. There are so many tracks on the album, and you just kept flipping it over and trying a different side. Also, there was a lot of studio talking, which was unusual. So the album had a very intimate feel. You feel like you know this weird looking guy who created this whole musical experience– some of it solo, some with the best musicians in pop.
Right now, I’m listening to the end of the album, with “Slut” and “You Left Me Sore.” The tracks hold up so well they could have been made last week. They’d be hailed as breakthroughs. There’s no question that a direct line run from Todd to projects like the New Radicals. As it happened, Hall & Oates–after their Arif Mardin produced classic “Abandoned Luncheonette” — went full Todd with “Rich Girl” and all those hits. Daryl Hall was smart to commercialize Todd’s concepts, which Rundgren abandoned for his harder metal edged Utopia.
So that’s just this week in 1972. This month coming up are the 50th anniversaries of the Allman Brothers’ “Eat a Peach” and Neil Young’s “Harvest.” This was also the year of the greatest R&B singles. Sly and the Family Stone’s “Family Affair” took the first week of 1972. Then “Let’s Stay Together” was number 1 for 8 consecutive weeks. This was followed by James Brown, Joe Tex, the Staples Singers, Aretha, the Dramatics, and the Chi Lites. This was all before June 30th. When you hear the expression The Soundtrack of our Lives, this was it. At least it was mine. It’s the reason I made the film, “Only the Strong Survive” in 2002.
If you remember all this, you know it already. If you don’t, and you want to know what real music was like, jump in anywhere. And yes, this whole time, “American Pie” was everywhere. We had no idea who Don McLean was or what he was like in real life. I’m so glad we didn’t.
On Sunday, Peter Jackson’s Beatles Get Back: The Rooftop Concert brought back Beatlemania. The shows were sold out, with a box office take of $391k on 67 IMAX screens, $5,840 per screen. And this was a Sunday exclusive.
This was also besides the fact that the whole “Get Back” 8 hour documentary is on Disney Plus and has been for months. Also, the DVD package is being released that week.
The response was so good that IMAX will do it again February 11th-13th, with some previews on February 9th.
The Rooftop concert is just 60 minutes long, and comprises just the concert, which features in its entirety in Peter Jackson’s original docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back,” has been optimized for IMAX screens, digitally remastered into the image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Remastering) technology. Beatles fans everywhere will get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch and hear their heroes in the unrivaled sight and sound of IMAX.
So what’s left? I was horrified when on last night’s “60 Minutes,” the original Michael Lindsay Hogg movie “Let it Be” was thrown under the bus. That movie is still very important. I hope we get a DVD release of that soon, too.
Rihanna’s next release will not be an album. It will be a baby.
The singer from Barbados strolled around Harlem on Saturday with an exposed, large, round belly She was possibly confusing the term “freezing eggs” with “freezing fetuses.” The outside temp was about 20 degrees.
The baby probably wore an expensive fur coat which it will charge to Rihanna’s fashion company once it is born.
The singer whose real name is Robyn Fenty hasn’t actually released an album in six years. Friday was the 6th anniversary of her album, “Anti.” The single was called “Work Work Work” and she hasn’t done any in the music business since then. Rihanna has now beaten Adele record for longest time between records.
But this is a blessed event for Rihanna and boyfriend, rapper A$AP Rocky. It’s unclear if the baby’s name will include a dollar sign or initials.
I met Rihanna during the evening before she and Chris Brown took their fateful drive in Los Angeles. It’s hard to believe she’s only 33 now. She’s really lived through a lot. This is lovely news.
But someone please, buy her a sweater or an overcoat!
Adele is suffering from the bad publicity of her cancelled Weekends with Adele in Las Vegas.
The star’s “30” album sold just 37,000 copies, and dropped another 15% in its 8th week of release. The “30” album is a pale reminder of the singer’s “25” album in 2015. C’est la vie. Cancelling 16 shows, offering no refunds, that didn’t help. These are the lowest numbers yet for “30.”
“30” dropped to number 6 on hitsdailydouble.com’s chart and fell to about number 10 on iTunes. On Amazon, it’s still number 1, which makes little to no sense since “30” was outsold in CDs and vinyl last week by the “Encanto” soundtrack and country singer Walker Hayes.
“Encanto” was actually up by 9% last week, selling 115,00o copies total.
Other news: Meat Loaf sold over 50,000 albums last week after he died from being a COVID anti-vaxxer, What a disaster. And Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors sold another 15,900. It’s 2022, Fleetwood Mac and Meat Loaf are on the album charts. Who’d a thunk it?
