Rocci Fisch

December 12, 2011

LIONESS: HIDDEN TREASURES

… The name of the "new" CD by Amy Winehouse.
… Not really "new" because the songs were recorded a while back before her death and remained incomplete. Producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson sifted through tapes and unfinished tracks and compiled the album, which represents material she had recorded since 2002 up to the present.
… Called "Lioness," I am presuming, because that was the name of her own record company that she formed in 2009. She chose it because a pendant her grandmother Cynthia gave her bore the likeness of a lioness on it.
… Overall the album's pretty good, despite what the all-knowing, nitpicking music critics say. They claim it sounds like leftover goods -- bits and pieces put together to capitalize on her death.
… THE RUNDOWN:
… OUR DAY WILL COME: A remake of the Ruby & The Romantics 1963 hit. She sounds young and happy on it.
… BETWEEN THE CHEATS: Jazzy and in her unique bluesy style.
… TEARS DRY: Very Billy Holiday-ish and downbeat.
… WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW: Dramatic, very pop arrangement and orchestration.
… By the way, the song's title was originally Tomorrow, then Will You Love Me Tomorrow and then Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Ask Carole King. She wrote it with then-hubby Gerry Goffin and it was a hit for the Shirelles in 1960.
… LIKE SMOKE: Same beat as the previous cut with guest rapper Nas on it.
… VALERIE: A skipping beat and good tooting horns. She wails a bit on this one asking Valerie to come on over and stop "making a fool out of me."
…THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA: A remake of the bossa nova hit of the 60's. Fast tempo, hollow-sounding drum work. Her voice has good vibrato and you hear it well.
… HALF-TIME: Loping along, sounds a bit off-key in places but winds up being okay.
… WAKE UP ALONE: Bluesy, lazy tune about love being a game. "I stay up, clean the house, least I'm not drinking. Walk around just so I don't have to think about thinking …"
…BEST FRIENDS, RIGHT?: Mid-tempo with good horns and she sings it nice and smooth. Sounds sassy.
… BODY AND SOUL: Sung with Tony Bennett. Slow, quiet, very Billie Holiday-ish. Lush, soft strings, smooth and sophisticated.
… A SONG FOR YOU: Remake of a great Leon Russell tune (1970). Her voice sometimes seems to disappear and waver and go under and she gets lost in the arrangement that seems too large and overdone.
… It's Winehouse and her distinctive style with some battle scars from her rough life but it doesn't seem like a hodgepodge to me.
IF YOU ASK ME… The new Sherlock Holmes movie, a sequel to "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, looks more like an action movie than a clever whodunit.
… It's overstocked, with too much shoot-em and blow-em ups and running around and special effects that take away from what everyone remembers as a classic detective story. Is this what the movie producers want?
… Sure, enough to suck in the young demographic. Guess they had to outdo the first one.
… Overdone.
Donald Trump discussed his hair with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly last week. She asked, "What's the deal with the hair?"
… "Is it that bad?"questioned Trump.
… She asked about it being combed down in front and wondered if he was hiding anything.
… He responded by pulling the front back and saying that it he thought it wasn't receding much.
…Then Kelly leaned over and pushed it back to check it herself.
… "I'm getting killed on the hair," he said.
… Later, back on the news set, Kelly said it was "very silky and it was all his; it was real."
… She's moderating the next Republican debate in Sioux City, Iowa. Just sayin'.
… In other Trump news it sounds like he's getting his comeuppance because only two Republican presidential hopefuls are participating in his Newsmax (conservative media organization) debate on Dec. 27 in Des Moines, Iowa.
… Only Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are on the roster.
… Michele Bachmann told Fox News she thought that Trump has already made up his mind about which candidate to endorse and that he would therefore be biased as a moderator.
… Ron Paul said it was beneath the office of the presidency to have a grandstander like Trump do it. That man speaks his mind.
… Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, was relieved when owner Sally decided not to get a Norwich Terrier puppy to add to the household family. Sally had second thoughts about it and didn't want Hanalie, who has ruled the roost for twelve and a half years, to be upset and feel left out with a new arrival that would demand a lot of attention.
QUESTION. Does hip-hop warrant a college course? It's worth three credits college credits at Georgetown University and is called the "Sociology of Hip-Hop: Jay Z," taught by author /professor and frequent TV commentator, Michael Eric Dyson.
… "I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop …" (Rapper's Delight - The Sugarhill Gang, on Sugar Hill Records, 1979, a seminal rap recording.)
… It's about the Jay Z's music, business and fashion sense.
… It's a big hit with the kids and is a "chance to listen to great music and discuss topics like racial and gender identity," says Dyson.
… Great "music"?
… They never had classes on soul music and R&B back in my day, as far as I know.
… Kids today … They get everything.
"How many times have you been "properly" in love," asked Piers Morgan of Jane Fonda, in a re-airing of an interview that the talk show host did a while back with the actress/author.
… What's "properly" in love?
… Too British. This is American TV.
ESPN reports that Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary told the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Patriot News that he heard "sex sounds" coming from the shower on campus where he allegedly saw a young boy peer around the corner, was then pulled back by an adult's arm and then saw former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky walking out.
… This account differs from what McQueary first told a grand jury. He told them he actually saw the incident.
… So what does sex sound like?
REQUEST. I wish the American Lung Association would please buy less time on TV to lobby for the EPA to update its pollution standards. That billowing industrial smoke paired with audio of a choking/crying/wheezing baby and a red baby carriage in the foreground is a bit too much to take.
… How alarming can we get?
"I wanna leave my footprints in the sands of time," tweeted Michael Jackson's 13-year-old daughter Paris, who's making her feature film debut in the title role of Lunden O'Malley in "Lunden's Bridge and the Three Keys," a live-action/animation flick based on the Dennis H. Christen novel.
… She sounds like she's got her father's ego.
… Remember when he slurred his last words on his deathbed and said of himself, in regard to his upcoming concerts in London, "I want people [when they leave this show] to say, "I've never seen nothing like this in my whole life … it's amazing. He's the greatest entertainer in the world."
… The movie also stars Larry King and his wife Shawn - what, is she gonna sing? - Ted Lange from The Love Boat –where's he been all these years? - and Joey Fatone, former N'Sync member and Dancing with the Stars contestant. (He came in second in 2007.)
… I see they have all the stars.
… The movie's about wizardry.
… All profits from the film go to schools that need the money.
… Reminds me of Chelsea Clinton, going on TV soon (Monday) to be a "Making a Difference" correspondent for NBC News. How much did her lineage account for achieving such a plum job?
… How much experience has she had?
… She's seen in a two-fer promo interviewing someone in her home state of Arkansas (she goes "back home") along with Ted Koppel talking about the Iraq withdrawal. The announcer declares they'll be first with their pieces on NBC Nightly News followed later in primetime on the network's new magazine show, Rock Center.
… She's a good one to pair the seasoned newsman with.
PONDERING. Katie Couric appears to be taking over ABC. She seems like the next Barbara Walters to me.
… She's even got a two-hour year-end special, The Year with Katie Couric (in collaboration with People magazine), which resembles Walters's Most Fascinating People shows.
… Recently Couric was in primetime interviewing Lady Gaga in her Thanksgiving special.
… And then she interviewed Beyonce about her pregnancy and career.
… In the upcoming special - airdate Dec. 15 - she takes a dance dip with Dancing with the Stars winner J.R. Martinez.
… (What show hasn't he been on lately?)
… Walters does stuff like that. She was the trailblazer in dancing with guests on her TV specials.
… FYI: Walters's special is just an hour and a half (9:30 - 11 p.m.) on Wednesday, Dec. 14 compared to Couric's two hours of primetime.
… I'm guessing there's jealousy going on at the network.
MOVIE: HUGO. Martin Scorsese's fantastical adventure film about a boy in Paris who lives in a train station and is on a mission to find out what happened to his father and an automaton (a robot machine).
… It's got a lot of special effects/CGI mixed with live action that looks terrific as the characters maneuver in and around everything in the city. The "camerawork" is unbelievable.
… It's slow-moving at first and takes a while at the beginning to get to the start of the story but in the end it's worth it.
… The lead character is played by young actor Asa Butterfield and Ben Kingsley plays a toy maker. Sasha Baron Cohen plays a crippled station inspector that catches trouble-making youngsters that hang out and rob merchants and tosses them in a paddy wagon to be hauled off to an orphanage. Cruel but a good role for Cohen, who plays it believably and comically.
… They're talking about Scorsese getting an Academy Award for it.
… The movie is quite an accomplishment considering all the moving parts in the film. You have to see it to believe it.
Home designer Nate Berkus's show is dead, according to The Hollywood Reporter. They'll finish up the season and that'll be it.
… Low ratings and other hosts coming down the pike for their own talk shows -- Survivor's Jeff Probst, comedian Steve Harvey, the return of Ricki Lake and Katie Couric - there she is again - are killing his.
… The word is that there will be too many shows and too few TV stations to air them on.
… Oprah Winfrey was Berkus's "godmother," so to speak, and he was a featured designer on her show back in the day.
RIDICULOUS. Demi Moore sitting in an elaborate French-looking upholstered chair near a rushing river in a snow-filled scene for an Ann Taylor holiday ad.
… Her location is described as a "Nordic winter wonderland."
… She's got a fur (faux?) scarf-like thing around her neck. Looks like roadkill.
… Her hair is flowing down like Rapunzel.
… She's gently touching a silver necklace and looking out in the distance, not particularly happy, just lazily gazing, like a Stepford Wife or something.
… It's one of many ‘holiday faces" on display for the women's clothing line's seasonal campaign.
… Mr. Highfalutin had this reaction to her expression: "Don't smile. It might show a wrinkle" - a reference, perhaps, to her reported use of Botox.
… Wonder if Ashton is proud of her.
OBSERVED. ABC World News (weekend) anchor David Muir likes to emphasize a point while questioning a correspondent about a story by gently pounding one hand on the anchor desk. He did it with Andrea Canning on Sunday while discussing her story about people earning extra money for participating in drug tests.
… Sometimes he uses both hands in the air to ask intense, concerned questions at the anchor desk and sometimes while he's out doing interviews in the field.
… He also likes to make it sound like ABC is one big (happy?) family working together , a concept long used by NBC in their tradition of inclusiveness, calling every reporter by their first names and commenting about how hard they work. Anchorman Brian Williams has been doing this for years.
… Muir thanked Cannning (mentioned above)for "being with us on a Sunday night."
… Like it's an inconvenience.
… It's obvious that it's Sunday night. What, do you think people don't know what day it is?
… And then he thanked GMA weekend co-anchor Bianna Golydryga, who appeared on the set, for "pulling double duty after GMA" (this morning) to deliver her report on Green Monday, whatever that it is.
… Anyway you look at it, it's mindless and needless dialogue that pollutes the airwaves and insults the viewer.
…FYI: Green Monday is an online retail industry term (what isn't nowadays?) to describe a good sales day, traditionally the second Monday of December.
… Black Friday, Cyber Monday. What's next, Bargain Basement Leftover Day?
…UH … Blue Monday - Fats Domino - on Imperial Records, 1956.

rocci.fisch@gmail.com

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