Welcome to Big Hollywood’s monthly review of all things notable in the world of music.

This is Vintage Now, released a few weeks ago, is a retro music compilation that isn’t designed to cash in on nostalgia– rather, it’s a harbinger of a growing movement to revive not only the style but the values of classic culture. Featuring 10 songs from artists of all ages and nations, This is Vintage Now embodies the sound of classic jazz, rock, and pop music but doesn’t come off as pure nostalgia. Producer David Gasten, who appears on the record with his band The City Kids, explains the reason the disc doesn’t sound like a cynical ploy preying on older generations’ memories:

The Vintage Movement is a new social movement of people who are essentially trying to escape back to the 1940’s, 1950’s, and early-to mid-1960’s. Many times attempts at bringing a period back have been short-lived (e.g. the Nineties Swing Revival) because they were not rooted in a inside-out, values-based way of doing things. People come to these older styles because they want to escape. They want to visit an alternate world where class and quality are the rule, not the exception. They want to be excited about life and culture instead of slimed by the same old garbage over and over again. And they want to get along with others, have good conversations, flirt, dance, enjoy great music and movies, etc. The ladies want to be treated like ladies, and the gentlemen want to be able to be gentlemen.

Spanning a wide range of styles, from Beverley Kenney’s whimsical ’40s-era piano ballad to Big Jay McNeely’s raucous boogie-woogie to The Necro Tonz’s edgy jazz to Caro Emerald’s catchy neo-swing tune “Just One Dance” (see the YouTube Video below), This is Vintage Now is a well-paced, engaging listen, and its intent is exactly the type of culture-changing  media we need to combat the values-destroying narcissism and nihilism of the world’s currently dominant “artists.” TIVN is available from iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, and other online retailers, or you can order it directly from the compilation’s home website to get extra tracks from a special Release Party edition.

(more…)

First there was an earthquake, then a tsunami, then a meltdown, and now, possibly a volcano.

At this point, a Mothra joke seems inevitable – but also lame. Frankly, I’m not sure there’s anything I can say that adds incite or comfort to anyone after such a horrendous event.

Living in Manhattan, I’m always reminded of man’s ugliness. But I’ve forgotten about the arbitrary viciousness of Mother Nature. Looking at the devastation, from my cozy apartment, I can only think that there was someone in Japan doing that exact same thing when the quake hit. Sitting at home, drinking tea, in boxers.

Then it’s over.

Disaster rarely calls ahead.

We are all vulnerable to the whims of catastrophe, and as far as I can tell, there’s little wisdom to be gained from it.

Well, other than info for future planning.

Yep – we all know life is precious. But it’s also a sentence featuring ever-more-brutal methods of mayhem, and the hell in Japan just added another exclamation point.

Anyway, you’d think there are no winners in this tragedy, but you’re wrong.

(more…)

Real human being that Roger Ebert. Nothing like politicizing a human tragedy to take a shot at your adversaries:

(more…)

Gilbert Gottfried isn’t the only celeb “joking” about Japan’s unthinkable tragedy.  Rapper 50 Cent:

“Wave will hit 8am them crazy white boys gonna try to go surfing,” the rapper wrote Friday morning, as the West Coast braced for a potential tsunami.

He followed it up with, “Look this is very serious people I had to evacuate all my hoess from LA, Hawaii and Japan. I had to do it. Lol.”

“Family Guy” writer/Producer Alec Sulkin (who later apologized):

“If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, google ‘Pearl Harbor death toll’,” he tweeted over the weekend.

From The Street we learn comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been fired by Aflac for his “jokes”:

Gilbert Gottfried was fired by Aflac on Monday after the comedian made a number of distasteful jokes about the devastation in Japan.

“Japan is really advanced,” Gottfried tweeted on Monday afternoon, “They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”

Aflac quickly cut ties with the comedian following a string of similar comments. 

(more…)

Director Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter” opens with a pretty amazing and terrifying sequence involving a deadly Tsunami that rips through everything including the person of a vacationing star-reporter from France, Marie LeLay (played by exquisite French actress Cecile de France). After she’s found drowned and presumed dead, a couple of strangers make a valiant attempt to save her but it’s futile. She’s not breathing and has no pulse. Marie eventually revives on her own to choke the dirty water out of her lungs but not before spending a few minutes in the soft glow of the afterlife, an experience that will have a profound effect on the life she was sure she wanted back in France.

—–

Meanwhile, over in England, pre-teen twin brothers Marcus and Jason are dealing with their drug-addicted mother and an eventual tragedy that will blow a hole in their family — while back here in the States, Matt Damon’s George – a psychic who turned his back on a gift he now considers a curse, has to deal with a brother (Jay Mohr) who wants to commercialize him and the loneliness that comes with knowing everyone’s deepest darkest secrets.

You can see the obvious potential here and eventually the three stories will connect as the protagonist’s personal experiences involving death and/or the hereafter inevitably finds a way to intertwine and draw them together. As is the case with most Eastwood films at this stage of his career, the performances are uniformly good, the pacing unhurried, and directorial competence hangs over the full 129 minutes. The film’s problem, and it’s a fatal one, is Peter Morgan’s screenplay, which has managed the impossible in telling this story without advancing anything resembling a theme. (more…)

Everywhere they go Irish children endure politics disguised as education or entertainment.

The Irish Times is, like the New York Times, the country’s most influential newspaper. 

They recently teamed up with Irish government’s overseas aid department and produced an educational supplement for every Irish classroom. 

In the supplement Irish children are informed that “more natural disasters are happening now than in the past because the world’s climate is changing”. They are then invited to “hear about what happened to Vathyia when extreme weather affected where she lived.” (their emphasis)

(more…)