Edgy MD

Beyond the stategery, it symbolically helps reinforce his martyrdom.

"Hart Bochner as Rod." I give that antagonist name four Zabkas. [FIMG=350]http://www.boyculture.com/.a/6a00d8341c2ca253ef01b7c9261805970b-800wi[/FIMG]

She's listed as producer with the other parties.

That's pretty much our strategy. Frayed Knot wrote: Director Peter Jackson claims that Disney wanted the release scrubbed of the Fab Four smoking and swearing. Paul, Ringo, and Olivia Harrison refused to go along. So ... Yoko would have been cool with that?

It seems pretty clear that the real producer (or the closest thing to a producer) here is Glyn Johns, despite what the album credits say. It isn't all together clear what George Martin's role is, but as the adult in the room, he's managed to be the voice of realism a few times (against Michael Lindsay-Hogg's absurd ambition, as well as the Beatles' indifferent faith in incompetent others). Most notable is the return to Abbey Road Studios, when he immediately suggests Alexis Mardas' equipment won't work and makes clear that the sooner they get a traditional setup in there, the better. I got the idea that they might have wasted several days futzing around with Magic Alex's bullshit (and perhaps lost Harrison again) if Martin hadn't asserted himself there. It's great to watch the project slip away from Lindsay-Hogg and his stature declining by the hour once they get to Abbey Road.

Frayed Knot wrote: Edgy MD wrote: So, I guess I'm slogging through this on my own. As long as the only way to view this involves paying (even more) cash to the Mouse/ESPN conglomerate, this will remain unseen by me. The weird part is that it comes free with the subscription. I guess that's at least partly due to the comprehensive length of it making it such a slog for even the most ardent fanboi. I'm enjoying it, but if I paid 60 quid for it, I'd be pissed.

So, I guess I'm slogging through this on my own. "Much opprobrium has been cast at Yoko Ono for her constant presence at Beatles' recording sessions, but, after this, you marvel at her fortitude for sitting through them." — https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/25/the-beatles-get-back-review-peter-jackson-eight-hours-of-tv-so-aimless-it-threatens-your-sanityThe Guardian

Second half of first episode. 1) I'm starting to get the notion that the division of the three episodes is going to make them distinct from one another, with ONE covering the Twickenham sessions, TWO covering the Abbey Road Studio sessions, and THREE covering the Abbey Road rooftop performance. 2) The group is starting to get tighter as a band and warmer with each other. This appears to be in part due to them being surrounded by such a bunch hangers-on looking to capitalize that they bond in resistance. 3) Dick James swings by to chew the fat. James was the music publisher who had the Beatles by the short-and-curlies, having signed them to an exploitative deal very early in their careers. The Beatles had tried to wrest control of their catalog a year and a half earlier after Epstein died, but came up short. George even went so far as to write and record with the Beatles a complaint song about the situation with James, so it was really a dick move of him to come by and interrupt the sessions, but again, being surrounded by tools and exploiters is seeming to help them bond. Paul plays nice, reading the songs in the Dick James publishing catalog, with the Beatles material alongside music hall standards from the twenties, but George takes a look at the list and passes it on to Ringo, saying, "Here, want to see what you own one half of one percent of?" 4) Yoko Ono becomes less of a symbol and more of a character after Linda Eastman arrives, giving her someone to talk to, and an excuse to sit outside the inner circle. Maureen Starkey also arrives shortly before the end of this episode. 5) Yoko even takes a turn at the piano when John gets up for a break, and she begins to do her ad-libbed shrieking vocals, and the band are delighted to join in behind her. They keep with her changes, holding the song together musically, but goof around and add their own vocal improvisations. I understand, of course, the animus for Yoko and her music, but this isn't zero-calorie entertainment. In a small way, it can get its hooks into you. 6) John reasserts himself as alpha, sings his heart out on his leads, stays engaged, plays the clown, and does his funny British fishwife voices when backing up Paul. 7) Paul, despite trying to be the Dad in the first half of this episode, and despite being a better musician and more productive a songwriter than John, is kind of a suckup to John, deferential to John's elder status, his authenticity, and his independence. 8) A lot of weird foreshadowing happens. Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg mentions appearing in a film as a child with Orson Welles. It turns out that he'd find out decades later (2006, I think) that Welles was quite possibly his father. That may not be true, but it kind of has a poetic appropriateness to it, as Welles was famous as a director for historically over-ambitious projects that fall apart when neither the other principals nor the money men are interested in supporting the scale of his vision. 9) Further weird foreshadowing happens, when Hoggo can't pin the band down on a location for the concert, and Paul says, "We'll probably end up doing it on a farm in Scotland." Linda overhears and says something like, "That sounds like it would be nice." 10) Despite the general bonding, Paul's sucking up to John tends to further marginalize George. The last straw for George seems to silently come when Paul asks George not to vamp on a song, because it conflicts with John's vamping. 11) George quits in the most George-like way possible, just standing up mid-day and saying, "Well, I'll be leaving now." "Leaving for where?" "Leaving, you know, the Beatles. See you round at the clubs." 12) The band has had dustups before, so they continue the session without him, but they seem to be playing for the sake of playing, having a little fun, but not trying to do any serious work in the afternoon. At the end of the day, the three of them huddle away from the sycophants and mics, apparently deciding that this is more serious than they were letting on for the cameras, and they would have to pull together and recruit George back. 13) The music is generally a delight compared to the first half of the episode. "Get Back" is rolling into shape and takes on a temporary status as a protest song. Paul also does a piano version of "Another Day." It's not everybody's favorite Paul song, but along with "All Things Must Pass," "Gimme Some Truth," and "Child of Nature" (the song that would become "Jealous Guy") these are four songs (so far!) that the Beatles reject in these sessions that would ultimately become classicks for them as solo artists in the seventies. It's amazing to think of these as their throwaways. If you take any old band — say, Jesus Jones — and add those four songs to their catalog, they are suddenly fringe candidates for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. For the Beatles, this is their debris. [media=youtube]JxiXE3BKu10[/media]

I watched the first half of the the first episode and: 1) Good God, the beginnings of the sessions at Twickenham are a slog. 2) The lack of authority is palpable — over the songwriting, over the recording, over the alleged concert this is supposed to end with. 3) They refer to Brian Epstein as "Mr. Epstein." At first, you think the deference is somewhat ironic, but it's clearly not, as they all continue to do it. They acknowledge they didn't all agree with his decisions but appreciate that it gave the four of them a unified direction. 4) Perhaps not having a proper studio to operate out of, George Martin is mostly absent, robbing the group of another authority figure, and perhaps the organization and direction they'd have in a proper studio. 5) Glynn Johns tries to step up and give them musical feedback. It's mostly solid direction, but he's young and doesn't project the authority for them to listen to. He's more of an engineer than a producer at this point in his career. 6) David Lindsay-Hogg is both young and posh, and his overtures for them to commit to the direction of the project — as they rebut that they can't commit to anything if the sessions aren't productive — is fruitless. Even Paul rebuffs him. 7) Paul is the centerpiece, as he's trying to establish a process in the absence of another leader. They even acknowledge what has happened to them as boys in the absence of a father, and he's trying to step up. He's even grown a beard for the occasion. But officious Paul is nobody's favorite Paul, including himself, and he's very sensitive about how the others are reacting to him, and constantly tugging at his beard, as if he's not sure he's fit for his new role. 8) Nobody's communicating very well. There are a lot of incomplete sentences and empty pronouns. They've been together for the better part of 15 years, so sentences like “That's … you know … if you do the other thing … like that …” probably makes more sense to them than myself, but I have no idea what the fuck they are getting at. 9) Ringo is mostly mute as the other three try to hammer out a process for getting their songs together. 10) It's terrific to hear John spontaneously coming up with a countermelody lyric for “I've Got a Feeling” and Paul liking it right away. It's also astounding how, on Day Two, John is a little late, and Paul starts fooling with a bass lick that germinates into “Get Back” really quickly. George and Ringo immediately recognize that a genuine song is happening (it would in fact be a single), and start focusing on what they can add. By the time Lennon arrives, seemingly 20 minutes later, they've got a good chunk of the song finished, though the chord-change hook isn't there yet, and neither are the verse lyrics. They put the song away quickly, like they don't want to lay it on John until Paul's got his lyric down, and it's almost like a secret among the three of them. 11) It's kind of sad to hear George's early contributions to the song, because he would later walk away from the sessions, and one of the results is that John ends up playing the lead guitar in the rooftop concert version. 12) They instead work on “Maxwell's Silver Hammer.” Paul seemingly thinks it's a real forward-thinking piece, but John thinks it's more granny music despite the serial killer lyric. Nonetheless, everybody is committed to it, and the arrangement quickly has more structure than the songs they were working on the previous day. 13) Massive roadie Mal Evans is brought in to bang a hammer against an anvil during the song. He also transcribes the lyrics for “I've Got a Feeling” as John is coming up with them. You could re-cut the whole film to just tell the story of how badly Evans wants to be in on the group's creative process, but is kept just outside the circle, with the men fetching sandwiches and drinks and lighting cigars and ciggies. 14) It's old hat to blame Yoko for the breakup, but her presence here is almost spectral — like she's the abstract representation of the new directions pulling them apart (the pull on George is also represented by a Hare Krishna disciple sitting in the corner, who at some point seems to undergo mitosis and split into two Hare Krishnas). She's inside the circle, but always sitting over John's shoulder, often sewing or knitting, shifting seats when he shifts from guitar to organ to piano. She's not always my bag, but I love her jumpsuit. Whatever her presence was in the White Album sessions and the later Get Back session joining the four of them on the recording studio floor, here in the big film studio, with a big gap of space in between the group and the world, her presence among them is almost comical. 15) I bailed at that point because my wife was growing disengaged. I know they will be turning a corner, but I know from reports that Paul thought he had a single in “Maxwell's Silver Hammer” and he poured everything into it until the others were ready to take a hammer to him. It's pretty funny to now realize that this all took place while they had a genuine hit single simmering on the back burner.

On the verge of disbanding, the world's greatest rock band returns to the studio attempting to compose (largely), arrange, and record an album in a matter of three weeks, live with no overdubs, with plans to end the session with a concert. Filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg documented in the proceedings with 1970s Let It Be film, but Peter Jackson returns to the 55 hours of footage (and 140 hours of audio) to re-cut and re-tell the story. To air in three two-hour parts over Thanksgiving weekend. [fimg=350]https://images.bonanzastatic.com/afu/images/822a/595f/897a_10817632024/W_1265_.jpg[/fimg]

In the latest of his portrayals of iconic historical Brits who were neurodivergent social misfits, Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the titular Louis Wain, the celebrated illustrator of anthropomorphic cats, whose whimsical work somehow rose out of a life of tragedy and struggle, but (or so it is argued) changed the place of the cat in Western Anglo culture. [FIMG=350]https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/TlkAAOSwAQVhcKGb/s-l1600.jpg[/FIMG]

I, myself, would watch Indy Day six to nine times before rewatching thiski, but I'm glad that i live in a world where I don't have to make that choice.

That's an ongoing theme — that necessity or just plain creative momentum had them constantly changing their act, which allowed them to move on from failures with aplomb, because they were already making their next thing, but also move on just as quickly from success without mining the vein of gold they didn't realize they had struck, because they were already onto their next thing. So they ended up sounding like Queen before Queen, The Cars before The Cars, Ultravox before Ultravox, and Erasure before Erasure. This isn't necessarily saying that they were as good as any of those acts, though they might have been if they set up camp and sustained their musical direction (and band lineup) for a few records. It was fun to see Vince Clarke describe all the two-person acts that consisted of a romantic, emotive singer and a depressed, detached keyboardist, and acknowledging that all the depressed, detached keyboardists were stealing Ron's act. The lack of copious available video from much of the career was a challenge the filmmakers met delightfully by accompanying the recollections with animations, including great cartoons of depressed, detached keyboardists. Also notable that despite all the roster changes, so many of the former band members remained fond of the Maels and their time in the act.

Documentary chronicles the head-scratching career of the enigmatic band Sparks, following Ron and Russell Mael from their Beach Boys-esque SoCal childhood onto UCLA film school (somehow not running into Morrison and company) and into a fascinating-but-hard-to-access goofy art rock act, that somehow becomes (a) briefly a teeny-bop British sensation, and later ( the missing link between nu wave cinema and nu wave music, no matter what David Byrne might say. [fimg=550]https://i.etsystatic.com/23550508/r/il/9be0e0/3147528772/il_794xN.3147528772_e6bb.jpg[/fimg]

Yeah, this felt awful paint-by-numbers. Emma Thompson is the host of a long-running talk show that, as noted, is running on fumes. As the ratings are falling, a new network head tells her it's her last year. This feels a little false, because in my experience, late night viewers are so brand loyal that stale, formulaic execution night after night doesn't tend to hurt ratings. Jay Leno's Tonight Show felt stale almost from the beginning, but the ratings held steady (and generally ahead of Letterdude) year after year. People like familiarity before bed or something. But that's not this woman's fate. Fortunately for her, she's recently fired a dude for having the temerity to ask for a raise, and he tells her on the way out the door that she hates other women. So just when she needs to freshen up her brand, she brings in a replacement who is the first woman (Mindy Kaling) on the writing staff in living memory. And despite clashes, they work to make Thompson's character fresh again — too fresh to replace. Firstly, what a damned shame that, in late middle age, Emma Thompson has allowed herself to be typecast as a vampiric shrew, sucking the youth and life out of female protagonists. I don't know if this is the sixth straight time she's played such a character, but it feels like it. And she sucks. It's neither a believably horrible character, which tends to be much more insidious, nor is she a dazzlingly entertaining Disney sort of evil, which perhaps they seem to be going for. In fact, her character works best as a cutout stand-in for Ellen, with the short blonde hair and the sneakers on the set working as visual cues, and the simultaneous contempt of her writing staff alongside her demand that they save her working as character cues. Like most standup comedy on TV and in movies, she's not funny. Even good comics don't tend to come across in such scripts, but she doesn't even seem to have much of an idea what comedy is. Neither do her observations or political digs come across as meaningful or sincere. What does wring true is seeing the writing staff drag themselves through the workday, plow through the newspapers for setups, and mail in their shit. I do believe that's how real late night comedy staffs work, and it does tend to very quickly make funny folks tired. But the young(ish) female writer takes an unthinkable amount of shit (from the colleagues as well as the boss), commits to changing the show's tone, and keeps throwing life preservers to folks who don't deserve it, coming back from a termination not once but twice, ultimately changing the whole old-boys-club-under-a-dehumanizing-bitchy-woman culture. It just doesn't ring true. Kaling (whose cadences come across exactly like Mindy Cohn's and once you realize that, you can't get it out of your head — you're welcome) wrote as well as starred in the film, and you have to be very careful about writing a film where you're the hero. It worked with Sylvester Stallone and Matt Damon, because they weren't telling their own story. This is largely built from Kaling's own tale from her days working for The Office, and even if it's all the God's-honest-truth, it sure feels mythologized, with the one-year-later ending so perfectly wrapped and staged. She and director Nisha Ganatra might have seen that for what it was if she had stepped back and cast somebody else in the role. We all tend to make ourselves the heroes of our own stories. Whether people buy that is another thing, but nobody wants to say it to or faces.

The cold, bitchy hostess of a long-running late night talk/comedy show is surprised to find out her act has grown stale and her ratings are falling. She brings in a new writer too naive to accept that she's on a sinking ship, and ... maybe the show finds some new life. [FIMG=450]https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjZmOTEwMGEtOWVmMy00Njg4LWI1OGEtMGYwN2VmYzJiYzAzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODE1MjMyNzI@._V1_.jpg[/FIMG]

Yeah, YouTube's Defunctland series does a great job telling the Henson story.

All Van Halen studio albums from 1984 onward were recorded in EVH's personal 5150 Studio, with the exception of their last album A Different Kind of Truth, which was mostly recorded in London at Henson Recording studios. And thus was Eddie's status and legacy as an honorary Muppet cemented.

Well may you ask.

Congratulations to the Vaughn Family for sporting a name of Welsh origin and not trying to fake it by calling their pub something more Irish-sounding like Tubby O'Shamrock's.

OK, nobody else saw this junk heap? Good?

Visitors from a generation in the future arrive in present to tell mankind that they are getting their asses kicked in a global war against an alien invasion. A global draft takes place to send citizens to the future to fight. Chris Pratt plays an ex-soldier who had been having trouble finding his break in the civilian world, and he ends up zapping to the future with a bunch of unqualified middle-aged shlubs. It's like the most-downloaded thing on Amazon, because heck, they produced it. [fimg=500]https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTI2YTI0MWEtNGQ4OS00ODIzLWE1MWEtZGJiN2E3ZmM1OWI1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODk4OTc3MTY@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg[/fimg]

Wow, I didn't know you ware making reference to an official list.

Francisco Alvarez back in the lineup tonight. Has a walk, a run scored, and an RBI, midway through the sixth.

Well, since that's all music by Queen, it doesn't say anyt'ing.