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All About Jazz News
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BOOK/MAGAZINE: Rebecca Walkera€(TM)S "Black Cool" Promotes the Non-Material Side of Black Culture
From the moment she spotted it in 2008, author Rebecca Walker couldn't erase a particularly striking image of then soon-to-be President Barack Obama out her of mind.
For Walker, the picture of the 44th president of the United States emerging from a sleek black Town Car cloaked in a suave black suit, red tie, and super stylish sunglasses signified a return to an era of black cool she thought had died with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis. She was so impressed with the message conveyed by that particular photograph that she decided a book dedicated to all things black and cool was in order...
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TECHNOLOGY: Canon Releases Custom 5d Made for Spielberg to Public.
Director Steven Spielberg has long been a outspoken advocate for shooting movies on film in spite of the rapidly emerging digital technology.
However last year while walking on the lot at Sony Pictures in Culver City he watched as a crew shot a television promo using the Canon 5D. Spielberg was attracted to the versatility of the light weight platform. So he went to Canon to discuss a hybrid version of the Camera that could output to digital and film...
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TECHNOLOGY: Film Survives Amid Digital World
Many helmers favor celluloid to achieve specific look. With 'War Horse,' Steven Spielberg continued his decided preference for shooting on film—although he made the 3D 'Tintin' on digital. Director Christopher Nolan and d.p. Wally Pfister shot on film to get the look they wanted on 'Inception.'
While the switch to digital production in the movie industry has been much ballyhooed—and indeed, both Panavision and Arri have stopped manufacturing film cameras—it could easily still be decades, if at all, before film is a medium of the past...
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AWARD: Ex-Hfpa President Backs Dick Clark Productions in Globes Fight
A steadfast Mirjana Van Blaricom, who was president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. in 1993 when it renewed what is now a contested television rights contract with Dick Clark Productions, testified Friday that the HFPA knew all the details of the deal at the time it was signed.
Those details include an amendment that Dick Clark Productions believes gives it the rights to produce the HFPA-owned Golden Globes awards show in perpetuity as long as the program remains on NBC. In 2010, HFPA sued Dick Clark Productions after the latter signed a renewal agreement worth $150 million that keeps the Golden Globes on NBC through 2018. The HFPA alleged that its agreement with Dick Clark Productions did not give DCP the right to renew the deal without the association's approval. Dick Clark Productions countered that the amendment gave it the right...
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PERFORMANCE/TOUR: Trio M at the Musicians Institute
If drummer Matt Wilson ever decides to hang up his sticks, it seemed like he had a future in comedy toward the close of his performance with Trio M at the Musicians Institute on Friday night, part of the Jazz Bakery's ongoing Movable Feast concert series.
Introducing a few songs by his trio-mates pianist Myra Melford and upright bassist Mark Dresser, Wilson dryly encouraged the crowd to "support the economy" by buying the group's new CD "Guest House" on the way out, tying the act the part of both the 99% and the 1% before finally insisting the doors would be locked until everyone bought a copy. "If you buy both," he added in reference to the Trio's 2007 Cryptogramophone debut "Big Picture," "We might let you have your car...
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PERFORMANCE/TOUR: Cast Tops 1,000 for Mahler's 'Symphony of a Thousand' in L.A.
How many performers does it take to pull off Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, popularly and dauntingly known as the "Symphony of a Thousand"? The answer isn't as obvious as it appears.
For the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which performs the gargantuan symphony Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium, the tally is 1,011, with a lingering asterisk or two. It marks a rare, but certainly not unique, instance of the symphony being performed on the scale that the composer intended...
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ADVOCACY: Motion Picture Fund Nursing Home to Admit New Residents
Three years after a controversial decision to close Hollywood's best known nursing home, the Motion Picture and Television Fund has reversed course and said it would immediately begin admitting new residents to the Woodland Hills facility.
The decision marks a victory for residents and their families who waged a highly public campaign to fight the fund's decision in January 2009. Many residents accused the charity of losing sight of its mission to take care of entertainment industry workers and refused to leave, hiring an attorney to block evictions...
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CD/DOWNLOAD/ALBUM: Van Halen's "A Different Kind of Truth"
"A Different Kind of Truth" is actually not bad; in fact, it's pretty good, all things considered.
On "A Different Kind of Truth," the first studio album from Van Halen to feature original lead singer David Lee Roth since "1984," the charismatic front man sings about trying to land that "stone cold sister soccer mom" he's chasing in "Honeybabysweetiedoll." But hooking up is the least of the challenges facing Diamond Dave and his bandmates in this year of their comeback...
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ADVOCACY: Visiting Verdi at the Musicians' Rest Home He Founded in Milan
Giuseppe Verdi's 28 operas (or 26, if you count "I Lombardi" and its revision "Jerusalem" as one opera; likewise "Stiffelio" and "Aroldo"), plus his Requiem, are his legacy to the performing arts.
Wherever there is an opera house, you can be sure that at least one Verdi opera will be on the boards in any given year —- and if a season goes by without one, wait till next year...
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TV/FILM: Super Bowl Halftime Scores
For non-football fans forced to watch the game, the halftime spectacle is more than half the fun. This year's performance features music by Madonna, an act whose fan base is not known to be traditional NFL fans.
In recent years the game has seen a spate of older acts, including the Who, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and m: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The latter have all been relatively safe acts since the 2004 Janet Jackson- Justin Timberlake debacle. Perhaps Madonna will bring sexy back...
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The most universal musical entertainment show in the world. Pictured: “The Louie”
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