Showing posts with label 2014 at 05:54PM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014 at 05:54PM. Show all posts

Saturday, 22 March 2014

59 Things U Might Not Know About Prince

Prince is not a woman, not a man, and something U will never understand. And other surprising facts.



Warner Bros.



Warner Bros.


1. Prince wrote his first song at the age of 7, and it was called “Funk Machine.”


2. He danced on stage with James Brown when was 10. “My stepdad put me on stage with him and I danced a bit until the bodyguard took me off,” Prince told MTV in 1985.


3. He later danced with Brown — and Michael Jackson! — in this amazing footage from a show at the Beverly Theatre in Los Angeles in 1983. (B.B. King also happened to be on stage.)


4. His first band when he was a young teenager was called Grand Central.


5. Prince was a hardcore Joni Mitchell fan as a teen. “Prince used to write me fan mail with all of the U's and hearts that way that he writes,” she told New York Magazine . “And the office took it as mail from the lunatic fringe and just tossed it!”


6. He was once so poor that he'd just smell food instead of eating it. “I didn't have any money, so I'd just stand outside McDonald's and smell stuff,” he told Rolling Stone in 1985.


7. He rejected a deal with CBS when he was 19 because they insisted that Verdine White from Earth, Wind, and Fire produce his first three albums. Prince later signed a deal with Warner Bros. that allowed him to produce his own music.


8. Another clause in Prince's Warner Bros. contract allowed him to recruit and produce other artists for the label. He took advantage of this to produce an album by The Time.


9. Despite the fact that he put The Time through rigorous rehearsals for the album, Prince ended up recording every single instrumental part on their debut album himself. The only member of the band who is actually on the record is singer Morris Day, who was forced to closely mimic Prince's delivery and is often overshadowed by his backing vocals.


10. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the production duo behind many of Janet Jackson's biggest singles in the '80s as well as hits by Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Human League, and George Michael, started out as members of The Time, but were fired by Prince.


11. When he made his first appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1981, he sang, “Fightin' war is a such a fucking bore,” but it wasn't noticed in the moment and was aired without any censoring.




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Friday, 21 March 2014

The 4 Teens And 1 Extinct Duck In “A Birder’s Guide To Everything”

The writer and director of the coming of age film explain how birdwatching fits into the teen psyche.



Ben Kingsley, Alex Wolff, and Kodi Smit-McPhee


Screen Media Films


Rob Meyer and Luke Matheny have been trying to make bird-watching cool for a while now. The screenwriting pair started working on A Birder's Guide to Everything about six years ago, and the film, directed by Rob, finally comes out in theaters today.


I met the duo back when they were first working on the script and they needed someone to take them bird-watching for research. Meyer believes the stereotypically nerdy pastime has potential to connect with hipsterdom — the obsession with old-timey hobbies and craft — and all.


“We all met up in Central Park and had our first genuine birding experience,” Matheny recalled in a recent Gchat conversation.


“We saw this small group of birders freaking out, and we found them all looking at the most amazing little owl — that is the moment I always refer to as when I got hooked on birding. It was so tiny and incredible to watch,” Meyer added of our North American Saw-Whet Owl sighting.


That day, they went home and wrote a scene for what's become A Birder's Guide to Everything — the story of four teenage bird-watchers who set out on a road trip after they see what they think is an extinct duck — about that outing. “Unfortunately, it didn't make it in. But it's my favorite scene that we cut. We didn't shoot it. It's on the cutting room floor…in our minds,” Matheny said.


Below, the co-writers chat more about their long road to getting their movie made (which included Matheny winning an Oscar along the way), why they care about birds, and whether Ben Kingsley, who plays a jaded bird expert in the movie, is as scary as he seems.



Director/writer Rob Meyer (left) and writer Luke Matheny (right).


Getty / Andrew H. Walker


So you guys wrote the script years ago, and it was a long road getting it made.

Rob Meyer: Yeah — really long. But actually one of the good side effects of all the wait was getting to go birding a lot, and getting experts to help us make the script more accurate. Luke, how into birding would you say you've gotten?

Luke Matheny: Well, there was that time I went with you guys in Central Park… And…

RM: Uh-oh.

LM: Yeah, pretty much that one time.

RM: Luke's too cool.

LM: Untrue. It was sort of quietly understood that Rob would be the one who was more into birding.


If you didn't know much about bird-watching, why write a movie about birding?

RM: Well, birding basically started out almost like a good plot device — we wanted these kids to be chasing something on a road trip and we wanted them to be kids who were into hobbies, activities, etc. … I knew of the ivory-billed woodpecker story, so I started with that.


Getting to go out birding a lot, I realized birding is, essentially, searching. And searching is what characters do in movies (on all sorts of levels). And, in this case, searching for a connection, for an answer to an unanswerable question, for romance, for beauty in a world that seems cruel and shitty sometimes. And birding is also discovery. Like, all the time — seeing something new, something beautiful, and it's fleeting. So it turned out to be a great theme for the film, and honestly it probably changed the way I look at the world.




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Sunday, 9 February 2014

Every Question You Have About Ski Jumping, Answered

The idiot’s guide to the Winter Olympics’ most photogenic sport.



Mark Reis/Colorado Springs Gazette / MCT



Mike Blake / Reuters



Mark Leffingwell/Usa Today Sports




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