GEORGE LUCAS INSISTS IT’S POSSIBLE TO ‘NUKE THE FRIDGE’

Dear George,

Please see: Holes, first rule of.

Signed,
America

People wouldn’t have cared anything about the fridge thing had the rest of the movie not been so awful… and stupid. I doubt very much an inflatable life raft works like a parachute when it’s filled with people and thrown out of a plane. But we suspended disbelief for that because the third act of “Doom” made us wet our pants.

THR REVIEWS ‘RED TAILS’

The experience of black American aviators in World War II gets a whitewash in Red Tails. The story of the 996 pilots (and some 15,000 ground personnel) who distinguished themselves in the air in the face of institutional racism is a great one and, at least, will come to the attention of more people due to this long-gestating project from Lucasfilm. But every character here is so squeaky clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing. The tale’s considerable built-in inspirational value will move and impress black audiences of all ages and would do the same to a wider public if sufficiently promoted, but the determinedly simplistic approach will curtail interest among any viewers hungry for some real history. The anticipated low interest level for this material overseas is cited as a major reason the project took so long to get off the ground.

Related: George Lucas Heading For a Big Disappointment with ‘Red Tails’

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Kid Rock says he doesn’t mind if a politician on the left or the right wants to crank up his tunes on the campaign trail.

The shaggy crooner is the exception to the rule.

FoxNews.com reports that most singers balk when a Republican wants to co-op their songs for campaign events. Things are mighty different when it’s a Democratic politician singing a familiar song.

On the other hand, Bill Clinton used Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” in his successful 1992 presidential bid, Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry played Springsteen’s “No Surrender” in his 2004 campaign, in 2008 Sen. Barack Obama revived Springsteen’s “The Rising,” and that same year fellow Democrat John Edwards used Mellancamp’s “Our Country.” All of these came and went without objection from the artists. In fact, except for 2008, when Barack Obama was sent a “cease and desist” letter from the legal team for Sam Moore (one half of the legendary duo Sam & Dave) over the unlicensed use of “Hold On, I’m Comin’” as background beat at his rallies, its hard to find examples of Democrats getting taken to task.

Perhaps the only place you’re guaranteed to see a squeaky clean concert these days is during the Super Bowl halftime show.

The fallout from Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” back in 2004 ensured subsequent acts were chosen for their family-friendly appeal. That meant older, less threatening rockers like U2, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty got the call, while Lady Gaga was left to watch the game at home on her big screen TV.

That, inexplicably enough, leads us to Madonna. The Material Girl will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show Feb. 5 along with Cirque du Soleil.

Madonna has come a long way, baby.

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Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen don’t work the land for a living, but each is working the U.S. government for a pretty penny.

A new report from Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, “Subsidies of the Rich and Famous,” reveals a number of high-profile liberals have been sucking at the public teat. Perhaps being part of the 1 percent just isn’t enough to make ends meet these days.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified several individuals receiving farm payments “whose professions had nothing to do with farming or agricultur[e],” says the report.

The report also says millionaires Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Ted Turner have collected farm subsidies.

“For example, Jon Bon Jovi paid property taxes of only $100 last year on his extensive real estate holdings in New Jersey that he uses to raise bees. At the same time, Bruce Springsteen received farm subsidies because he leases his property to an organic farmer,” the report explains.

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When Bruce Springsteen recently traded his lyricist pen for an op-ed pen, which he used to criticize New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie, a collective yawn arose throughout the land. After all, it’s long been evident that Springsteen writes and sings about the struggles of the common man, but in real life, and in politics, he’s completely out of touch.

It seems Springsteen is upset with Christie’s ongoing battle against government expenditures, particularly public entitlements. And as liberals and hard left ideologues like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon have done against Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, so Springsteen is now doing against Christie in New Jersey.

Wrote Springsteen: “[Christie’s] cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few years.” (If you’re like me, when you read Springsteen’s words all you see is “blah, blah, blah, and blah.”)

Honestly folks, I’m beginning to get embarrassed for him in the way I’ve come to be embarrassed for Larry Hagman’s family and Al Gore apologists. (more…)

From Baseball Crank, a very insightful look at why Bruce Springsteen’s been able to hold on to the affection of many conservatives even with his open political support of liberal causes and politicians; and what distinguishes the Boss from those entertainers who can’t.

Baseball Crank:

When New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie, was sworn into office, he chose to celebrate at his inauguration by joining a Bruce Springsteen cover band in singing the Boss’ signature anthem, ‘Born to Run’. Governor Christie hails from Bruce’s home state of New Jersey, and his zealous Springsteen fandom is perhaps unusually dedicated for a politician. But it also symbolizes a paradox: while Springsteen has long been open about his left-wing political views and has hit the campaign trail for the last two Democratic presidential candidates, he remains enduringly popular with a broad segment of conservatives and Republicans. In part, that’s for the obvious reason: Bruce is a rock legend with a ton of fans, so we should be unsurprised that he would have fans of every political persuasion. It’s also partly demographic; Bruce’s fans tend to be disproportionately white and, increasingly, older, and those are more conservative groups than the population at large. But my own anecdotal sense is that Bruce’s fanbase is – if anything – more conservative-leaning than you would explain by those factors alone, and certainly not markedly more liberal. Speaking as a conservative and a longtime Springsteen diehard, let me offer some theories as to why that is. This is not an essay dedicated to claiming Springsteen for the Right, or arguing that he’s unwittingly some sort of crypto-conservative, although I do note at a few points conservative themes in his writing and his life. Rather, my argument is that the things that appeal to fans of Bruce Springsteen and his music are, quite logically, most appealing to conservatives.

Generally, we conservatives have pretty low expectations, politically, for our pop-culture icons. We understand that most of them don’t agree with us on politics or policy. So, what we look for are artists who have some tolerance and respect for us, some themes in common with our worldview, and sometimes being one of the good guys on something. Bruce delivers on all counts.

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So last Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi was speaking at some DC summit, where she noted that – because of the new health-care reform law – musicians and artists could quit their jobs and pursue their dreams, because now the rest of us will be footing the bill for their urinary tract infections.

Here’s the gasbag, now, gasbagging:

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“We see it as an entrepreneurial bill – a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”

So, to put it plainly: If you want to play your guitar in the subway, no worries – we’ll supply your health care. If you want to join a death metal barbershop quartet that plays everything on a children’s xylophone- that’s cool too. If you want to freeze-dry your feces, jar it, and call it an indictment on the Bush regime, relax, you daring artist – we’ll pay for your pink eye. (more…)

Somewhere over the last 25 years, the idea of what constitutes a “celebrity” changed from a person with some kind of history of achievement to pretty much anyone with a pulse who manages to get his, her or its mug splashed across a TV screen.  Actually, as the wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding the death of Michael Jackson demonstrated last year, the pulse is now optional.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the ridiculous, cynical remake of “We are the World,” an exercise that according to news accounts seemed less focused on assisting the people of Haiti than on stroking the egos of the pseudo-stars and future nobodies who did the yodeling.

The tiresome video (directed by the tiresome Paul Haggis) raises an important question – who the hell are these people?  I think one of them – the dude with the expensive clothes and dull stare – was Puff Diddley or P. Daddy or whatever idiotic moniker he’s using this week.  You know, there was a time when grown men used their given names instead of childish nicknames that are just emblems of the eternal adolescence that modern pop culture worships. 

Now, the original “We are the World” was itself nearly unlistenable, but that’s a matter of taste and reasonable people can disagree (I thought the British supergroup Band-Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was a much better song, though it shared “World’s” inexcusable refusal to confront the reason the Ethiopian drought turned into the Ethiopian famine – the cruelty and stupidity of its left wing government ).  However, at least most of the participants were people with track records of success.  You had Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan, Dionne Warwick and a bunch of others.  Now, not all of them might have been your cup of tea – I’d rather pass a kidney stone made of broken glass than listen to the Boss – but you had at least heard of them. (more…)

As I am a foreigner, the first I ever heard about the Super Bowl’s tradition of mid-show entertainment was the now notorious Janet Jackson nipple incident whereby Justin Timberlake ‘accidentally’ unleashed Ms. Jackson’s breast upon millions of unsuspecting Americans. I was living in Moscow at the time and even the Russians were quite obsessed by the role of Ms. Jackson’s mammary glands in a sport none of them played or cared about. 

Six years later and it is clear that the Super Bowl’s organizers are still terrified of Janet Jackson’s nipple, that it comes to them at night and haunts them in their sleep, threatening to embroil them in scandal and to lose them millions in sponsorship deals. For what else can explain the entertainment decisions made by the Masters of the Bowl ever since that fateful Sunday afternoon in February 2004? 

Let’s take a look at who has played in the years since:  (more…)

In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks described a 1975 Bruce Springsteen concert as the start of his “other education,” not the intellectual one from schooling but the “emotional education” from the popular culture. 

Brooks is a superstar pundit.  A featured journalist at The Weekly Standard, in 2000 Brooks was author of “Bobos in Paradise,” a smart look at “bourgeois bohemians,” the educated, “counterculture” crowd that had become America’s new blue state power elite.  Brooks went on to occupy the house conservative Op Ed position at the liberal mainstay New York Times and the equivalent chair on PBS NewsHour’s version of crossfire, with ever-apologetic Brooks pitted against the always garrulous lefty Mark Shields.  These two roles established Brooks as the left’s favorite conservative, a position he solidified as one of the Obamacons, prominent conservatives who supported Obama, believing him to be a moderate centrist, or in Brooks’ case, even a closet Burkean conservative. 

Last week Brooks went with his 15-year-old daughter to see a Springsteen concert in Baltimore and witnessed her joyous astonishment.  Her arrival at utter abandon echoed the exhilaration, the emotional learning, Springsteen had long ago imparted to Brooks, the depiction of a world of “teenage couples out on a desperate lark, workers struggling as the mills close down, and drifters on the wrong side of the law,” tales told with a jolt for “10,000 people in a state of utter abandon.”   

Brooks fondly describes the artistry and stories of Springsteen’s universe, “a distinct map of reality” seen on an epic and anthemic scale, in which “losers” always retain dignity and their choices have immense moral consequences, with emotions like stoicism, seen through veils of exaltation and nostalgia.  (more…)

The disconnect between beauty and popularity in music has never been greater.  Where once America sang the Beatles or Motown (“The Sound of Young America”), today the music industry is severely fragmented.  Gangsta rap.  Speed metal.  Trip-hop.  The major recording companies whine about declining profits even as they pay Mariah Carey $18 million not to record.

Unanimity of public opinion over popular song has passed.  Music, which used to unite, now divides.  Eminem and Ludacris would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.  We live in an antinomian age where it’s hip to defy conventional wisdom long after every vestige of conventional wisdom lies in tatters.  Where Keats’ Grecian Urn once proclaimed, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” today’s antinomian consumer proclaims, “Whatever,” in a voice oozing ennui. (more…)

Liam Neeson is officially a full-fledged action star. The Irish-born actor has often played heroes, whether it was Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Schindler’s List, the wise Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace or determined sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in 2005’s biopic Kinsey, Neeson has always had a knack for playing the earnest-but-flawed good guy. In his new movie Taken (Fox), writer/producer Luc Besson and director Pierre Morel have turned him into a Dad with the “mad skills” of a super-spy – think Mike Brady crossed with Jason Bourne.

The result is a well-reviewed (56% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) action film that will help to satisfy blockbuster-hungry audiences waiting for Warner Bros’ Watchmen (due March 6). Taken has scored big on its opening weekend. After grabbing an estimated $9.4M, the movie surged on Saturday to $11.62M (up almost 24% from opening day) and, despite today’s Super Bowl, the film could reach $24.62M according to studio estimates. That will be more than enough to win the Super Bowl 3-day, and positive word-of-mouth could get this one into the $70M-$75M range domestic.

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Bruce Springsteen has promised a “12-minute party” during his Super Bowl halftime set this Sunday, which means among other things that he won’t be performing any song he’s written in the past quarter-century or more. Actually, the Boss was cagey about his playlist, telling the media, “Who decides? The Boss decides. People suggest, hint. They cajole.” Listeners of the world, unite!

Here’s a guy who went from making love in the dirt with Crazy Janey out behind the dynamo off of the backstreets near Thunder Road during the freaking Ford and Carter years to bitching and moaning about unemployment and factory shutdowns during the booming 1990s, when his entire musical universe was populated by hobos walking along highways with hats in hand and mumbling about unions, Pinkertons, and the WPA. Like most self-absorbed rock stars, the turning point came early, the moment he started writing songs about how hard it was to be…a rock star.  (more…)

With his trademark look of severe yet not unwelcomed constipation, his trusty acoustic guitar in hand, working class diva Bruce Springsteen kicked off Barack Obama’s We Are One Inaugural Celebration concert at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18.  Indeed, Bruce had much to celebrate.  Just a week prior he scored himself a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the film The Wrestler, beating out the worthy likes of 16-year-old Miley Cyrus and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl Beyonce Knowles.  Within the next two weeks, he’d be releasing a new album and headlining halftime festivities at Super Bowl XLIII.  Most importantly, on this grand day, he was performing in front of his latest favorite Democrat, helping to usher in a historic new era of something or other (I always forget the required tag line, I just know something is really historic). (more…)

Nobody is ever completely satisfied with the Academy Award nominations, but with several key snubs, Oscar voters may have ensured that the 2009 telecast hits an all-time ratings low.

Investor Warren Buffet coined the phrase “skin in the game” to describe a situation where executives use their own money to buy shares in their company. The so-called Oracle of Omaha likes companies where insiders have their own money invested because they work harder, care more and generally are more emotionally invested.

The problem with the Oscars is that voters are nominating films that relatively few people have seen. The five movies nominated for Best Picture this week – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, The Reader and Frost/Nixon – have combined to gross just $186.7M. The Dark Knight passed that box office total early in its fifth day of release. (more…)