With this song, The Whispers paid tribute to the legendary soul singer Donny Hathaway, who was best-known for songs like “The Ghetto”, “This Christmas”, “Someday We’ll All Be Free”, and “Little Ghetto Boy” and for his collaborations with Roberta Flack. Tragically, Hathaway, who struggled with depression and who was diagnosed as being paranoid schizophrenic in 1971, committed suicide in 1979 but his music and influence lives on. The Whispers were one of the many groups to pay tribute to Hathaway after his death.
This video is a simple performance clip, as the majority of music videos were in the days before MTV.
It’s a new month and that means that it’s time for a new Black Widow trailer. How long have we been waiting for this film now? Where that old lady from Titanic? Has it really been over 80 years? I think that’s an exaggeration but we have been waiting for quite a while now.
Personally, I just hope this movie provides some sort of justice for the character. I’m still massively annoyed with how Natasha was treated in Avengers: Endgame and hearing that Black Widow 1) takes place before Endgame and 2) features Florence Pugh as the character who took Natasha’s place in the comic books does not particularly make me happy. At this point, though, I’ve been waiting so long to see the film that I’m just hoping Scarlett at least gets to beat a few people up with style.
Here’s the latest trailer. Black Widow will finally be released on July 9th!
This was originally published in 1962, when 1999 was 37 years away and many people probably thought it would be doomsday. Today, it’s been 22 years since doomsday and the world’s still here. This cover was done by Ed Valigursky, whose work has been featured on this site in the past and will be featured again in the future.
Since I’ve already shared the videos that were made for Annie Lennox’s and David Byrne’s contributions to the Red, Hot + Blue compilation album, it seems appropriate to share the best known cover and video to come out of that project. With Night and Day, U2 not only provide their own spin on Cole Porter’s best-known song but they also introduced the sound that would define them throughout the 90s. This was the first song of U2’s post-Joshua Tree era.
The video was directed by the German director, Wim Wenders. U2 would subsequently provide songs for Wenders’s Until The End Of The World and Far Away So Close. Bono would also produce and provide the story for The Million Dollar Hotel, one of Wenders’s less regarded films.
Recently, I was shocked to discover that I had never reviewed the 2006 film, Save The Last Dance 2.
I mean, really, it seems like this is a film that I should have reviewed a long time ago. For one thing, it’s not only a dance film but it’s also a ballet film and, if you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know that I pretty much grew up going to dance class and doing pointe work and regularly injuring my ankle. Add to that, Saved The Last Dance 2 is a sequel to one of my favorite movies, the original Save The Last Dance. Really, why had I not already reviewed this film before tonight?
Well, some of it is because Save The Last Dance 2 isn’t very good. I mean, it’s basically a really forgettable sequel that lacks almost everything that made the original Save The Last Dance such a meaningful film. Oddly enough, despite preferring the original, I think I actually have watched Save The Last Dance 2 more times than I’ve watched the first film. For whatever reason, Save The Last Dance 2 is on Showtime constantly! It shows up early in the morning, when you’re still too tired to change the channel and you end up watching it because you’re lazy. This is a film that mocks you by both tarnishing the legacy of the first Save The Last Dance but by also reminding you that you don’t even have the willpower necessary to turn off the TV.
Save The Last Dance 2 continues the story of Sara, who has now been accepted to Julliard and who has broken up with her wonderful boyfriend from the first film. In the first film, Sara was played by Julia Stiles. In the second film, she’s played by Izabella Miko. On the one hand, Izabella Miko is far more convincing ballerina than Julia Stiles was. (Unlike Julia Stiles, Izabella Miko was a dancer who even studied at the School of American Ballet before she injured her back and decided to focus on acting instead.) On the other hand, Julia Stiles brought some needed edginess to the role whereas Izabella Miko is so constantly cheerful that it’s hard to really believe that the Sara in the sequel is the same Sara from the original film. Izabella Miko is likable as Sara but, in this sequel, the character has been robbed of everything that made her interesting in the first film. She’s just another cheerful teenager looking for success in an MTV Film.
Once Sara arrives at Julliard, she meets the usual collection of jealous classmates, demanding teachers, and quirky roommates. She also meets Miles (Columbus Short), a guest lecturer who is impressed by Sara’s hip-hop skills. Sara and Miles fall in love. Miles wants Sara to help him choreograph his next show but the demanding Monique Delacroix (Jacqueline Bisset) wants Sara to play the lead in Giselle. Playing the lead will demand all of Sara’s time and attention but it could also be her ticket to stardom. Unfortunately, it also means that she won’t be able to help out Miles, which this film portrays as somehow being the ultimate betrayal despite the fact that one assumes that Miles, being a guest lecturer on hip hop dance, knows more than one choreographer.
If the message of the first film was that Sara didn’t have to choose between loving ballet and loving hip hop, the message of the sequel is, “Actually, she does have to choose and she better pick the one that will allow us to put together a successful soundtrack.” It’s a bit depressing and hollow, to be honest. It goes against everything that made the first film special.
That said, I’ll probably watch Save The Last Dance 2 the next time I turn on the TV and it’s playing on Showtime. Changing the channel would require too much effort.
That’s one way to pay for college, I guess. The combination of the frat boy smoking a cigarette and that dangerously tight corset combine to make this cover a classic. The artist responsible was Tom Miller.
This book was originally published in 1961. Edwin West was a penname that was used, at the time, by the author Donald Westlake. Using the name Richard Stark, Westlake wrote a series of highly regarded crime novels about a ruthless crook named Parker.
This cover of Cole Porter’s Don’t Fence Me In appeared on Red Hot + Blue, the same compilation album that featured Annie Lennox’s cover of Ev’Ry Time We Say Goodbye. Along with singing the song in his own unforgettable style, Byrne also directed the music video that was used to promote it. Byrne’s cover and the video both turn Porter’s song into an anthem of tolerance and liberation.
Of course, before Byrne covered the song, Don’t Fence Me In was made famous by one of the original singing cowboys, Roy Rogers. Rogers appears in archival footage throughout this video. The song itself was originally written ten years before Rogers first sang it in the 1944 film, Hollywood Canteen. Porter originally wrote the song from a never-produced western that was going to be called Adios Argentina. Porter based the lyrics on a poem that was written by Montana engineer Robert Fletcher. Fletcher was originally only paid $250 for his contribution to Don’t Fence Me In. A decade later, after Rogers made the song a hit, Fletcher was able to negotiate with Porter’s estate to get a co-writer credit and to also collect royalties on the song.
Sometimes, all it takes to appreciate the ludicrousness of something is to nudge that something in a different direction, to shift it ever so slightly so that what should, by rights, be blatantly obvious absolutely is. 45 degrees here or there can sometimes be all it takes to restore focus to something that somehow loses it when it’s front and center.
Case in point : the collector mentality, especially the comic book collector mentality. The kind of “thinking” that compels people to drop ridiculous sums of money for cheaply-made periodicals that are essentially disposable by design, and then to not even engage with them on the level people who paid a quarter (or less) for them did, which is to say — the collector doesn’t read that “holy grail” comic he (and yes, it’s almost always “he”) just dropped a huge chunk of his life savings and/or year’s…
Jake Gorsky is a tough New York cop who flies a helicopter and who gets results …. HIS WAY! He’s also played by David Hasselhoff and, as a result, you never look at him and really buy the idea that he’s a tough New York cop who gets results …. HIS WAY! Instead, you just assume that he’s the Hoff, cheerfully making his way through yet another silly made-for-TV movie.
In Gridlock, criminals have blown up all of the bridges leading out of Manhattan! The entire borough is gridlocked! Why would they do this? Are they hoping to make a quasi-philosophical statement, like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises? No, of course not. (That, to be honest, didn’t even make sense when Bane did it.) Instead, it’s all a part of a plot to rob the Federal Reserve. How are they going to escape if they’ve blown up all the bridges out of town? That question is never really answered, or if it was, I was too blinded by the Hoffness of it all to notice. I assume that Mr. One (Miguel Ferandes) and Mr. Two (Gotz Otto) have a plan. I assume that there’s also a reason why almost all of the bad guys are bald. For that matter, many members of the police are bald as well. You know who isn’t bald? The Hoff.
Anyway, it turns out that the Hoff’s girlfriend, Michelle (Kathy Ireland), works in the Federal Reserve. She gives tours to tourists who presumably flock to New York to see “where they keep all the money.” Michelle is trapped in the building while the robbery is taking place. It’s up to the Hoff to sneak into the building, rescue Michelle, and prevent the robbery. This leads to a scene where the Hoff uses two bags of nickels to take out some henchmen. Woo hoo!
Of course, while watching this film, you have to wonder how the crooks possibly thought they could get away with robbing the Federal Reserve. I mean, let’s just ignore the fact that they blew up all the bridges out of town. How are you going to launder that much money? We’ve all seen Breaking Bad. We all know Walter White ended up with a pile of money that he essentially could never touch. It’s hard not to feel that it would have been smarter for these crooks to just rob an ordinary bank. It also seems like there should have been a simpler way to commit their crimes than to blow up every bridge in Manhattan. How can these criminals be so smart and so dumb at the same time?
That said, you’re not really watching a film like this for the criminals or even the plot. You’re watching it because it features David Hasselhoff doing his thing. I wouldn’t exactly describe David Hasselhoff as being an actor with a particularly wide range but, when it comes to projecting an odd combination of earnest sincerity and mocking self-awareness, it’s hard to think of anyone who does it better. Much like William Shatner, the Hoff always leaves you wondering whether or not he’s actually in on the joke. Did David Hasselhoff realize he was appearing in a silly Die Hard rip-off (“Die Hard in an office building …. wait a minute, that’s just Die Hard!”) or did he earnestly call his agent and say, “Baywatch isn’t challenging anymore. I want to play a copy who doesn’t always follow the rules!” One gets the feeling that both possibilities are true.
Anyway, Gridlock is a made-for-TV movie from the 90s, which means no blood and no cursing. A lot of guns are fired but hardly anyone gets shot. I’ll give it a 6 out of 10, just for the Hasselhoff of it all.
This little fellow, or maybe his relatives since I took this picture two years ago, shows up in our backyard a lot, usually in the middle of the night. On this day, I happened to catch him out in the afternoon and he was so surprised to see me and my camera that he almost fell off of his branch. I’m not going to say that this is a great work of art or that it’s even the best picture that I’ve ever taken but I’ve still always liked it and I felt our neighborhood devourer of tics deserved a chance to welcome all of you to the month of June.
Possums may look fierce and they may hiss but they’re actually harmless and good to have around. They eat tics, do not get rabies, and are not aggressive. Everything you’ve heard about possums playing dead to get out of confrontation is totally true. Don’t try to make a possum into a pet, though. Just let them do their thing.
Hanging Around is probably not the most original name that I could have come up with for this picture but I don’t think the possum would mind.
Through the Shattered Lens 