Ronnie James Dio 1942-2010

Ronnie James Dio succumbed to stomach cancer at age 67 on May 16, 2010, in Houston Texas.

Perhaps one of the greatest metal singers, he fronted Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, Elf and Heaven and Hell. His further contributions to the legacy of metal include being the originator of the devil horns salute.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tags: Black Heaven, Black Sabbath Dio, Black-Sabbath, Devil Horns, Elf, Heaven And Hell, Houston Texas, Legacy, Rainbow Black, Ronnie James Dio, Salute, Singers, Stomach Cancer
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Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On

Bette Midler: Great Gams for 60+

Okay, once again I get to suspend my sexual preference, at least for an evening, and attend the greatness that is the Divine Miss M. Bette Midler, who, at 63 is as raunchy and bawdy as ever. She seems to be in great shape, pacing the stage in Peg Bundy fashion and calling out to “Let’s hear it from the Jews, now let’s hear it from the Christians, now let’s hear it from the gays!”
Playing at the same venue as Elton John and Cher, this time we got free orchestra tickets. The show starts out really quite ingeniously.
For the time the audience is loading in you’re looking at a projected graphic advertisement of Bette’s “The Showgirl Must Go On,” with her in white hot pants sitting in the middle of the Nevada desert. Then as the show actually starts the graphic pulls away to show that it’s a billboard on the side of the long desert stretch of highway leading into Vegas. Donkeys and buzzards stare at us as the band walks over the boulder backdrop and takes place on the stage. A tornado rips through the desert tearing apart the billboard. It picks up cars and trucks on the highway and spins them around a la Wizard of Oz. The tornado tears through the desert and into Las Vegas, tearing up the strip. The tornado heads to Caesar’s Colosseum and proceeds to blow it apart as the stage gets hit by wind and smoke (the tornado is entering the theatre) and from the midst the Divine Miss M appears out of the tornado.
With her backup singers The Harlettes and her dancing show girls, the Caesar Salad Dancers, they go through a series of popular songs from the 30s through the 80s. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tags: American Idol, Backup Singers, bette midler, Caesar Salad, Caesar's Colosseum, Delago, Divine Miss, Donkeys, Elvis, Gams, Graphic Advertisement, Great Shape, Holy Trinity, Hot Pants, King-Lizzard, Las-Vegas, Nevada Desert, Peg Bundy, Sexual Preference, Show Girls, showgirl, Showgirls, Tornado Rips, Wayne Newton, Wizard Of Oz
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TV Mini Reviews

Here’s s some reviews of some TV shows I kinda watch:

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA  Rating:

I hate to sound like Dwight Schrute, BUT THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING FRAKKIN’ SHOW THAT’S BEEN ON TELEVISION IN A HELLUVA LONG TIME!!!
In a re-imagining of the 1978 space opera, this show has grit, tit and is the shit. Pre-dating the birth of human existance, a realm of twelve colonies (planets) are kicked out of their own home when robots they created as slaves rebel and evolve. The remnants of civilization escape to the stars in search for a mythical planet named earth to start life anew on, all the while doing battle with the ever evolving Cylons. If you liked “Blade Runner” you’ll love this, as the concept, cinematography, atmosphere and music are very similar. Very intense. Stars Edward James Olmos (also in Blade Runner).

PUSHING DAISIES Rating:

Lee Pace is a pie maker who can bring dead people back to life by touching them. If they stay alive for more than one minute something/someone else has to die in their place.

The show is both morbid and sweet with an Edward Scissorhands feel to it, complete with a narrator and overly colorful style. Chi McBride has all the great lines as a detective who solves crimes by hearing from the dead folk themselves who killed them. The piemaker lives with his dead girlfriend and dead dog that he brought back to life, but can’t touch them because he’ll kill them again. The music is drippy emotional and the dialogue has a forties film noir snappiness to it. The characters are odd and the stories have frequent guest stars. Overall amusing, but starting to get stuck in a one-note rut.

ELI STONE  Rating:

Brit import Jonny Lee Miller is an attorney for a San Francisco firm who develops a brain aneurysm and starts having divinely inspired hallucinations, mostly based on George Michael themes, that help him become a lawyer with a mission.

Also in the cast is Victor Garber who, no shit, played Jesus in the 1973 screen version of Godspell. There’s singing and dancing and very elaborate CGI special effects. At the end of season one Eli had his aneurysm removed. He begins season two normal, except his doctor brother now has the sight. BTW, their dad has the sight and he drank himself to death because of it. After negotiating with God (Sigourney Weaver) his brother loses the sight and he gets it back. Kinda lame but generally amusing.

JERICHO  Rating:

Well done ensemble cast, now defunct from CBS, about a fictional town in Kansas who tries to survive after 23 cities get nuked by terrorists. The acting is above average as the USA is plunged into a Mad Max anarchy of the Old West, with no electricity, TV, computers and neighboring towns, mercenaries and thieves assaulting them. The terrorists turn out to be former U.S. Government folks and one of them has escaped to Jericho with the last warhead. The show made it only into 30 episodes and there’s talk of maybe a big screen version.

THE OFFICE  

overall Rating:
This season Rating:

Anyone who isn’t familiar with this series has been living under a rock for years. The Americanized version of the British The Office, this focus on Steve Carell as the dumbass boss of a Scranton, PA, paper company called Dunder Mifflin. Told in “This is Spinal Tap” kind of docucomedy style, this show is somethimes very painful to watch. Rainn Wilson is the uberhero as ass-kissing inbred Dwight Schrute. The story follows the ensemble cast’s drama from day-to-day. I have to say that, so far, the current season is horribly off-game and if they don’t get their shit into one-sock, pronto, I’ll have to take my business elsewhere.

MAD MEN Rating:

Yeah, wanna know why the ratings are so low on this? Because it fucking sucks! An esemble cast of hateful pricks smoke and fuck around this Madison Avenue ad agency in the early sixties. There’s plenty of style, but the one thing that keeps me coming back to a TV series is some likeable characters, which this has none. Even if there was one semi-likeable character, but it’s painfully obvious that everyone is only out for themselves…oh yeah, and every smokes, drinks and fucks TOO GODDAMNED MUCH! When one guy kicked his dog out into the street to get killed by a car cause he was pissed off at his wife, that’s what made me permanently tune off.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, brain aneurysm, chi mcbride, colorful style, dead girlfriend, Edward James Olmos, edward scissorhands, eli stone, fictional town, forties, frequent guest, george michael, godspell, hallucinations, Human Existance, jonny lee miller, lee pace, mad max, mercenaries, pie maker, pushing daisies, sigourney weaver, Space Opera, victor garber
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As rock stars age out of touring business, who will take their place?

BY CHRISTINA HOAG
Miami Herald

Hip hop may be the top dog in CD sales and radio plays, but it’s rock ‘n’ roll that still fills the arenas – and we’re not just talking legends like the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney.

It’s bands like Meat Loaf, Journey, Pink Floyd, Styx, REO Speedwagon and Judas Priest that, if you weren’t around in the ’60s or ’70s, you might not have even heard of.

Trouble is, a lot of these guys are hitting retirement age. Some sexagenarian performers have even had to cancel tours due to age-related ailments such as heart problems and strokes.

“What’s going to happen when they’re gone? It’s a legitimate concern in the industry,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, the chronicle of the $2.8 billion concert trade. “They’re a huge percentage of our business.”

When these performers and the second-tier rockers eventually shelve their road acts, the touring business could find itself hard pressed to fill the void.

With a handful of exceptions such as Jay Z, Eminem and Kanye West, the iconic music of today’s youth – hip hop – doesn’t pack venues with fans in the way rock does, those in the industry say.

“It’s always been a conundrum why hip hop, the top CD seller, hasn’t translated into ticket sales,” said Ray Waddell, senior editor touring of Billboard.

According to Pollstar listings of current tours, about a third are so-called “evergreen” rockers. The balance is a melange of genres including alternative rock, country and Latin, with only a sprinkling of rappers.

And classic rock is crucial to the industry’s gross revenues, boasting some of the biggest earners in the business – to wit, U2, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles.

McCartney, based on numbers from his 2002 tour, is likely to gross about $103 million on his current tour, or about $2 million per night, according to Pollstar.

Compare that to last year’s Usher-Kanye West concert, which grossed about $700,000 at a sold-out AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, according to Billboard Boxscore.

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Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: aging-rock-stars, baby-boomers, Bruce Springsteen, Cd Sales, Current Tours, David-Bowie, Gary Bongiovanni, Gross Revenues, Heart Problems, Hoag, Judas Priest, Kanye West, Legitimate Concern, Meat Loaf, Miami Herald, Music Of Today, Radio Plays, Reo Speedwagon, Retirement Age, S Gross, Stars Age, Top Cd, touring, Waddell
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In Hell

Acting___Rating:
Wow…Van Damme can act? There are pieces of this film when he actually shows some deep emotion in his facial expressions. You really think he’s suffering when he’s pretending to be hurt. WHen he’s trainging, it’s an intense atmosphere. Van Damme, in his last film as well (Replicant) showed he could do a bit of acting. Playing the scare feeble clone, he did a good job i thought. Funny, of all the cheesy 80′s action stars, Van Damme ends up being the one that can act. Stallone lost his ability to do so some time ago. If he pulls another ROcky out of his ass liek he says, maybe he’ll impress me again even though Rocky V was horrid.
Story___Rating:
Typical. Plagued by a voice over through most the film of Van Damme’s psycho cellmate who wants his peace and quiet. Van Damme goes to jail for chasing down his wifes Killer and taking him to court. The killer wins the case, so Van Damme steals a cops gun and shoots him dead in front of the court house. Van Damme goes to this Russian (he was doing a job in Russia) prison and after being pushed around trains to take place in the fights they hold there to resolve issues. Eventually, he wants to get out.

Presentation – Visuals and Sounds___Rating:
Another wow, good music in a Van Damme film? There’s a catchy theme type music to the movie. The theme was emotionally well done and added to the sadness of the priosn enviorment and the death of Van Damme’s wife. The visuals are pretty typical, it’s a prison film, but the Prison was a hell hole, and it looked the part.

Overall___Rating:
A fan of Van Damme (if those exist these days) will love this film. It’s one of the best things he’s ever done and it hardly has a cheesy moment. In fact, unlike his other films, I don’t think there was a single cheesy moment. Van Damme’s acting in the fim is impressive for his standards. Although the story is typical, it’s still an enterttaining film that should eb checke dout by action fans.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tags: Action Fans, Action Stars, Catchy Theme, Cellmate, Clone, Court House, Deep Emotion, Dout, Enviorment, Facial Expressions, Good Job, Good Music, Hell Hole, Intense Atmosphere, Last Film, Presentation Visuals, sadness, Scare, Stallone, Type Music
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Matrix: Revolutions – Elf – Looney Toons Back in Action – Gothika – Bad Santa

Matrix: Revolutions – Rating:
I think Reloaded impressed me more upon first viewing because I didn’t expect much. This film I’ve seen a few times in theaters and think its slightly better becasue there’s less “Im too smart to understand” talk and the amazing ending leaves a lot to debate and consider making the viewer be a part of the film long after it’s done. The Neo VS Smith fight is epic, the great scenery and the epic music make this one of the best scenes in Cinema this year.
Elf – Rating:
The movie was pretty good, but upon a second viewing I found myself to be not intrested much in the film, and the corny and childish jokes had little to no effect on me second time around. Watch the film once, kids will enjy repeated viewings probably, but its a great movie to watch with some pretty funny scenes.

Looney Toons: Back in Action – [raing: 6.5/10]
I actually wanted to find a way to Fast Forward this one. Space Jam was FAR better in every way possible. This film was just lame, it has a few funny moments but ultimately it stunk.

Gothika – Rating:
I don’t know why it’s called Gothika, or even spelt with a K instead of a C, but the films not all too bad. The story was a lot more interesting than I thought but got predictable as events drew closer. It’s strictly a watch once film, I couldn’t stomach a movie with a story like this a second time, theres not much entertaining value besides the story, the acting is average but won’t keep my attention if I tried to watch it again.

Bad Santa – Rating:
This movie was hilarious. It was offensive, dark, and just plain old dirty. It was amusing to see a guy in a Santa outift the whole movie, screwing women, drinking, pissing himself, and oh yeah, every other word he says is a cuss word. John Ritter (I’m assuming it’s his final film role unless he shot something else before his unfortunate death) has a small but amusing role as well. Definetly worth checking out if you want a good laugh and some dirty and crude jokes….perhaps a DVD buy for me…perhaps..

Posted by Scythe

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: Acting, Bad-Santa, Childish Jokes, Cinema 10, Cinema 8, Cuss Word, Elf, Epic Music, Film Role, Films, Gothika, John Ritter, Looney Toons Back In Action, Matrix-Revolutions, Scenery, Second Time Around Watch, Space Jam, Stomach, Theaters, Unfortunate Death
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