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Broadway’s “Doctor Zhivago” didn’t make it this past spring; the stage production was beautiful but unwieldy.
Luckily, Lucy Simon’s wonderful songs live on in a just-released cast album. Below you can watch the 12 minute exclusive video of the making of the album. I think the songs stand on their own. They are really beautiful. My guess is, one day in the near future new producers will try again with “Doctor Zhivago” and these songs will already be well known to fans of the album.
Exclusive video
And here’s an earlier video of a song I really liked from the show called “Love Finds You”:
“The Man from UNCLE” is back and I’m ready for the sequel. Guy Ritchie has made such a fun, stylish origins story film about Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin that they could absolutely have played another installment at the Ziegfeld and everyone would have stayed.
And the audience included Ritchie’s kids with Madonna, son Rocco, and David Banda, the little boy they adopted from Malawi. I met the kids at the screening and they are very nice. They were quite excited for their dad.
Also in the audience: “12 Years a Slave” Oscar winning director Steve McQueen, “Crash” Oscar winning director Paul Haggis, Broadway stars Leanne Cope and Sara Esty from “An American in Paris,” Mick Jones from Foreigner with daughter Annabelle, and Maureen and Steve van Zandt. Later at the after party at the Bowery Hotel, we ran into MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell looking dapper after a day on the air.
At the premiere party, Armie Hammer — charming and affable, as always, a young Robert Redford from “The Way We Were” days– took pictures with Cope and her Broadway pals. They were, let’s say, agog. Hammer tried to dissuade them about his matinee idol status. “How about that Henry?” he said of his co-star who also plays Superman. “He’s carved out of marble!”
Will there be a sequel to “UNCLE,” I asked? Armie, bluntly said: “You never know. That’s what we thought about the Lone Ranger. And look what happened. It took me a long time to get over that.”
But back to “UNCLE”: Guy Ritchie is really the star of “The Man from UNCLE” even though he’s not in the movie. It’s just that as the director, Ritchie’s presence, personality and artistic stamp are all over the movie, and it’s a good thing. Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer are the actors, and they’re perfectly suave as Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin. Hugh Grant doesn’t have enough to do as Mr. Waverly, head of British Intelligence, but he might in a sequel– which I’d like to see. This movie is an origins story– it brings up to the first episode of the TV show. And it’s incredibly entertaining.
“The Man from UNCLE” is also beautifully shot, has a real sense of time (the 60s), place (Rome) and attitude (glib, willful, fun). Joanna Johnston’s costumes are sensational riffs on mod apparel, but in their own groovy-ness. Oliver Scholl’s production design is cool, cool, cool. And the props– including a mod one piece phone with the dial under the base– are dead on perfect.
The secret stars of “UNCLE” might turn out to be the ladies. Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki are absolutely essential, charming and sexy as respectively, a heroine and a villainess to counterpoint the guys. One or two movies from now you’re going to look back and say ‘Oh I know them.’ Swede Vikander with a swoony British sounding accent will be in “The Danish Girl” this fall. Debicki was the essential Jordan Baker in “The Great Gatsby” and she’s Lady McDuff in “MacBeth” also this fall starring Vikander’s boyfriend Michael Fassbender. Each of them is hot stuff.
PS As with Mission Impossible, Man from UNCLE is all about the music. The soundtrack is a lush combination of the original theme music and various similar takes including some uses of the scores from the original series. “The Man from UNCLE” theme was written by Jerry Goldsmith, who also wrote music for the show. But many other important composers contributed including Lalo Schifrin (Mission Impossible). All I know is, I want this CD ASAP.
EXCLUSIVE The Toronto Film Festival may be announcing this morning a screening of “Amazing Grace,” an unseen performance doc about Aretha Franklin filmed by Sydney Pollack in 1972 in Los Angeles. (UPDATE The screening was announced. Telluride will also show the film. )
I say “may” for many reasons: the film’s provenance is still up for some discussion. Franklin has not wanted it to be released, and has fought it at every level. She may still fight it, that part is unclear.
Alan Elliott, a lecturer at the Herb Alpert UCLA School of Music, told me a few days ago that he he owns the rights. There’s a long back story about how Pollack made the movie, and papers Franklin may or may not have signed 40 years ago, etc. But the main story now is that Elliot managed to get the audio and video synched up of this historic performance, and he’s planning on showing it in Toronto and at Telluride.
Thanks to Elliott, I’ve seen “Amazing Grace.” It runs about 87 minutes and is all music taken from Franklin’s huge bestselling album of the same name. All of the music is spiritual with the exception of an astounding rendition of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”
There’s also a little surprise: Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts sat in the very small audience at the church for one of the filming days. They aren’t seen talking to anyone, or vice versa, including Franklin. But they are very much on camera.
Reverend James Cleveland accompanies Franklin on piano, although Aretha herself plays quite a bit. She’s 30 years old, has already had innumerable hits, and is sensational. At one point, her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, gets up and speaks about her. She’s 30; he’s 57. It’s an incredible historic moment. She is at her greatest height artistically (although she’s pretty damn good right now).
For her own reasons, however, Franklin has blocked this film’s release over the years. Her attorney Arnold Reid got a temporary injunction against Elliot in 2011. In 2012, he told a Detroit TV station that Franklin would have to approve the film’s release. “(You) still can’t use somebody’s name and likeness for commercial purposes without compensating them,” Reid said. “They own it, but they can’t exploit it commercially without her permission.”
So what’s next? Keep refreshing. Franklin is traveling, doing dates in Oakland CA and Las Vegas, and can’t be reached yet.
Good grief! The record business hits an all time low this week as the top album– “The Descendants”– sold only 31,000 copies.
The second, third, and fourth spots on the Top album charts goes to reissues from Led Zeppelin. The 40 year old albums sold around 70,000 copies total.
Last week pretty much no one bought new music. Even Taylor Swift’s reliable “1989” album sold just 20,000 copies.
The number 50 album, the soundtrack to “50 Shades of Grey,” sold just 4,354 copies.
The music business is in free fall. Where are the great songs of summer, the big beach hits?
Who’s to blame? Radio would be my first choice. They’ve killed opportunities for new records, and limited their rotations to the same junk over and over. There’s also no variation.
Sirius is fine, but it’s expensive and skews a little older. Apple Music’s Beats 1 is the new hot thing to listen to on iPods and iPhones. But it’s not clear if music played there is translating to sales.
Spotify and other streaming services are how kids are getting their music. I guess kids don’t have record collections any more. What a shame.
This would be the moment for a big surprise release, something to really shake up the industry and the fans. But even the artists are scared– they know music isn’t selling. Even One Direction’s new single leveled off quickly.
The real test will be when Justin Bieber drops something — an album, a single– besides his pants, on August 28th. That will be his Stevie Wonder moment, when he actually puts up or shuts up with real music and not just bubblegum.
Does this sound Kosher? I’m told “Friends” star David Schwimmer is producing a TV pilot about ultra Orthodox Jews who live in the insular community of Fishkill, New York. He thinks it could be the “Big Love” of the Hasidic community.
The show will be called “Fishkill” I’m told, and Schwimmer’s Dark Harbor Productions has optioned it through their partner Tom Hodges. Lisa Davis, a writer from Providence, Rhode Island, wrote the script. The great actor-director Bob Balaban has signed to direct the pilot.
The main characters in “Fishkill” are named Moishe, Lev, and Bathsheba. I’m not making this up, and this isn’t a Mel Brooks skit. Lev is a diamond dealer in the city. Bathsheba supposedly meets a transgender person while shopping for wigs. There is going to be nudity and sex among the wigs, they say. I do hope there’s a suped-up Mitzvah mobile, and a hora here or there.
The word is, they’re looking for actors who speak Yiddish. Oy vey!
So far, commenters on the imdb message board are noting laughs when Michael Bay’s name comes up on this trailer. “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is set for a January 15th, 2016 opening. There’s no Oscar qualifying week scheduled. If this movie is really coming out on January 15th, then brace yourselves. It’s not good despite an excellent cast (James Badge Dale, John Krasinski). To me, this trailer looks like “Zero Dark Thirty” without any purpose. I hope I am wrong.
Ah, Prince. This weekend he called record contracts “slavery” and advised musicians not to sign them. Twenty two years ago, Prince claimed he was a slave to Warner Music and left the label. he changed his name to a glyph symbol and identified as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. He then re-recorded all of his music so he could own it, but no one wanted those recordings. They wanted the originals. After drifting from Arista to EMI and other places, and releasing his own music, Prince went back to Warner Music last year and released two albums. He has a new one scheduled for Sept 7th. On Warner Music.
I don’t know. Prince took all music off of Spotify, then a released a new single straight to Spotify called “Stare.”
Then he gave that new Warner Music album to Jay Z’s Tidal exclusively, a service that no one is really using.
He also allowed this video to post to YouTube of his backup band 3rd Eye Girl, in a string session. Notice something? All the musicians are white. Just sayin’…
Prince brought 10 black journalists into Paisley Park this weekend, made them wait until 12:45am, spoke to them briefly, and played no music.
The great music publicist Susan Blond and I went through this years ago with Prince. I don’t do it anymore. I don’t wait around til the middle of the night when Prince shows up and is in his own world. He’s released a smattering of good songs since 1995. But it all pretty amusing. At least he’s still into whatever it is he’s doing.
Frank Gifford has died at age 84. He was married to Kathie Lee Johnson, known to us as Kathie Lee Gifford, since 1986. They have two grown kids, very nice kids, Cody and Cassidy. A Hall of Famer in the NFL. Frank was a legend with the New York Giants, playing with them for his whole career from 1952 to 1964. In New York, as well as the world, Frank was a superstar. From his first marriage Frank had two kids, Kyle and Victoria.
Kathie Lee and Frank had their ups and downs, but mostly ups, and to their credit they weathered intense scrutiny, tabloid press, and a set up by a tabloid to try and wreck their marriage. But they always stuck it out. Kathie Lee left “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee” years ago to be with Frank and raise their kids. She only went back to work on the Today show when she was ready.
Frank Gifford leaves a huge legacy as a player, a broadcaster, and a family man. That’s all you can ask for. Condolences.
Here’s the deal on these comic book movies: if the fanboys smell a stinker, you’re dead. “The Fantastic Four” made just $26.2 million over three days, probably a little less. It’s a bust. The fanboys knew it in advance. See the way they’ve tried to distance Marvel, their never-do-wrong glowing orb, from infidel Fox. Yes, Fox owns the rights to the Fantastic Four characters. But Marvel didn’t disown the new movie, Stan Lee put his name on it. It’s their loss, too.
So now what? I don’t think we’ll be seeing the “Fantastic Four” again any time soon. And if we ever do, my guess is that Fox will cut a deal with Marvel the way Sony has concerning Spider Man. At Fox, the X Men series was lucky to find a filmmaker who really got it and stuck with it in Bryan Singer. That’s what you need for these things to work.
Coincidentally, both Sony and Fox are having terrible years. “FF4” is Fox’s latest wound. So far, 15 movies that earned money for Fox in 2015 have made a total of $687,933,683. That’s approximately what Universal’s “Jurassic World” has made world wide.
Fox has released 9 new movies in 2015. Three of them went over $100 million. “Home,” an animated film that won’t win the Oscar thanks to Pixar’s “Inside Out,” made $176,819,973. Matthew Vaughn’s very good “Kingsmen” made a very tidy $128 million. Melissa McCarthy’s comedy “Spy” came in at $108 million, which is pretty damn good.
Every studio has its dog days. Fox will rise again with Stacey Snider running the show now. I’m banking on Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” with Matt Damon to turn things around.
Meanwhile, “Trainwreck” crossed $90 million this week, on its way to $100 mil. For a comedy, this is nirvana. And “Mission Impossible” is slowing down but still, $265 million worldwide isn’t bad after just 11 days.
Parker Posey has joined “The Brits Are Coming,” a new comedy starring Uma Thurman. I can tell you now that Parker isn’t the only addition to the cast. Tim Roth, Stephen Fry, and Maggie Q are also recent additions to this caper movie shooting in New York. James Oakley is directing. I don’t know much about him except that he’s young, his family owns an NFL team, and he has an amazing townhouse in the West Village that’s featured on real estate sites for millions of dollars! I want to be his friend. Also, JC Chandor, director of “A Most Violent Year,” is producing the film with the very successful Cassian Elwes. I love the idea that Parker Posey is having this Renaissance. She deserves it.
PS Kristen Chenoweth is not in this movie. The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive was that she was in it. She ain’t.
