What the hell has happened to David Lee Roth?
TiVo caught him on the Tonight Show (which I could never watch without being able to high-speed through it, as Jay Leno’s unbelievable awfulness gives me a headache every time) playing a cover of “Jump” off his new album. It’s apparently a gimmick album, with fiddle, banjo and other “Southern” instruments standing in for Eddie Van Halen and company.
It was awful.
I know a lot of people haven’t liked Roth’s post-VH rock stuff, but I did (“Sensible Shoes” in particular is a great, great song), but if he’s going to go in another direction, it should be one that works. This was Roth grinning like he was lobotomized, surrounded by musicians who seemed incredibly bored and exposing that “Jump” is not one of the world’s most complex songs and loses a lot once a much-younger Roth isn’t squealing and howling over top of it.
What the heck is the point of this new album? Is it just to finally kill Eddie Van Halen? I figure, after how he and Sammy have been treated the last few years by the Van Halen brothers, he might be entitled to screw with Eddie like this, but ugh, do we have to buy it? Or even listen to it in promotional appearances?
Awful, awful, awful.
- In other news of the weird, MC Hammer has a blog. Warning: Turn off your office speakers before clicking that link. Please Hammer, don’t hurt everyone’s job situation.
From the Word A Day mailing list:
honorificabilitudinity (ON-uh-rif-i-kay-bi-li-too-DIN-i-tee, -tyoo-) noun
Honorableness.
[From Medieval Latin honorificabilitudinitas, from Latin honor.]
Another form of this, honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters), is the longest word Shakespeare ever used. It comes out of the mouth of Costard, the clown, in Love’s Labour’s Lost:
“I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon.”
Wow. I’ve got to find a way to use that word sometime in my fiction.
Be forewarned: The first few minutes of The Producers
are a little surprising if you’re expecting the (relative) subtlety of a normal Mel Brooks movie. The film of the musical based on his original film is done bigger than life throughout, with the acting never dropping down from the this-is-for-the-folks-in-the-back-row level. Once one is acclimated to that, however, this is a great, great time, although one that always feels very much like the filmed version of a stage play and not necessarily like a movie musical.
The basic story and story-within-a-story are as hilariously profane as ever, meaning this movie is not for children or for the easily offended. Mel Brooks takes a machine gun approach to every sacred cow on Broadway and his willingness to push the boundaries in the 1960s still feels quite edgy today.
The television and film actors he casts in the movie — some in blink-and-miss them roles, like Andrea Martin and Michael McKean — all acquit themselves well and bring an extra layer of polish to things, although I imagine fans of the Broadway show will complain, possibly with merit, that the original stage actors should have been given a chance to perform before a wider audience.
Still, this is a dazzling film and side-splittingly funny.
Strongly recommended for fans of Mel Brooks (stick around after the credits to see him appear in the film of the musical of his old film), the strong cast (Will Ferrell does an especially good job in his role as a maniacal Nazi-turned-playright) or folks who are just curious about what all the fuss was about on Broadway.
What is, for my money, the best entertainment news magazine around, KCRW’s The Business, talked about the upcoming movie based on World of Warcraft in this week’s show. They interviewed my former boss of my boss, Blizzard Entertainment’s Paul Sams.
(The only non-gamer mistake made by the show that I heard: There’s no built-in voice support in WoW, but that’s pretty good by the standards of mainstream journalism.)
Check it out.
The truth is, most people thought of King Kong as a joke. Sure, the original, way back when, was apparently scary to audiences. But today, the clumsy little stop-motion gorilla doesn’t have the power to do much with current audiences. Certainly not scare them. The campy 1970s remake — with the very timely energy crisis subplot — doesn’t really do it for today’s audiences either.
Peter Jackson remembered, though, that Kong used to terrify audiences. Lucky us.
The 21st century King Kong not only features an utterly convincing giant gorilla and actual compelling characters and a great Depression-era setting, it also is the scariest dinosaur/giant monster movie to date. The bug scene will send arachnophobes screaming for the door and Kong versus not one, not two, but three tyrannosaurs makes the Jurassic Park series look like a lot of smoke and mirrors. Combined with the best version of Kong’s climactic stand-off with the fighter planes, this is easily the best version of the classic story to date.
Unfortunately, this all adds up to a long, long movie. It’s worth it, but be prepared for at least one intermission along the way.
Peter Jackon’s King Kong gets my highest possible recommendation for fans of the previous films, the Jurassic Park series, the radiant Naomi Watts, Peter Jackson or giant monster movies in general. Great, thrilling stuff.
- We also saw Rumor Has It, which is a strange little movie.
I suppose if you’re a woman under 40 who also happens to love The Graduate despite being a woman under 40, this might be your favorite film ever. As it is, while Jennifer Aniston is charming in an exactly like her role on Friends way, and you feel badly for Mark Ruffalo, who plays her fiance whose biggest crime seems to be not being Kevin Costner, this falls sort of flat.
It’s clever in a borderline obsessive-compulsive about the Graduate and (sort of strangely) the city of Pasadena way, but that’s not really sufficient for a recommendation.
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