Friday, December 19, 2025
Home Blog Page 834

“Chaos Walking” Running to VOD This Friday After Crashing at Box Office, This Year’s Huge Money Loser

0

The wait is over.

If you stayed away from “Chaos Walking” because of the pandemic, the good news is it’s coming to video on demand and all streaming services this Friday.

The release is just in the nick of time. “Chaos Walking” cost over $100 million. But it’s made just $11 million in four weeks. It’s the biggest money loser of 2021.

Directed by Doug Liman, “Chaos Walking” stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, two big names of this generation. The co-stars are even more impressive: David Oyelowo, Demian Bechir, Cynthia Erivo, and Mads Mikkelsen. Nick Jonas is even in it.

And yet, the film has a 22 rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics didn’t like it. Neither did bloggers. And on Friday, we’ll all get the chance to see it!

 

Give Her Shelter: Merry Clayton’s Triumphant Return to Music Shows Off Her “Beautiful Scars” and Sensational Voice

0

Merry Clayton is back, with a sweet vengeance. After a terrible car accident in 2015, the legendary singer from the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and from Carole King’s hit albums of the 70s, has made a new album.

“Beautiful Scars” is named for a title track written by Diane Warren. The album is produced by Lou Adler, who first signed Merry to Ode Records in 1970. She had solo albums and she sang on Ode Records’ Carole King albums memorably. Her voice on the Stones song remains a key part of their legacy and hers.

Merry was featured in the Oscar winning drama “20 Feet to Stardom” a few years ago. I was at a Grammy event with her and Darlene Love and a few others from that film in a small club in Los Angeles, and will never forget her peeling the paint off the ceiling when she sang. Utterly amazing.

“Beautiful Scars” drops on April 9th.

What Year Is It? Oldies Take Up 8 of the Top 20 on iTunes Including 1994 “Zombie” and 1970 “Spirit in the Sky”

0

What year is it again? While Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” is number 1, and Justin Bieber is in the top 10, the iTunes chart continues to be rife with Oldies. Oldies!

It’s comfort food for the pandemic, I guess.

On the iTunes Top 20, 8 of the entries are oldies but goodies. They include Norman Greenbaum’s unintentionally spiritual “Spirit in the Sky” from 1970 and the Cranberries’ “Zombie” from 1994. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” a song with with 9 lives, is number 4. The late 70s hit already had a massive run on the charts last year after going viral from a fan video. “Dreams” won’t go away.

There are FOUR other Fleetwood Mac singles in the top 100. Not to mention Stevie Nicks, who wrote “Dreams” sang lead on it for the Mac. Her solo hit, “Edge of Seventeen,” is also in the top 20.

Bryan Adams’s “Summer of ’69,” a hit in 1984, is also there. Just FYI, Adams was only 9 years old in the Summer of 1969. The song is fiction. The rest of the top 100 is littered with oldies, including past hit records by Bon Jovi, U2, Chicago, Nickelback, Simple Minds, Heart, and Tina Turner.

Is this a surge of nostalgia? Or an indictment of current music? Or just a lack of current music with artists and labels holding back new music until the pandemic is over?

 

Nick Jonas’s “Spaceman” Album, Deprived of Oxygen Like Major Tom, Dead After Selling Only 15K Albums in 2 Weeks

0

Does anyone know what happened? Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Nick Jonas’s “Spaceman” album is now completely dead. This failure to launch is very unusual for a big pop star. But “Spaceman” is not even falling back to Earth. It’s floating in the outer reaches of our galaxy, adrift, deprived of oxygen.

Sales for two weeks come to just 14,800 in CDs and downloads. With streaming, the album has sold 33,700 copies according to Buzz Angle. It’s gone from any chart.

You can’t live a big celebrity life style on sales of 14,800. So the question is, what did happen? “Spaceman” was no better or worse than any previous Jonas album. Granted, there was no breakout single like Joe Jonas’s “Cake by the Ocean.” But there were plenty of tracks for Adult Contemporary radio, and pop. Nick is a good pitchman. He gave it a go on “SNL.”

But that’s it. The party is over. I guess Nick goes back to work on a Jonas Brothers album and writes this off. Very unusual for Universal Music Group, which otherwise commands the charts. But this release didn’t even get a chance.

Report: Rupert Murdoch Book Publishing Empire Expanding to Add Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin to Harper Collins

0

Hey guess who got this scoop? The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, just reported that News Corp, also owned by Murdoch, is expanding its book publishing empire.

Murdoch already owns Harper Collins, which was called Harper & Row back in the day. Now they’re going to add Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, now known as Houghton Harcourt.

Isn’t that great? Book publishing will essentially be two conglomerates. The other one is Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, all its subsidiaries like Knopf, plus Doubleday, Viking Penguin, and is trying to complete the purchase of Simon & Schuster.

If you had told me this in 1986, I would have laughed, LOL. Not possible, I’d say! But sure enough we’re going to be down to these two massive conglomerates controlling all of book publishing.

The next thing you know, Murdoch will put Judith Regan or one of his old cronies in charge of the whole shooting match. It’s certainly a turn of events. Houghton Harcourt already owns Scholastic Press’s education and technology business, so now those go to Murdoch too!

They used to have the ABA book convention, now called the BEA or something, in convention halls with hundreds of stalls for booksellers. Now they can have it in the backroom of a funeral parlor with two stands.

“Saturday Night Live” Ratings Collapse to LOWEST in Over a Decade As Show Pairs “Family Favorite” Maya Rudolph With Unknown Musical Guest Jack Harlow

0

Maya Rudolph is brilliant, but the general “SNL” audience considers her part of the family and not a guest host.

Jack Harlow is unknown to just about everyone as a white rapper, and isn’t a draw.

These are the lessons learned from last night’s show as “SNL” had the lowest recorded ratings in over a decade. Going back to 2009 you can’t find a 3.6 million rating. But that’s what happened as Rudolph — albeit wonderful– hosted, and Harlow performed.

The show lost 500,000 viewers from its last airing on February 27th. Post-election, “SNL” has been averaging around 4.1 million.

The season high was 9.1 million on the Saturday after the election, and the numbers stayed around 6 million for three more weeks. But then reality set in: Alec Baldwin as Trump was gone. Trump himself was gone, and with him all acerbic political bashing. The resistance was done. “SNL” suddenly lacked a purpose. It went from being appointment viewing to a pedestrian experience. The fans tuned out.

The pandemic hasn’t helped. It became increasingly difficult to book hosts and musical guests. Celebrities didn’t want to travel to New York. No one had anything to promote. And so the choices whittled down to Rudolph, who we love but isn’t a movie star, and Harlow, who is unknown and frankly, after last night– even with an unadvertised appearance by Adam Levine, looking strange — may remain so.

Things should improve over the next two weeks with two Oscar nominees coming– Daniel Kaluuya and Carey Mulligan– and musical guests at least with a following– Kid Cudi and St. Vincent. But it was wrong of “SNL” to hang Rudolph out to dry ratings wise with a bad musical guest. They did her in, really. She deserves better.

CBS Sunday Morning Woody Allen Interview Omits Mia Farrow’s Child Molester Brother, Mia’s Three Dead Children

0

So CBS and Lee Cowan, who is quite smarmy on camera, have omitted a lot from their Woody Allen interview on Paramount Plus.

The interview was conducted for “CBS Sunday Morning” last July. There’s no way that Woody could have defended himself against the recently aired HBO special because no one knew about it last July.

In the interview, which you could pay $5.99 for or get a free trial to the streaming service before cancelling it (which I advise), Cowan opens by telling the audience Allen is “reviled” and conveys fairly clearly that he’s disgusted by even being there. Cowan has always been the B team on “CBS Sunday Morning” to Anthony Mason. He’s really at a low point here.

This is what we get: that Woody feels Dylan believes the accusations against him even though they are not true. “She was a nice kid,” he says. She was 7 when he last saw her, more than 25 years ago.

He once again denies all the accusations, and repeats the obvious: why would a 57 year old man with no history of any such activity suddenly choose that moment to molest a little girl — at Mia’s house, with lots of witnesses downstairs, and the spotlight of custody trial looming. It makes no sense.

Cowan concedes that Woody went on to marry Soon Yi, it’s been 23 years, and they adopted two little girls who are now in college. As Woody says, “They don’t give two baby girls to someone they think is a pedophile.” They don’t, he’s right, and he’s not a child molester. “And yet,” Woody says, “the smear has remained.”

There is no mention of Mia Farrow’s brother, John, who just served 7 years of a 25 year sentence for child molestation in Maryland. There is also no mention of the suicide of two of Mia Farrow’s adopted children, and a third one who died. The facts are irrelevant to Cowan.

So you don’t have to subscribe to Paramount Plus, don’t waste your money. As I wrote in a previous item, Woody’s team expected this interview to air last summer after it was taped. They say they were lied to for months, and no idea that the interview would be held this long only to be put on a streaming service. Meanwhile, on the free CBS Sunday Morning, Woodyh is kicked around once again, out of context, and without a defense.

And I hate to say it, but when Woody passes away — he’s 85 now– CBS will exploit this by repurposing Cowan’s clips over and over. Disgusting.

 

 

 

EXCLUSIVE: CBS Never Told Woody Allen Team News Interview Would Move to Pay Service: “Lied to Us Month After Month”

0

When Lee Cowan interviewed Woody Allen last July for “CBS Sunday Morning,” it was a news segment tied to the release of Allen’s memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.”

But the piece debuted this morning, nine months later, it was not on a CBS News program but on CBS’s pay streaming subscription service, Paramount Plus.

The Allen team had no idea what had happened to the Cowan piece or that it was going to be charged for.

Woody’s sister and producing partner Letty Aronson, tells me exclusively: “They lied to us month after month, finally breaking their word that it would be about Woody’s career and new book and play with absolutely no controversy (we don’t do that on our Sunday Morning show).”

I asked if, with the switch to pay streaming, if there was now remuneration involved. Suddenly, CBS is getting income from charging for a Woody Allen interview. Aronson added in an email: “And he’s not getting paid.”

Not getting paid, as well as rights issues, may be a problem now. It could be argued that CBS pulled a fast one on Woody, actingi duplicitously and disingenuously.

PS Paramount Plus isn’t even promoting the interview. You have to search for CBS Sunday Morning and find it there. A fair piece? I’ll tell you in a bit.

stay tuned…

PS Here’s a real Woody Allen interview I did in 2014.

Flashback: Woody Allen Makes a Brilliant Chocolate Malted, Hasn’t Had a Hot Dog in 15 Years

Johnny Depp Down for the Count: Latest Movie, “City of Lies,” Earns Just $500K in 2 Weeks of Release

0

Johnny Depp is not having a good year, or decade really.

His latest film, “City of Lies,” made just $118K this weekend. In its two weeks of release, “City of Lies” has earned just $500,000.

Ouch! That amount of money is a drop in the bucket for Depp, who has spent millions in court fighting his ex wife, Amber Heard, and losing financially and in public relations. He’s also lost millions from spending wildly. Maybe he has deep hidden reserves somewhere, but on the face of it, he’s allowed himself to be hobbled.

“City of Lies” has a 50 rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn’t nearly has bad as most of Depp’s releases for the last decade or more. He hasn’t been in a movie that both made money and got good reviews since “Into the Woods” in 2014. He earned decent reviews playing Whitey Bulger in 2015, but the movie, “Black Mass,” scored just $63 million.

“City of Lies” comes from Saban Films, not exactly a prestigious distributor. It tells the story of Russell Poole, the real life detective who tried to find the killers of rapper Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious BIG aka Biggie Smalls. The film had no marketing whatsoever, no publicity, and evidently no interest. The New York Times described Depp’s performance as “onfusing somnolent with serious.”

 

CBS Sunday Morning Sandbags Woody Allen, Labels Him a “Bad Actor” on Free TV, Relegates His Interview to Paid Streaming Service

0

Everyone thinks of “CBS Sunday Morning” as this sort of kind, generous TV show for smart adults. And a lot of the time it is is like big comfy sofa.

But they make mistakes a lot of the time and don’t do a lot of vetting. This morning they featured a book called “1974” which was about music from 1972 and TV shows that started in 1970. All they had to do was Google it.

They also sandbagged Woody Allen. They took an unaired interview from last July and put it on CBS’s paid streaming service, Paramount Plus. You wanna know what Woody thought last July? Well, cough up some dough.

Meanwhile, Erin Moriarty, who I really liked back when she was on Channel 2 in New York, ran a crazy piece about separating artists from their bad behavior. She labeled Woody a ‘bad actor’ and not in the theatrical sense but as a bad person, smearing him with no evidence– just he’s a bad guy. There was a passing graphic about Woody’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, who’s been conned into saying bad things about him by Mia Farrow.

Also smeared: Michael Jackson. Like Woody, never convicted of anything. (Woody was never arrested for anything, either.)

Not mentioned: that CBS’s former chief Les Moonves left the network in disgrace, and so did their Charlie Rose. They also each accomplished great things in broadcasting but had personal habits. But let’s not go there.

“CBS Sunday Morning” is often very selective. They take a lot of information at face value without doing a lot of research. Most of the time it works. This morning, it didn’t. (I did like their piece on Brenda Vaccaro, but how could you go wrong with her?)

As for Woody, Paramount Plus costs $5.99 a month. I’ll try and get the free trial to watch Woody, and then cancel my subscription. That would seem fair and balanced, right?