Entertainment

Finally Done With Band Competitions

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My fall season has ended, and I bet I know at least one person who’s happy about that…

I saw the new Steve Martin movie, Shop Girl today. It wasn’t my favorite Steve Martin movie, and it put me in the mood to watch ¡Three Amigos! More importantly, we saw the trailer for The Producers. I wish I had seen that on Broadway with the original cast… or any cast, for that matter.

For Those of You All

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If you’re interested in looking at the links I find on the internets (where there are rumors, I hear), you can view my link repository, managed with del.icio.us. I don’t include links to randomly found websites here anymore, but there’s a link to my found links on my link page if you misplace it.* So check it out, you might enjoy some of them.

In the last two days, I’ve seen two movies. One was seen at the Princeton Garden Theaters and the other on the USA Network on television. One of the movies is highly recommended and the other is not so much highly recommended.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know by now that Million Dollar Baby is considered a great movie, at least according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is film as art, the way I like it. If you’re a fan of Sergio Leone, you’ll notice familiar lighting techniques, camera angles and movements, and storytelling. Clint Eastwood directed, acted, and wrote the musical score for the movie. His talent really shines.

The other movie I happened to catch had a horrible story and was merely a shade of its original. Bring it On Again was truly a disappointment, despite scantily clad cheerleaders jumping around. As far as Los Angeles suburbs go, I’d choose Torrance over Whittier any day.

* At the last count, “link” showed up four times in that sentence—not bad.

Mary Fahl Concert

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The Mary Fahl concert last night was very nice. Kate Gaffney was Mary’s opener, and she was very good as well.

I got to spend some time with some of Jen‘s nice friends and we discovered a very creative way to get from Darren‘s house to Bryn Mawr.

Interestingly, when I first listened to Mary Fahl’s album (yesterday), I went immediately to the last track on the CD. I misread The Dawning of the Day (which was apparently featured in some film) as The Dimming of the Day. The Dimming of the Day is a beautiful song by Richard Thompson that has been covered by many people. I was quite surprised when the track started playing and I didn’t hear the song I anticipated. Now that I had realized I misread the title on the CD cover, there was no reason for me to assume Mary would sing the Richard Thompson song.

I was doubly surprised at the concert when Mary opened with Richard Thompson’s The Dimming of the Day.

Pink Floyd and Doctor Who Mash-Up

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It’s well known among Pink Floyd fans that the band sometimes hid music from Doctor Who in their songs. Well, I’ve taken that to the next step in the tradition of mash-ups. For your listening pleasure, I present a mash-up between Pink Floyd’s Sheep from their album Animals and the original Doctor Who theme. You can download it from Fiveandtwenty Torrents. It’s a long song, so you’ll have to listen through all of it.

Article About Pop Music and Lip Synching

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In Salon (get the day pass and click through the ad to read the full article), there’s a nice article about pop music and lip synching and giving credit where credit is due. Here’s a quote:

Ashlee, Britney, Christina, etc. are not artists, they are just faces being used to sell these products, these songs. The products can be good (Ashlee’s “Pieces of Me,” Christina’s “Beautiful”) or even great (Britney’s “Toxic”), but the “artists” have very little to do with how they turn out. Any scorn or appreciation you feel for them should rightfully be distributed among the teams of producers, songwriters and managers who have steered these women to stardom.