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Advance Drive-By Truckers, Morrissey, Cutout Bin, Cloverfield   Printer-friendly page   Send this story to someone
Friday, January 18, 2008 - 08:00 AM
Posted by: Karl

Karl

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with RADIOHEAD's surprise show at the 93 Feet East club in London two nights ago!  It was the first show this intimate since some US dates around the time of OK Computer.  The Times of London writes that the gig "felt like a modern-day equivalent of The Beatles' al fresco show on the rooftop of their Apple HQ" and "So much for the myth that they no longer rock."  The band played the entirety of the new In Rainbows album: "15 Step," "Bodysnatchers," "Nude," "Weird," "Fishes/Arpeggi," "All I Need," "Faust Arp," "Reckoner," "House of Cards," "Jigsaw Falling into Place," and "Videotape."  I feel slightly guilty about featuring Rradiohead just two weeks after their New Year's webcast, but this is a special case.  If you're burned out on Radiohead, check out my Wednesday qurtet of videos from Duffy.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS:  Rolling Stone can hook you up to an advance stream of the upcoming Brighter Than Creation's Dark album, plus Robert Christgau's review of the record.  And maybe the lawyers will stay away.

TEDDY THOMPSON talks to London's Telegraph about American country music and working with parents Richard and Linda, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, and Emmylou Harris.

LILY ALLEN is reportedly heartbroken after suffering a miscarriage.

NICOLE ATKINS & THE SEA are playing the World Cafe at noon EST today.  You can stream the gig live -- or on demand a bit later -- via NPR.

MORRISSEY is accosted by a stream of stage divers in the live footage backing "That's How People Grow Up," the new track on his upcoming Greatest Hits LP.

THE ROLLING STONES are putting out the soundtrack to the Marty Scorsese concert film, Shine A Light, on Universal, not EMI.  Seems like Paul McCartney is not the only classic rocker not happy with EMI's new management -- esp. its policy against big advances.

WILCO:  At Cinema Blend, Jessica Grabert explains how she learned to loathe the band -- and why she thinks others love Tweedy & Co.  (Thx, LHB.)

THE DAP-KINGS are set to jet to L.A. to back Amy Winehouse at the Grammys -- provided she passes the drug test necessary for a visa and the show isn't derailed by the writers' strike.

PETE DOHERTY, who is in training for this year's Flora London Marathon, is wearing his girlfriend's bras to protect his "sore nipples."

CUTOUT BIN:  From Marshall Crenshaw to Candi Staton, from Gram Parsons to Xiu Xiu, from The Clash to Nelson Riddle, this Friday's fortuitous finds -- with covers a-plenty -- can be jukeboxed or streamed individually on the Pate page at the ol' HM

CLOVERFIELD is -- as the trailers and ads suggest -- "The Blair Godzilla Project" (I'm sure plenty will draw that analogy) -- a giant monster movie told as a video verite mockumentary from the point of view of a group of friends and acquaintances in NYC at the wrong time.  I suppose NYC natives may feel queasy about some of the 9/11-esque imagery, though similar images appeared in Spielber's non-NYC-based War of the Worlds.  I do not think there is any sort of 9/11 subtext to the movie.  I congratulate the filmmakers for managing to keep the monster -- and one of its unique facets -- largely secret in the Internet age (I was aware of this facet, but if you want the spoiler, click the "Read full article..." link at the bottom of today's entry.  What makes Cloverfield good, as opposed to great, however, is that the backstory for the main characters is not as fleshed out as it could have been, given the clever way it was presented.  This weakness, combined with the fact that the focal character Rob is not always sympathetic, almost ensures (though it was likely to happen any way) that the character the audence likes the most is Hud, who is the largely unseen cameraman.  It does give the movie a strange symmetry, as the monster itself is more glimpsed than seen.  Indeed, I suspect people will debate whether the monster should ever be fully revealed (my take would be they should have actually waited for the moment where it is fully revealed, and shown a bit less in a couple of distance shots).  It is a movie ultimately more about style than substance, but is stylish and gives the audience enough to keep it worried about whether some or all of the cast will survive.  BONUS:  The teaser trailer for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot ran in front of Cloverfield, but about all you see is a peek at the USS Enterprise.

NOW SHOWING:  In addition to Cloverfield, which goes way wide on 3411 screens and a 70 percent rating on the ol' Tomatometer, this weekend's wide releases are the Katherine Heigl rom-com 27 Dresses, which is scoring 35 percent; and the Keaton-Latifah-Holmes comedy Mad Money, currently scoring 22 percent.  Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood expands to 389 screens and a 90 percent score.  And there is still the adorable Juno, which has been No. 2 at the box office during the week.

BRITNEY SPEARS: The pop wreck's agenda for Wednesday included getting stopped for speeding, and a 2 a.m. shopping spree without pants.  That is how the paparazzi at X17 got nsfw photographic evidence that the pop tart is not pregnant.  Four paparazzi were arrested for reckless driving while chasing Britney Spears' car around Mission Hills.  On Thursday morning, "manager" Sam Lutfi barged in on Britney in the shower, during a phone call into Ryan Seacrest's radio show.  UPDATE:  TMZ has sources sugestinng that Spears has multiple-personality disorder.

JAMIE LYNN SPEARS, Britney's 16-year-old knocked up sister, denies miscarriage rumors.

OWEN WILSON was busted on film and video buying a monkey pipe at the Green House Smoke Shop in Venice Beach, Calif.  Isn't he supposed to be rehabbed?

DREW BARRYMORE was... wait for it... caught canoodling on camera with co-star Jason Long at the New Orleans airport.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON is going to entertain the troops in the Persian Gulf, the USO has announced.  The precise dates are undisclosed.  For some reason, Scar-Jo gets a large supply of fan letters from the military and wanted to do more than just answer them on paper.

SEAN PENN:  Was Sienna Miller a factor in his split from Robin Wright Penn? 

KIEFER SUTHERLAND gets out of the slammer Monday morning.  A Glendale City Jail rep told People magazine: "He never wanted preferential treatment from the get go, and we respect him for that."

THE X-FILES sequel is a "stand-alone movie, not a mythology conspiracy one," says series creator Chris Carter.  Probably a smart decision -- how could they compete for conspiracies now that the Internet is ubiquitous?

HOLLYWOOD WRITERS' STRIKE:  The Directors Guild of America struck a deal with the major studios that may pressure the Writers Guild to settle the 11-week-old strike that has roiled Tinseltown.  Which was why -- imho --the studios were working on a deal with the directors even before the strike.

THE OSCAR NOMINEES for Best Picture, once reflected a kind of national cinema, but have become a smaller niche market than horror films or urban comedies.

RACHEL BILSON, who has been seen on episodes of Chuck after the demise of The O.C., and will soon be on the big screen in Jumper, has a photo spread the February 2008 issue of GQ magazine.  There's also a video of the photo-shoot soundtracked with Vampire Weekend's "A-Punk."  Yep, it's Gratuitous Friday.

IRAN is confident of a prompt solution to the dispute over its nuclear program, despite the possiblility of further UN Security Council sanctions, but deputy foreign minister warned that failure to find a solution would play into the hands of those who favor unilateral action and war.  A new GAO report claims the three-year international effort to pressure Iran is faltering, and questions the impact of 20 years of US economic sanctions on Tehran.  At the Counterterrorism Blog, Matthew Levitt argues that the new report misses the point.  Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki publicly claimed that Pres. Bush would be impeached by his own party over his statements about Iran, displaying the keen grasp of US politics and the US Constitution Iran needs in its top diplomat.

LT. COL. JOHN NAGL, blurbed here yesterday, was interviewed on WHYY's Fresh Air about what's next for Iraq.

IRAQ:  Gen. Petraeus said Iran was still training terrorists despite its pledge to cut support for the insurgency.  He and SecDef Gates are at odds over the speed of the drawdown for the "surge."  More than 75K US and Iraqi soldiers are preparing to launch the widest military operation since 2003 in three Sunni provinces in what is being described by military sources, as a crucial attempt to uproot AQI.  The US military conducted more than five times as many airstrikes in Iraq last year as it did in 2006, targeting AQI safe houses, insurgent bombmaking facilities and weapons stockpiles in an aggressive strategy aimed at supporting the "surge" by overwhelming enemies with air power.  Iraq faces a period of economic growth and political progress, according to assessments by the International Monetary Fund and the UN.

WOLFGANG LEANDER:  Swimming with sharks is his hobby.  He's 67 and has been doing it since he was 14, but not without incident.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT:  Grey squirrels are even more devious than anyone realized.

MOOKIE the BULL, won in a poker game, was kept in a garage in Ewing, NJ... until someone tipped off Animal Control.

THE ROBOT ZOO will offer children in Qatar the chance to explore the biomechanics of complex animal robots to discover how real animals work.  Freaky pic at the link.

 

CLOVERFIELD SPOILER:  Unlike your traditional Godzilla-esque monster, the beast here has some sort of lice or parasites that leave their host to do some very nasty things themselves.

Read full article: 'Advance Drive-By Truckers, Morrissey, Cutout Bin, Cloverfield'
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