Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
As long as there are girls, boy bands such as 98°, which performed Tuesday at the Rosemont Theatre, will fare just fine. And when you think about it, that’s not such a bad thing. Whose concert would you rather have your 12-year-old attend? The one by nice young men in 98°, who sing about eternal love, or a show by wacky Marilyn Manson, who likes to pick fights with Kurt Cobain’s widow?
In her first book, rap star-turned-actress Queen Latifah, candidly writes about her steady rise to fame, her close-knit family and and how she treated her grief with alcohol and drugs after her brother died in a motorcycle accident. At 173 very short pages (the type is huge and the margins generous), readers are entertained and, to a certain extent, enlightened. But they never get the feeling that they have gotten to know the artist.
Barefoot and clad in a pair of sweats that have seen better days, Viggo Mortensen walks over to introduce himself. His hands and arms are covered with names and phone numbers he has scribbled on himself after checking his answering machine. And his hair is tousled and flecked with tiny bits of paint. None of this can hide Mortensen’s deadly good looks.
Who knew that the ‘N Sync crowd would be familiar with the Beatles, much less the Sugarhill Gang? But when photos of the former were flashed on a screen above the stage Friday night at the Rosemont Horizon, the young crowd gave a knowledgeable ovation to the Fab Four.
You’ve heard their song “Tearin’ Up My Heart” on the radio. You’ve seen the video on heavy rotation on MTV. And if you have a little sister, young niece or a daughter with a subscription to Teen People, there’s a good chance you could even pick Lance Bass, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone Jr., Chris Kirkpatrick or Justin Timberlake – the Fab Five who make up the pop band – out of a dreamy lineup.
Janusz Kaminski has a brother for 5-year-old Oscar. His name is . . . Oscar. The Columbia College graduate won his second Academy Award Sunday night for best cinematography for “Saving Private Ryan.”
Deftly directed by Robert Johanson, who shows a keen eye for detail, the immaculately staged, 90-minute musical is a whirlwind of eye candy. With the collaboration of set designer Michael Anania, Johanson brings the scenes to life. One minute you see the cantankerous neighbor/witch flying high above the stage on her bicycle. The next, a farmhouse is furiously swirling through the epicenter of a tornado. All this sets the stage for the trip to Oz, where the kaleidoscope of colors are as bright as a rainbow and the onstage pyrotechnics just add to the fun.
There’s a certain cruelty to these type of contests that the filmmakers don’t address. It’s easy to understand why poor people would want to win a car. But why do sponsors feel the need to humiliate and torture them this way? Surely there must be a better, more humane way to get themselves publicity and give away an automobile.
Forget about the Spice Girls. Britney Spears has real girl power. After debuting at No. 1 last month with her album ” . . . Baby One More Time,” the teenager has sold more than 800,000 copies. Surprisingly enough, the album has sold more copies each week that it has been out. Fans snapped up 230,000 copies of Spears’ debut album the week ending Feb. 14 – 50,000 more than the previous week.
Synopsis: Greaser Danny Zuko (Todd DuBail) has a summer romance with sweet Sandy Dumbrowski (Sandy Rustin). When they bump into each other in high school, Danny hides his true feelings for her because he’s afraid of looking uncool in front of his buddies. Trying to impress her, Danny joins the track team and becomes a letterman. But in the end, it’s Sandy who trades in her poodle skirt for a skin-tight getup designed to jump start his heart. Never mind the obvious message that this play sends: that the girl has to tramp herself up to get the boy, while the boy returns to his old self. This is a play where you have to suspend good sense. Otherwise, too many things would bother you.
Three years ago, Wes Anderson was an unknown writer-director winning praise for his charming, offbeat feature film “Bottle Rocket.” These days, he’s traveling on a bright yellow tour bus promoting his latest picture, “Rushmore,” which opens Friday. (Anderson prefers not to fly.) And check this out. The soft-spoken Anderson has groupies.
At 19, Queen Latifah was the first female solo rapper to have a major label record deal. Four years later, she had crossed over into acting with roles in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever” and her own Fox sitcom, “Living Single.”
Viggo Mortensen is relating a tale that involves Vince Vaughn, a butcher knife and the threat of bodily harm. But, oddly enough, the actor isn’t describing the shooting of his latest film, “Psycho.” He’s remembering a country music concert. “Vince and I went to see Buck Owens one night after we had finished that day’s shoot [for “Psycho”],” Mortensen said during a call from his Los Angeles home. “I had gotten one of the `Psycho’ knives to give to Buck as a present ’cause it was his birthday. They wanted us to give it to him on stage that night. “So we bumbled our way through our speech to Buck. He opened the box and saw the knife, and the fiddler started making the “eek eek eek” [noise from the shower scene]. Buck got all excited and started posing as a damsel in distress. Then he began chasing Dwight Yoakam all around the stage with the knife. I don’t think he realized it was real.”
For a band that made its debut with an album full of bluntly sexual songs, Placebo has simmered down … a little. At their show Tuesday night at Metro, the English trio debuted cuts from their current record “Without You I’m Nothing.” Musically, the album is pure post-punk genius, heavy on dissonant guitar chords and conjuring up the romantic desperation the title implies.
The three-dimensional Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs in “T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous” look like they could throttle the dickens out of the ones depicted in “Jurassic Park.” The visuals in “T-Rex” are so amazing that a story line isn’t even necessary. But the screenwriters came up with a plot that – while not totally original – works as an effective tool to educate viewers as it entertains.
Shot in Chicago in 18 days, “Do You Wanna Dance?” is a delightful little sleeper that captures the richness of the city as it tells the story of a dancer forced to serve community service in tightly knit Greek Town. Never mind the goofy title, which implies a giddy, mindless romp.
“No land on Earth possesses more wonder than Egypt,” narrator Omar Sharif notes in “Mysteries of Egypt,” the latest Omnimax film to play at the Museum of Science and Industry. And the film certainly plays up some of those wonders: the ancient Pyramids, King Tutankhamen’s sacred tomb and the glorious, winding stretch of the Nile. But what the movie lacks is the excitement and splendor of previous Omnimax films such as the superb “Everest.”
Imagine that the Russians took over America in 1957, nirvana is a place called Lost Vegas and the leader of the Western world is Elvis Presley. When he dies in 1997, every guitar-playing, sword-swinging maverick worth his weight in blue suede shoes heads to Vegas to become the next King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
You have seen “Knock Off” before. And you didn’t like it then, either. Sure, it may have had a different title and maybe a Dolph Lundgren or a Brandon Lee in the starring role instead of Jean-Claude Van Damme. But the premise has always been the same: The charming, vaguely shady hero is caught in a web of deceit where no one is what they claim to be. (In Van Damme’s case, that would be an actor.)
This spare duo delivers a cohesive, 15-track follow-up to 1996’s As Good as Dead. Equal parts sardonic brat (”All the Kids Are Right”), realist (”She Hates My Job”), and dreamer (”Lucky Time”), vocalist Scott Lucas also cranks out the best crunchy guitar licks since Cheap Trick’s heyday. Grade: A-