SAG And AMPTP In Open Warfare & other

Lemon-flavoured melons soon

2008-09-04T22:08:00.001-07:00

Would you like a lemony watermelon?
How about a strawberry-flavoured

Hollywood legend Tony Curtis was in Montreal to promote new documentary

2008-08-25T18:24:00.001-07:00

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What Else You Missed at All Points West: The Vulture Grab Bag

2008-08-15T19:07:00.001-07:00

From left, top: Grizzly Bear, Girl Talk, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper; Bottom: Nicole Atkins, The Go! Team, Kings of Leon, CSSPhotos: Getty Images

Maybe you didn't have the cash for the tickets (despite everyone in your office e-mailing last week about extra seats for sale). Maybe you were worried about the weather (although it was mostly perfect). Maybe you're just a sad loser like us. Whatever your excuse for missing All Points West, why not read a maddening litany of all the other awesome concerts � besides Radiohead � you didn't see?

The Go! Team

The dynamic Brighton-based dance band kicked off the festival Friday afternoon with loud pulsing beats and exercise steps to "Get It Together" and "The Power Is On," the American Apparel�clad singer Ninja prancing around like a renegade Spice Girl and calling out to the crowd, "Anyone who isn't dancing is going to get fat!"

Girl Talk
Gregg Gillis blew the early-evening air wide-eyed open when he and his ragtag entourage of dancers, B-boys, drag queens, models, and hipsters packed the stage, throwing beach balls and glitter into a jacked-up crowd. The Pittsburgh combine master let loose a barrage of prodigious pairings: Youngbloodz�cum�folk stone with "Damn!"/"The Weight," old vs. new-school hip-hop in "No Diggity"/"The Whisper Song," and an extremely X-rated interlude about oral sexual practice mashed up with the MacBook Air song. A giant balloon fish weaved its means through outstretched arms as Sinead O'Connor's entreaty to her lover "Nothing Compares 2 U" mixed with Shawnna's equally emotional "Gettin' Some Head."

Kings of Leon

The Nashville rockers brought their fieriest guitar chords to the main stagecoach like it was a stadium, playing a sexed-up set which included "Crawl," "Happy Alone" and "King of the Rodeo" as the blind panned between singer Caleb Followill's furrowed brow and drummer Nathan Followill's pink-bubblegum bubble-blowing.

Jack Johnson

Since the Hawaiian folk cradle Johnson has added multi-instrumentalist Zach Gill to the lineup, the sound is richer, Gill's piano adding a bluesy jazz vibe that makes sun-soaked favorites like "Poor Taylor" and "Bubble Toes" sound new again. Those who'd braved a day of rainwater got a pleasant surprise when exceptional guests began appearing. Trey Anastasio wandered over from the future stage to play awesomely on "Mudfootball." Matt Costa spent all of "Fall Line" a verse or two behind.

Grizzly Bear

It was fine afternoon fare, the crooning harmonies mingling with the odour of funnel cakes as the Brooklyn-based Grizzlies played longtime favorites like "Knife," with some of the clearest and tightest vocals of the festival.

CSS

Strobe lights, neon tights, boas � it all came together in a burst of energetic electro-pop with the Brazilian beat-boppers and the crowd saltation along to "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" and "Alala," upraised men rising and falling in rhythm to instrumental breaks. Lead singer Lovefoxxx is that girl at the bar world Health Organization has more than fun than everyone else.

Nicole Atkins

Your next indie beat out from Jersey had Karen O's smoky, dragged-out vocals perfectly paired with quirky set choices like "Brooklyn's on Fire," which crescendoed into a fist-pumping testimonial to the borough.

K'naan

The socially conscious knocker spent the last trey months sample distribution Ethiopian soulfulness and recording in Marley's old house, and decided to ploughshare a few tracks with the crowd. The sweetness of his voice on a cappella tracks juxtaposed with the bitter images of violence and corruption in Jamaica.

Duffy

The pint-size performer from Wales has gotten a luck of flack catcher for stressful to be the adjacent Winehouse, but "Rehab" ripoff "Mercy" by, which face it, is fun and danceable, Duffy chose to shine the spotlight non solely on those gravelly vocals, but her distinctive pitch and penchant for introspective lyrics as well, showcasing songs like "Warwick Avenue," and the title track turned her album Rockferry.

The Felice Brothers

Maybe the best faux-hillbilly band round (c'mon, one of them is from Staten Island), the go down, although odd, deserves serious credit for their rub-a-dub fun-time song lyrics like "I poured some whisky into my whiskey," and the off-kilter sense of humor showcased on a Dylan-esque lay to a long-lost puss named Ruby, complete with requisite feline screeching into the mike.
�Lauren Salazar

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Game of Two Halves binned

2008-08-07T18:31:00.001-07:00

It's game over for the Game Of Two Halves.

Sunday News has been told the full-time

Ivan Drago Still "Must Break You"

2008-06-27T21:35:00.001-07:00

Rocky Balboa better watch his back -- The Siberian Bull is ready for another run.

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Hendrix's Cousin in Black, Blue and Purple Haze

2008-06-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

Jimi Hendrix's cousin Riki was seriously injured on Monday -- and it wasn't from crowd surfing.

Riki Hendrix was painting the Sudden Dunes Resort in Cali. when he fell 20 ft. off scaffolding -- breaking his pelvis, a few ribs and puncturing a lung. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital where he is still under care.

Riki, who says painting is just a side gig, tells TMZ he can't wait to heal up and go back on tour.

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Gershon Mum on Bill But Big on Herself

2008-06-14T00:14:00.001-07:00

Gina Gershon was quick on the trigger when it came to blasting Vanity Fair for suggesting she hooked up with Bill Clinton. But Gina took the 5th out in public yesterday.
Well, not exactly the 5th. She was pimpin' out something.

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Louisiana's Le Roux

2008-06-13T21:25:00.001-07:00

Artist: Louisiana's Le Roux

   Genre(s):
Blues

Discography:

Brother to the Blues

Year: 2006
Tracks: 13

My Sixth Shadow

The Eye (2002) - 6/3/2008

2008-06-13T21:24:00.001-07:00

Of all the horror films that spring to mind while watching the Pang brothers’ stylish if only sporadically frightening The Eye, none is more amusing than Body Parts. That moronic vehicle for B-movie heartthrob Jeff Fahey concerned a man whose decapitated arm is replaced by the appendage of a serial killer on death row, and which eventually turns out to still be controlled by said killer, who wants his arm back! It was one of the 1990s' most inane “it’s so awful that it’s come back around to being good again” guilty pleasures, and features a truly inspired performance by Fahey’s arm, which flails about wildly under the possessed guidance of its original owner. Even in some quarters today, unexpectedly smacking someone next to you can easily be explained by the simple phrase, “Sorry, it was my serial killer arm.”

But I digress. Like Fahey’s insipidly entertaining film, The Eye is about transplanted body parts that can’t seem to shake the influence of their former hosts. Mun (Angelica Lee) has been blind since the age of two, but a recent cornea transplant has miraculously given her the gift of sight. The only problem is that, along with sight, Mun seems to have gained a “second sight” as well: She can see sinewy, indistinct figures (apparently death’s bureaucratic minions) taking people away right before they die, and even sees a mysterious stranger’s face when she looks in the mirror. This prescience is confounding and terrifying for Mun, and she seeks the counsel of a psychotherapist named Dr. Wah (Lawrence Chou) to help her escape this terrible curse. In typical ghost story fashion, what both learn is that these spirits are hanging around their former haunts because they have unfinished business in the real world, and that it’s up to Mun to help them complete their last earthly tasks and send them safely on their way to happy dead-person land.

Visually, the Pang brothers’ (Bangkok Dangerous) latest is both sleekly ominous and hopelessly derivative, with every ghoul a mere rehash of The Sixth Sense’s wandering dead and everything else – the film’s bland female heroine and useless male sidekick, washed-out steel grey color palette, jarring musical cues, and hopelessly familiar story involving a dead witch whose spirit continues to haunt the living – blatantly lifted from Ringu (remade for U.S. audiences last year as The Ring). But if the film’s lack of originality is its most problematic aspect, The Eye’s ultimate failure is simply a dearth of genuinely startling moments. Edited with razor-sharp precision, the film elicits most of its scares from delightfully sudden and discomforting changes in perspective, and a few of the ghosts – most notably one haunting the calligraphy school Mun attends – manage to provide a jolt. Yet it’s disappointing to find the film’s most deliciously terrifying surprise occurs during the film’s opening credits.

One could make the case that Mun’s plight reveals the futility (or at least imperfection) of sight, and the Pang Brothers do seem interested in rebuking the notion that physical (or extrasensory) sight somehow grants people greater knowledge of, or control over, the world around them. With a film like The Eye, however, the primary objective is to terrify the pants off of moviegoers as frequently as possible, and, despite a few bone-rattling shocks, those looking for a really good ocular-themed scare are still better off picking up a copy of Luis Bu�uel’s surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou.

Aka Jian gui.

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Chicago - Movie Reviews The Incredible Hulk 2

2008-06-13T21:20:00.001-07:00

While early reviews of The Incredible Hulk
mostly concluded that the new version was a great improvement over Ang Lee's 2003
Hulk (as we reported Thursday), several critics are expressing disagreement
with that assessment today. Among them is Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times
who calls the Ang Lee film "rather brilliant" and says that the new one "sidesteps
the intriguing aspects of Hulkdom and spends way too much time in, dare I say, noisy
and mindless action sequences."

13/06/2008

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Guitarist Bill Frisell: It all just comes together, brilliantly

2008-06-13T21:19:00.001-07:00

Concert Preview

Bill Frisell just released a dandy new album, "History, Mystery," and — lucky for us — the peripatetic, Seattle-based guitarist plays his hometown Monday and Tuesday, as well.

Not that there will necessarily be much crossover between the album and the gig.

Seattle violist Eyvind Kang is a common denominator, but the album's for octet, and the Seattle date features an intriguing guitar-viola-drums trio, featuring Denver drummer Rudy Royston.

"I had this thing in my mind, to try this with just Eyvind and him, without bass," said Frisell earlier this week, adding one of his characteristically modest, self-deprecating caveats. "I don't know how to explain why, but I think it might work."

Indeed. Most Frisell projects do tend to work rather well, from his groundbreaking album in the 1990s, "Nashville," to his puckish collaborations with cartoonist Gary Larson and his electronically noisy, Grammy-winning 2005 album, "Unspeakable."

That's why Frisell consistently wins both the Down Beat critics and readers polls, and why he is often cited as the most influential guitarist since Jimi Hendrix.

Frisell's woozy, reverbed sound and reverse attack — which makes each note sound like it balloons to life rather than being plucked — and his deft use of digital delay have become standard operating procedure for a whole generation of guitarists.

The new album showcases orchestrations for three string players (Kang, Jenny Scheinman and Hank Roberts); two horns (Ron Miles, trumpet; Greg Tardy, tenor saxophone and clarinet); and rhythm section.

The textures are delicate, folkish and exquisitely distributed over often-minor keys, with the mysterious, slow-motion quality of a daydream. Most are originals, but on Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," Frisell extracts a delicious, organlike sound from the horns.

Themes surface and resurface throughout the two-CD album, though Frisell says it was not conceived as integrated work.

"I'm not one of those guys that has some preconceived, big-picture thing before it happens," he confessed. "I'm just going along and these little pieces are appearing, and I put them together."

Much of the material, however, does derive from collaborations with the whimsical Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring. Other pieces include short cues for an NPR radio show, "Stories From the Heart of the Land," plus tunes Frisell just thought would "fit," like Thelonious Monk's "Jackie-ing." Most of it was recorded live.

"Some things almost came out of having a jam session," Frisell said. "[Jim] would come over to my house and I'd play and he'd draw."

For all this purported haphazardness, the music hangs together beautifully.

"I like the idea that people can listen to it and make up their own story," he said.

In Seattle, the trio may play some of the tunes from the album, but that will get decided on stage. Frisell says he is particularly excited to be playing with Royston.

"I met Rudy in Denver in the early '90s," said the guitarist, who also hails from the Mile High City. "He's just this fantastic drummer. But for quite a while he didn't want to leave town. He taught school. More recently, he moved to the East Coast, and he really just wants to play out now. That's been fantastic. We played Jazz Alley last summer and we just recently played at the Vanguard [in New York] and went to England. I have a real strong hookup with Eyvind, so hopefully it'll all connect up."

Oh, don't worry, Bill. It will.

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com

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Lucy Kaplansky

2008-06-13T21:18:00.001-07:00

Artist: Lucy Kaplansky

   Genre(s):
Pop
   Folk

Discography:


The Red Thread

   Year: 2004
Tracks: 10


Every Single Day

   Year: 2001
Tracks: 11

When Lucy Kaplansky was 18 years previous, she appalled her neighbors in the Hyde Park area approximate the University of Chicago when, instead of going to college, she went to New York City with her fellow to become a folksinger. Fifteen years later, having suit a clinical psychologist as substantially as a sought-after dyad and harmony singer, she made another surprising decision: she gave up her private practice session and her attitude at a New York hospital to act on a full-time tattle calling.

Haggard to Greenwich Village in the late '70s by the revitalization of the folk music scene, she became a steady at Gerde's Folk City. By 1982, she was a fellow member of the CooP (later Fast Folk) and was featured on nine-spot of the group's "melodious magazines," along with Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, Richard Shindell, and others. By 1983, however, Kaplansky had enrolled in New York University with the calculate of becoming a psychologist. Well known on the folk scene for her crystalline harmonies, Kaplansky american ginseng harmony vocals on Nanci Griffith's Lonesome Star State of Mind and Little Love Affairs albums and performed in New York clubs as a duet with Colvin while earning her Ph.D. from Yeshiva University. But when she and Colvin attracted attention from disc companies, Kaplansky declined, decorous a staff psychologist at a New York hospital and establishing a private pattern piece Colvin recorded her first base three albums for Columbia Records.

As a record of what Lucy had accomplished on the tribe scene, and to dedicate Colvin a chance to strain her hand at production, the two collaborated on Kaplansky's first album, The Tide, comprising trinity of Kaplansky's have compositions and a collection of trite covers, including songs by Richard Thompson, Sting, and Robin Batteau. By 1994, when The Tide was released by Red House Records, Kaplansky distinct to shift gears once again and turn a full-time touring folksinger. She exhausted much of the next few eld playing the folk circuit of coffeehouses, church halls, and festivals, accompanying herself on guitar and playacting in concert with Shindell and Gorka. In 1996, Red House Records released her second base album, Flesh and Bone, produced by Anton Sanko (Vega's Solitude Standing and Days of Open Hand). It includes 8 original songs (co-written with Kaplansky's hubby, film maker Richard Litvin), as well as duets with Shindell and Gorka. Ten Year Night followed in 1999. Every Single Day appeared in 2001 on Red House Records, with Bolshevik Thread in 2004 and Over the Hills in 2007, both besides on Red House.

Jessica "So Nervous" About Country Disc

2008-06-13T21:16:00.001-07:00

With the release of her new single, "Come On Over," the countdown is on until Jessica Simpson's country album hit shelves in September, and the pop star is definitely feeling the pressure.

�I am so nervous," she tells Extra. "I know this is a part of me that people are going to see that they�ve been waiting to see and I�ve been waiting to let out so it�s very exciting.�

Also exciting is her new purchase -- the 27-year-old recently bought digs in Sin City, now her home away from home. �I honestly feel like it was a great place to put my money.�

The city has certainly been good to her. Jess once won $7,000 playing blackjack and was "handing out hundreds, left and right.�

The Texas native was back in Vegas over the weekend for the Palms Palace opening, where her new brother-in-law, Pete Wentz, DJed the party, and Jessica had full faith in the Fall Out Boy for bringing out the big guns on the turntable.

�DJ P did a good job at the wedding. He picked the play list so I trust him tonight," she says.

As for Pete, DJing was the furthest thing from his mind. The dad-to-be was still basking the the glow of his marriage to Ashlee Simpson.

�The best part of being married is I get to hang out with this girl [Ashlee] everyday," he tells Extra.

For more on Jessica and Pete, tune in to Extra tonight!

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SAG And AMPTP In Open Warfare

2008-06-13T21:15:00.001-07:00

The Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers each issued blistering statements about the other's negotiating tactics Thursday that suggested that the "de facto strike" that currently has stalled motion picture production in Hollywood will not be brought to an end soon. SAG's statement said that the union's leaders believe that "it is possible to complete negotiations and secure a fair deal before the expiration of the current agreement" on June 30. The statement was issued shortly after union president Alan Rosenberg remarked that he was skeptical that an agreement could be reached before that date. (Daily Variety reported that SAG's strategy may be to drag its feet in negotiations until July 7, the day when results of AFTRA's membership vote on a new contract are announced. SAG has authorized the expenditure of a reported $150,000 to "educate" AFTRA members about the perceived shortcomings of its deal with the AMPTP.) In its own statement, the AMPTP said, "Any effort by SAG to drag out these negotiations past June 30 would be a disservice to the people in this industry whose livelihoods are being put on hold. SAG's inability to close this deal has already put the industry into another de facto strike."

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