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Posts Tagged ‘bruce springsteen’

Mike Baron

Ugly Pop World Drives Beauty Underground

by Mike Baron

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…)

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Posted Feb 27th 2009 at 2:05 pm in Entertainment, Reviews, Video | 89 Comments

Steve Mason

Biggest US opening ever for Luc Besson – TAKEN grabs up 24% Saturday and finishes with $24.6M for Super Bowl weekend; PAUL BLART: MALL COP strong at #2 while THE UNINVITED appears headed for 3rd with a possible $10.5M; Zellweger’s NEW IN TOWN may reach $6.75M opening; Not much of an “Oscar bounce” for THE READER and MILK!

by Steve Mason

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.

(more…)

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Posted Jan 31st 2009 at 2:15 pm in Steve Mason's Box Office | 34 Comments

Nick Gillespie

Springsteen at the Super Bowl

by Nick Gillespie

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…)

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Posted Jan 30th 2009 at 11:00 am in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Politics | 114 Comments

Riley Hunter

The Audacity of Bruce Springsteen

by Riley Hunter

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…)

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Posted Jan 27th 2009 at 7:50 am in Celebrity News, Entertainment, Politics | 171 Comments

Steve Mason

LOWEST RATED OSCAR TELECAST IN HISTORY?: Snubs of THE DARK KNIGHT, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Springsteen point toward a new ratings nadir for the Oscar show; The five Best Picture nominees have combined to gross only $186M, about what TDK delivered in first 4 days!

by Steve Mason

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…)

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Posted Jan 22nd 2009 at 11:09 pm in Steve Mason's Box Office | 75 Comments