Francis Ford Coppola says that art should be shared not bound with copyrights (photo Grazia)
Excerpted from Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration by Aniston Anderson in 99%
I once found a little excerpt from Balzac. He speaks about a young writer who stole some of his prose. Continue reading
Bing Crosby on drums (Photo: Rex Hardy Jr./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Jan 01, 1937)
Everyone knows Bing Crosby (b. 1903 Tacoma, WA d. 1977 Spain) for his smooth voice singing White Christmas or comedy “Road” movies with Bob Hope.
Less well known is Bing Crosby started his career as a jazz drummer and singer.
In 1925 Bing Crosby dropped out of law school to tour as a singer and jazz drummer in a duo with pianist Al Rinkler. In 1927 while the two were touring the vaudeville circuit, they joined the Paul Whitman jazz orchestra.
Bing left Whitman soon when his star and personality clashed with the controlling Whitman.
In the popular movie High Society, Bing played a jazz singer backed by his friends such as jazz trumpet player and singer Louis “Satchmo”Armstrong.
The 1956 film was centered around a love mismatch with Bing and Grace Kelly in the setting of the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport Rhode Island.
While critics panned High Society as a weak remake of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, movie goers loved the music and light story about socialite Kelly and her ex-husband jazz singer Bing Crosby. I love the film for the music and fun performances from people like Frank Sinatra, playing himself like he did in Guys and Dolls.
High Society also has a musical and witty score by American composer Cole Porter with memorable songs like True Love sing by Bing and You’re Sensational by Frank Sinatra.
Trivia – it was Grace Kelly’s last film before marrying Prince Ranier of Monaco
The video clip is from the 1940 film Rhythm on the River, which featured Bing Crosby playing drums, the only clip I could find with Bing on the drums.
Fox "bonus" movie download requires lawyer and DRM (illustration Fox Media)
The Digital Copy “bonus” DVD inside Crazy Heart requires reading and accepting a 2,925 page legal agreement that seems hefty for just watching a movie.
The intent is to allow consumers to buy a Blu-Ray DVD and watch the movie on their computer, iPhone or other portable device and Blu-Ray player. All good intentions.
Crazy Heart is a second rate re-make of Tender Mercies, a touching and believable movie with Robert Duval in the lead.If you haven’t seen Tender Mercies, rent it or buy it. I cry every time I see it.
Duval is a co-producer of Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges playing himself as a country singer “Dude” down on his luck from alcoholism.
It’s an OK movie. Jeff is the dude. The country music, mostly by T Bone Burnett of the excellent Oh Brother Where Art Thou, sounds authentic and is forever forgettable.
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Tron Legacy (picture Disney)
I was excited to see Tron Legacy in 3D but disappointed by the movie at several points.
The cycle games/races and dog fight near the end were exciting on the one hand.
However, there were also long periods of boring and inaudible, philosophical commentary.
I still might go back and watch it again.
The original Tron in 1982 was innovative in the animation of characters in glowing neon suits and the metaphor of life as a computer bit. Tron’s appeal was mainly computer geeks (those few of us around back then) and fans adventure movies.
Tron was full of David-and-Goliath references as the hero gets dematerialized and re-materialized inside a computer. Is he a bit, a byte, a program? No he’s a “User.”
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Sonar X1 two days of crash on the tracks but now it's great
Tuesday night I was pretty flushed with getting the guys tracks down for our release of Blue Christmas so I did the unthinkable – upgraded Sonar 8.5.3 DAW software to the new Sonar X1.
Update – Sonar X1b now ready for prime time
If anything could sabotage the project, new recording software is about best way to go about it. From my point of view, what could be worse than the trouble I went through trying to get a backing track last week?
What could be worse was two days of misery trying to get the new software working. But I did it and that suffering is behind me. Sonar X1 is a champ.
Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s Sonar but it that always been a flaky tool. Recording audio is like supporting an inverted pyramid of sound drivers and audio files being processed through the bottle neck called a CPU – central processing unit. People using other programs will tell you their software is better than Sonar. I don’t believe it: the internet is full of support forums with cries of despair. Continue reading
Critically acclaimed Man of a Thousand Songs plays tonight one-night only at Empire Theatres across Atlantic Canada.
Show starts at 7 PM.
Ron tours constantly.
In the video below, Ron spoke to me about the film and why he feels good about it.
I met him after the show at Harmony House, Hunter River PEI on November 19, 2010.
Ron Hynes’ movie plays Empire Theatres tonight
Ron Hynes’ manager provided one ticket for the Harmony House show. I purchased the second ticket.
Ron Hynes Man of a Thousand Songs (photo supplied)
The Man of a Thousand Songs, starring Ron Hynes, Joel Thomas Hynes and featuring Amelia Curran is a the highly rated movie about music and story telling for the many thousands of Ron Hynes fans across Canada.
We saw Ron two weeks ago at Harvest House and he packed the place with his fans. They loved him. We’ll post his exclusive interview about the new movie this morning.
The film is full of Ron performing some of his most famous songs, including Sonny’s Dream, The Saint John Waltz, Boy from Old Perlican, and Dry.
Fans can also expect gut wrenching honesty and his famously disarming sense of humour because Ron tells his own incredible story in his own blunt manner.
Ron’s manager and publicist sent us clippings from media reviews and they are glowing. Continue reading
The Social Network
You have to see The Social Network.
It’s the best movie yet about today, computers and the new era in business. The movie has great dialogue, pacing, plot, music, and suspense. It is well worth seeing.
The reviews almost turned me off. Pundits were quoting the line “Zuckerman is an asshole.” Sort of “yeah he is rich and started Facebook but is he human?”
Human? The guy was a genius even if the movie does fictionalize some of what happened during the creation of Facebook.
He had the brilliant idea of an internet social media site and executed beautifully. He was so good about it that 500 million people like what he has given them.
Did he shed a few people along the way? Of course, they were either leaches or dead weight. The twins are the leeches. “I have an idea and now you owe me.” That’s what I call a brain fart. You have it and it evaporates. Continue reading
Cool idea for movies but not quite ready for Canada
Netflix opened it’s doors in Canada to movie streaming into your home for $7.99 a month. The first month is free and it’s $1 cheaper than US customers pay.
They are not ready for the Canadian market since they can only stream movies to Netflix Ready devices.
In Canada that means your iPad or iPhone, computer, Wii, PS3, or Toshiba Blu-Ray players.
Coming some time this fall are Samsung Blu-Ray and Xbox 360 and Apple TV.
They say Canada’s most popular Blu-Ray players from Samsung Blu-Ray are supported but not true. Samsung has to upgrade the bios or whatever prom they have to add the Netflix application.
So hold onto your video store membership because online streaming via Netflix is not ready.
Unless you want to watch movies on a tiny screen like the iPhone or iPad.
Neil Young Le Noise
Droid R2D2 sign up page (click for larger image)
When Verizon licensed the Droid name from Lucasfilms (Star Wars) you knew they had to have a Star Wars version of the phone. The Droid R2D2 is coming September 30th.
Verizon is leaking more information today in Orlando but a preview shot of the Droid R2D2 phone follows the story break. You can sign up for pricing and availability on this site.
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