Movies.ie

A special mention to the Irish based movie website Movies.ie.
The site features listings for cinemas and movie screening times all over Ireland, trailers of new and forthcoming movies, reviews of current movies as well as a large archive, all of which are rated by the readers of the site, who can also maintain their own personal movie blog within the site.
There is daily updated movie news so all the brand new info on Captain America, the Iron Man Sequel and other casting and production news can be accessed on the website’s opening page.
Almost every day now there are interviews with stars in current movie releases. This week there are interviews with the following stars: Audrey Tatou (“Priceless”), Edward Norton (“The Incredible Hulk”), Adam Deacon (“Adulthood”), Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel (“The Happening”) and Keira Knightley (“The Edge Of Love”). The interview with Keira is here.
A great feature of the site is where it offers it’s readers the chance to see preview screenings. recently all of these have been previews shown in cinemas in Dublin’s city centre.
In the last three weeks I have gotten to see Gone Baby Gone and The Incredible Hulk” through these preview screenings.
The current preview offer is for the new Angelina Jolie and James McEvoy, guns and fast cars movie; Wanted. That offer is still on line as of today Wednesday.
What I like about these preview screenings is that the movies to date have been commercial movies which are ones that usually become the biggest hits of the Summer and year ahead. “Iron Man” being just one of the films that audiences got to see at least a week before the film’s general release date.
Movies.ie seems to be a website that caters to people who simply love to be entertained when they choose to go to movie. There is also full coverage of arthouse cinema as well so the balance is there while the snobbery isn’t.
The Movies.ie website is here.

Little Miss Confident

Robyn has been announced as one of the support acts on Madonna’s Sweet & Sticky tour. Robyn will play support at 9 venues starting in Nice on August 26th. There are no plans for her to play support in the UK where she recently toured as a solo artist. The full details of those European tour dates are here.

Last year I went to see Robyn live in concert and a review of that show is below. She is amazing in concert and the combination of seeing her and Madonna on the same day, well, all I can say is you, lucky, lucky people.
The review below was previously published on my other blog All The Way To New York.

Andreas Kleerup is fiddling with the amp, he turns the volume way up and there is a whoomp! of sound, the crowd are knocked back and there is a collective burst of laughter, my ears are like something on a supersonic plane, I turn to my friend and say “We’ll end up in St. James!”.
Saturday night in Dublin’s The Village and Kleerup, the music behind the voice of Robyn are playing, their songs, mostly instrumental, so far are ok, but the sound isn’t great and then they have a moment of perfection in the shape of the song “Thank you for Nothing”. There is a loop video of scenes from “Miami Vice”, the original TV show, playing on a screen behind Kleerup. I watch the screen thinking “wasn’t Don Johnson beautiful!”, the music though is subliminally art- techno gorgeous. On his myspace page Andreas lists Giorgio Moroder as an influence but there is also Fleetwood Mac and Michael McDonald, music heaven to me. The last song Andreas plays is a droning version of “Wonderful World”, dedicated to Phil Lynott.
There is a lengthy wait until Robyn appears. All week I wondered what she would look like, would she be dressed as an astronaut or a potted plant or even a yellow road digger as pictured above, but no, none of these, those photographs and images are all just for publicity.
Robyn bounds out onto the tiny stage in a leather jacket, tight skirt, tights and a wonder bra enhancced vest. She is Kylie small and you realise the best pop princesses are all tiny.
A few years ago I saw the Scissor Sisters in the same venue before all the hype exploded and they turned their debut album into a greatest hits album, this venue was also ideal for Robyn and you really hope, in equal measure, that more success will follow her and also that she keeps the sheer energy and little stick of dynamite quality that is evident every minute of her performance.
Andreas and his two bandmates turn out to be brilliant musicians. There are two factors that made this concert pop perfection, the first is that the crowd, a wide age mix adores her and knows all the words of her songs, something she comments on mid way and then there are the songs. They are tight and loud, Robyn knows she’s a good performer but this confidence is a mix of professionalism and someone still having fun after over a decade touring and creating. “Who’s that Girl” and “Handle Me” sound wonderful live.
There is also humour peppered throughout the show.
When she introduces “Keep the Fires Burning”, she says that the audience may recognise it as it was a song she wrote and became a hit for Beverley Knight, she says “I think she sings it really beautiful but I just think that I sing it better”. This may sound cocky on page but it was really funny hearing her day it in her little Disney demented character voice. She also reveals that the great “Bum like You” song was written after seeing a documentary on the writer Charles Bukowski, saying that he was awful to women but “always gets the woman”.
On her website it says that “Konichiwa Bitches” is her signature song but of course it isn’t, “With Every Heartbeat” is, sadly the sound went back to dodgy for this song but it still gave me goosebumps. “Cobrastyle” and “Crash and Burn Girl” were also simply amazing.
She did 4 encores, two sets of two, one a Swedish folk-song version of her American hit “Show me Love”, I had read recently that she prefers to just do new material but she said after the song, “it’s nice what you can do with an old song”,the last being acoustic versions of “With Every Heartbeat” and “Be Mine” accompanied just with Andreas on guitar. This seems proper as they have created the best pop song of the last 12 months in the form of “With Every Heartbeat”.
Another memorable moment was before the encore the crowd did a chant, myself and my friend couldn’t make it out at first but it was “one more tune!”.
Boys kissed boys and girls kissed girls and straight couples looked happy too and for one evening Robyn world was a sweet place to be.

Viva, etc

I never thought that I would feature Coldplay on this site but I really like their new American single “Viva La Vida”. I don’t think I will stop saying that downloads killed the charts as due to this reason the song wasn’t eligible to be a single in the UK where instead, “Violet Hill” is the current UK single, reaching only number 8 in the UK charts to date.
“Viva La Vida” is currently number 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the highest ever charting Coldplay song in the US.
I never really liked Coldplay, I always regarded them as a band that people who would say they listen to and ridicule someone like Celine Dion, while secretly listening to her music at home. I loved Trouble years ago but bar “Clocks” not really anything since then.
Viva La Vida is Coldplay suddenly becoming U2 in a scary, good way. The song is one that will sell out tour dates and I think it sounds almost Christmassy.
Their album”Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” is this week’s number one album in the UK, selling 300,000 copies there to date and has recieved generally good reviews.
The official video to “Viva la Vida” is not the one below.
But it should be.

Icehouse

The next song on my favourite songs from the 1980’s is also 25 years old this year.
In February 1983, “Hey Little Girl”, by the Australian band Icehouse was released and made it to number 17 in the UK singles chart. I always thought that the song had made it at least into the top ten but like today, many of the best songs are not always top ten hits. The song fared better in the band’s native Australia where it got to number 6 in the then ARIA charts, it was also a number one in Switzerland. I’m sure it is a song that many readers on this site know but for those who don’t “Hey Little Girl” is one of the most atmospheric and haunting songs from that decade.
It is one of the first singles I ever bought but sadly my copy has disappeared over the years. “Hey Little Girl” was taken from Icehouse’s second album “Primitive Man” which was originally recorded and released as a solo project for the band’s singer Iva Davies.
Icehouse released several albums after the success of “Primitive Man”. Their most successful album “Man of Colours” was released in 1987 and was a number one best seller in Australia and New Zealand. The single “Electric Blue” from that album was a big American radio hit at the time.
In 2006, Icehouse recorded a new album “Bi-Polar Poems” but, to date, it has not been released.
Icehouse also supported David Bowie on his famous “Serious Moonlight” tour and in 2003 Iva Davies collaborated with Christopher Gordon and Richard Tognetti to write the acclaimed film score for fellow Australian Peter Weir’s film; “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”.
The video for “Hey Little Girl” is below. It matches the mood of the song perfectly. To this day “Hey Little Girl”‘s lyrics are one that stay in the mind.
The chorus is both simple and unnerving.

“Hey, little girl, where will you hide,
Who can you run to now,
Hey, little girl, where will you go,
Who can you turn to now?”.

Summertime

Scarlett Johannsson has recieved a mixture of good and average reviews for her debut album, “Anywhere I lay my Head” which is a collection of songs originally performed by Tom Waits.
As Tom Waits is the High King of the type of music that he does it was never going to be completely easy for Scarlett to have her album judged in a neutral, positive light. I have never been a fan of Tom Waits so I did not know what “Falling Down”, the first song released from the album, sounded like so I very much liked Scarlett’s version of the song when I heard it. I know several people who like Kylie, Madonna and Tom Waits all at the same time but I’m not one of them.
One song that I have listened to a lot is another cover version that Scarlett did. Her version of “Summertime” features on a charity album called “Unexpected dreams: Songs from the Stars”. It is a 14 track album released in April 2006, which contains songs by Ewan MacGregor, Lucy Lawless (television’s Xena) and other actors from cinema and television. Jeremy Irons take on the Bob Dylan song “To Make You Feel My Love” is pleasant. This song was recorded by Billy Joel and I also heard the wonderful Irish singer, Mary Black, do a gorgeous version of it at her recent concert in Vicar street here in Dublin. Other songs that stand out are Jennifer Garner’s “My Heart is so Full of You” and Teri Hatcher’s “Goodnight”.
The album would make a nice gift if you are a romantic like me, it is basically a collection of lullabies, sung in the style of the 1920’s.
There are short music clips for all 14 songs on the album’s Amazon page which is here
Following on from her role in “The Other Boelyn Girl” Scarlett will feature in 3 other films this year.
The first is Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” which got good reviews in Cannes last month and co-stars Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is awaiting a release date in Europe.
The second is the film adaptation of the best selling self help book; “He’s Just Not That Into You” which will do well as the book was written by the script writers of “Sex and the City” TV series and has a cast that includes Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Connolly. “He’s Just Not That Into You” is due out in October.
The third film is “The Spirit” which is directed and written by Frank Millar and is another adaptation, this time from Will Eisner’s drawings. Gabriel Macht plays the lead and Samuel L. Jackson continues to star in most of the fantasy/Sci-Fi movies released in the past few years. “The Spirit” is provisionally due to be released this December.

Oh, happy day!

Today I found the cure for depression. Below is a video that could cheer up the saddest heart.

It’s amazing when you think you know most things about popular culture and some things just pass you by. One that had done so for me was, Jerry Springer: The Opera and the song I Just Wanna Dance from it. When the musical itself opened in London’s West End it was one of the most controversial shows ever. The show did make it to America but not to Broadway after failing to get the all important financial backing. Thankfully some songs live on.

While looking at the great pop music site Fizzypop I came across the song and a video featuring a montage of the best and worst moments from musicals spanning several decades of cinema. It is simply one of the funniest and fabbest things I have ever since. It is fantastically edited and the inclusion of movies like Showgirls and Connie &Carla made me laugh out loud but it’s the look on Kate Winslet’s face as Titanic‘s Rose that made me smile the most.

The song, better known by it’s proper name; I Just Wanna Fuckin’ dance is sung by Shawntel in the Jerry Springer: The Opera stage show. Shawntel is described on Wikipedia as “an overweight, middle aged woman who dreams of being a pole dancer”. It’s like a John Waters dream come true.

The vocals on the song are by Alison Jiear, who in true tragic gay dance diva style was rumoured never to have been paid for her vocals on the remix of the song used in clubs all over the world.

There are other videos versions of the song but the video below reminded me of those montages you saw on the Oscars in the 1970’s or 1980’s.

Last Dance….

Many months ago when I read that there was going to be a new horror movie called “Prom Night” it reminded me of the 1980 film which starred Jamie Lee Curtis and was one that I was far too young to see when it was released in it’s day.
The “Prom Night” of 2008 really only shares a name with the 1980 movie as the plots of both movies are quite different.
“Prom Night” (2008) is a 15a cert in Ireland which means if you are aged over 15 you can bring anyone under that age with you to see it. I am forever uncomfortable with this cert. While there is no intensely gory scenes in “Prom Night” it’s theme is still adult, particularly the opening scene.
“Prom Night” (2008) begins with Donna (Brittany Snow) returning home to find her younger brother dead, unaware her father too lies murdered downstairs and after going to hide under a bed, then witnesses her mother being killed, stabbed by a manically obsessed teacher in Donna’s high school, Richard Fenton (Jonathon Schaech).
A counselling session and a change of dress later and it’s straight into the event of Donna’s Prom Night. Her Aunt and Uncle are now her surrogate parents; who are there to tell her she’s the “most beautiful girl in the world” and also frighten the life out of her as she stands in front of the bathroom mirror. Meanwhile Donna-obsessed Richard has escaped from his maximum (minimum) security prison three days previously and has arrived at the hotel that the Prom is being held in, checking in under an alias, his only disguise a baseball cap. It has also taken three days for the police in Donna’s home town to be informed.
This all happens in the first five minutes of the film. From there on it is pure and utter B-movie. It is the “Showgirls” of it’s day without the nudity or Elizabeth Berkley.
Donna goes to her Prom night with her perfectly handsome boyfriend Bobby (Scott Porter) and her friends Claire (Jessica Stroup) and Michael (Kelly Blatz) and Crissy (Brianne Davis) and Ronnie (Collins Pennie). The acting and script is so bad at this early part of the movie that it’s like as if they met in the car park 5 minutes beforehand instead of being in High School all those years.
It is obvious by the grand entrance and upstairs suites that the hotel is a very expensive place to stay in. However! This is also a hotel where there are no security staff let alone cameras anywhere. It dosen’t take Richard long to make his first kill and after the third or fourth murder, you wonder is he going to make his way through everyone in the entire hotel.
Despite the fact that the man who has murdered her entire family may (i.e., is) in the hotel with Donna, it is decided (solely) by Officer Hicks (Craig Susser) that it’s best not to tell Donna this information. If ever a movie character would later have the guilt of the deaths of the young and the restless on his hands it’s Officer Hicks!
There is no little or no interaction outside of Donna’s immediate set of friends, so it is obvious who is on the quick exit list. As most of the murders take place in a hotel room, the movie for the first half should have simply have been called “Spider’s Web”.
The Prom Night party itself is a rather horrible affair. An awful mix of bad music, a name checking dj and various video montages of the students. When you consider the fact that Scott Porter who plays boyfriend Bobby is 28 in real life, these are teenagers a lá Beverly Hills 90210’s Dylan and Brandon.
Brittany Snow is very pretty and does get to scream once or twice but this a Prom Night where the main character isn’t even on the short-list to be named Prom Queen, Crissy has been instead. Therefore even the imagery of the tilted tiara on the movie poster, which we assume is Donna, doesn’t even apply.
As the film processes the entire plot just gets more ridiculous by the second. Literally! For the majority of the film, not one student or teacher in the hotel recognises former teacher Richard as he wanders from hallway to hotel room to lift to reception area. A small child could make better plot twists here, than what happens in the last half hour of this movie.
By not having any gore there are no “Final Destination”/”The Omen” inventive style death scenes which seems to be the only way to make the teen horror movie different these days.
There is not one moment of tension in the whole thing. Jonathon Schaech is a bit unnerving in this movie but he is an actor who was once regarded by magazines like “Vanity Fair” as someone to watch out for after his roles in films like “That Thing You Do” and “How To Make an American Quilt”. With the younger actors in the film, being in a horror movie is almost like something that has to be part of their acting résumé in Hollywood today.
When 2008 will be reviewed, “Prom Night” will still be one of the “number one” movies of the year as it made that position on it’s release last April when it made $20 million in it’s first weekend. This made back the film’s entire budget in three days and it went on to gross €43 million in total in the US, which for now means that movies of it’s type will continue to be greenlighted by studios in the US.
The only other movie to get truly awful reviews recently was the spoof comedy, “Superhero Movie”, which stars Drake Bell and Leslie Nielsen.
In 1980, 28 years ago, Leslie Nielsen also starred in a horror movie.
That film was “Prom Night”.

Mon Frére Talentueux

Last month my brother, Mike, moved to Paris with his girlfriend, Jane. Before he went to France he started putting a collection of his drawings, paintings and sketches on his own website which is here.
I’ve always loved his work and I hope you do too.

No Air

Last year the American singer Chris Brown starred in “This Christmas” which made nearly $50 million at the American box office. On the soundtrack was a version of “I’ll be home for Christmas” by American Idol 2007 winner Jordin Sparks. She has already had a hit single with her debut single “Tattoo” which I liked a lot.
One of the best pop songs of the year so far is “No Air”, a collboration by Jordin and Chris.
“No Air” is this week’s number 3 in the Australian ARIA charts, the same chart placing it got to in America. “Tattoo” is still top 20 in Australia.
While “No Air” was originally due to released in the UK /Ireland on May 14th it is now going to released properly in July, building on the success Chris Brown has had already in Europe and no doubt on the strength of Rihanna’s “Take a Bow”, a similar R’n’B ballad, which is still number one in the UK. “No Air” is a song that back in the days of CD:UK and “Top of the Pops” would easily have charted quickly in the top ten.
Below is a performance of the song by Jordin and Chris on the most recent “American Idol” season. While they both seem to be singing over pre-recorded backing vocals in parts, it is live and is a great performance overall.
Chris Brown seems to have been in the charts for years now but he is still only 19, Jordin is 18. Bless!

Yazoo

In 1982 I was 12 years old. The year is important music wise to me because it was the year that I first remember loving a pop song. The song was “Only You” by Yazoo. I would get to see Alison Moyet sing the song in Dublin’s Olympia theatre many years later in the 1990’s but I never thought I would get to see her perform it as part of the group Yazoo. On Monday night I did as Yazoo played the same venue as part of their “Yazoo: Reconnected tour”.
It was a truly great concert experience. The stage was like a Top of the Pops set with strobe lighting, neon lit flooring, visuals on screens, one behind Alison and Vince. She was in great form throughout, genuinely loving the adoration of the Dublin crowd, a great big smile across her face throughout the gig. Vince Clarke however was at best robotic but it all helped to Tardis the audience back to TV screens showing Top of the Pops or The Tube.
Beginning with “Nobody’s Diary”, one of the all time great pop songs, the concert featured many songs from Yazoo’s two albums. “Upstairs at Eric’s” from 1982 and 1983’s “You and me Both”. The “hits”, “Situation”, “Don’t Go” and of course “Only You” were saved for near the end but if you going to see them I would advise listening to the two albums again. It is truly wonderful to hear songs like “Midnight” “State Farm” and “In My room” sung live. “Tuesday” is a really tender song which you could imagine a singer like Annie Lennox singing now or back when the Eurythmics were also new artists in the charts with Yazoo.
Vince’s synth is now replaced by a laptop but the sound was great throughout. There was no band just the two of them so that added to the whole experience. Vince is now most known for being one half of Erasure but he was also the man who wrote “Just Can’t Get Enough” while he was an original member of Depeche Mode. He also wrote the much better song, “New Life”.
The audience became a happy football crowd when “Only You” was sung which Alison introduced as “a song that has been very good to Vince” and she wished that it was one that she had written. Sadly, the audience went a bit Flying Pickets while singing the song. The fact that The Flying Pickets had a 5 week Christmas number one with “Only You”, while Yazoo’s version only got to number two, shows that the charts have always been a mad place.
“Only You” was also offered to Depeche Mode by Vince Clarke and when they turned it down it would become Yazoo’s debut single. I still can’t imagine Dave Gahan singing it. “Situation” was also the b-side of “Only You” and was, amazingly, never a single in it’s own right in the UK in the early 1980’s, a remix of the song would get to number 14 in the UK in 1990. “Situation” also opens with one of the best “laugh” introduction which, for me, is as memorable as Madonna’s laugh at the beginning of 1985’s “Angel”.
The two clips below feature “Don’t Go”. One is from the time when the song was first released and the second is from May of this year and is a live performance which Yazoo did when they guested on Jonathon Ross’s chat show. Ross was and still is, obviously a fan and rightly calls them one of Britain’s greatest bands.
Yazoo’s tour continues for the next few weeks in the UK and there will be one date in Barcelona and in July will also play American dates in Las Vegas, Oakland in San Francisco, Dallas, Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The website which lists all the tour dates, as well as details on the remastered editions of their albums is here.
In America in the 1980’s they were know as Yaz. When I told a 20 something colleague in work that, I was going to see Yazoo in concert, he said “Didn’t she sing “The Only Way is Up”?”.
Not a million miles away…. I guess.