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NEWSLETTER
Updated: August 10, 2006
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::TOP
STORIES::
Fight For Next Year's Caribana Begins
Source: CBC News
(Aug. 8, 2006) While this year's Caribana festival is being hailed as a success
by the city, fighting for control of next year's event has already begun. Bickering
over attendance numbers and management flared up as the 39th annual event,
now called the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, drew to a close Monday.
Although attendance numbers have not yet been tallied, the festival management
committee, a group of city-appointed organizers, contends the event drew
the usual one million visitors. But the festival's founders
disagreed, claiming the festival drew well below the average attendance
because tourists were turned off over confusion about who was running the
festival and whether it was still Caribana.
'We will call for a complete shutdown'
The Caribbean Cultural Committee (CCC) said the city had no right to
take over control of the carnival and has vowed to regain control
for the 40th anniversary next year. "We will call for a complete
shutdown of the festival. Period," said spokesman Ellsworth James,
adding that CCC owns the Caribana brand and won't let the city hold the
festival next year without its input. Caribana, the largest Caribbean festival
in North America, attracts thousands of tourists to Toronto for its parade,
which features brightly coloured masqueraders, bands and dancers. The City of
Toronto pulled funding from the event early this year after the CCC failed to
hand in a clean audit for 2005. A new management group was brought in and
scrambled to put the festival together in less than three months.
City group vows to present audit in fall
Eddison Doyle, Caribana's new chief operating officer, said the 2006 audit
will be ready by the end of September — a first for the festival.
Festival founders have come under criticism for running up deficits while
attracting huge crowds of more than a million people. "It isn't really
important who runs Caribana, or the festival, or whatever it's going to be
named," said Toronto Coun. Joe Mihevc. "From our end, all we
want is a transparent, financially responsible organization." Once the
city committee completes an audit, it plans to write a report recommending the
best way to manage the festival next year.
Caribana 2006 – It's Bigger Than Ever
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Jeff Gray
(Aug. 4, 2006) This year's Caribana festival, with tomorrow's signature
colourful parade, will be the biggest ever, organizers say, despite the months
of political wrangling that delayed preparations for the annual event.
"It's not only a black community affair," festival chief executive
officer Eddison Doyle said yesterday. "It's for all Torontonians. Let's
enjoy and see what each other has to offer." The 39th annual parade goes
west from Exhibition Place along Lake Shore Boulevard to Parkside Drive, with
ticketed viewing areas along the route, which will be closed to traffic. In
all, there are a record 35 bands or floats participating this year, including
floats from police, the Canadian Forces and even "a Chinese marching
band," Mr. Doyle said. Last night was the annual King and Queen
Extravaganza competition at Lamport Stadium in the west end, the site of
tonight's Pan Alive steel-drum band competition. The festival, which is
technically called Toronto Caribbean Carnival this year after tortuous
negotiations ended in a peace deal between rival organizers, has long been
plagued by political infighting and financial problems. And police announced
this week that with the blessing of organizers, closed-circuit cameras will
keep watch over the informal, late-night weekend street parties along Yonge
Street, where violence has broken out in the past. The festival attracts tens
of thousands of visitors from the United States and the Caribbean, and has also
become a draw for many black celebrities, such as National Basketball
Association superstar Shaquille O'Neal and rappers Jay-Z and Ludacris.
Mayor David Miller said yesterday that he was looking forward to having curried
goat in the hot sun, and that the city is committed to the festival's long-term
survival. "Curried goat on the lakeshore on a steaming hot day, what more
could you want? . . . Everybody's going to jump up on Saturday."
Caribana's other main weekend event is the picnic on Olympic Island, which runs
from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday and Monday. Organizers promise musical performances,
dancing and comedy, along with Caribbean art, crafts and food, and
face-painting and costume-making workshops for children. Admission is $21 for
adults and $13 for children and seniors.
Chaka Khan: True ‘I-Khan’ Gets Her Due
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com - By Kenya M.
Yarbrough
(Aug. 9, 2006) The introduction of a legend is rather difficult. There never
seems to be enough words or accolades to shower those who need no introduction,
those who have established themselves as the high standard, or those who have a
lifetime of achievements – particularly those who have done all of the
above. Chaka Khan has
been a soul, pop, funk icon for decades. Her powerhouse jams and unmistakably
voice, has not only been a frontal force in music, but also supportive of other
great artists, as well as an icon to others. It’s no wonder that “I-Khan” is in
the title of Chaka’s new project. EUR’s Lee Bailey got the chance to chat
with the original diva upon the announcement of her BET Lifetime Achievement
Award last Spring, and found that though this songstress was long overdue for a
lifetime achievement acknowledgement, she’s always on the cutting edge of funk.
Chaka’s new disc, “I-Khan Divas” is still in the early stages. She’s in the
studio working on new material with R&B super-producers Jimmy Jam &
Terry Lewis. “This CD is going to be called ‘I-Khan Divas’ and I’m going
to do cover songs, mostly, of some of the artists that I love,” Chaka told the
EUR. “It’s with a new label called the Burgundy label. It’s a Sony label. I am
going to be covering folks like Phoebe Snow, Joni Mitchell…a few surprises, but
a few that are probably expected.”
Though the disc will mostly be made up of remakes, Chaka does promise about
five new tracks, of which she’s currently writing with the Jam & Lewis
team. In the meantime, some Chaka fans thought that the next project would
feature some gospel, but Chaka says that while a gospel disc, or at least a
song or two, are in her heart, at this point in her life, they are not in the
works. “There won’t be any gospel on this CD. I want to do a gospel CD, but I
know how that is. I first want to be a full member of the fellowship,” she
chuckled. “It’s going to be straight up funk. I’m doing everything my way –
it’s gonna be friggidy-funky. You can do anything funky. I’m going to interpret
the songs my way. If you’re going to redo someone’s song, either do it
different or don’t. I’m all about the different.” Chaka and song covers aren’t
a new story. In 1992, Whitney Houston hit the top of the charts with a remake
of the disco anthem “I’m Every Woman” that Chaka recorded 1978. There were
grumblings that Chaka wasn’t’ impressed. Though the buzz was alleged, the
thought of Chaka doing a Houston cover came up, but Chaka says that never
really crossed her mind. “She’s done a lot of cover tunes,” she said
about Houston’s body of work. “So by doing a Whitney song, you’d be doing a
cover of a cover.”
Nevertheless, Chaka promises that the new disc should be at the least,
interesting: “I’d be interested to see how the hell I’m going to do it,” she
joked. On reflecting on the lifetime achievement accolades awarded her in June,
Chaka reminisced about her career and the stages she’s surpassed, and how
although she’s grown as an artist, the artistry has been a bit stifled. “When I
started there were no music videos. There were still 8-tracks. I’ve been there,
almost the whole run,” she said. “Now, everybody and their mother's trying to
be an artist. It’s just ridiculous. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m in the
circus, or a fashion show, or freak show, or what. I think the craft has
suffered as far as integrity is concerned. There are exceptions, but it’s just
gotten too crowded, too easy, too accessible, and the standards that dictate
what an artist is has fallen tremendously. But I think music is coming back up;
the future looks better.” With her optimism in tow, Chaka shared that she was
honoured to find out she would receive this year’s award. “I am honoured beyond
words. I’m looking forward to it,” she said weeks before the actual show,
“mainly getting together and jamming with some people I really love.” As you
recall, some of those artists were on hand to help award the singer at the
show. Stevie Wonder, Prince, Yolanda Adams, and India.Arie performed with Chaka
at the 6th annual BET ceremony and Steve Harvey presented the award. When asked
if she sighed the word “Finally” as a reaction to finding out she’d be
receiving the award, Chaka confessed “I said it quietly. I said it,
nonetheless. I’ve supported a lot of artists and they’ve received their
lifetime achievement award, so ...” To keep tabs on Chaka Khan’s new project,
keep checking www.chakakhan.com
and www.burgundyrecords.com.
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Infamous Down Low Author/Husband & Wife/Author Hook Up
Source: Ian Smith, 850-212-8840, iansmithpr@nettally.com
(Aug. 9, 2006) Atlanta, GA and Springfield, OH Best-selling authors J.L.
King and Brenda Stone Browder are working to combat the
indifference toward HIV and AIDS within the African-American community.
In a national speaking tour called "A Conversation of
Reconciliation," King and Browder reunite in a forum that promotes candid,
open and honest conversation between African-American men and women about sex
and love and the devastating impacts of deception and denial in
relationships. The tour is being presented in conjunction with Black
churches, health organizations, women's groups and other community
organizations, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Lillie Mae
Foundation, a family based foundation that provides financial support for
families impacted by HIV/AIDS. "The vision that Brenda and I have is
that our 'Conversation of Reconciliation' tour will enable us to use our
experiences to bring the discussion of HIV and AIDS to the forefront in the
African-American community. We want to make a meaningful difference in the
lives of brothers and sisters across this country," King added. The
90-minute presentation sheds light on their personal struggles as a couple with
two children whose private battles with deceit and deception quickly became
public. They detail the pain that resulted, their individual journeys toward
healing, their fight to save their family and how their faith played in the
middle of everything.
"I truly give all credit to God and to a tremendously supportive family
for helping me make it through one of the most difficult times in my life,"
Browder said. "Our community can't keep silent about the HIV/AIDS
epidemic. It's literally destroying our families and now more than ever we have
to encourage dialogue, promote knowledge and understanding and support
African-American women and men who are reaching out for help."
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is a health crisis for African
Americans. In 2002, HIV/AIDS was among the top three causes of death for
African American men ages 25 to 54 and among the top four causes of death for
African American women ages 25 to 54 years. J.L. King first gained
national and international attention for his New York Times best-selling book
On the Down Low, which exposed the "DL" phenomena among some men. The
terms "On the Down Low" and "DL" are often used to describe
the behaviour of men who have sex with other men as well as women but do not
identify as gay or bisexual. His expertise has been cited in over 100
national publications, he has been featured on more than a thousand web sites
and his television guest appearances have included the Oprah Winfrey Show, PBS,
BET, CNN, The Discovery Network and over 80 national news shows.
Brenda Stone Browder, King's ex-wife and author of the Essence bestseller On
the Up and Up: A Survival Guide for Women Living with Men on the Down Low, is a
writer, educator, and lay speaker in Springfield, Ohio. Brenda became concerned
about women's issues during a church service after she saw pain on the faces of
women while listening to their testimonies. The "Conversation of
Reconciliation" tour will be traveling to major cities across the United
States and the Caribbean. To request the tour in your area or for media
interviews, contact Ian Smith at 850-212-8840 or iansmithpr@nettally.com.
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EUR Interview With Michael Clarke Duncan
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com -
*Michael
Clarke Duncan went from ditch-digger to
bodyguard to aspiring actor to Oscar-nominee in just a few years. And the Windy
City native’s career only continued to skyrocket after his critically-acclaimed
performance as convict John Coffey in the screen adaptation of Stephen King’s
The Green Mile (1999). He’s made about 50 flicks since, including such hits as
The Whole Nine Yards, Planet of the Apes, The Scorpion King, Sin City,
Daredevil and The Island. Despite being 6’5”, broad-shouldered Big Mike
has refused to be pigeonholed, handling a variety of roles, the latest opposite
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in the action comedy, Talladega Nights: The
Ballad of Ricky Bobby, where he plays Lucius Washington, a father figure of
sorts to the title character.
KAM WILLIAMS: What interested you in this project?
MICHAEL CLARK DUNCAN: What got me excited was seeing John C. Reilly, Will
Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen and Leslie Bibb, because I worked with her on
another movie. [See Spot Run] To see those names up there, knowing you’re going
to be a part of something great like that, that was the only thing I needed,
really. And to go to the table read a year or so ago, and to see everybody at
the table read, you don’t exactly what to expect, but you’re anticipating
something great, and I think we did something really
good.
KW: How would you describe your character’s relationship with Ricky Bobby?
MCD: Julius is much like a father figure to him, because we see what his father
was like. So, I don’t think he’d want to follow him too much, even though he
did teach him how to drive. He did make a good race car driver out of him, but
Ricky still needed somebody to tell him when he was wrong, and when he was
doing stupid things. And that’s where I come in. I’m the crew chief, so I kinda
keep everybody like a close-knit family. And we’ve all been with Ricky Bobby
from day one, so there’s nobody else out there that we’d rather be with. We
thought that was kinda cool.
KW: What was it like filming on location during an actual NASCAR race?
MCD: We had to wait for the accidents to happen. Any type of yellow flag, there
we go. Everybody’s like, “Alright, we’re on!” I’d get up there in the booth.
We’d say our little things. But as soon as the race re-started we go and sit
back down.
KW: Did you find that frustrating?
MCD: No, it was actually fun because we used not only the actual racetrack but
the actual fans at the racetrack. It wasn’t like we brought in 200,000 extras,
or something like that. These were actual fans that were there, sitting and
clapping, and they were very patient with us. So, a big up to everybody in
Charlotte for being so patient.
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::MUSIC NEWS::
Kevin
Hearn's Solo CD A Sumptuous-Sounding Package
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Vit Wagner, Pop Music Critic
(Aug. 8, 2006) Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn has
discovered there are advantages and disadvantages to pursuing a solo career
when your overriding claim to fame is membership in a famous band. True,
the affiliation buys an automatic level of interest from fans and critics who
might as easily be disinclined to lend an ear. It's just as likely, however, those
listeners will have preconceived notions about the music you make. The
Miracle Mile, a new album independently released by Celery Music and
distributed through BNL label Warner Music, is Hearn's fourth disc with side
players Thin Buckle. A contemplative, sumptuous-sounding, 10-song package that
merges acoustical instruments with understated electronics, it is nothing like
the boisterous pop produced by his main meal ticket. "There are
probably people who wouldn't give it the time of day or even think to listen to
it because they don't like the Barenaked Ladies," Hearn says. "I also
get BNL fans checking it out who don't like it because it's not what they
expect. "I really wanted to try to reach outside of BNL to see if
there are other people who would like it. This music would appeal to people who
like the Flaming Lips or Death Cab for Cutie and that kind of thing."
The disc is absorbing, in its own low-key way. One song, "Map of the
Human Genome," is as irresistibly insinuating as anything released this
summer. But Hearn concedes that a song about a hospital research laboratory's
investigation into the microscopic building blocks of human life might not
announce itself as commercial radio fodder. "That's the thing about
this," Hearn says. "I'm in the Barenaked Ladies. And they are making
music for the radio. They're making good music. But I want to embrace my song
about the human genome. I don't want to think, `It's too weird to make the
radio.' I like the song and it makes me feel good to sing it.
"I love being in BNL. They have a certain sound. It's unique, but it has
its parameters. I need to go outside of them sometimes, just to explore and
maybe think non-commercially and play with other people and express things in
my own voice." Finding time to vent that voice can be tricky. Even
as he anticipates Wednesday's show with Thin Buckle at the Drake, Hearn is also
preparing to play with the Barenaked Ladies at Sunday's opening ceremonies
concert for the Toronto AIDS Conference at Rogers Centre. The band's new
album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, drops Sept. 12, leaving Hearn with a
small window to promote The Miracle Mile. After Wednesday, he has gigs
in Hamilton and Mount Tremblant. The album was written and recorded in similar
circumstances. "As much as I can when I'm on the road, I like to
keep thinking about lyrics and progressing with them," he says. "When
I do find pockets of time, I record and work out songs with my own band. I
can't really do both things at once." Much of the attention Hearn
has received to this point in his career has focused on his recovery from
leukemia, the subject of 2001's H-Wing, an album made up of songs
composed while he was a patient at Princess Margaret Hospital. Today, as
a way of "giving back," Hearn has collaborated with California artist
Natasha Sasic to create a couple of figurines, Wax and Wane, based on Hearn's
doodles and drawings. The figurines are sold on Hearn's website to raise money
for cancer-related charities.
"It's a way to turn something I do for fun into something other people can
enjoy and benefit from," he says. In the Barenaked Ladies, Hearn
takes a back seat to voluble front men Steven Page and Ed Robertson.
During an afternoon photo shoot and interview at Queen St. W. eatery
Swan, he projects the shy, self-effacing reserve of a veteran accompanist.
But appearances can be misleading. Hearn acted in a skit at last month's
Toronto Fringe festival called Awesome Radical. "I played the
host of a TV show for kids. Except he's a 57-year-old man who still thinks he's
a teenager and who is a total asshole." After that, how intimidating
can fronting your own band be? "I love it," he says, "but
it really makes me appreciate what Steve and Ed do every night. I don't know if
I'd want to do it all the time. That might make it less fun for me. This way, I
have the best of both worlds."
Canucks
Add Vibe To Fest - Lollapalooza
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Ben Rayner, Pop Music Critic
(Aug. 8, 2006) CHICAGO - The Broken Social Scene/Red Hot Chili
Peppers grudge match starts here. It was revealing to step outside the
Toronto bubble and confirm during BSS's gangbusters Sunday-night set at this
year's massive Lollapalooza festival that our most saturation-hyped contemporary musical
export is indeed as popular with the kids as we in the media often claim.
After booking the band for his aborted attempt at reviving Lollapalooza
in its classic, early-'90s touring form a couple of years back, founder Perry
Farrell invited Broken to play this year's fest in Chicago's Grant Park and
graciously granted the crew the penultimate spot on the bill, sandwiched
between a typically monstrous set from Queens of the Stone Age, hometown heroes
Wilco and rather flaccid festival closers the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Most
of the extended Social Scene family — including Paris-based songbird Leslie
Feist, Stars' Amy Millan and Evan Cranley, and Metric's Emily Haines and Jimmy
Shaw — turned up for a deliciously fat-free "pop" set that found the
band reining in its tendency to sprawl and concentrating on crowd pleasers like
"Cause = Time," "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl,"
"Fire Eye'd Boy" and "7/4 (Shoreline)." So
crowd-pleasing were those treats that about a quarter of the 70,000-strong
throng gathered in Grant Park for the day refused to turn its attention to the
main stage at the south end of the field where the Chili Peppers were about to
arrive, and began chanting "One more song! One more song!" and
"We won't go! We won't go!" Unsure what the proper etiquette was
on such a tight festival schedule, the band milled around backstage until it
received word from Lollapalooza organizers that an encore was okay. They just
had to check with the Peppers' people. But the Red Hot Chili Peppers'
tour manager defied public opinion, leaving the Social Scenesters to conduct a
sheepish group bow in front of an unruly mob that now bellowed: "F--k the
Peppers! F--k the Peppers!"
It was a lovely scene, anyway, one that left the band feeling thoroughly good
about itself. And it was a rare exhibition of "vibe" at an event that
offered serious bang for the buck over the course of its three sweltering days
in downtown Chicago, but little in the way of a heart-and-soul identity to set
it apart from other festivals of the same nature. Not that that was
anything to seriously complain about, or that there was much time to complain
while dashing to and fro along the kilometre or so separating the festival's
nine stages. As was the case with its reinauguration last summer in Grant Park,
Lollapalooza 2006 — which drew 180,000 concert-goers over the long weekend —
was as smoothly run, respectfully priced ($150 for a three-day pass really did,
as the website noted, work out to "about a buck a band") and well
programmed as a festival can be. Sound bleed between stages was the only
common complaint, despite the fact that Lolla occupied twice the physical space
it did last year in an effort to avoid just that. Dainty popsters the
Shins, for instance, were nearly drowned out completely on one of the main
stages Sunday afternoon by punkabilly warhorse the Reverend Horton Heat, while
Feist had to make an onstage "executive decision" whether to press on
with the hushed waltz "Let It Die" when the booming Go! Team intruded
from afar upon the last minutes of her solo set on Saturday afternoon. Feist's
was nevertheless one of Lollapalooza's most memorable sets, not least because
the Calgary-born singer and guitarist — who flitted easily from feathery
ballads to brawny rockers during a captivating hour onstage — was such a
charmingly serene and graceful presence amidst the testosterone-charged hubbub
("It's a bit of a sausage fest out there," BSS's Kevin Drew noted on
Sunday night). Girls ruled if you could find 'em, though.
Pint-sized British MC and general troublemaker Lady Sovereign tore up a side
stage on Friday with much more danger and insouciant originality than Lolla's
big hip-hop draws Kanye West and Common, if not Gnarls Barkley, would the next
day. Swilling from a champagne bottle roughly a third her size, the
foul-mouthed teenage rapper brought a pugilistic swagger to her curious blend
of U.K. grime, rave-ready hardcore beats and snarling punk, and turned in one
of the weekend's most galvanizing sets. She and tirelessly funky MC Lyrics Born
both proved on Saturday that the hip-hop underground is far healthier than the
mainstream lets on. Portland, Ore., femme-punks Sleater-Kinney — fighting
through the murky sound mix that had earlier in the day crippled a set by
Toronto's Stars on the same stage — ended what they've hinted might be their
last show ever in blistering style, amidst much duelling guitar noise on Friday
night, handily trumping the day's girly-boy headliners Death Cab for Cutie in
the process. Showing no signs of packing it in or arresting the
relentless forward motion that has characterized its 25 years in the business,
venerable guitar-terror outfit Sonic Youth delivered Saturday's finest set by
playing three-quarters of its fab new album, Rather Ripped, and only a
smattering of semi-obscure oldies ("Schizophrenia," "Eric's
Trip") to a reverent crowd split equally between long-time fans from the
original Lollapalooza era and doting newbies. Bassist Kim Gordon, now in her
50s and still looking rather ripped herself, introduced 1983's "Shaking
Hell" by pointing out that the song was "probably written before you
were born." Noise fans had much to love on Saturday, since Sonic
Youth was flanked on the bill by noisemakers Built to Spill and the reliably
chaotic Flaming Lips. The former concentrated heavily on languid, Neil
Young-esque jams from its new album, You In Reverse, but drew a
rapturous response from the many cultists in the crowd when Doug Martsch
jangled out the intro to "Carry the Zero," from 1999's wonderful Keep
It Like a Secret, to close the set. The beardy band also got off a few
choice quips about the level of corporate sponsorship at Lollapalooza this
year. "Does Bud Light care about us? Does Adidas care about
us?" wondered guitarist Brett Nelson. "Does Perry care about
us?" Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne, an infectiously effusive
presence who commenced the set by rolling into the crowd in a giant plastic
ball, was less cynical. He pronounced Lollapalooza "f--king great"
and reminisced fondly about the Lips' time on the original tour, and then urged
the crowd to sing along with "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" so loudly that
Israel would stop bombing Lebanon. Whatever their occasional musical
shortcomings, the Lips are a pleasingly lunatic force onstage and delighted the
throng with a festival-sized set augmented not just with singalongs, but also a
gaggle of dancing Santa Clauses, a pack of leggy ladies in alien costumes, and
a phalanx of enormous inflatable astronauts, Clauses and aliens behind the
drumkit. They're completely mad, but in a good way.
I'll
Be Watching You – Police
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Guy Dixon
(Aug. 4, 2006) Sting wasn't interested. Drummer-composer Stewart
Copeland had sent him a couple of early
edits of his nostalgic, home-movie documentary about their old band, the Police. "And he'd sent me
a nice e-mail back. Then I pressed him, 'Well, what's your favourite part about
the movie?' He finally had to confess he hadn't seen it, and he wasn't going to
see it because he doesn't watch himself on the screen. He gets all twitchy. But
his kids told him that it's cool, and, most importantly, that he looks cool in
it," Copeland said by phone from his studio near Los Angeles. "Back
in the Police days, it was part of his job to check himself out. We used to
tease him about that. It was all our jobs. It would be unprofessional of us to
leave our hotel room looking like we'd be safe to be with children." But
if looking edgy or mean was the intention, Copeland's assortment of Super 8
footage pieced together to make his new documentary, Everyone Stares: The
Police Inside Out, may not have succeeded, because the band comes off as
utterly human and child-friendly. The life of a rock star, at least life in the
Police, had about the same level of rowdiness and misbehaviour as, say, a Jamie
Oliver cooking show. It was strangely tame in its way, and that's the film's
appeal. There's Sting being awkward and self-conscious, nervous about the mass
of fans around the corner. And there's guitarist Andy Summers, giving
hilariously wry travel commentary to the camera from various picturesque tour
spots. From the film, it's obvious that Summers was the one that gave the
band that extra little sophistication that took them to the top. But there are
none of the legendary fights on film. There's a coziness in Copeland's home
movies -- goofing around backstage, goofing around on trains and buses, being a
little more serious in the studio -- all shot for want of something to do
during the endless hours of downtime as much as an attempt to document it all
for posterity.
The film, which airs Sunday night on Movie Central and the Movie Network and will
be available on DVD next month, isn't an exposé into the ultimate break-up.
"There are those who may accuse me of avoiding the big subject, which is,
'What about all the fighting?' " Copeland said. "But I don't have any
fighting on camera. Maybe I forgot to pick my camera up when I was in the
middle of a screaming match. It would have been really cool if I did actually,
and it would have been in the movie if I had." Copeland, who is now 54,
admits that in the years after the band members split in the mid-1980s, he
began to believe the stories that they had fought all the time. Yet poring over
the 50 hours of footage protected by plastic wrap in his garage, he realized
that the opposite was true. "It's not my intention to say that we laughed
and chuckled all the time. But that's pretty much the reality. It's surprising
to me, in all that footage that I have, I don't have anything other than
laughing and chuckling," he said. Since the Police broke up, Copeland has
been heavily involved in film composing, and he originally opened up the boxes
of old Super 8 movies to get some footage for a TV program being made about
him. But then he found himself digging into what amounted to a trove of found
footage. He hadn't watched much of it before. Still, like any home movie, the
documentary has its omissions. There's some great footage of Sting teaching
Summers the chords for De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da in the studio for the
first time, as well as a self-photographed scene of Copeland on stage taken
from behind his drum set with the camera on a tripod. It's as if you are
sitting right next to him during a concert. And scenes of mass adulation
are always fascinating, such the shots of British New Waver kids, too young and
therefore a little behind the cutting edge, shouting for the band backstage.
But where are the groupies?
"Well, I guess I put my camera down for some of those scenes. I haven't
got any Tommy Lee footage," Copeland said. There is one brief scene with
the band sitting on a boat with a bevy of bikini-clad fans. It's enough for you
to get the picture. Despite Copeland's insistence that the documentary doesn't
follow the typical, melodramatic docu-plot of the rise and ultimate fall of the
Police, like an episode of VH1's Behind the Music, that's the general
trajectory. What comes through is the isolation that occurs. Perhaps it's the
same kind of isolation we all feel in our jobs. But for Copeland, Sting and
Summers, it all happens on a world stage, cliché as that may sound. As
Copeland says in the movie, "The tours are so intense that the space
between them -- life at home -- seems unreal, like a cartoon. Sure, we'd bought
houses and tried to make families in them, but it's just going through the
motions. Reality for us is the road. "Half the time, I don't know where we
are . . . and it's not like we're really there anyway. It's just scenery for
the next video. Every now and then, I look over my shoulder and I see a pyramid
or Parthenon or some other wonder of the world. . . . There's a growing notion
that there's something wrong with this. It's been years since I've bought
groceries or drove my own car. Am I missing something?" What they were
missing was an understanding of where the band fit in with what was truly hip
at the time. For instance, the footage of the Police headlining the 1982 U.S.
Festival shows is telling and contains a small piece of Canadiana. While both
Sting and Summer were dressed in early eighties finery, Copeland performed in a
CFOX T-shirt, complete with that Vancouver classic-rock radio station's old
cartoon logo. It was an obvious coup for CFOX. But as any Vancouver New Wave or
New Romantic type would have told you at the time, CFOX was the antithesis of
new music and totally un-cool. Of course, that was a long time ago and the
T-shirt today would be retro and ultra-hip to wear. However, it illustrates
Copeland's point about staying in touch with what was happening outside the
band's cocoon.
It also means that his relatively ordinary life today feels quite separate from
the Police. "There's a world out there that I don't really inhabit that
much, which is the Police world. There's no Police world. There's no context in
my life of 'the Police.' The band broke up 30 years ago." However,
"over my shoulder there is an avatar or a creature or a picture of the
rock star of all those years ago. And it's invisible most of the time. When I
walk down the streets of Santa Monica or wherever, it's invisible." That's
not to say Police fans still haven't given up hope that the three will
re-emerge together. Unlike Sting, Summers encouraged Copeland along the way
with the documentary, and interest in the band seems to be building once again.
Is there any chance they will they play together? "Andy and I have at
various times because we live nearby. Haven't jammed with Sting since [the
band's 2003 induction into the Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame." We'll take
that as another of Sting's polite no-thank-yous. It's surprising to me, in all
that footage that I have, I don't have anything other than laughing and chuckling.
Thousands
Turn Out For American Idol Tryouts
Source: Associated Press
(Aug. 8, 2006) Pasadena, Calif. — Thousands of American
Idol hopefuls descended on the Rose
Bowl before dawn Tuesday with wide-eyed
dreams of becoming the next Taylor Hicks or Carrie Underwood. The competitors
taking the field Tuesday had American Idol fame in mind, not football.
Pasadena was the first of seven cities where producers of Fox TV's talent show
planned auditions. Roads leading to the Rose Bowl were clogged as auditioners
hurried to meet the supposed 6 a.m. PDT deadline to line up. Outside the
stadium, early arrivals gathered — some huddled under blankets, some wearing headphones
and silently mouthing lyrics. Others did last-minute makeup checks. The
generally subdued early morning crowd roused itself occasionally, once when
sample breath mints were tossed into the crowd and another time when TV news
crews went on the air. “I've been wanting to do it for a long time,” said
Corrin Moore, 19, of Oceanside. She finally got up the nerve, she said, when
friend Candice Starks, 21, also of Oceanside, agreed to join her for the
tryouts. Surveying the growing crowd, Moore said: “It makes me feel nervous.
There's a lot of talented people out here.” American Idol has
demonstrated its prowess as a starmaker by turning unknowns into overnight
sensations with awards and hit records. As the top-rated TV show last season,
it has shattered expectations that it couldn't sustain its popularity.
American Idol also continues to deepen its pop culture imprint. Hicks,
the latest winner, and finalists from last season are on tour, other
contestants are pursuing solo careers and the Lifetime channel is airing a
movie about and starring past winner Fantasia this month. On the new season
that begins airing in January, American Idol will up the ante with a
songwriting contest in which professionals and amateurs will have the chance to
compose tunes for the finalists. Upcoming auditions for singers: Alamodome, San
Antonio, Friday; Continental Air Arena, East Rutherford, N.J., Aug. 14;
Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex, Birmingham, Ala., Aug. 21; FedExForum,
Memphis, Tenn., Sep. 3; Target Center, Minneapolis, Sep. 8; Key Arena, Seattle,
Sept. 19. Those intending to try out were asked to register up to two days
before an audition, but that offered no guarantee of being seen and heard on
the big day. “If our time is running short the producers may walk around the
venue to pick out people to audition ... based on performing ability, look,
style, personality and other factors,” according to guidelines posted on the
show's Web site. Passing the initial scrutiny is just the beginning, with
follow-up auditions to winnow the pack even more. It's a relative handful that
get to strut their stuff for Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson and
see their auditions — good, bad or ugly, and the judges' appropriate reactions
— featured on the show. Those rejected in one city can jump to another and try
again. According to the Web site, hopefuls can be accompanied to the audition
by a friend or relative and can tote in items such as blankets and water. On
the banned list: alcoholic beverages, illegal drugs, animals and hair dryers.
Prince's
Hits And Videos Bring The Funk 2 U
Source: (CD) Lellie Capwell / lellie.capwell@wmg.com; (DVD) Christopher Buerger / christoph.buerger@wmg.com
LOS ANGELES - During his
groundbreaking 18-year paisley
reign at Warner Bros., Prince built a superfunkycalifragisexy legacy of genre-bending hits that
made him royalty on the rock, soul, pop and R&B charts. Warner Bros.
Records salutes the Twin Cities' funknastiest son with a pair of releases:
ULTIMATE PRINCE, a two-disc compilation featuring his biggest hits and
hard-to-find remixes; plus DIAMONDS AND PEARLS, a DVD collection of videos,
performances and more. Both are available August 22 at regular retail
outlets and online at onlyhitmusic.com. The double-CD set can be purchased for
a suggested list price of $24.98, while the DVD is available for $14.99.
Featuring more than two-and-a-half hours of prime Prince, ULTIMATE includes
songs recorded between 1978 and 1993. The two-disc set contains the
Grammy-winning singles "Kiss" and "Purple Rain," plus #1
pop hits "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" as well as
rare remixes of "Cream," "Little Red Corvette" and
"Pop Life." Drawing from music Prince originally recorded with his
backing bands The Revolution and The New Power Generation, ULTIMATE tracks the
artist's evolution from his early albums (Prince, Dirty Mind and Controversy)
and pop successes (1999, Purple Rain and Sign 'O' The Times) to more eclectic
albums (Lovesexy, Diamonds And Pearls and the "symbol" album). A
marathon of funky joints, sensual ballads and dynamic pop, ULTIMATE features
Prince's first #1 R&B hit, "I Wanna Be Your Lover" from his
self-titled 1979 sophomore album, as well as his Top 5 Pop hits: "Sign 'O'
The Times," "Raspberry Beret" and "U Got The Look,"
and his Top 5 R&B hits: "Controversy," "1999" and
"Alphabet St."
A treasure chest of royal rarities, ULTIMATE collects hard-to-find tracks
including the single version of "7" from the symbol album; the
12-inch version of "Raspberry Beret" from Around The World In A Day
and the classic B-side "She's Always In My Hair" rounded out with
remixes of "Hot Thing" from Sign 'O' The Times and "Thieves In
The Temple" from the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack. DIAMONDS AND PEARLS
contains more than an hour of music including the DVD debut of concert
performances, interviews and classic videos. The collection spotlights songs
from Diamonds and Pearls, Prince's thirteenth studio album and his first with
the New Power Generation. Videos for the smash singles "Gett Off,"
"Cream" and the title track are bolstered by clips of fan favourites
such as "Money Don't Matter 2 Night" and "Insatiable," as
well as three more album tracks. The DVD also features concert footage of
Prince and the NPG working up a sweaty funk on the Diamonds and Pearls tracks -
"Thunder," "Jughead" and "Live 4 Love." The
collection also captures Prince and his formidable band putting their
unmistakable spin on Aretha Franklin's classic soul hit, "Dr.
Feelgood." Interviews with Prince and the band round out DIAMONDS AND
PEARLS. Considered a musical genius by many of his peers, Prince Rogers Nelson
occupies a rarefied place in music history as: a four-time Grammy winner; a
prolific hitmaker with more than 50 multi-platinum, platinum and gold release
to his credit; an electrifying performer whose last tour was one the year's
top-sellers; and a consummate musician dedicated to exploring new musical
territory.
Ultimate Prince
Track Listing
Disc 1
1. "I Wanna Be Your Lover"
2. "Uptown"
3. "Controversy"
4. "1999"
5. "Delirious"
6. "When Doves Cry"
7. "I Would Die 4 U"
8. "Purple Rain"
9. "Sign 'O' The Times"
10. "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man"
11. "Alphabet St."
12. "Diamonds And Pearls"
13. "Gett Off"
14. "Money Don't Matter 2 Night"
15. "7"
16. "Nothing Compares 2 U"
17. "My Name Is Prince"
Disc 2
1. "Let's Go Crazy" - Special Dance Mix
2. "Little Red Corvette" - Dance Remix
3. "Let's Work" - Dance Remix
4. "Pop Life" - Fresh Dance Mix
5. "She's Always In My Hair" - 12" Version
6. "Raspberry Beret" - 12" Version
7. "Kiss" - Extended Version
8. "U Got The Look" - Long Look
9. "Hot Thing" - Extended Remix
10. "Thieves In The Temple" - Remix
11. "Cream" - N.P.G. Mix
Diamonds And Pearls
DVD Track Listing
1. "Gett Off"
2. "Cream"
3. "Diamonds And Pearls"
4. "Call The Law"
5. "Willing And Able"
6. "Insatiable"
7. "Strollin'"
8. "Money Don't Matter 2 Night"
9. "Thunder"
10. "Dr. Feelgood"
11. "Jughead"
12. "Live 4 Love"
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Canadian
Roots Music: A Hot Export
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Brad Wheeler
(Aug. 7, 2006) November, 1968. Clad in pink trousers and an Afghan jacket, with
absurdly poofed-out hair and maybe even a ring on his tea-cup pinkie
finger, Eric Clapton set out from England for upstate New York, intent on
joining the funky, cellar-rehearsing roots-rockers the Band. He had heard a
bootlegged acetate of the Basement Tapes, the no-frills recordings made
by Bob Dylan with Robbie Robertson and company, and was “shook to the core” by
its earthy appeal. Upon arriving at the group's house in Woodstock though,
Clapton was shattered. The vibe was rustic and insular, and the posh virtuoso
guitarist knew he didn't fit in. “They had a very closed scene,” he later
recalled. “I wanted to be a part of it, but there was no way in. So all I could
do was admire it from afar and long for something similar.” Some might describe
what the Band did in the basement as “Americana music,” and even if it was
being made by Canadians, the Brits dug it. They still do — except now it
travels to them, instead of the other way around. Canadian bands today find
receptive audiences in Britain and Europe, where fans are attracted to the
rusticity and songwriting of music that falls under the genre titles “roots”
and “alt-country,” as well as Americana. Those descriptors are not terribly
precise, but acts such as Elliott Brood, Blood
Meridian, Lynn Miles, the Be Good Tanyas, Ox, Corb Lund and others have developed cult followings across the ocean.
Grungy Vancouver crew Blood Meridian, for example, is a big deal in the
Netherlands, where an Americana scene thrives. The band, whose new album Kick
Up the Dust features a rifle-toting gold prospector on its cover, receives
more than 90 per cent of its fan correspondence from Holland. There, radio
programs and websites are dedicated to roots music: The highly informative
www.americana-uk.com currently highlights articles on Ox and Blue Rodeo.
It's not that Canadian fans don't appreciate their own artists, but the appeal
to foreigners comes from a different mindset. “They see an authenticity to it,”
says Mark Browning, the frayed-voiced singer-songwriter with Vancouver-based
Ox. “We've done a lot of touring back and forth across Canada and the United
States, and we do it grassroots style — in a van, sleeping on floors and
driving all night. That lifestyle gets absorbed into our music, and so U.K. audiences
have a glimpse of the wide open spaces, at 4 a.m. in the morning, and the
caribou and moose on the road, diners and laundromats.” The lure of a life
different than their own, as expressed both lyrically and in the actual life
experiences of the musicians themselves, is similar to the notions that
audiences overseas (and in white America) conjured up during the blues revival
of the 1960s. And like blues musicians back then, Browning sees nothing
quaint or weird about his background or musical persona. “I don't romanticize
it at all,” he says. “To me it's reality. But to them, it's ‘America.'
Mark Sasso, the banjo-whacking lead singer of Elliott Brood, a Toronto
trio that often employs a suitcase for percussion and forcibly presents edgy,
so-called “death country” music, agrees. “We're not cowboys by any means,” he
says, calling from a roadside pay phone. “But there's that romanticized notion
of it over there, and they kind of hold onto it.” While there's no denying that
a fondness exists for a place where the buffalo roam and the antelope play, a
six-shooter and a ten-gallon hat only go so far. And there's not a substantial
preference for Canadian acts over American acts — the Canadian acts that are
successful in Britain and Europe are so simply because they're very, very good
at what they do.
“I think the attraction has to do with the quality of the music,” says David
Morrison, a London-based journalist, broadcaster and promoter. “Discerning
music fans that are attending the shows are rightly viewing Canada as a hotbed
right now. Whenever we announce a show featuring a Canadian act there's
immediate interest even if their profile is very low or non-existent. There's
such consistency and diversity in roots music coming from there. It's like
they've come to trust Canada in that respect.” In effect, the musical
emigration is a sort of piecemeal package tour, especially in Britain where
bands routinely play to the same fans along a route that takes in such major
cities as London, Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Birmingham.
There, according to Neville (Arbuckle) Quinlan, the leader of Toronto
country-rockers NQ Arbuckle, acts are routinely branded according to
nationality. “You're touted as being the next best thing from Canada,
regardless of whether it's true or not.” As to whether foreign fans prefer
Canadian to U.S. politics — in a sense, getting the Americana without the
America — there doesn't seem to be much bias. “Most of the people we play to
are bar people,” quips Quinlan, fresh from Italy. “I see a lot more
alcoholics than pundits.” Occasionally, bands find themselves the focus of
unreasonable expectations. Club owners mistakenly play up the “country” angle
of the music, even to the point of decking the place out with rural paraphernalia
such as hay bales and mechanical bulls. Quinlan once ran into a dicey situation
in a shady East London bar, where he was greeted by customers garbed in cowboy
hats and Western shirts. “I don't think I've ever played a George Jones cover
in my life,” he says. Playing to a hostile audience who preferred traditional
twang, Quinlan endured “the most disastrous performance I've ever had.” Elliott
Brood's Sasso, who has toured Europe twice in the last 10 months and is popular
in Spain, hasn't run into anything along those lines, but allows that anyone
who sees his banjo and expects traditional bluegrass would be “very
disappointed.” So, what does it all come down to? Ox's Browning tells of
British fans who get a kick out of his stories about arriving hours early for
shows over there — he's simply not used to the short drives. Perhaps that's it:
the lonesome highways — long stretches of desolate roads that run forever, and
dusty, rugged back roads too. Saddle up, and giddy up, Canada.
TSO
Music Was The Food Of Love
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - John Terauds, Classical Music Writer
(Aug. 5, 2006) It's no secret that music can bring people
together. But did
you know that listening to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra can lead to matrimony? At least that's what happened to
Raymond and Vivian Chan, who met through the symphony's online Yak With Yara chatroom. After a
three-year courtship, they were married on July 1. Their first date was a TSO
concert. And their engagement picture was shot in front of the orchestra's home
at King and Simcoe Sts. Yara Jakymiw, the real person behind the cute
cartoon icon on the TSO website, didn't expect to play matchmaker when she
became the moderator of one of the world's first orchestra-sponsored web
chatrooms five years ago. But, then again, life is full of surprises.
Like the coincidences that Raymond and Vivian share. If the TSO hadn't brought
them together, perhaps something else would have. Or maybe not ... Both
attend Chinese Martyrs Catholic Church in Markham on Sundays. Until they met,
Raymond sang in the choir at the 11 a.m. Cantonese mass, while Vivian sang and
played guitar for the 2 p.m. English service. "We had seen each
other at social functions but had never actually spoken," says
Vivian. Once they started dating, they discovered that they had lived in
the same Hong Kong apartment building as children, that Raymond has a sister
named Vivian and that Vivian has a brother called Raymond. Raymond, who
works downtown as a systems analyst, describes himself as a "music
nut." He started playing the violin about 10 years ago, and figures he has
about 5,000 discs in his home collection.
He is an avid subscriber to Toronto Symphony concerts and founded the Toronto
Mahler Society two years ago. His other two favourite composers are
Shostakovich and Bruckner — all symphonic heavyweights. Raymond says he
started listening to classical music in high school, "when my family
bought a new hi-fi. CDs were still new at the time, so I had bought a few
albums to listen to, and it just grew from there." He is an
enthusiastic poster on Yak With Yara, and he closes his emails with a quote
from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: "Without music, life would be
a mistake." As for Vivian: "Before I met Raymond, I knew
absolutely nothing about classical music." But the seeds were sown four
years ago, at her 28th birthday. She was one of her church's
co-ordinators for World Youth Day in 2002, and had been inspired by the spirit
of the celebration to take guitar more seriously. But a mix-up over a birthday
present changed all that. Vivian's sister gave her what she thought was a
bottle shaped like a guitar. But Vivian recognized it as a cello. "I had
always liked the sound of the cello," says Vivian. "And the gift woke
me up." She signed up for lessons. "Since then, I fell in love
with both classical music and the cello." Vivian blushes when she admits
that, at the time, "the cello was my boyfriend."
She works as an investment adviser assistant across from Roy Thomson Hall, so
checking out concerts was easy — especially given "tsoundcheck," the
orchestra's discount program for people under 30. (Indarjeet Mudhar, of
the TSO's marketing department, says there are 28,000 registered tsoundcheck
members who bought some 20,000 tickets last season.) The first TSO
concert that really moved Vivian included Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.
"I had heard it on the radio before," she says. But nothing could
prepare her for the power of a live performance. "After that concert I
couldn't even walk straight." She confided in a friend that she had
been daydreaming about meeting a guy who can play the violin, "because I
think violin and cello sound so nice together." Vivian started
visiting Yak With Yara daily, "so that I could learn something every
day." One of the regular posters she read signed his name as
raychan. "I thought, `Oh, a Chinese name' — from a guy who has no
imagination," she laughs. (Some posters prefer more evocative titles, such
as Music_Junkie or Crescendo.) Vivian discovered that raychan belonged to
the same church, and tracked down his email address from a friend.
"After a couple of weeks (of sending emails back and forth), we decided it
was time to get together," says Raymond. "So I suggested we meet
during intermission" at a concert. Music brought them together and
has kept them together. The Chinese characters on the cover of their wedding
invasion read: "United in strings, united in God." At the
wedding reception, Raymond serenaded Vivian and their guests with Edward
Elgar's "Salut d'amour" on the violin. They even organized their
European and British honeymoon around key concert dates, including Vivian's
first Proms concert in London. They have had tickets to the Canadian Opera
Company's upcoming production of Wagner's Ring Cycle since 2003 —
"since even before we were engaged," laughs Vivian.
She tells of how she once chided Raymond about wearing jeans to a TSO concert.
He replied that he sees no problem doing so, because Roy Thomson Hall feels
"like a second home." Whenever they can, Raymond and Vivian try
to include friends in their concert plans. "I bought about 90 tickets for
a Yo-Yo Ma concert," says Raymond. In this respect, the Chans are like
extensions of Yara herself, who is there to answer questions of curious
concertgoers and, with any luck, entice fresh ears to sample the TSO's
talents. Yara Jakymiw says that the chatroom currently has 800 registered
users, and that there have been approximately 2,000 posts in the last six
months. The topics range from impressions of particular performances, to
trading of opinions and insights into the issue of music downloading.
Even during the quiet summer months, there are a handful of topics that
generate regular postings. And perhaps even more romantic
couplings. Check out Yak With Yara at http://www.tso.ca
Tupac’s
Mom To Visit South Africa Next Month
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 8, 2006) *Afeni Shakur, the mother of slain rapper Tupac
Shakur, will visit South Africa from Sept. 10
through Sept. 18 to mark the 10th anniversary of her son’s passing, as
previously reported. With her sister Gloria Cox and daughter Set Shakur in tow,
Afeni Shakur will scatter some of Tupac’s ashes in the town of Soweto, the
birthplace of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. Afeni, who once served
as a section leader for the Black Panther Party, will be honoured for her
contribution as an activist for the rights of black people and the oppressed as
well as for her bringing her son’s ashes to Africa. "I feel
blessed to be able to visit South Africa, especially Soweto,” Afeni said in a
statement. “Events that happened there are so much a part of our history and it
will be an honour for my son to rest in this special place -- the birthplace of
the South African struggle for democracy.” Also during her
visit, Shakur will meet with South African Kwaito star and actor Zola. As
previously reported, the musician and activist will record vocals to be
featured along side Snoop Dogg and the late Tupac on a 10th Anniversary
CD. Additionally, Afeni is hoping to meet with former South
African president Nelson Mandela, as she works to develop a relationship
between the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Tupac Amaru Shakur
Foundation.
“Nelson Mandela's contribution to the people of South Africa has been immeasurable
and I look forward to helping with his work all over the country," Afeni
said. The return of Tupac Amaru Shakur's remains to the birthplace
of his ancestors will be celebrated in a traditional African ceremony with a
praise singer on the 10th anniversary of his death, Sept. 13. In attendance
will be prominent political leaders, the South African government,
representatives of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and guests of the Shakur
family. In other Tupac news, the British Film Institute and National
Film Theater will present an educational study focused on the rapper’s film
work. Entitled "Tupac Shakur Reinterpreted," the 13-day London study
will begin Sept. 15 and screen among his films 1992’s “Juice” and “1997’s
Gridlock’d.” The purpose of the event is to examine the rapper’s movies as they
relate to hip hop, his fans and mainstream media culture. “Reinterpreted” is
scheduled to run through Sept. 28.
Rhino
Brings The Funk: What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (1967-1977)
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(Aug. 9, 2006) LOS ANGELES - Right on. Right on. Nothing puts a dip in
your hip and a glide in your stride quite like a gritty funk groove that hits
the beat hard on the one. The polyrhythmic kissing cousin of classic soul
and R&B, funk's sinuous slap-bass lines and booming kick drums from its
heyday in the late '60s through the late '70s went on to inspire a generation
of hip-hop heads. Rhino rocks funk's foundation with a four-disc collection of
rump-shaking beats and hard-to-find pimpalicious jams that don't fake the funk.
WHAT IT IS! FUNKY SOUL AND RARE GROOVES (1967-1977) will be available October 3
at all retail outlets and at www.rhino.com for a suggested retail price of
$64.98. This compilation brings together 91 slabs of righteously funky grooves
taken from the vaults of Atlantic, Atco, and Warner Bros.
Records. Arranged chronologically, WHAT IT IS! contains more than five
hours of wicked rhythms, badass clavinet, incendiary horn blasts, libidinous
wah-wah guitar, and chirping Hammond B3. WHAT IT IS! celebrates
some of the genre's biggest names with the late Wilson Pickett's "Engine Number
9;" "I'm Just Like You," a song recorded by Sly Stone under the
pseudonym 6ix, and "Stanga" a tune he wrote and produced for Little
Sister (which included Vaetta Stewart, Sly's little sister); and Earth Wind
& Fire's "Bad Tune" from the acclaimed group's debut. The boxed
set also includes tracks by Little Richard, Allen Toussaint, The Commodores,
Curtis Mayfield, Labelle, P-Funk guitar virtuoso Eddie Hazel, and The Meters,
who can be heard with Cyril Neville on the classic "Gossip,"
performing undercover as The Rhine Oaks on "Tampin'" and under their
own moniker for "Chug Chug Chug-A-Lug (Push And Shove) Part 2."
The collection also features an unreleased, alternate version of "Rock
Steady" recorded in 1970 by Aretha Franklin. One of three versions
recorded during the session, Franklin is backed by her red-hot studio and
touring band, King Curtis and The Kingpins. With a final section that slows to
a stop before disappearing in reverb, the version included here differs
significantly from the previously available versions. Teeming with rare
funk tracks, WHAT IT IS! is a dream come true for groove gurus who spend hours
scouring crates of used vinyl in search of lost classics. Among the rarefied
gems featured are tracks such as "Improve" by Darrow Fletcher,
"Cold Bear" by The Gaturs, "Funky To The Bone" by
Freddie/Henchi and The Soul Setters, "Sexy Coffee Pot" by Tony Alvon
and The Belairs, "It's Your Thing" by Cold Grits, "Gangster Of
Love (Pts 1 & 2)" by Jimmy Norman, "Funky John" by Johnny
Cameron and The Camerons, "You Gotta Know Whatcha Doin'" by Charles
Wright, and The Mystic Moods' interstellar "Cosmic Sea."
Although much of the music featured on WHAT IT IS! flew under the radar, many
of the break beats and riffs will sound familiar thanks to hip-hop DJs and
producers who - over the years - have sampled several songs featured in this
compilation in tracks from Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Beastie Boys, Tupac Shakur,
and The Notorious B.I.G., to name a few. WHAT IT IS! continues Rhino's
tradition of deluxe, imaginative packaging with the four discs nestled in a
hand-assembled clamshell box. The set includes liner notes by Wax Poetics
contributor Oliver Wang, plus detailed track-by-track commentary and
testimonials by such heavyweights as Fred Wesley, Howard Tate, Hank Shocklee
(Public Enemy), Bootsy Collins, DJ Pooh (Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube), George
Porter Jr. (The Meters), Clarence Reid, Chuck Rainey, and others featured in a
stunning booklet with rare vintage photos.
Van
Morrison - ‘The Man’ Remains An Enigma
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Vit Wagner, Pop Music Critic
(Aug. 9, 2006) Plenty of arena concerts end with the sights and sounds of
a
delirious audience standing on its feet clapping and singing along in unison to
a treasured classic. Seldom, however, does this happen in the absence of the
star attraction. For that to occur, Van
Morrison has to be somewhere in the
vicinity — the operative phrase being "somewhere in the
vicinity." After a perfunctory thank-you to the crowd and a verbal
tip of the hat to his band, the Belfast-born legend departed the stage of a
three-quarters full Air Canada Centre last night, leaving his 11 stellar
accompanists to soak up the party atmosphere as they put the finishing touches
on the set's last song, "Gloria." No return bows from Morrison.
No encore. No attempt by even the most devoted die-hards to try for one. The
houselights came up. Everyone filed out. Whether the fans left entirely
satisfied was hard to gauge. Certainly, Morrison, who turns 61 at the end of
the month, made an effort to send them home with fond memories, larding the
conclusion of the show with a run of favourites that included "Have I Told
You Lately that I Love You," "Wild Night" and "Brown Eyed
Girl."
Prior to this onslaught, the characteristically eccentric singer-songwriter did
little to curry favour. While the earlier portion of the evening featured its
share of touchstones such as "Crazy Love" and "Bright Side of
the Road," their inclusion sometimes seemed obligatory. "Moondance,"
for instance, was used as a vehicle for introducing the band, a chore the front
man left to his guitarist. Front man is maybe not the right term. When
not stepping up to the microphone to sing or play the sax and harmonica,
Morrison showed his back to the audience, his demeanour resembling that of a
distracted conductor as he frequently signalled a stage hand to refresh the cup
of whatever liquid he was endlessly draining. The musicianship is still
there, although it was sometimes hard to tell if Morrison was singing scat or
the actual words to a particular song. The styles ranged over blues, rock,
country and jazz, affording frequent opportunities for the accompanists,
including the backing vocalists, to assume the forefront. It is an odd gesture
when the band leader can't be bothered to introduce his own accompanists. On
the other hand, Morrison allowed them to more or less steal the show — right up
until the final moment. You would have thought that by now his reputation
as an enigma was secure. Clearly, he's still working on the finer points.
MUSIC TIDBITS
Jody Watley Marks Return With ‘Makeover’
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 4, 2006) *Fans of Bravo’s new reality show
“Workout” already
know that Jody Watley, 47, is back with a new album entitled, “The Makeover,” due in
stores on Tuesday (Aug. 8). The disc’s title describes her re-emergence on the
music scene as well as her own physical transformation, which involved routine
visits to one of the physical trainers highlighted in the weekly Bravo series
about the employees of a Los Angeles gym. Watley, who got her start in the
R&B trio Shalamar, will sign autographs and perform at Virgin Megastore’s
Sunset Blvd. location in Hollywood on Tuesday at 7 p.m. to promote the album
release. Prior to her performance, fans will be treated to complimentary hair
and make-up makeovers courtesy of Rudolphe's Salon and complimentary "Lash
Makeovers" by shu uemura. After leaving Shalamar in 1984, Watley surfaced
three years later with her first of three solo albums. The self-titled LP –
which included the hit singles “Looking for a New Love,” “Still a Thrill,”
“Don't You Want Me,” “Some Kind of Lover” and “Most of All” – cemented the
singer as one of the top-selling R&B acts of the 80s.
D’Angelo Back In Studio After Rehab
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 7, 2006) *D’Angelo is reportedly all done with rehab and back in
the studio recording tracks for a new album. According to Karu F. Daniels of
AOL’s BV Entertainment Newswire, the Virginia native had been addressing his
substance abuse problem at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Centre in Antigua.
The 32-year-old, born Michael Eugene Archer, is now back in the States
trying to get his career back on track. BV reports that he was in New
York recently meeting with Virgin Records urban music president Jermaine Dupri,
veteran music executive Gary Harris, who worked with D’Angelo on his 1994
breakthrough hit “Brown Sugar,” and famous music industry manager Irving Azoff
(Seal, Lenny Kravitz, Christina Aguilera). In January 2005, D’Angelo was
arrested near his Richmond, VA hometown and charged with drunk driving and drug
possession. Police searched his vehicle and found substances they
believed to be cocaine and marijuana. He was given a three-year suspended
sentence after pleading no contest. In November 2002, a woman alleged the
singer cut her off in a lane leading to a shopping mall and then repeatedly and
recklessly switched lanes. When the cops arrived at his house to serve him with
misdemeanour charges of aggressive driving, the singer refuted the allegations
and was further charged with resisting arrest.
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LeToya’s Album Debuts At No. 1
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 3, 2006) *Whether it was calculated or not,
turns out that last week’s
pre-order launch for Beyonce’s upcoming album “B’Day” did nothing to clip the
album sales of her former Destiny’s Child mate LeToya
Luckett, whose self-titled Capitol disc entered
the Billboard 200 chart this week at No. 1. “LeToya,” led by the No. 1
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop single “Torn,” sold 165,000 copies in the U.S., more than
enough to unseat the monstrous compilation “Now 22,.” which falls to No.2 this
week on sales of 151,000. As a member of Destiny’s Child, Luckett
co-wrote and sang on the group's gold-certified singles "Bills Bills
Bills" and "Say My Name," from their eight-times platinum album,
“The Writing's On The Wall.” As a solo artist, she is the subject of a
new BET reality series, “LeToya: The H-Town Chick” and an opening act for Mary
J. Blige on “The Breakthrough Experience” tour. Meanwhile, Pharrell Williams’
long-awaited solo LP “In My Mind” debuted at No. 3 this week. Elsewhere
in the top 10, Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere" (Downtown/Atlantic)
drops 4-5 despite a slight sales increase to 54,000; Rihanna's "A Girl
Like Me" (Def Jam) moves up 8-7 with 46,000 (+1.5%); and Nelly Furtado's
"Loose" (Geffen), produced by Timbaland, inched down 7-8 on sales of
45,000. Rap outfit Jurassic 5 enters Billboard at No. 15 with
"Feedback" (Interscope), which sold 34,000 copies. First single
"Work It Out," featuring Dave Matthews Band, is getting spins across
multiple radio formats.
New Gospel Category For Grammy’s Announced
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
In a progressive move, the Recording
Academy (The Grammy’s) has announced a new music category for gospel. Titled
"Best Rock or Best Rap Gospel" the category provides an opportunity
for the Holy Hip Hop community and Christian Rock musicians to receive music's
highest honour. Members of the Academy will be able to submit their
votes in the new category during this Summer/Fall 2006 submission window for
the 49th Annual 2007 Grammy Awards. With Christian Rock and Hip Hop
accounting for 25% of Christian music (GMA Annual Report), the category is
justifiably on the prestigious list.
Sean Paul Picks Up Two MTV Nominations
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com -
· Sean
Paul earns two MTV Video Music Award
nominations….Its his second time being nominated *International recording
artiste and hot dancehall star Sean Paul picked up two nominations in the 23rd
annual MTV Video Music Awards. The deejay's hit single Temperature figured in
the categories Best Choreography in a Video and Best Dance Video. This is the
second time that the platinum-plus selling toaster has picked up a nomination
in the MTV VMAs. In 2003, his number one hit, Get Busy, was nominated in the
category Best Dance Video. Reacting to the news, Sean Paul told this writer on
Tuesday morning that his double nomination this year spelt good news for
Jamaican music and our culture. "I am excited about being nominated for a
second time. It goes to show that what we (Jamaicans) have here is authentic.
This is another plus for Jamaican music," commented Sean Paul. In the Best
Choreography in a Video category, Sean Paul goes up against Christina
Aguilera's Ain't No Other Man, Madonna's Hung Up, Buttons by the Pussy Cat
Dolls featuring Snoop Dogg and Hips Don't Lie by Shakira featuring Wyclef
Jean. Sean Paul will once again come face to face with Madonna, the Pussy
Cat Dolls and Snoop, Shakira and Wyclef Jean, along with Nelly Furtado and
Timbaland (Promiscuous) in the category Best Dance Video. Temperature, taken
from his platinum-plus selling VP/Atlantic Records disc The Trinity, topped the
Billboard Hot 100 chart earlier this year. The Trinity has already sold in
excess of three million copies worldwide. Latin superstar Shakira and re-energized
rock outfit, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, top this year's nominations for the
MTV VMAs with seven nominations each. The 2006 MTV VMA's will take place
on August 31 and air live from New York's Radio City Music Hall. Among those
already confirmed to perform are Justin Timberlake, TI, Ludacris, The Killers
and Beyonce.
Janet Exposed, Again
Excerpt from The Toronto Star -
Associated Press
(Aug. 8, 2006) NEW YORK— Janet Jackson has never been afraid to
expose some skin. The 40-year-old singer, newly svelte after losing some
60 pounds, appears on the cover of Vibe magazine wearing a skimpy bikini
bottom and a necklace made of large shells. Her right arm covers her breasts.
Will she ever stop posing for sexy photos? "Of course. When I'm
80," she tells Vibe. "That's when I'll call it quits.''
Two years ago, Justin Timberlake pulled off a part of Jackson's bustier,
briefly exposing one of her breasts, during the Super Bowl halftime show.
In an interview in the magazine's September issue, on newsstands Aug. 15,
Jackson says the incident — variously referred to as ``Nipplegate" and the
"bra-ha-ha" — is history. "It's just over and done with.
It's old. It's the past. It's history. I'm onto something new. Everybody got
their licks in — those who wanted to — and it's done," she says.
Jackson credits her boyfriend, 33-year-old music producer Jermaine Dupri,
for giving her self-esteem "a little boost.'' Her new album, 20
Y.O., is slated for release Sept. 26. Dupri produced a few tracks.
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Idol To Add Songwriting Contest
Excerpt from The Toronto Star
(Aug. 8, 2006) LOS ANGELES (AP) — Songwriters will get to add their voices to American
Idol next
season. The Fox TV contest, which has produced instant pop stars and hit
records, will allow both professional and amateur songwriters to compete for
the chance to write songs for the finalists, a spokesman for series creator
Simon Fuller said Monday. In the past, the show has called on an industry
songwriter or producer to write an original song for each of the two finalists,
with the new "idol" or even the runner-up consistently scoring
best-selling records with the tunes. Last season's winner Taylor Hicks is
on the charts with 'Do I Make You Proud', which he performed on the finale.
The songwriting contest is aimed at getting numbers that might be better
matches for the contestants, Fuller told the Los Angeles Times.
Details of the new competition were not available, Fuller spokesman Eric
Green said Monday. Auditions for the sixth season of TV's top-rated
series were scheduled to begin Tuesday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and continue
in six other cities through September. American Idol returns in January.
Cassie’s ‘Me & U’ Video Controversy
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 8, 2006) *One look at pop singer Cassie’s video for “Me & U”
and one can only assume the 19-year-old is paying homage to Janet Jackson’s
classic 1986 video for “Pleasure Principle,” as both clips feature the singers
dancing by themselves in an empty rehearsal room. Cassie, however, says that
assumption is wrong. "I'd love to emulate her career. She's
incredible, from her moves to her voice,” Cassie says about 40-year-old Janet,
according to Contact Music. "I'm a diehard fan of Janet but …I was just
rehearsing in the studio, they filmed me and the record label thought it would
be great for the video." The so-called “Pleasure Principle”
ripoff wasn’t the first video shot for “Me & U.” A more sexually-themed
clip filmed before the artist signed to Diddy’s Bad Boy label surfaced on the
Internet last week. It features Cassie singing to a man (the camera) as she
takes him home to have sex. According to the latest Internet
buzz, the entire song is about a specific form of sex, and the original video
captured the concept more blatantly than the current version shot by Bad Boy.
“Me & U” (official) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBiGFbd5icM
“Me & U” (original) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt2RQXm1n7o
Outkast Announces Songs For Soundtrack
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 7, 2006) *Big
Boi and Andre
3000 of OutKast have revealed
the list of songs that have made the soundtrack for their upcoming film
“Idlewild,” due in theatres on Aug 25. Three days before the Universal
Pictures film release, the soundtrack arrives in stores via LaFace/Zomba.
“Mighty O,” produced by Organized Noize and featuring both Big Boi and Andre
3000, was the set’s first single, while “Morris Brown,” featuring Big Boi, Scar
and Sleepy Brown, is the current release. Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Janelle Monae
and Macy Gray make guest appearances on the soundtrack. Set in the
1930s, "Idlewild" stars Andre 3000 as a club piano player named
Percival, and Big Boi as the club's lead performer and manager, Rooster. Music
video veteran Bryan Barber directs the picture, which co-stars Terrence Howard,
Faizon Love, Melinda Williams and Cicely Tyson. "This is
probably the first musical that didn't have the music done before it was shot,"
Andre 3000 recently told Billboard. "That has been the biggest lesson I've
learned in this whole thing. Next time, we'll do the music first."
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Toni Braxton Debuts Vegas Act
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 7, 2006) *Toni Braxton, unveiled her Celine Dion-like live
production show “Toni Braxton: Revealed” last Thursday at Flamingo Las Vegas.
An invitation-only audience (that included Earvin "Magic" Johnson,
'Vegas' "Entertainer of the Year" Danny Gans, EUR's Lee Bailey,
record exec Garnett March and more) saw the Severn, Maryland native perform
such hits as "Unbreak My Heart" and "Breathe Again," in a
production described as a musical and visual journey that showcases Braxton's
recording career, family and personal voyage.” "Toni's background is
so diverse that we were able to leverage her Broadway experience and combine
that with the energy of her live concert tour," said director Andrew
Logan. "Her passion as a singer and skill as an actress has allowed us to
take the show to another level." Braxton’s elaborate stage
show includes nine dancers and choreography that incorporates a variety of
styles. Costumes range from a seductive, flamenco-style dress to vintage
inspired couture. One outfit sports over 11,000 Swarovski crystals constructed
on nude netting with over 25,000 decorative stones. The hand-beading process
alone took 120 hours to complete. “Revealed’s” specially-designed
set features a 9' x 16' LED screen display that runs a video montage of
Braxton's personal life as well as imagery tied to many of her most popular
songs. Audiences are given an inside look at Braxton as a mother and an artist.
After the premiere Thursday, Braxton and her husband Keri Lewis
headed to Pure Nightclub for a private afterparty. Tickets
for Toni Braxton: Revealed are available by calling 702/733.3333 or
800/221.7299 or at www.flamingolasvegas.com. Ticket prices are $69,
$89 and $109 (plus tax and handling fees). Showtime is 7:30 p.m.,
Tuesday-Saturday.
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We Remember ‘First Black Hippie’ Arthur Lee
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 8, 2006) *Arthur Lee, the eccentric singer/guitarist who called
himself “the first so-called black hippie,” died in a Memphis hospital after a
battle with leukemia, his manager said on Friday. He was 61.
A member of the influential 1960s rock band Love, Lee emerged from
the Los Angeles scene that also birthed the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the
Doors and the Mamas and Papas. The first multiracial rock
band of the psychedelic era, Love recorded three groundbreaking albums fusing
traditional folk rock and blues with symphonic suites and early punk.
Love’s self-titled debut features the hit single "My Little
Red Book," written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. The 1967 follow-up,
"Da Capo," was one of the first rock albums to feature a song,
"Revelation," that took up an entire side. Their third release,
1968's "Forever Changes," was considered Love's response to the
Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" album. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at
No. 40 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Lee was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia this year. After
three rounds of chemotherapy failed, Lee underwent a bone marrow transplant in
May, and was the first adult in Tennessee to undergo the procedure using stem
cells from an umbilical cord, according to The (Memphis) Commercial
Appeal. Several benefit concerts were held in Britain and the
United States to help Lee with his medical bills. Former Led Zeppelin singer Robert
Plant headlined a benefit in New York in June. Lee married his
long-time girlfriend, Diane, near the end of his life. He had no children.
Flip joins Asylum
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 7, 2006) *Houston rapper Lil
Flip has signed with Asylum/Warner
Music Group, reports Billboard. In June, the artist severed ties with
Columbia/Sony Urban, which was supposed to release his third album, "I
Need Mine." Shortly after Flip left, the album was mysteriously leaked to
the Internet. "All I know is my copy is watermarked, I didn't leak it and
the only other people that have it is Sony," Flip says. "The point of
taking the masters was so we could release the album exactly how it was. Now we
have to regroup." Asylum Records, which already features fellow Houston
natives Mike Jones, Paul Wall and Pimp C, plans to release "I Need
Mine" in 2007.
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Prince To Perform During Super Bowl Halftime
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(Aug. 9, 2006) *CBS hasn’t aired a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet
Jackson’s breast popped out and cost them a little over half a million
dollars. Three years following Nipplegate, the NFL’s biggest game will
return to CBS on Feb. 7, 2007, with the half-time show belonging to Prince -- a man who once
performed on live TV with his butt cheeks exposed. According to the
New York Post, the artist has signed on to rock half-time at Miami’s Dolphin
Stadium, while Cirque de Soliel has been booked to entertain fans during the
pregame show. Meanwhile, Sean “Diddy” Combs and his Bad Boy artist Cassie will
join country act Rascal Flatts to perform for the NFL’s "Opening
Kickoff" celebration, which will air Sept. 7 on NBC. Diddy and
Cassie will perform their free concert on 7th Street in Miami’s South Beach,
while the Rascal Flatts will play from Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field, the site of
the NFL’s first matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins.
Martina McBride will sing the national anthem.
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People
And Projects To Watch For In Gospel
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(Aug. 9, 2006) Grammy Award-Winning Artist Smokie
Norful will release
his third full-length CD, Life Changing, on October 3, 2006. Considered
the “Voice of Inspiration,” Smokie Norful once again lives up to his name by
delivering work that is expressive, heartfelt, and passionate. The new
project is a regeneration of the EMI Gospel artist, and was inspired by a
series of life-changing events that have taken place in Norful’s life over the
past few years: fatherhood, pastoring a rapidly growing church, and
experiencing musical success. “Since reconnecting with ministry and the
true nature of my call (preaching), I have literally seen life change…in a
wonderful way!” states Norful, while discussing the genesis of the project.
“For me, this project is truly a rejuvenation of Smokie Norful. It is part of a
series of events that have been life changing for me. I hope that listeners
will be inspired to be better…to do better…to worship better…as a result of
these songs.” (Source: EMI Gospel)
::CD RELEASES::
August 7, 2006
3rd Degree, Since
Day One, 3rd DeGree
Al Green, Gospel
Concert, Wonderful Music
Ayatolla, Listen,
Soundchron
Big B, Random
Stuff [CD/DVD], Suburban Noize
Big Prodeje, Hood
Ni**a in Charge, Triple X
Bob Marley, 18
Greatest, Direct Source
Bob Marley, The
Anthology, Cleopatra
Bob Marley, Trilogy,
Music Brokers
Capone, God
Guns Money, Latino Jam
Cassie, Cassie,
Bad Boy
C-BO, Money
to Burn, West Coast Mafia
Chamillionaire, Ridin',
Universal
Chic, The
Definitive Groove Collection, Rhino
Copyright, Defected
D-Fused and Digital 06:02,
Damian "Junior Gong" Marley,
All
Night, Universal
Defari, Street
Music, Abb
DJ Quik, Born
and Raised in Compton: The Greatest Hits, Arista/Profile/Legacy
E-40, BME
Recordings Present E-40 & The Hype O, Warner Bros.
Freeway, No
Breaks,
Funkadelic, Motor
City Madness: The Ultimate Collection, Westbound
Ghostface Killah, Back
Like That, Universal
Grandmaster Flash, The
Definitive Groove Collection, Rhino
James Brown, Funk
It!: Remixed Hits, Cleopatra
James Brown, James
Brown [Direct Source], Direct
Source
Jay Dee, The
Shining, Bbe
Joe, Where
You At [12" Single], Jive
Jurassic 5, Feedback
[UK Version] [Bonus Track], Universal
International
Kool & the Gang, Best
of Kool & the Gang [Disky], Disky
Lil' Blacky, It's
a Hustler's World, Vol. 2, Triple
X
Lil Dank, Welcome
2 Da a,
M.O.P., Ghetto
Warfare, Full Clip Media
Martha Reeves, Martha
Reeves, Direct Source
Marvin Gaye, The
Very Best of Marvin Gaye [Mastersong], Mastersong
Masta Killa, Made
in Brooklyn, Nature Sounds
Matisyahu, Youth
[Bonus CD], Red Label
MC Breed, MC
Breed & DFC,
Micall Parknsun, Interview
Mixtape, Sit Tight
Michael Watts, Pandora's
Box, Oarfin
Percy Sledge, 18
Greatest, Direct Source
Percy Sledge, When
a Man Loves a Woman/Take Time to Know Her, Direct Source
Pharrell Williams, Number
One, Pt. 1, EMI/Virgin
Prince Po, Prettyblack,
Traffic Ent.
Ray Charles, 18
Greatest, Direct Source
Rick Ross, Port
of Miami, Def Jam
Rollah, Rollah's
Back, Underground Railroad
Scarface, 2
Face, Rap-A-Lot
Shoshyn, Sincerely
Yours, Affiliated
Sister Sledge, The
Definitive Groove Collection, Rhino
Slave, The
Definitive Groove Collection, Rhino
Smokey Robinson, Gold,
Motown
The Average White Band, The
Definitive Groove Collection, Rhino
The Drifters, 18
Greatest, Direct Source
The Gap Band, Gold,
Hip-O
The Hard Boys, A-Town
Hard Heads,
The Miracles, The
Miracles, Direct Source
The Platters, 18
Greatest, Direct Source
The Pointer Sisters, Live,
Direct Source
The Staple Singers, In
the Praise of Him, Collectables
The Whispers, For
Your Ears Only,
Third World, Riddim
Haffa Rule, Music Avenue
Tippa Irie, Divide
and Rule, Music Avenue
TR Love, Beat
Terrorist vs. The Cartel, Corner
Shop
Various Artists, '70s
Soul Gold, Hip-O
Various Artists, 40
R&B #1 Hits, United Audio
Entertainment
Various Artists, Smooth
Soul Ballads, Direct Source
Various Artists, Soulful
Songs of Love, Direct Source
Various Artists, The
Best of R&B Soul Stars, Direct
Source
Various Artists, The
Music of the Isley Brothers: Afterhours the Nightclub Tribute, Scufflin
Various Artists, This
Is R&B [Cleopatra], Cleopatra
Various Artists, Blazin'
Hip Hop, Activated
Various Artists, Death
Row Ghetto Mix, Death Row
Various Artists, Drugs
on Music: Cocaine City, Vol. 2, Tapeman
Various Artists, Hip
Hop Backstage Pass,
Various Artists, Hip
Hop: Collection, Vol. 4, Universal
International
Various Artists, Sounds
of the Bullet, Double 9
Various Artists, 18
Reggaetonazos Pa'Perrear, Brentwood
Various Artists, Reggaeton
Girlies [DVD], Primo Discos
Various Artists, Stone
Love, Vol. 1.5, Sure Shot
Recordings
August 14, 2006
Alton Ellis, I'm
Still in Love with You, Heartbeat
B.A. Boys, Days
of Being Broke, Bungalo
Betty Everett, They're
Delicious Together, P-Vine
Betty Wright, I
Love the Way You Love Me, Water
Beyoncé, Deja
Vu, Pt. 1, BMG/RCA
Bob Marley, Trilogy,
Music Brokers
Bounty Killer, Nah
No Mercy: The Warlord Scrolls, VP
/ Universal
Bunny Rugs, I'm
Sure, Cof Music
Cassie, Me
& U, Bad Boy
Cham, Ghetto
Story, Atlantic / Wea
Chamillionaire, Ridin',
Universal
Cherish, Unappreciated,
Capitol
Cognito, Knucklehead
Theatre, Thizz
DJ Nelson, The
Kings of the Remix, Universal
Latino
DMX, Lord
Give Me a Sign, BMG/RCA
Dosia, Waiting
to Inhale, Awol
Field Mob, So
What, Universal
Ghostface Killah, Back
Like That, Universal
Ice Cube, Why
We Thugs, Pt. 1, EMI/Virgin
Ice Cube, Why
We Thugs, Pt. 2, EMI/Virgin
Ike Turner, 1951-1954,
Classics R&B
J.R. Bailey, Just
Me N You, Soul Brother
Janet Jackson, Call
on Me, Virgin
Kool & the Gang, Best
of Kool & the Gang [Disky], Disky
Layzie Bone, The
New Revolution, Thump
Lil Cyco, Get
Money, Have Heart, Mob Shop Ent
Ludacris, Money
Maker/Tell It Like It Is [Single], Def
Jam
Lunasicc, A
Million Words, A Million Dollars, Awol
Lyfe Jennings, The
Phoenix, Sony
Obie Trice, Jamaican
Girl [Single], Shady/Interscope
Obie Trice, Second
Round's on Me, Shady/Interscope
Paris Hilton, Paris,
Warner Bros.
Pharrell Williams, Number
One, Pt. 1, EMI/Virgin
Randy Crawford, Feeling
Good, Universal
Rich Boy, Throwing
Some d's [Single], Interscope
Teflon Don, Something
the Lord Made, Str8 up Music
The Distants, Broken
Gold, Blue Cave
Various Artists, Old
School, Vol. 3, Thump
Various Artists, The
Best of R&B, Madacy
Various Artists, Anyone
Can Dance: Hip Hop [CD/DVD], Style
Various Artists, Black
N Brown/Thizzed Out, Thizz
Various Artists, G
Force, Lideres
Various Artists, Heavy
Rotation All Star Compilation, Vol. 4: Hot 97 Edition, Mastertapes
Various Artists, Heavy
Rotation All Star Compilation, Vol. 5: Strictly R&B, Mastertapes
Various Artists, Legacy
of Awol Videos, Awol
Various Artists, The
New Awol Records: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1, Awol
Various Artists, The
New Awol Records: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, Awol
Various Artists, Thizz
Is How We Eat!! [Bonus CD], Sumo
Various Artists, Thizz
Is How We Eat, Vol. 2 [Bonus CD], Sumo
Various Artists, West
Coast Trippin', Awol
Various Artists, Best
of Reggaeton [Madacy], Madacy
Various Artists, D'Fame:
La Fama, Machete Music
Various Artists, Dancehall
Reggae [St. Clair], St. Clair
Various Artists, Reggaeton
Extended 40 X 10, Lideres
Young Dru, Flame
Spitter/V-Town, Thizz
::FILM NEWS::
The Drive-In's New Heyday
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Jennie Punter
(Aug. 4, 2006) In cinema lingo, twilight is the "magic hour," when
light changes rapidly from golden orange to deep blue. It is
also the most subtle pleasure of an evening at the drive-in, an outing that has been making a comeback in recent years in
Southern Ontario. Five years ago, the Docks Entertainment Complex in Toronto
added a big screen at the end of its driving range -- which can fit up to 500
cars -- so that it could run double features on summer weekends. But for the
full-on nostalgia trip, it's difficult to beat the retro-themed atmosphere of
The 5 (Oakville), Mustang (London) and newly renovated Starlite (Hamilton)
drive-ins, which are all celebrating the August long weekend by running
mini-marathons of first-run films, including the just-released Talladega
Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. "On Friday and Saturday, we run
three movies and on Sunday we blow it out with four, and you can't get near the
place," says Brian Allen, confessed movie fanatic and vice-president of
Premier Operating, which has several theatres across Ontario including the
above-mentioned retro trio. (Allen also books movies for The Docks.)
After their heydey in the 1950s, drive-in theatres went through an image
change, from places for family entertainment to places where teenagers steamed
up car windows and maybe caught a few minutes of the latest horror or beach
movie. "In the early sixties, when TV became more popular, drive-ins and
small-town theatres took a hit," says Allen, whose family has been in the
movie-theatre business for almost a century. Although most big-city drive-ins
were eaten up by urban sprawl, the few that survived have continued to do brisk
business. The 5, Canada's largest drive-in, was bought by Allen's late father
in 1962. A second screen was added in 1979, a third in 2001. While the action
in the back rows hasn't changed, the action on the screen is now first-run movies
with family entertainment back in focus, particularly in summer months.
"Family films drive the industry now," Allen says, "but what
drive-ins offer are lower admission prices, especially for kids, plus you get
to watch two or more movies." After Labour Day, Allen, who keeps his
drive-ins open until the end of December and reopens in early spring, programs
more restricted fare. This long weekend at The 5, you'll know the magic hour
will have arrived when the line-up thins at the snack bar. Parents will
retrieve their kids from the large sandlot playground. Lawn chairs will be set
up, hatchbacks opened and radio dials tuned to the FM signal that broadcasts
the soundtrack. Then the trailers will begin -- and not just the usual plugs
for upcoming movies. After a well worn O Canada comes a series of retro
food shorts (hot dogs jumping into buns, marching ice cream cones) and maybe
one of the Looney Toons classics Allen picked up on eBay. "It's all part
of making people feel they've left behind the aggravations of modern
life," Allen says. "Like they've stepped back in time." Special
to The Globe and Mail The 5 screens films seven nights a week, rain or
shine. Show times vary. 2332 Ninth Line, Mississauga, 905-257-8272, http://www.5drivein.com
(also links to the Mustang and the Starlite).
Mateen Kemet -- Speaking Loudly about “Silence”
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com - By Deardra
Schuler
(August 8, 2006) *Film director Mateen
Kemet plans to make films that
correctly represent African culture and speak to the audience on a realistic
level. A filmmaker since 1997, Mateen has written and directed six short
films, several screenplays and one music video. He is the winner of the
FESPACO Film Festival 2005 Best Director Award for his film short
“Silence.” FESPACO, held in Burkina Faso, West Africa, is the
largest Arts Festival in the African diaspora. PRAI (Promoting Reel
African Images, formerly known as the Paul Robeson Award Initiative) presented
the award. Silence addresses the often hidden and shameful reality of
child abuse. A former Wall Street bond trader, Kemet currently teaches in
San Francisco. “I have worked with young people who have a story to tell.
Often, it’s the hidden, shameful story of abuse. Via my students, this
tale has been told to me repeatedly. I hear this story mainly from girls
but sexual abuse happens to boys as well. For example, I was once
affiliated with a program that dealt specifically with empowering young black
boys, some who were dealing with sexual identity issues stemming from paternal
abuse,” claimed Kemet. “Sexual abuse is the ultimate betrayal of a child
by an adult, and the shame stays with the victims all their lives,” reveals the
young filmmaker who wanted to bring this tragedy to the fore through his
film. “I have learned that we are often an amalgam of our
childhood. Every major thing that happens in our childhood somehow forms
us for both good and bad. If you have low self-esteem or you are an
aggressive go-getter for instance, most likely, it started when you were a
child.”
His experiences have enabled Mateen to discern the signs of sexual abuse, and
through Silence he was able to visually articulate one young woman’s
struggle. Notable signs of abuse include a child not wanting to be alone
with adults, appearing enraged, frightened, or acting out. Sometimes, they
even behave in an abnormal sexual manner. “My film is very complex,”
stated Mateen. “I am proud that I presented it in layers. It is not
a simple formula of rape. For instance, there are three main characters whose
individual perspectives are shown within the film. Through the male
character’s perspective, I explore the perceived power within manhood and touch
on what would make this man delve into incest. It’s not about sex, it’s
about power. What does it mean to be a man, especially a black man in our
community? If you want to say there is a sense of powerlessness, then we
have to talk about the socioeconomic relevance. An individual, who feels
inept and powerless, may seek to implement power over something or someone they
can control. A child is controllable because a child does not have the
wherewithal to reject a predator’s advances. Children don’t know how to
react in such a scenario. Therefore, most predators prey on the weak.
There is an old saying: It is the very small individual who can be tall only
when someone else is on their knees” explained Mateen of the predator psyche.
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Mateen had always been the
kid who went to the movies and picked scenes apart; little did he realize that
he was already sewing the seeds of his directorial future. Though he
excelled in football, his mother insisted he further his education. Kemet
earned a degree in Economics at San Francisco State and later a MFA in Film and
Television Production at Chapman University. In 1998, his dramedy “Who’s
the Mack?” helped Mateen win the Marion Knott Fellowship and introduced him to
noted film and theatre director Arthur Hiller. He was appointed the
Chapman University Film Student of the Year; received student filmmaker award
from the Directors Guild of America and his MFA Thesis film short “Silence” won
2nd Place at the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. Silence has screened in
over 60 festivals worldwide, winning 15 awards. He also shot a music
video for opera singer Oyendasola. Currently Mateen is developing a
documentary about Charter Schools, directing Oakland b Mine -- a short film in
Oakland, California and the Sundarbans Tiger –a children’s book on tape.
The script for the Sundarbans Tiger recently won Best Screenplay at the 2006
San Francisco Black Film Festival.
“I have always been political and outspoken and felt I had something to say,
which led me to the Black Studies movement at San Francisco State.” His
interest in Egypt and Kemetic Science bolstered his need to correct the misinformation
surrounding the African diaspora experience chronicled in the records of
Western Civilization. “I wanted to be a part of the inertia that is the
affirmation of Africa. That is why I regret I couldn’t attend the FESPACO
Film Festival. However, it’s probably good I didn’t, because had I sat
among an African audience and received my Best Director Award for a Short Film,
it would have culminated in the ultimate achievement.”
Filmmakers seeking to submit films to FESPACO/PRAI should know the second
cycle deadline for consideration is August 31, 2006 and the third and final
cycle is December 30, 2006. Early submission offers the best chance for
consideration. For submission information see: http://www.prai.us
The Devil And Mr. Dupuis
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Etan Vlessing
(Aug. 5, 2006) KIGALI, Rwanda — That Roy
Dupuis makes a handsome
Roméo Dallaire is hardly in doubt. But
whether the Quebec actor can evoke the paradoxical heroism of the former
Canadian lieutenant-general who valiantly fought, and yet failed to halt the
1994 Rwandan bloodbath, is being put to the test as Dupuis assumes the role of
Dallaire in the Canadian feature film Shake
Hands With the Devil, now shooting on location in Kigali. As three cameras start
rolling, Dupuis sets his jaw square and his eyes into the distance as he draws
his United Nations Jeep up to a scene right out of Dante's Inferno —
ragtag Hutu killers wielding machetes and wooden clubs at a roadblock are
rounding up Tutsis fleeing Kigali, while a half-dozen men in pink prisoner garb
pile bloodied corpses into a dump truck. Suddenly, a young Hutu girl walking
behind the truck slips and falls to the ground. Rising to her feet, the girl
begins screaming on discovering her dress front is painted dark red with
blood. As Dupuis's poker face betrays controlled distress, the young girl
shrieks still louder after wheeling round to see bodies stacked up in front of
her. “And cut,” Ottawa-born director Roger Spottiswoode calls out before
instructing the young actress, Angel Mahoro, during the next take to stand
longer in place before turning toward the dump truck. With that raw moment in
Dallaire's Rwandan command now set in celluloid, Spottiswoode, better known for
directing Hollywood blockbusters such as the James Bond thriller Tomorrow
Never Dies, is attempting that most untypical of cinematic goals — the
making of a Canadian hero.
Shake Hands With the Devil distils Dallaire's memoir of the same name into a journey that
sees a career soldier from Montreal be entrusted with Rwanda's future. By the
movie's climax, Dallaire is laying bare his human frailty and guilt over the
lives of Rwandans and UN peacekeepers he could not, or did not, save. “I'm
telling the general's story, but also the story of the UN, of French treachery,
of [then U.S. president] Bill Clinton's negligence and I'm telling it all
through Dallaire,” Spottiswoode says during a lunch break. Dupuis, having
prepared for his latest role with instruction from Dallaire, says he's playing
the retired general more like a priest at the start of a spiritual odyssey. “He
[Dallaire] is not this dark, secret figure you expect of a military leader.
He's open and direct. And he's never afraid,” Dupuis says of his onscreen
character between takes. Flush with Telefilm Canada financing for a $10-million
feature to be released theatrically in 2007, Shake Hands With the Devil
co-producer Laszlo Barna bills the homegrown movie as the country's Lawrence
of Arabia. “It's Canada's epic story, and it's all modern-day,” Barna
insists before returning to oversee a gruelling 30-day, dawn-to-dusk production
schedule stretching into mid-August. But while the Canadian film is ambitious,
its portrayal of the inhumane 1994 bloodbath is hardly told from the
perspective of Rwandans. Instead, like earlier Rwanda genocide projects — Hotel
Rwanda, where Nick Nolte played a character loosely based on Dallaire,
HBO's Sometimes in April or the BBC's Shooting Dogs — and even
the rival Canadian feature Un dimanche à Kigali ( A Sunday in Kigali),
which is based on a 2000 novel by Quebec journalist Gil Courtemanche) — the
central characters in Shake Hands With the Devil are mostly foreigners
caught up in the murderous purge of Tutsis by rival Hutus.
The issue is not so much with plots or storylines, as with the heroes. For many
ordinary Rwandans, former rebel leader and current president Paul Kagame
succeeded where Dallaire failed. He halted the 1994 Tutsi genocide and
completed Rwanda's transition from dictatorship to democracy. So Kagame is the
true Rwandan hero in the eyes of some, although human-rights groups estimate
his government has killed as many as 300,000 in revenge massacres, as the
Rwandan army pursued Hutus into neighbouring Congo. Léonce Ngabo, a Burundian
filmmaker who lost a dozen family members during ethnic strife in his native
country in 1993, argues Dallaire is regarded by many here as a “good man,” but
most associate him with the UN and an international community that abandoned
Rwanda in its hour of need. “He [Dallaire] stayed when other white people left.
The UN, that's bullshit. You were supposed to save us, and you didn't,” Ngabo
says of diplomats in New York who tied Dallaire's hands while he fought his
battle against genocide. Ngabo has returned to Kigali to work as a wrangler on Shake
Hands With the Devil. Canada's most famous former general is also faulted
by some for obeying UN orders to remain on the sidelines and not using his
available arms and manpower to leap into the breach. “As a soldier, he
[Dallaire] should have gone with his gut. He knew the situation, that the génocidaires
were planning to massacre Tutsis and he didn't act,” Ignace Rukata, a one-time
Rwandese Patriotic Front soldier and today a Kigali retailer of car parts, said
of Dallaire. Peter Meyboom, the supervising producer on Shake Hands With the
Devil, recalls an early meeting with a Rwandan government minister who gave
official permission, but not his personal blessing, to the Canadian movie. “He
told us, ‘We're very glad you're making a film in Rwanda, but you're not
telling our story. You'll get it all wrong. But that's of no concern to us.
We're just happy you're telling a story,' Meyboom says. But the anger and
darkness with which Shake Hands With the Devil ends — the final shot has
Dallaire standing alone on a pontoon bridge, staring down in horror at
half-nude dead bodies he has discovered floating in the river — contrasts with
signs that Rwanda may finally be getting back on its feet economically and
socially.
One hopeful sign that the country is on the mend came with the launch this year
of gacaca courts, or village tribunals, where jailed Hutus accused of
killing and raping Tutsis are put on trial. On a Saturday afternoon a half-mile
from the Kigali production office for Shake Hands With the Devil,
Jean-Pierre Nyzabira, dressed in a pink prison outfit, stands in respectful
attention before nine gacaca judges, with around 120 local Rwandans in
the audience behind him. Asked by one judge whether he helped murder 12 members
of Thomas Rutabana's family, Nyzabira insists he was at home sleeping when they
died. But a frisson of disbelief moves through the otherwise quiet hall when
another judge says Nyzabira was seen by a neighbour carrying a shovel to the
murder scene. The young Hutu, who was jailed for five years before his trial,
denied the accusation, explaining that he did carry a shovel to the crime
scene, but only to help bury the Rutabana family, not to kill them. At the end
of the afternoon, the gacaca judges break off the trial until the
following week as the wheels of justice here grind slowly. Back on set, Dupuis,
looking every inch a general, from his blue UN beret to starched uniform,
emerges from the cinematic time warp that's taken him to events from Rwanda's
1994 genocide to rest between camera takes. Dupuis nods in appreciation to the
huge gallery of Rwandans across the street eyeing his performance. “They're so
beautiful, so receiving and respectful. I'm beginning to understand why General
Dallaire couldn't leave, why he had to disobey [UN] orders,” he says.
Looking For Robin Williams
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Peter Howell
(Aug. 4, 2006) HOLLYWOOD—The curious Russian cabbie wants to
know why I'm heading to the Four Seasons Beverly Hills early on a Sunday
morning. "I'm interviewing Robin
Williams," I tell him.
"Who is that?" the cabbie says. I look at his face in the
rear-view mirror. He seems sincere. Incredible. "You don't know who
Robin Williams is? You know, the funny guy from Mrs. Doubtfire, Patch
Adams, Moscow on the Hudson and Mork & Mindy. You've
never heard of him? How long have you lived in America?"
"Eighteen years. But I drive cab 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. I don't go to movies or
watch TV. How am I supposed to know who this Robin Williams is?"
When I relate this incident to Williams a few minutes later, he howls,
"That's wonderful!" He begins an impression of the cabbie,
muttering oaths in mock Russian. He ends the riff in accented English:
"Why go see Moscow on the Hudson? Why go see movie about
Russians?" After more than 30 years in show business, where he's
established himself as one of the best-loved of American entertainers, he's
delighted to think there are still people out there waiting to discover him.
People who don't think they already know everything there is to know about him.
And having reached the age of 55, halfway through the time passage his pal
Steve Martin ruefully calls "the last viable decade," Williams is
also in a mood to reflect about fame and what an artist owes his public.
It's a timely contemplation, and a serious one, despite the playful attire
Williams has worn to the interview. A T-shirt bearing a picture of a monkey,
its rear end raised high and the slogan: "Human-Animal Hybrid" tops
his loud plaid pants. Some things never change. In his new movie The Night Listener,
opening today, Williams plays a New York radio storyteller, Gabriel Noone, who
is drawn into a mystery by a devoted fan, whose identity is in doubt. The movie
assumes Hitchcockian elements as Noone goes on a journey of both the map and
the mind.
Williams has had to wrestle with separating the true from the false and the
sincere from the insincere for the past three decades, since he first came to
prominence in 1978 playing the space alien Mork on the TV sitcom hit Mork
& Mindy. "People think they know you," he says,
grimacing slightly. "They expect you be literally like you are on TV
or in the movies, bouncing off the walls. A woman in an airport once said to
me, `Be zany!' The weird thing is now with all these cellphones with cameras,
they'll say, `May I take a picture of you?' and you'll say, `Fine.'
"And then they'll say, `C'mon, smile!' And I go, `I am smiling ...' At
that point you want to go, `Back off!' Because they want something else. Do
something goofy!" The Night Listener struck a chord with him
in several ways. He is fascinated by the power of radio to create images in the
mind. The movie is based on a novel by Armistead Maupin, a friend of Williams’
who has lived near him for years in the same San Francisco neighbourhood.
Williams is intimately acquainted with the source of the script: it's based on
a true experience that Maupin, best known as the creator of the Tales of the
City novels and TV series, went through 14 years ago. The Night Listener
script was co-written by Terry Anderson, Maupin's former lover, who
also knows Williams. What really helped Williams to identify with the
character of Gabriel Noone, however, was the man's need to confront the dark
side of idol worship. Williams has been there. "It's kind of like
the bookend to the obsessive character I played in One Hour Photo,
although this time I'm on the receiving end of it. I sometimes get strange
requests for money. And because I've played so many different characters and
personalities over the years, different people start to see you in different
way. You do something like The Fisher King (in which he played a
mystical tramp), and you appeal to a few folk."
Williams suddenly drops his voice to a whisper. "They go, "You know!"
"Or you do What Dreams May Come (a fantasy about a bereaved husband
in hell) and the same thing happens: `You know!' Basically it goes even
back as far as Mork & Mindy. You get letters from people, they'll
send these strange things out that start out very rationally and then it just
goes into, `There's a time when we shall all gather together by the moon ...'
Thank you. Thank you very much." Williams tries to laugh off these
encounters and accept them with good grace. But sometimes they rattle
him. "You'll meet people who come up to meet you and go, `Hi, how
are you?' and `Gosh, I really like you.' And if you do not go along exactly
with their scenario, they snap: `What! Get out! Too big for me? Mr. Star can't
talk to me?' "A woman came up to me once and said, `You knew me in
Oklahoma.' And I went, `I don't know, maybe when I was drinking.' And she goes,
`You flew me all around the country for months and I worked for you.' And you
go, `Would you excuse me?' And then you walk away. You don't engage them. `Good
luck! Keep the delusions up but reduce your dosage!' "These people
can be stone-cold believable. Maybe, like O.J. (Simpson), that woman believed
it happened. Although with O.J., he believes it didn't
happen." Williams has noticed that different media have different
ways of imbedding characters in the public mind. He believes television is by
far the most powerful medium for that, which is why many people still think of
him as inquisitive Mork from the planet Ork, 24 years after the final original
episode of Mork & Mindy aired. "Television just goes
directly into you. It's not even like movies, where people have to go someplace
to see you. You're in their memory banks (with TV). You're just there in the
background subliminally or even directly, but it still goes like that. I still
have people calling me Mork, no matter what I've done. I've met Nobel Prize
physicists say, `You are Mork!' And I say, `Yes, I am, thank you.'"
Yet Williams seems most fascinated by radio, the one medium he hasn't
completely conquered — his star deejay turn in Good Morning, Vietnam notwithstanding.
He likes the idea of one day having his own satellite radio show, like his
close friend, cyclist Lance Armstrong. "Radio engages the
imagination," Williams enthuses. "It engages the mind in a
different way. Because there is that thing that if it works on you, especially
if you're reading stories or something like that, it engages you on a whole
different level, both positively and negatively. You can be listening to a
woman and envision her being one way, and when you meet her, it's, `Whoa, I
didn't imagine that she was that frumpy.' And then later on that's scary."
Acting is still a thrill for Williams. The Internet Movie Database lists him in
no fewer than six movies due out this year or next, and that doesn't include The
Night Listener or his recent family smash RV. Still to come
are the animated musical Happy Feet ("Riverdance meets March
of the Penguins"), Night at the Museum ("It's like Jumanji,
but I get to play Teddy Roosevelt"), and the movie he's currently filming,
License to Wed ("I'm kind of a Protestant minister, who puts
couples through a stress test"). He doesn't buy the popular myth
that he deliberately alternates between comedic and dramatic roles, or that he
always wears a beard when he's playing a serious character — such as the
psychologist Sean in Good Will Hunting, which won him the Oscar for Best
Supporting Actor in 1998. "I just kind of rejoice in the
process," Williams says of his busy acting career. "All the new
people you meet, it's pretty amazing. The vampire needs new blood. And there is
still a lot to learn and there is always great stuff out there. Even mistakes
can be wonderful." And there is still at least one guy in North
America, that mystified Hollywood cabbie, who still needs to be won over.
Williams’ work isn't finished yet, not by a long shot.
Combative Filmmaker Oliver Stone Finds A Human Touch In World
Trade Center
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Murray
Whyte, A&E Reporter
(Aug. 5, 2006) Oliver Stone can't sit still. On the eighth floor of the Four
Seasons Hotel in Yorkville, he's opening curtains, moving chairs. He glances
quickly over the expanse of green stretching north from his window, and his
mind spins back. "I stayed in a cheap hotel on Yonge Street, working
on my first movie, Seizure, in 1970," he says, smiling a clenched
smile. It was during an active time in Toronto's film history, when wide-open
tax shelters brought in rafts of investment and a handful of hits — Porky's,
for one, and David Cronenberg's Scanners. "Mine was the loser of
the lot," Stone chuckles. Even when he comes to rest, at a small
table draped in a hotel-issue white polyester tablecloth, he doesn't, fidgeting
with the coffee cup, the saucer, the water glass placed in front of him by the
attentive team of publicists who tend to his every move. The energy level
should come as no surprise. Since at least the mid-'80s, Stone has made a
reputation as a fiercely passionate, strong-willed, combative filmmaker
unconcerned with ruffling feathers with his politically charged works.
But the source of that energy slowly dawns. Could it be that Stone, a
provocateur of the highest order who wilfully, happily made enemies of the
American right with conspiracy-laden films like JFK, his anti-Vietnam
treatise Born on the Fourth of July, or his merciless portrait of shamed
former president Richard Nixon, is nervous? He could certainly be
forgiven. It's mid-July, and Stone is in the midst of a low-key advance
promotional tour for World Trade Center, his small-sliver take on the vast miseries that took place over
24 brutal hours just before and one long, full day after the terrorist attacks
that felled New York's twin towers on that day in September 2001.
Up to this point, the finished film has been screened only twice, for small
audiences in Toronto and New York. Much of the chatter surrounding it — and
there has been plenty — is not about the film, but Stone himself: the
director's controversial works, like Natural Born Killers, his taste for
conspiracy, his reputation for indelicacy. "And so it was with the
greatest regret that we heard Paramount Pictures had chosen Oliver Stone, the
conspiracy-addled director with a soft spot for dictators, to direct
Hollywood's first major movie about that day of days," went one editorial,
in The Washington Times last summer. Stone's ego hardly
needs further battering. He is 17 years removed from his third Oscar, for
1989's Born on the Fourth of July. His last film, 2004's extravagant,
bloated, three-hour-long Alexander, was both a critical and commercial
disaster. It was, to say the least, a blow: Stone had been trying to make
the film since 1991. It was also his first big-budget film since 1999's similar
flop, the football drama Any Given Sunday. Mindful of not only the
delicacy of World Trade Center's subject matter, but the director's
lightning-rod reputation, Paramount chose small venues for its preview tour.
Stone appeared personally at many to speak, flanked by cast members, and
significantly, some of the many New York police officers and firefighters who
served as daily on-set consultants. Various ensembles travelled to Miami,
Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle and Philadelphia, among other cities. "We
wanted to get this film into the heartland and you can't really achieve that
from a hotel suite in New York or Los Angeles," said Nancy Kirkpatrick,
Paramount's head of worldwide publicity.
The studio has eschewed buying billboard or poster space in New York and New
Jersey out of deference to the attack's still-raw impact there. All promotional
materials are screened by a survivors' group, to ensure appropriate
sensitivity. Paramount's parent company, Viacom, has even been quietly
building alliances in Washington, assuring politicos that the film is an
agenda-free, non-partisan tale of heroism. So, nervous? Fair enough. World
Trade Center is not the first film to be extracted from the horrors of that
day. Paul Greengrass's United 93, about the passenger revolt aboard the
hijacked plane that forced it to crash in a Pennsylvania field, and not the
White House, its intended target, came out earlier this year. But Stone's
film is, by far, the grander in scale. With a production budget of $63 million
(all figures U.S.), and a promotional budget of $35 million, it will need to do
far better than United 93's $31 million in box office to break
even. The film opens within a breath — one month — of the attack's five-year
anniversary, further complicating the emotional impact. Some are simply angry
that Stone would look to revisit that awful day at all, let alone in such
exacting detail. "Movies are always trying to shape stories. Perhaps
that's where the anger comes from — there's always that `Am I being
manipulated?'" Stone says. "But in this, there's the least
manipulation possible." Indeed, Stone made efforts to distance the
film from any politicizing effect. (When asked by the Guardian recently
asked Stone if Against All Enemies, Crash director Paul Haggis's
upcoming adaptation of former White House adviser Richard Clarke's book on the
causes of 9/11, was something he would have considered. Stone scoffed in
response: "I'd be burned alive.") Instead, Stone's story is
smaller, personal and human-scale. He went to great lengths to involve rescue
workers and survivors like his two main characters, New York City Port
Authority cops Sgt. John McLoughlin and Officer William J. Jimeno, in every
step of the production, to ensure veracity in every detail.
"If we had gone after fictional characters, I would have been all right
with it, personally, because I feel a dramatist has a licence," Stone
says. "But a lot of people don't any more, because there's too much junk
on TV, too many interpretations that are shallow and perhaps
propagandized." There is, too, the question of distance. Five years
on, the world has yet to see an exacting recreation of what happened that day.
Judging from United 93's lukewarm commercial performance, it may not yet
want one. Stone has been here before. "I opened Born on the
Fourth of July the day (President George Bush Sr.) invaded Panama. That
didn't help our first weekend," he said. "The Killing Fields —
it was made five years after (Pol Pot's massacre of 2 million Cambodians). Casablanca
was made in '41. We (Americans) weren't even in the war yet. It was
anti-German, it mentioned concentration camps. When is the right time, is all I
can say." Even Platoon, arguably the director's most powerful
work, based on his own experiences in Vietnam, didn't wait for a sensitivity
buffer period to pass. For 10 years, it simply languished. "Platoon
was too realistic, on paper. It was too much of a `bummer,'" Stone
says, hooking his fingers into quotation marks in the air. "That's why it
took so long. "They made Apocalypse Now, they made Coming
Home, they made The Deer Hunter. When I made Platoon, I
didn't have much hope for it. I thought it was on the tail end of this whole
thing. I thought nobody was that interested. But for some reason, it was the
realism that caught hold right away, and went around the world."
When it's suggested that perhaps World Trade Center is his film most
like Platoon, Stone raises an eyebrow. "That's very true," he
says. "It's that same feeling: `Oh, yeah, I feel like I'm seeing what
really happened, as opposed to the mythic versions.'" Indeed, there
is no mythologizing in this film. Not even close. There are no political
departures, no proselytizing. It is most striking — and, for viewers, most
painful — for Stone's devotion to minute factual detail, based on the real
accounts of the real people the film depicts. The attack happens quickly
after the film begins (Stone deliberately excludes the planes' impacts). A small
cadre of New York City Port Authority cops, among them McLoughlin and Jimeno,
descend on the site, and march resolutely into the buildings' lobby, only to
have it collapse on top of them moments later in one of the most wrenching
scenes in recent memory. What follows is the movie's guts: The long,
torturous day McLoughlin and Jimeno spend underground, waiting for rescue.
Jimeno, played by Michael Peña, is pinned by a man-sized hunk of concrete;
McLoughlin, played by Nicolas Cage, trapped deeper, is immobilized and buried
by rubble, with only his face and one arm free. There, deep in the
wreckage, the men wait, trying not to die. (In the end, they are two of only 20
survivors pulled from the rubble.) Stone balances the claustrophobic darkness
of being buried alive with the emotional claustrophobia of the men's families
in their homes, watching CNN and waiting, one way or the other, for news.
That balance, Stone says, is the only filmic licence he permitted
himself. "The movie is, in a way, a struggle between light and
dark," he says. Lifting viewers up from underground and into the men's
homes "allows you out of the darkness throughout the movie," Stone
says. The light above, however, is nonetheless harsh, in the intense
glare of anxiety and helplessness. Still, Stone calls World Trade Center "a
gentle movie that has some very beautiful images," and now, two weeks
after his pass-by in Toronto, a consensus is beginning to form. Stone has
made converts of an unlikely faction: the same arch-conservatives for whom he
has long been the embodiment of Hollywood's deep-seated liberalism. In
the National Review, right-wing columnist Clifford May said World
Trade Center "may be the most powerful work I have ever seen on the
screen. It should be required viewing for every American." Cal Thomas, a
columnist of the same stripe, called it "one of the greatest pro-American,
pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving God Bless America films you will
ever see." Even the Washington Times, which so completely
disavowed Stone in its editorial, has recanted: "A year later, having seen
the finished product during a special screening for Washington journalists, it
is with the greatest regret that we recall those words. For with World Trade
Center, Mr. Stone has made a truly great movie." The broader
consensus, though, is "Oscar." For Cage, possibly, or Peña. But most
likely, for Stone himself, who now seems poised to climb back from the depths
into which he had fallen, and finally back into the light.
World Trade Center would seem the most unlikely of saviours. But Stone
has been through enough darkness — and not only of the Hollywood variety — to
understand its capacity for redemption. "Having lived through things
like Vietnam, some personal disasters, some heavy situations, Watergate in my
time, the Kennedy assassination, the wars that were unnecessary — I've seen all
the evil in the world, let's say. And it accumulates, the older you get,"
he says. "I think 9/11 is one of them — it's not the only thing. All
that anger — it's the result of the event. It brought a black hole into the
heart of humanity — just as Lebanon is today. Every day, we get this bad news
piling up in this big black hole of anger — this big, despairing hole.
"That's why it's better to face it. You can have a reaction all your life,
but it's better to deal with something, isn't it?"
Bringing Streets to Screens
Excerpt from The Toronto Star
(Aug. 9, 2006) Chris Chin is campaign director for Streets to Screens,
the Toronto Public Space Committee's year-round film series (fall season opens
Aug. 31) aimed at boosting the profile of the city's often-neglected public
realms and Torontonians' passion for protecting them. See http://www.streetstoscreens.ca
for information.
Q As a genre, films about public space would seem fairly narrow, no?
A You'd be surprised. There is a lot of material out there that does deal with
public space — everything from documentaries on city projects or city planning
to old tourism films. We have one from the National Film Board, a promotional
film from the 1950s about Toronto, the Expanding City ...
Q Back when suburban expansion was seen as a good idea?
A Exactly. It talks about, at that point, the big push for the Spadina subway,
and the Spadina Freeway before that.
Q Is it difficult to draw an audience for films that are about public-space
issues? It can sound more like broccoli than cheesecake.
A (Laughs) That's part of the reason we're doing it at the Bloor. It's open to
that walk-by traffic that's inclined just to check out what's playing there for
its own sake. But I think we've struck a chord with the public. And that's
always been our goal: to show people that our issues are your issues. It's not
so much a case of broccoli versus cheesecake, but that everyone has to have a
little something on their plate. These issues do involve the public, and that's
one of our main goals: getting them involved and saying `You can make a
difference. You can make a point.' Even if you're not out to change the world,
you can change your corner.
Location, Location, Location
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Alwynne
Gwilt, Entertainment Reporter
(Aug. 9, 2006) That blue house with the teal shutters isn't just another
home in Oakville. With its wide front porch, white rocker and hanging
baskets
exploding with red impatiens, it also doubles as a house in Iowa.
"You could plop this house in the middle of America and it (would look
right)," says Cindy Merrigan. She and husband Craig own the house,
which will be seen in the TV show Runaway on the new CW network this
fall. Cindy, a Scarborough native, lived in Atlanta nine years before
bringing her husband and then 4-month-old twin girls, Cameron and Carter, to
Ontario. Their house was featured in the Disney series Flash Forward three
years before they moved in eight years ago. "We probably get
approached at least once a year" about using their home in a film shoot,
Cindy says. She adds that they got involved in Runaway after a
location manager approached Craig in the driveway as he was cleaning out the
garage. Giving up the outside of their home for a shoot was a bit
unnerving at first, but Cindy says it's worth it in the end. "Every
time they put up something to make it look worse it was kind of `Oh,
okay,'" says Cindy, recalling watching the house being transformed into a
weathered wreck for the pilot episode. "But everybody said they leave it
in immaculate shape and, sure enough, they put everything back.
"It's just an absolute blast and everyone is so nice; they really want to
make you happy." This feeling is exactly what John Musikka, one of
two location managers for the show, wants to engender.
"There's a trust that we work on with our locations," explains the
Halton native, who's been doing this for 10 years. "There's nothing more
important than the integrity of (it) and we treat a location like it's our
own." An owner will be paid for the use of their property — the rate
varies from shoot to shoot — and put up in a comfortable hotel if interior
shots are required. People who want their homes to be listed as potential
filming sites can check the locations page of the Ontario Media Development
Corp. (http://www.omdc.on.ca/English/page-1-65-1.html).
For the Merrigans, the experience was so great they signed on for the rest of
the show's episodes. Now, juggling meetings and phone calls with producers and
location managers has turned into a bit of a part-time job for Cindy.
"When they say, `How's 2 o'clock tomorrow because we've got the director
in from L.A. and he's flying out tomorrow?' it's like, I guess it's okay,"
says Cindy, as she balances 18-month-old Cyle on her knee. "It's usually
not an inconvenience (and it's) no more hectic than three kids."
Every other week, a crew of around 70 invades the neighbourhood, meaning the
whole street has to be okay with the activities. Making sure everything
is peachy is up to Musikka. His long days, often 10 to 14 hours, include
everything from getting permits (for parking trucks or erecting lighting
cranes, for instance) to confirming with all involved parties that filming at a
certain time on a given day will be okay. "When you're shooting an
American show in Ontario, signage must change; there's no bilingualism in the
United States," he says of one of seemingly hundreds of details he must
check. Musikka feels weird turning off his cellphone, he says, even on his days
off because if anything needs to be changed for that week's shooting schedule
he's usually the one to deal with it.
"People out there, not in the film industry, don't understand why these
changes take place and we do our best to explain it to them, but they're not
always happy," says Musikka, who's worked on films such as Don't Say a
Word and Pushing Tin. "And because it's our responsibility to
make those things happen, we get the brunt of some unhappy responses
sometimes." The industry is changing though, he says, as the profile
of Toronto as a film destination has grown. "When scouting years ago
it would seem odd (to a family) when someone would knock on (their) door.
Today, because the exposure is there, people are much more aware of it and
they're more likely to believe you're not making this up." So with
14-hour days and pressure to get everything perfect, why would Musikka stay in
the job? "You get to see some cool things when you're scouting, you
get to go into some buildings that people might not be able to and you get to
take photographs of some really cool spots," he says. "There's
a good feeling that we all have when we find the perfect location ... and you
know that is your creative contribution." Besides, "we
(location managers) wear our hearts on our sleeves. I fall in love with almost
every location I shoot on."
FILM TIDBITS
Toni Tired Of Bulking Up
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - The
Washington Post
(Aug. 4, 2006) Can Toni
Collette really be serious — as the actress
has
been quoted recently — that she's thinking about drastically cutting back on
the number of movie jobs she takes on, leaving fans of her wide-ranging and
much lauded performances high and dry? You wouldn't know it from looking
at her current schedule. By her own count, the actress will shoot five films
this year, including the just-wrapped mystery-thriller The Dead Girl, due
out in 2007. Adding to her sense of ubiquity, she appears in two movies
out today: The Night Listener and Little Miss Sunshine. The
answer to the slowdown question is yes and no, says the "exhausted"
33-year-old actress. She and her husband, musician Dave Galafassi, would like
to have kids someday, Collette explains, which would necessitate taking at
least a little time off. Though Collette has made a conscious effort to
avoid being typecast as the dowdy loser, since her breakout performance in
1994's Muriel's Wedding — a role for which she reportedly gained at
least 40 pounds — it seems she hasn't entirely shaken the reputation as an
actress willing to immerse herself in a part. In director Curtis Hanson's
2005 In Her Shoes, Collette again put on weight. "Twenty-seven
pounds, my friend,'' she says with a cynical laugh. "Curtis wanted more,
but I just did what I could in the time that I had." She was asked
to fatten up for The Night Listener, but declined. "I just
said, `Look, I can't do it again. I've kind of just gotten back to normal
again. How about wearing 17 layers of clothing and acting my way through
it?'"
Haggis, De Palma to star at TIFF's Talent Lab
Source: Canadian Press
(Aug. 4, 2006) Toronto -- Directors Paul Haggis, Brian De Palma, Mary
Harron and Phillip Noyce will be among the guests at this year's Toronto International Film Festival
talent lab, organizers have announced. The artistic development program
for emerging Canadian filmmakers provides workshops and networking
opportunities during the festival, which runs Sept. 7-16. Twenty-two budding
writers, directors and producers from the Toronto area, Vancouver and Montreal
have been accepted for the four-day intensive program, now in its third year.
Canadian author Michael Ondaatje -- whose novel The English Patient was
made into an Oscar-winning film -- will return as a lab governor, along with
Australian producer Jan Chapman. CP
Enter The Dragon, On A Polyester Sea
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - New York
Times
(Aug. 7, 2006) LOS ANGELES—The casting call for an extra was specific yet
succinct. The applicant had to be male. He had to be Asian. He
couldn't be a member of the Screen Actors Guild. And one other thing: he had to
look like Bruce Lee. Finding one man who looks just like that legendary martial
arts master would have been a challenge, even in this actor-rich, Asian-rich
city. But the creative minds behind Finishing
the Game, the latest film by the
director Justin Lin, weren't looking for just one. They wanted 100. Last
month casting directors made calls, posted email messages and talked to
friends, and friends of friends. This week the look-alikes who made the cut
gathered at the David Henry Hwang Theater in the Little Tokyo district for the
first shoot. They'd been asked to wear 1970s-era clothes — the result was a
satiny sea of young Asian men in leisure suits and too-tight polyester slacks.
The filmmakers fell short of their goal of 100 Lees, but more than 50
actors and hopefuls showed up. None of them really looked like Bruce Lee.
Which was precisely the point, according to Lin, whose previous credits
include Better Luck Tomorrow and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo
Drift. "This is very much a comedy about denial. It's about putting
regular people in ridiculous situations, and seeing how they float."
Finishing the Game is a comedic take on the 1978 film Game of
Death, one of the most infamous in the martial arts canon. Soon after Lee's
death in 1973, producers wondered what to do with 40 minutes of usable film he
shot before Enter the Dragon made him an international star. The
solution: hire body doubles, hide their faces behind sunglasses and fake
beards, then fatten the whole thing with clips snatched from previous films,
even clips from Lee's own Hong Kong funeral. The finished product, which
includes about 12 minutes of Lee's original fight scenes, was grotesque.
Lin's fictionalized low-budget account, shot in documentary style,
follows those would-be Lees as they compete for the coveted lead in Game of
Death.
::TV NEWS::
America’s Got Brandy
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 4, 2006) *Is it that nothing else is on, or is
NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” really that entertaining? The show’s weekly dominance in
the
ratings proves people are turning in by the millions each week, prompting NBC
to announce the green light for a second season. But would those same viewers
run home to watch such acts as yodelers, grown men placing themselves into
giant bubbles, fools laying on nails, ventriloquists, jugglers and Rappin’
Granny if the show aired in the fall opposite some real (and not reality)
competition? “My four-year-old is the biggest fan of the show,” said Brandy, one of the show’s
judges, during its session at the Television Critics Association press tour
last month. “She loves seeing different things. Because children, they just
like new things all the time. So she’s like, at the TV, just smiling and
excited all the time.” If anything, “America’s Got Talent” has been credited as
one of the few shows in primetime that the whole family can watch together.
Executive produced by “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, it borrows all of
“Idol’s” winning elements: a surly British judge who tells it like it is, a
warm-hearted African American female judge who takes a more supportive tone
when criticizing the talent, and an affable third judge who keeps a smile on
his face and plays to the audience. Nestled in
the middle chair between judges Piers Morgan and David Hasselhoff, Brandy says
she enjoys getting to “speak her mind” about the spectacles that unfurl before
her – that’s if she doesn’t smack the buzzer midway through to end things
early. Her strategy in judging talent? “I just try to stay in my own lane, I
just try to stick with my opinion,” Brandy says. “I don’t want to be influenced
by anyone else. That’s really what I’m working on, just confirming what I say
and sticking to it. Because, sometimes you do get influenced by sympathy and
you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings.”
The show will make one winning act a million dollars richer, but for Brandy –
who hasn’t seen this much industry interest in her since “Moesha” went off the
air in 2001 – the experience has been priceless. “I’ve
had so many different things come my way,” Brandy told us after “Talent’s” TCA
panel. “I’m happy about it because it’s a lot of fashion stuff. I just did a
fashion shoot with OK magazine that I was really excited about because I’ve
never looked like that before. I was like, ‘Oh my God. I need to do more
fashion shoots. This is so much fun.’” While promoting “America’s Got Talent,”
which ends its first season on Aug. 16, Brandy was also able to do several talk
shows, and thereby, take further advantage of the sudden returning spotlight.
The 27-year-old single mom was one of the first to sit in Star Jones Reynolds’
vacated seat on “The View” and had a rather precarious exchange with Barbara
Walters that left many African American female viewers uncomfortable. Brandy
had barely taken her seat before Walters stuck her fingers in the girl’s curly
shoulder-length locks and asked if the hair was hers. “I was like, ‘Let me
think of something to come back with, ‘cause she ‘bout to ask me something that
I’ll have to have a comeback,’” Brandy said, channelling the hood
ever-so-slightly. “And when she asked me what I knew she was going to ask me, I
had a comeback and it worked.” After a few “uh…uhs…,” Brandy looked at Barbara
on her right, rolled her eyes toward Joy Behar on her left and said, “It ain’t
a wig. …Okaaay?” “The audience loved it, the people laughed and I felt good
about it,” Brandy said. But the experience may not be enough to encourage the
McComb, Mississippi native to take a permanent position on the morning
chatfest, should Walters extend the offer.
“Just out of honour for the fact that Barbara Walters is a legend, I would
really have to give that some serious thought,” Brandy said of the hypothetical
situation. “But, when I think about it to myself, it’s just really a tough
commitment to put myself into because of everything I want to do. I can’t tour
and be the music artist I want to be if I do ‘The View.’ I definitely can’t do
‘Got Talent’ and all of the other things I want to do.” One thing Brandy’s been
dying to do for years is nab a starring role on the Great White
Way. “I have a great idea for a musical that I really,
really wanna do,” she tells us. “And before I retire, which is I don’t know
when, I wanna do Broadway.” Brandy says she’s not sure when she’ll
get back to doing music, but it still ranks as her first love and she always
has it in the back of her mind. “That’s what makes me happy the most,” she
explains. “I can’t wait to get back into it. It would just complete everything
that’s going on in my life right now.”
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BET News Guides One-Year Look Back On Disaster, Recovery And
Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina
Source: Universal Music Canada
WASHINGTON (August 7, 2006) – Her destructive winds,
damaging
waves and torrential rains ended long ago. But the tragedy and indelible marks
of Hurricane Katrina remain. As the Gulf Coast region nears the one-year
anniversary of the greatest natural disaster in modern U.S. history, BET News today launches a
month-long series of daily news briefs and testimonials capturing life in the
aftermath for Louisiana and Mississippi as the rebuilding continues. S.O.S: SAVING OURSELVES – ONE YEAR LATER is a poignant reprise by BET News that culminates on Tuesday,
September 5 with a primetime special that takes a probing look at the region’s
future. BET News has assembled a cadre of celebrities, community leaders,
government officials and local citizens to lend voice and perspective to its
series. These individuals either lived in or traveled to the ravaged
region. Some were directly impacted by the storm, while others
contributed time and money to assist in the relief effort. Noteworthy
participants in the series include actress Holly Robinson-Peete; rappers
David Banner and Ludacris; gospel duo Mary Mary; hip-hop
mogul Russell Simmons; religious leader Bishop Paul Morton; New
Orleans activist Kalamu ya Salaam; Mary Joseph of the New Orleans
Children’s Defense Fund; and many others.
“Those powerful images of death and devastation in New Orleans and the
surrounding region will be remembered forever,” said Nina Henderson Moore, BET
Executive Vice President of News & Public Affairs. “The rebuilding
effort since then has progressed, yet been controversial at many levels.
This series will do more than just revisit the past. There are still many
unanswered questions about the local impact, especially among African
Americans; the government’s failures in the face of disaster; and the
vulnerability of the area to future hurricanes. Ultimately, our series is
part of BET’s ongoing effort to keep the public focus on this region and its
recovery.” In addition to the televised series, BET viewers
can access extended coverage of the Hurricane Katrina anniversary and recovery
at www.BET.com.
On-line content includes news, features, chats with experts, opinion polls,
blogs, photo galleries and links to community organizations providing
assistance to the thousands of victims still needing help.
TV TIDBITS
Vivica Wants Morning Show
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 4, 2006) *Now that her Lifetime show “Missing”
is gone forever,
Vivica A. Fox has been taking meetings
around Los Angeles in an effort to hustle herself a talk show gig. According to
the Hollywood Reporter, the actress has been in talks with distributors to
pitch a syndicated daytime talk show that would be similar in tone to “The Tyra
Banks Show.” In the meantime, the “Kill Bill” star will appear in the upcoming
films “Caught on Tape,” opposite Ced the Entertainer; "Citizen
Duane," opposite Donal Logue; and "Kickin' It Old School,"
opposite Jamie Kennedy.
PCD on CW
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
*The Pussycat
Dolls will search for a new member of the
group through an eight-episode reality show to air on the new CW channel during
the 2006-07 season. Tentatively titled "The Search for the Next
Pussycat Doll," the series will feature a crew of hopefuls living together
and competing for the chance to become the seventh member of the group, whose
debut album, "PCD," has sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide. The
CW said that certain elements of the series will be broadcast live. A nationwide
search will be launched soon by executive producer Ken Mok (CW's
"America's Next Top Model").
Nick Cannon Signs Deal With MTV
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(Aug. 9, 2006) *MTV likes what they see in Nick
Cannon. The 26-year-old
producer and host of MTV’s sketch comedy/improv series "Nick Cannon
Presents Wild 'N Out" has signed a first-look production deal with the
network to develop, produce and appear in projects. "It's kind of cool for
MTV to trust me with a discretionary fund to go out and buy projects,"
Cannon said. "For them to actually see me as someone who can create and
put product on the network is really great." Cannon says he already has a
music reality series and another sketch comedy project lined up under the new
deal. MTV made a similar arrangement with Sean "Diddy" Combs and his
Bad Boy Entertainment in March 2005. In addition to the TV deal, Cannon also
signed a producing pact with MTV Films through which the Paramount-based label
has committed to purchase scripts and pitches with Cannon attached as a
producer. "The film component of the deal gives me an opportunity to write
and produce films (as possible starring vehicles)," said Cannon, a
screenwriter who sold one of his scripts, "Extra Protection," to
Universal Pictures for six figures last year with Will Smith's Overbrook
Entertainment producing. "Now I have a home to get my views out. It gives
me a chance to be a part of projects they already have but also bring my own
ideas to the table."
::THEATRE NEWS::
Satire, Romance And Some Frustration - Summerworks Theatre
Festival
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Kamal Al-Solaylee
(Aug. 4, 2006) This year's SummerWorks was barely an hour into its 11-day run and 47-play selection when
it proudly displayed its first sold-out
sign and waved a waiting list of more than 10 names eager to catch the first
performance of young playwright Hannah Moscovitch's The Russian Play
(***½). The fact that it was playing at the small backspace of Theatre
Passe Muraille may have had something to do with it, but this funny little play
mixes comedy and melodramatics with the nerve and style only the very young
(and in this case, female) know how to handle. Tightly directed by the
fast-rising Natasha Mytnowych, The Russian Play is built around a series
of cultural stereotypes and stock dramatic motifs. We're in Stalinist Russia as
a wisecracking narrator recounts the story of Sonya (both played by the
compelling Michelle Monteith), a young flower girl who falls in love with a married
gravedigger and then -- just as her illegitimate child dies and she faces
destitution and other Russian-inflected miseries -- becomes a mistress to a
well-connected but married man. Love, death, vodka, a Moscow jail and a
wandering violin player are the remaining elements of this ostensibly bleak
landscape. It's how Moscovitch and Mytnowych mix it that gives their play its
stylistic statement and cultural edge. Without tilting it into one camp or the
other, the two sustains a production that's both a satire of folkloric
storytelling traditions and a wistfully romantic story of tragic love and even
more tragic death. It's that rarest of all theatrical experiments: a clever
satire with a beating heart. I see from the press kit that The Russian Play
is to be featured in Harbourfront's showcase series Hatch next year. It's hard
to see how much more mileage can Moscovitch get out of it. The limitations of a
festival setting (with a running time of under 45 minutes) give it all the
punch it needs. Extend its perimeters and both the joke and the emotional
content may wear a little thin.
Baby Finger (**½), written and performed by Linda Griffiths, will also
be featured in another performance series next year: Vision to Voice at Theatre
Passe Muraille. This should give the consummate performer plenty of time to
revisit her text and figure out how to tell her beguiling story without beating
its metaphors to death or explaining its meanings as if her audience is too
dumb to get it on their own. She's on to something with this story of a
playwright and one "irrevocable" act of anger that leaves her with a
nearly severed baby finger. The writing has some unbelievably gorgeous twists
and turns that allow Griffiths to share some insights into both the healing
process and the healing industry (hospitals, clinics, physiotherapy etc.) in
both French and English Canada. "Suffering in French is so much
worse," the narrator says as she observes the state of St. Luke's Hospital
in Montreal. It's all anchored in the anxieties and insecurities of the artist,
and Griffiths orients her performance to that angle with some success. The
problem is that the writing comes with its own running commentary as the
significance of virtually each scene is spilled out, leaving us no room to connect
the dots or draw our own conclusions. Obsessions may be second nature to the
artist, but it may help Griffiths to consider her audience and leave them
something to obsess (okay, think) about at the end of the play.
Another hospital, this time in Toronto, is the setting for Tom Walmsley's new
play Delirium (**). It's a fascinating play that (legitimately and
mischievously) asks questions about the possibility of combining carnality with
spirituality. The central character is a young philanderer who has recently
undergone two life-changing experiences: liver transplant and conversion to
Catholicism. As three girlfriends and a sexually charged but pious nurse gather
around the man's bed, Walmsley liberally uses obscenities and citations from
the Gospels to argue his case. Too bad the young company in charge, with the
exception of Ben Mehl in the lead role, is not up to the challenge of staging
this heady mix. Emily Gerhard's direction is monotonous and the work of the
four women is indistinguishable. As I watched Delirium, I kept
fantasizing about seeing it in the hands of a stronger director and a cast of
some of Toronto's top-notch actresses. Only then will the rampant and
unapologetic sexuality of the piece find its place in the religious maze
Walmsley has set up for it.
SummerWorks continues at various venues until Aug. 13. For more information,
visit http://www.summerworks.ca or call 416-410-1048.
THEATRE NEWS
Hardison, Jones Join Cast Of Pasadena’s ‘Fences’
Excerpt from www.eurweb.com
(August 8, 2006) *Kadeem Hardison and Orlando Jones will join
Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett in California’s upcoming Pasadena
Playhouse run of August Wilson's drama Fences. The 1950-60's Pittsburgh-set drama follows the
struggle of a former Negro League baseball player who now finds himself working
as a garbage collector. Wendell Pierce (“The Boys of Winter”) and Victoria
Matthews (“Les Miserables”) are also in the production. "This
is the kind of incredible cast that a director dreams of and prays for.
This tremendous group of artists coming together for this production is a great
tribute to August Wilson and a genuine sign of the deep admiration and devotion
that his writing inspires in actors," said the venue’s artistic director
Sheldon Epps, according to Playbill News. "I know that this is a
combination of players who will produce genuine theatrical fireworks in this
beautiful and moving play." "This is our way of honouring August —
and also the brilliant Lloyd Richards, the director who helped create many of
his plays," concluded Epps. Both playwright Wilson and his
long-time collaborator Richards died in the last year. The revival is slated to
begin previews Aug. 25 and open Sept. 1 for a run scheduled through Oct. 1.
Tickets to Fences at the Pasadena Playhouse (39 South El Molino
Ave., Pasadena) are available by calling (626) 356-PLAY. For more information,
visit www.pasadenaplayhouse.org.
::OTHER NEWS::
Lips, Tongues And Making Out ... At The Art Museum
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Sarah Milroy
(Aug. 7, 2006) The art of kissing is the subject of two notable works on
show at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario this summer, and they bear close scrutiny. Not just for the
pleasure of watching two people in flagrante delicto — though the
vicarious pleasure is considerable — but because they allow us some time and
space to consider the delicious act which they celebrate. Andy Warhol's 54-minute
film Kiss — a compilation of several improvised on-camera kisses — is on
view as part of the current Warhol show, a dreamy interlude for foot-weary
gallery-goers who may want to wallow a while in its languid embrace. In a
gallery upstairs, tucked in behind the crusty Group of Sevens, a performance
work of the same name by Berlin-based artist Tino
Sehgal is concurrently under way. Warhol's Kiss
is one of the artist's most lyrical works. Like Sleep and Haircut,
the film documents an activity from daily life with a kind of cinematic
detachment — just set up the camera and let it roll — but the result ends up
being anything but clinical. Whether inspired by good drugs or good love
(or both), these couples look like castaways on a desert island, alone with
their bliss, each kiss seeming to erode the barriers between them.
Like many of Warhol's films, Kiss takes a beloved film genre as its
jumping-off point — here, Hollywood romance — with Warhol cutting away
everything extraneous and serving up only the juicy bits. As well, in its
flickering crudeness and abrupt use of fade-ins and fade-outs, the film evokes
the early experimental cinema of Edison and the Lumière brothers, as well as a
short Irwin-Rice film from 1896 of the same title, which featured a long kiss
by a pair of Broadway actors. If Warhol's Kiss is about kissing, it's
also about the history of the film medium. It's also about politics. Kiss features
male partners as well as one pairing of a black man and a white woman, which
was considered risqué at the time. Warhol's friend and collaborator Bob
Colacello also remembers that Warhol was inspired to make the film in response
to the censor board's proscription against kisses longer than three seconds in
duration. Here, the kisses are three minutes or more, often seeming endless.
Endless, too, are their variations, from playful teasing and nuzzling to
full-frontal plowing of the jaw-dislocating sort. It's all good — a
make-love-not-war finger salute to rigid American Puritanism, as fresh and delightful
today as the day it was made. Sehgal's Kiss, which was first performed
in 2002, consists of pairs of hired dancers and actors (they work in shifts,
one pair at a time, during gallery hours) who enact a carefully choreographed,
slow motion sequence of movements, mimicking great kisses from the history of
art: Rodin's immortal grapple hold, Munch's vampiric clutch, Klimt's
jewel-encrusted swoon, Koons's raunchy ride-'em- cowboy wrangle, Brancusi's
precisely equipoised hieratic embrace. Once the choreographed sequence is
completed — it takes about 16 minutes — the performers begin again, with the
male and female performers reversing the roles. It's the opposite of Warhol's
free-flowing love-in.
Apart from the two performers, who periodically stop to draw breath and
announce the title and date of the piece, the gallery is empty, and gallery
visitors tend to wander in accidentally, receiving no explanation from wall
panel or signage. This tends to separate the sheep from the goats; some flee in
confusion; others settle in for the show. This open-ended ambiguity is a
requirement of Sehgal's; he also forbids photography of his works in progress,
forswears the issuing of artist statements, and discourages advertising and the
giving of explanations to the press. These performances are to be extolled via
word of mouth, if the pun can be forgiven. The first in Toronto to hear about Kiss
were the city's community of actors and dancers, who were solicited to audition
in early summer. It was women who tended to respond to the call, deciding which
gents to invite along for the ride. “I got a phone call from Kay asking me how
I would feel about kissing her for 2½ hours a day down at the art gallery,”
says the elfin 27-year-old actor Adam Blocka. “I said: ‘Sure! Good times!' ”
His partner in art, Kay Grigar, is a curvaceous, pillowy-lipped blonde well
equipped for the task at hand (she's a dancer and freelance journalist new to
the city), and she is the more business-like of the two, focusing her comments
on the uniqueness of the museum environment as a performance space. She will
allow, though, that the experience is charged. “Intimacy is intimacy,” she says
with a shrug, “but looking in each other's eyes can be more intimate even than
the kissing.” Like Grigar and Blocka, the duo of Brenden Jensen and Meredith
Woodley are not a couple in real life, but they appear to be rising to the
challenge. She's a whippet-thin brunette; he's a tousle-haired,
broad-shouldered lad worthy of Caravaggio. “You do get caught up in it,” she confesses,
a little breathless at the end of her shift on the day that I visited, adding
that her boyfriend, a filmmaker, has struggled watching her in this role. “He
said to me: ‘The artist that I aspire to be is totally cool with this, but the
caveman in me is feeling really uptight.' ” Watching these two, you can see
why; there's a sinuosity to their body language that seems to exceed the strict
requirements of the job. “When you are kissing,” she says, “you can't really
deny the moment any longer. As soon as your lips touch, you can't fake it. We
had a talk at the beginning of the process,” she adds, “and we said to each
other, ‘How are we going to handle this? Are we going to go for it?' ” Clearly
they concurred in the affirmative. Still, it's a job. “I'm used to this kind of
thing from my work as a dancer,” Woodley says, ever the good sport. “There's
this lift in classical ballet where the guy basically has his hand shoved up
right in your crotch. You don't even think about it after a while.”
Andy Warhol: Supernova continues at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto
until Oct. 22. Tino Sehgal's Kiss continues during gallery hours until Aug. 20
(416-979-6660).
Why There's No Beer At The Book Club
Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -
Kate Taylor
(Aug. 5, 2006) With eager anticipation, the reader cracks open the
spine of a new novel. Relaxing into a deck chair with a tall drink at hand, or
perhaps, in cooler weather, sinking into a comfortable couch beside the fire,
the reader will visit faraway places, meet new people and experience different
lives. The reader will lose ... Care to pick a pronoun? If your guess
was that the reader was about to lose herself in the book, your instincts are
perfectly accurate: Both publishers and pollsters can tell you that readers of
fiction are more likely to be female. “Women read more, they read more novels,
they read earlier and they read later. Sixty-five to 70 per cent of the
[Canadian] book market is women,” observes Brad Martin, president of Random
House of Canada, adding that the American and European markets are probably
similar. “How many men do you know who are in a book group?” No surprise, then,
that when the federal Department of Canadian Heritage surveyed Canadian reading
habits last year, it found a distinct gender gap. Women accounted for 60 per
cent of the daily readers and 70 per cent of the heavy readers who had read 50
or more books in the last 12 months. Women also outnumbered men two to one as
regular readers of both classic and contemporary novels. The divide is not new:
The department's previous survey, in 1991, had found similar results, while
academics can trace the characterization of novel reading as a genteel — or
frivolous — female pursuit as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries. However,
the gender gap is both particularly pronounced and much debated these days,
partly because publishers have exploited it so successfully with their
marketing strategies, and partly because teachers and parents are so concerned
that boys lag behind girls in their literacy skills.
Publishers and educators say they don't like to generalize about the tastes of
half the population, but they will speculate as to why women prefer fiction,
and are ready to debate both the social and the literary implications. You
could hear, for example, the giggling and the teeth-gnashing from the two
British researchers who recently asked 400 prominent men, many of them involved
in culture or the media, which novels had helped them live their lives, and got
a crop of unenthusiastic answers including many references to J. D. Salinger's
classic coming-of-age novel, The Catcher in the Rye, and a few responses
asking “Does it have to be a novel?” Albert Camus's The Outsider was the
clear winner; only one book by a woman, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird,
made the list. Last year, when the same researchers asked an equal number of
female readers the question as the first part of this lighthearted project
organized by the Orange Prize for women's fiction, the women had gushed forth
titles written by both genders. They included books by Charlotte and Emily
Brontë, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Jeannette
Winterson, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Marcel Proust, Gustav
Flaubert and Joseph Heller. A few even mentioned The Lord of the Rings and
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. “I was appalled by that recent poll,”
laughs Vancouver writer and literary critic George Fetherling. “You could
visualize them as they drummed their fingers and pulled their scruffy beards:
Do I know a novel? Yeah, I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 12; it
must be a great novel.” Fetherling complains that men only read those novels in
which they can directly identify with the protagonist, while women will read
about people different from themselves. That's the most common explanation of
the phenomenon: Reading fiction involves empathizing with the characters, and
thus draws on women's traditional emotional strengths. Men, on the other hand,
turn to non-fiction to learn about the world around them. “While men read and
many men read voraciously, they tend to read non-fiction, history, finance and
sports,” observes Doug Pepper, president and publisher of McClelland &
Stewart. “I wish it were more evenly split but it does make it easier for us
because we can identify our market.”
Indeed, publishers have successfully sold women so many pink-covered
“chick-lit” novels about the relationship travails of young working women, they
are now tentatively branching out in to “lad lit.” The genre includes stories
both about men's lives and relationships, such as Mike Gayle's My Legendary
Girlfriend and Mark Barrowcliffe's Infidelity for First-Time Fathers
and the bawdy non-fictional essays of Tucker Max, author of I Hope They
Serve Beer in Hell. Max is a bestseller, but most lad lit hasn't made
much impression in North America, although Pepper believes there is a growing
market for intelligent male fiction by writers such as Nick Hornby or David
Sedaris. He wonders, half-jokingly, if men could not be encouraged to form
beer-drinking reading groups. Meanwhile, Fetherling reports: “The male-only
book club has sprung up. It's viewed the same way the Vancouver papers view the
existence of nude yoga: It's a sign of the times, and should we be worried
about it?” Women, on the other hand, have turned their ubiquitous
white-wine-fuelled discussions of fictional characters into the contemporary
equivalent of the Tupperware party. Publishers know the book club ladies remain
the core market for novels, and behave accordingly. At Random House, for
example, Martin is watching sales of Ian McEwan's 2005 novel, Saturday,
about a day in the life of a prosperous London neurosurgeon. It has sold well
in Canada — but not as well as McEwan's previous book, Atonement, a
wartime story of a young girl's disastrous meddling in adult affairs. The
cover of the Canadian edition of Atonement featured a sepia-toned image
of a girl, while Saturday showed the silhouette of a man — and Martin is
now debating reprinting Saturday without the male figure on the cover.
“When we package a book, we say, ‘Okay, who is the audience?' and we design a
cover for them,” Martin says. That is the kind of story that makes Toronto
writer Russell Smith see red. “It's become a self-fulfilling cycle,” he says.
“If you are a young man and you pick up the book section, your primary
impression of literature in English is going to be the kind of thing your
mother's book club reads. . . . Literature has veered away from story to be
about psychology; male writers are as responsible for that as women . . . but I
do think men are interested in things, why things work, why things happen, and
men look for more comedy in fiction. We are bored by the earnestness of
contemporary fiction.”
Smith finds Canadian fiction particularly earnest and says the typical Canadian
novel is one that appeals to women with a story of family, memory and loss.
He's concerned that the success of these “women's novels” is limiting the kind
of fiction that gets published here. Martha Kanya-Forstner, editorial director
at Doubleday Canada, tends to agree, saying writers such as Carol Shields and
Alice Munro, who specialize in stories about domestic life and relationships,
have shaped the image of Canadian fiction. “They have chosen as their subject
matter things women can easily relate to, and so that becomes the novel in
Canada,” she says. “It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; we are a very
conservative business. If you are publishing a grammar book, you ask ‘What's
the next Eats, Shoots & Leaves?' ” she says, referring to Lynne
Truss's best-selling guide to punctuation. Both Smith and Kanya-Forstner argue
that men are drawn to books about ideas, and both think publishers have failed
to recognize that in their marketing schemes for fiction. “Guys look for
ideas,” says Smith. “Very intelligent men I talk to, none of them read fiction.
It's girl stuff: hundreds and hundreds of pages of feelings. To think that no
one perceives fiction as being about ideas is depressing.” Both genders should
be reading books about feelings, and books filled with factual information,
argues American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, a law professor at the University
of Chicago. “It's very important for people to learn to think about the
inner life of people, people who are like themselves and different from
themselves. Thinking about people different from oneself is fundamental to
democracy,” says Nussbaum, whose 1995 book, Poetic Justice: The Literary
Imagination and Public Life, argued that political leaders should read
novels to learn empathy. “The novel is particularly good at getting you to see
emotions in context ... and that's a very important political thing.” Nussbaum
traces the roots of female novel reading back to the 19th century, where, she
argues, women were often excluded from reading history, politics and economics
— serious subjects reserved for men. “When women were relegated to the novel,
it was not thought to be an intellectual thing. You couldn't get a degree in
English literature at Oxford in the 19th century.”
Today, of course, you can get a degree in English lit from Oxford to Ottawa,
but more women than men enrol in those programs, part of a gender gap in
literacy skills that increasingly alarms educators. Test scores show female
students proving more literate than males right from Grade 1 reading class all
the way to English 101. “The boys subconsciously reject reading as a female
activity,” says Trevor Gambell, associate dean of graduate studies at the
University of Saskatchewan and an expert in English education. He suggests that
the predominance of female teachers from daycare through grade school, and the
preference for fiction as schoolroom reading material, has given boys the
impression that reading is for girls. Educators are working hard to turn boys
on to books. The Toronto District School Board, for example, invites members of
the Argonauts football team into Grade 7 and 8 classes to promote reading — but
there are those who think such differences may be innate. Simon Baron-Cohen, a
British psychologist who studies autism, argues there are fundamental
differences between the male and female brains; the former has developed the
capacity for understanding systems whereas the latter specializes in empathy.
If he's right, the guys' book club may be destined to remain forever the nude
yoga of the literary scene.
Globe writer Kate Taylor is the author of Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen,
a novel about family, memory and loss that was read by lots of women
::SPORTS NEWS::
SPORTS TIDBITS
Tiger Roars To 50th Tour Win
Excerpt from The Toronto Star
(Aug. 7, 2006) The red shirt was familiar and so was the result. Tiger
Woods won his 50th PGA
Tour title yesterday, shooting his
fourth-straight six-under 66 for a three-stroke victory over Jim Furyk in the
Buick Open in Grand Blanc, Mich. Woods reached a season-low 24 under and
made a career-high 28 birdies in the tournament to hold off Furyk — who closed
with a 64 — for his fourth win of the year and a cheque of $864,000 (U.S.).
Woods became the seventh member of the PGA Tour's 50-win club after
improving to 21for21 when leading by more than one stroke after three rounds.
The 30-year-old Woods beat Jack Nicklaus' record pace to the milestone, which
Nicklaus reached in 1973 at the age of 33. "That's pretty cool to
get to 50," Woods said. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd
get to 50." Woods bogeyed the 12th hole, allowing Furyk to tie him
briefly, but took the lead alone for good at 13 when his approach from 105
yards landed close enough for a tap-in birdie. At 15, Woods' birdie gave him a
two-shot lead and essentially clinched his second Buick Open victory.
Calgary's Stephen Ames recorded a one under in the fourth round and
finished 16 under overall to finish tied for 16th, eight strokes behind Woods.
Mike Weir of Brights Grove, Ont., was one over yesterday and 14 under overall
to finish tied for 20th. Ian Leggatt of Cambridge, Ont., shot a four-over
76 in the final round and was even par for the tourney. Vijay Singh had a
chance to become the first player to win three straight Buick Opens — and four
overall — when he started the day three shots back. But Singh closed with a 70
to tie for 11th at 17 under. "I never got any momentum going,"
he said. "I drove the ball beautifully, but couldn't make anything."
Rogers Cup: Federer, Nadal Take First
Bows
Excerpt from The Toronto Star - Doug
Smith (Additional files from Canadian
Press)
(Aug. 8, 2006) The last time tennis fans saw Roger
Federer in action, he
was hoisting the championship plate after a dominant run through the fortnight
at the all-England Lawn and Tennis Club. Tonight, fans in Toronto will
see how he’s handled the idle time since his Wimbledon triumph. Federer,
the most dominant player in the game today, plays his first match at the Rogers Cup against unseeded – and
likely over-matched – Paul-Henri Mathieu of France in the marquee matchup of
Day 2 of the tournament at the Rexall Centre at York University.
Federer’s main nemesis – at least if the matches are on clay – also opens
his week today as No. 2 seed Rafael Nadal faces Nicolas Massu of Chile in the
afternoon session. In early first-round action today, 16th-seeded Tommy
Haas of Germany defeated Max Mirnyi 6-3, 6-3, Jan Hernych of the Czech Republic
beat Nicolas Mahut of France 6-3, 6-3 and Germany’s Denis Gremelmayr defeated
Kristof Vliegen of Belgium 7-6 (2), 6-2. The men are using the tournament as
one of the last preparatory events before the season’s final Grand Slam – the
U.S. Open. Because of the proximity to the early September event, the Toronto
tournament has attracted one of its strongest fields ever, with only Andy
Roddick and Andre Agassi, both out with injuries, missing from the field.
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