The running time of the tape was around 29 minutes and featured all members except for George Harrison. In the interview, the Beatles touched on current events such as the recent Watts riots in LA, segregation at Beatles concerts, surfing and LSD. What a cool bunch if I may add.

The tape is currently up for sale at around $4-$4.5K. Talk about a nice chunk of change. Although it has yet to sell, memorabilia sites will likely get their hands on this before the price drops any further.

It’s hard to imagine anyone in this day an age able to sell their interview for $4K. With the advent of YouTube, iTunes and most other platforms, interviews come a dime a dozen. Granted this was recorded almost 50 years ago to the biggest band of their time, it’s unlikely we’ll see a repeat of something similar in the near future.

THE PLAYBOOK: Suit Up. Score Chicks. Be Awesome, by Barney Stinson with Matt Kuhn is now available to the public.

Watch the video to learn more:

and

Here’s the press release from the BBC:

DOCTOR WHO TO FILM IN THE U.S. FOR THE FIRST TIME

The BBC announced today that season six of Doctor Who, which delivered record ratings for BBC AMERICA earlier this year, will open with a spectacular two-parter set in the U.S. and penned by ‘Who supremo’ Steven Moffat.

In the special two-parter co-produced with BBC AMERICA, key scenes will be filmed in Utah for a story set in the late ‘60s in which the Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves on a secret summons that takes them on an adventure from the desert in Utah – right to the Oval Office itself.

Production on episodes one and two of the new season starts in Cardiff this month and Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill will then travel to America in mid November to shoot pivotal scenes. They will also be joined by Alex Kingston who reprises her role as River Song.

Showrunner and lead writer, Steven Moffat, said: “The Doctor has visited every weird and wonderful planet you can imagine, so he was bound get round to America eventually! And of course every Doctor Who fan will be jumping up and down and saying he’s been in America before. But not for real, not on location – and not with a story like this one!  Oh, you wait!”

Piers Wenger, Head of Drama BBC Wales and Executive Producer, added: “Steven’s scripts generally inspire us to go that extra mile – this time we’re going that extra four thousand. Thanks to our friends at BBC AMERICA and to the continuing ambition of our lead writer and production team, the first two episodes of Matt Smith’s second season as the Doctor are going global and look set to become Doctor Who’s most action-packed and ambitious season opener yet.”

The new season follows on from the Doctor Who Christmas special guest starring Katherine Jenkins and Michael Gambon which is due to premiere during the holiday season. Season six will start airing on BBC AMERICA in spring 2011 and has been split into two blocks, with the second block airing in autumn 2011. By splitting the series Moffat plans to give viewers one of the most exciting Doctor Who cliffhangers and plot twists ever, leaving them waiting, on the edge of their seats, until the autumn to find out what happens.

Filming is taking place in Cardiff until March 2011.

To call Cannell prolific is like calling the Pacific Ocean a bathtub.  As a producer he had his name attached to nearly 80 different TV shows and movies, but as a writer, stand back!  Over 60 shows took advantage of his prowess and that was on top of his 16 published novels.  One gets the sense that his infamous Cannell Productions ID that ran at the end of each episode and showed Stephen typing furiously at a typewriter was less a marketing ply and more a necessity since he was always writing!!  He created and wrote for such legendary TV shows as:

• Ironside
• Columbo
• Adam 12
• Black Sheep Squadron
• Baretta
• The Rockford Files
• The Greatest American Hero
• Hunter
• Hardcastle and McCormick
• The A-Team
• Wiseguy
• 21 Jump Street
• The Commish
• Renegade
• and one of my personal favs, Silk Stalkings

And, he acted!!  More recently you might have seen him sitting around a poker table on ABC’s Castle.  I write all of this because I have mad love for Cannell and what he was able to do with his time on this planet.  Not only did he work his butt off, but it was quality work.  He had a knack for developing characters with real grit and sincerity.  A self-proclaimed “populist,” Cannell’s stories were accessible and entertaining, sometimes pandering, but always told with a skillful hand earned through a combination of talent and determination.  Very few people work as hard as they should in Hollywood, and with Stephen you always got the sense he worked too much.  He was a rare professional and our televisions will be sorely lacking without his bright light behind the screen.

Here’s a general rule of thumb for everyone out there: any time an actor claims to be retiring from the biz, they are lying or throwing a temper tantrum.  Case in point, the recent hubbub over Amanda Bynes and her Twitter announcement she was retiring… at 24.  That lasted 35 days.  Phoenix managed to pull off a longer stint of retirement, but mainly that was because he was working the whole time.

Along with his brother in law Casey Affleck, Joaquin has been traveling around, poorly rapping, and trying his best to hold character for a mockumentary that premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month.  This week, he returned to Letterman’s chair to perform a little spin control and promote I’m Still Here.

I gotta say, I’ve been only moderately interested in this film and the saga of his fake retirement until this interview.  Joaquin was back to his classic charming actor self, joking around with Dave and revisiting his last appearance.  He talked about how he was sure people would understand it was a joke and was surprised by the attention he received.  But Phoenix also brought up the inspiration for the project, reality television.  As he watched reality TV, he was amazed that people actually believed they were unscripted and wanted to do something to sort of blow up that myth.  What?  This was a noble endeavor?  Now I’m all for it!

See, I am on a reality TV show and completely agree with Phoenix’s assertion that the only thing real about them is people use their real names.  The interview on Letterman was the best promotion for the film I have seen so far.  We all knew it was fake, but now we can see why they did it and the movie transforms from being a footnote to a real piece of cultural criticism, a conversation starter.  Maybe we thought this was just a joke, but now it seems Joaquin Phoenix was making art.  What do you think?

The 37th Annual Telluride Festival offered a wealth of entertaining films that made the 3-day event more than worth it. From Black Swan to Tabloid, the vast array of films featured at the festival exceeded our expectations. For those of you unable to attend, we decided to create a top ten list of our favorites. Hope you enjoy and let us know what you think in the comment section!

1: Incendies

Extraordinary film about the Lebanese civil war and a mother’s last wishes.

2. Of Gods and Men

Cistercian French monks in Algeria stand up for their beliefs when confronted by fundamentalists.

3.Black Swan

A thriller where Natalie Portman melts down becoming the lead in Swan Lake and her rivalry with a possible competitor for her spot.

4. Oka! Amerikee

An eccentric American, Louis Sarno, lived amongst and recorded Pygmies music in the Congo and Western Africa.

5. Tabloid

The director of The Thin Blue Line and the Oscar-winning The Fog of War tells the true story of a former Miss Wyoming whose quest for one “true love” led her across the globe and into the tabloids.

6. Tamara Drewe

An urban girl with returns to her small hometown to take care of some family real estate and runs into (or causes) heaps of trouble.

7. Biutiful

A man struggles with a his existence as he attempts to reconcile with a past love and secure a future for his children as he senses his own mortality coming to an end.

8. Inside Job

Who caused the economic collapse and how.

9. Le Quattro Volte

An Italian visual poem of changing seasons.

10. Precious Life

A Palestinian gives birth in Israel and creates a tiny peace.

(Photo Via: Filmlinc)

At the end of season five, Dr. Gregory House — the brilliant diagnostician we either love or hate (I don’t think anyone is on the fence here) — was being led into a loony bin. We saw in season six how he worked his way out of that gnarly situation. At the end of last season, we saw House seemingly “hooking up” romantically — at long last (we knew this was coming) — with Dr. Lisa Cuddy, his boss. Any of us who have watched the show for six years might well agree that this may be an even gnarlier psychologically pickle he’s getting himself into. And try to imagine what’s in the works for Cuddy! Can two such flawed and fractured people possibly make a viable couple? The inquiry leads to further philosophical conundrums.

Is love an “emotion” or a “state of the will”? Is erotic love “moral”? These queries and many more are raised in a curious little volume titled House and Philosophy, one of a series of books containing essays that attempt to explicate complicated philosophical concepts by using icons of popular culture as teaching tools. For years I have been saying what a great show House is, and after reading that book, I am convinced more than ever of the show’s worth. The authors brilliantly illustrate how my favorite TV show provides examples of what all the great philosophers from Socrates to Sartre have been going on about for centuries: issues regarding ethics, morality, authority, reason vs. irrationality, etc. Few other narrative television programs give us this much great stuff to thing about.

So I am counting the minutes until eight o’clock rolls around and the new House appears on my TV screen. In my next article, I will give you my thoughts about “Now What?” I trust that I won’t be disappointed.

The spiritual leader of the group is Ed Harris, as “Mister Smith,” a taciturn and enigmatic self-proclaimed survivor who is inspired by Janusz’ determination to escape and his competency in the wilderness. As they prepare to escape, stockpiling food and materials, they are joined by an odd army, each from a different country and linguistic group, all united by their nearly flawless command of English, except for Valka (Colin Farrell), a member of the prison-ruling Bratva who has run up a lethal debt gambling for cigarettes, speaks with a strong Russian accent.

The group escapes through the Siberian woods, suffering some casualties, and makes their way through the rugged, frigid terrain to the edge of Lake Baikal, where they encounter the enigmatic Irena (Saoirse Ronan), a young girl who has apparently made her way into the wilderness an unknown distance alone, having escaped a collective farm.

It is through her questioning that we learn the painful back stories of each of the surviving characters, each having suffered the loss of family or friends or having been betrayed by them. Together they struggle through the landscape overcoming obstacle after obstacle until they cross the border into Mongolia, only to discover that it is home not only to the even more unforgiving Gobi desert, but also to Communism.

Determined to escape not only Russia, but also Communism, they vow to continue on to India. The geography becomes a bit difficult to follow as they find a heretofore unknown vestige of the Great Wall of China at the equally unexpected shared corner of Mongolia, China, and Nepal.

While the story follows a fairly familiar “great escape” format, and despite some liberties taken with strict adherence to reasonable facts, it is a beautiful movie that is fun to watch. The acting and character development is compelling and engaging, particularly Ed Harris and Jim Sturges, though Colin Farrel’s bad boy is the most entertaining and suits him well.

I recommend it.

One such movie is Kandahar Break, a new independent film written and directed by David Whitney, which drops you into the stark landscape of Afghanistan — forbidding, dry, lonely, and frightening — a place that, pre 9/11, very few of you would have been able to find quickly on a world map. For me, as a kid many years ago, Afghanistan was an almost mythical place mentioned in passing within the pages of one of my most beloved books, a volume of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories. In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson informed me that he was wounded by a “Jezail bullet” at “the fatal battle of Maiwand,” a village not far from Kandahar. Now, of course, none of us any longer has the luxury of thinking of Afghanistan as a mythical place. Too many of our brethren have died there.

The main character in Kandahar Break, the tough but lovesick Richard Lee, played by Shaun Dooley, is a member of a team of British engineers who, in 1999, are trying to find and destroy land mines that spot the dangerous countryside. He’s working for the Taliban, which creates a big problem for him and a female Afghan interpreter named Jamilah with whom he has fallen in love. The local Taliban leader wants to replace her with a male interpreter.

It would be cruel of me to reveal more of the tightly woven plot, but I can say that every moment of this film is infused with edge-of-your-seat tension; and the small, short, violent skirmishes invoke a heart-pounding sense of the terrifying confusion that one must feel in battle. Kandahar Break is a compact thriller; the plot is not difficult to follow, so you won’t be spending a lot of time asking yourself what the heck is going on. Instead you’ll be lured out of the safe complacency of your comfortable living room and plunged emotionally into this strange place called Afghanistan that you should know so much more about.

Kandahar Break will be released on DVD by Peace Arch Entertainment on September 21, 2010.

Joe, played expertly by the talented actor DJ Qualls, sees himself as a failure, “a meaningless stain smacked against the birth wall we call society,” and it is no wonder why. The highest he has gone in life is to be a janitor at a greasy hamburger joint; and to compound his misery, his boss is a sadistic browbeater of near epic proportion. Bossman Mr. Crolick goes so far as to shove Joe’s arm elbow-deep into a filthy toilet in order to instruct him how to thoroughly perform his duty. But is Crolick (William Sadler in an oddly comic turn), who flaunts his superiority over Joe so relentlessly, really as different from Joe as he thinks he is? A curious subplot addresses that question.

As a prelude to his planned personal “days of rage,” Joe spends twenty minutes on the Internet to find potential allies in murder: Middle Eastern gun merchants. But even they belittle Joe, as they laugh at him after ordering him to drop his pants to ensure that he is not already armed. He has only about $140, so the bad guys sell him “a junior gun for a junior man.” Watching Joe seethe over every insult is not easy, for he reminds us of every slight we have ever been slapped with by those who consider themselves our betters.

Joe is so insecure and frustrated, he will pick up and exaggerate every word and even every look pointed his way. Stephanie, played by Nikki Reed in a strong and emotional performance, makes the mistake of giving Joe an unintentional come-hither glance. Before too long, he has her tied up in a motel bathtub. Joe is not psychotic, but damaged and desperate and, he believes, at the end of his rope. His fantasy is to go Scarface (yes, he has a poster in his room at his parents’ home) at the burger joint. As he and Stephanie — will she or will she not succumb to Stockholm syndrome? — converse and commiserate at the motel, Joe starts to reevaluate the length of his emotional and psychological rope.

The writing in Last Day of Summer is sometimes a bit too much over the top, probably to take the edge off such a tough situation; but overall, director Vlad Yudin’s feature film debut is a decent little indie movie, worth watching at least to enjoy the strong acting of DJ Qualls and Nikki Reed.

The most breathless pre-release coverage of the movie concerns a sex scene between Natalie and her co-star Mila Kunis that was anticipated to be borderline X-rated. In the version I saw screened at the Telluride Film Festival as a sneak preview it was indeed extremely erotic but in no way x-rated. Though Mila unambiguously goes down on Natalie, the footage is fairly tasteful and there’s not even a nipple exposed (the scene is hotter than Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried’s makeout in last year’s Jennifer’s Body). There are also two fairly explicit solo masturbation scenes that seem to take a cue from Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp’s 2004 film (the first one is cut short in a very funny way that I won’t spoil).

The second most prevalent rumor surrounding this film is the Oscar buzz emanating from the Venice Festival where Black Swan’s official premiere was held (Telluride is considered an industry event, films that get their first public screening in Telluride often later “premiere” at Venice or Toronto). Natalie’s performance is, indeed, worthy of Oscar consideration. Her character disintegrates under the tearing forces of trying to be perfect in her role, her Mommie Dearest mother, and the perhaps imagined jealous spite of the other dancers in her company. She responds to the horror in her mind horribly but remains believable and even sympathetic as she simultaneously breaks free of her inhibitions while breaking her mind.

Mila Kunis turns in a strong performance as Lily, the dancer “from San Francisco.” She is a bit of a caricature: tattooed, sexually liberated, perhaps bisexual, a drug user, with natural talent but lacking precision and discipline. She becomes the understudy, of course, for Nina and may be trying to destroy her or maybe she is just trying to help her.

Winona Ryder plays the outgoing star of the company who has aged past her ability to draw crowds. She, too, turns in an excellent performance though her character’s range is limited to hysteria. Barbara Hershey is also remarkable as Natalie’s Mommy Dearest, both aggressively pushing her daughter to have the career she didn’t (stereotypically having given up her career to have her daughter) and simultaneously growing (perhaps) insanely jealous.

The last controversy is the somewhat over-the-top horror elements that make it a little harder to take seriously as an art film. As Nina loses her mind the world she sees becomes more and more fantastical and terrifying. The audience experiences her world through her eyes and fantastical elements blur the line between the mind games being played by the company director (Vincent Cassel), her mother, and her costars and the games her own mind is playing with her. I found the fantastical elements effective and appropriate to the story, but the camera work leaned too much on standard horror tropes and ended up being at times unintentionally funny.

Highly Recommended!

The movie is a dramatization of the 1996 kidnapping and assassination of
the monks of Tibhirine, a French Trappist monastery in the Atlas
mountains of Algeria during the Algerian civil war. The conflict
between Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria and more moderate Muslims
started to boil over, and foreign corporate entities and remnants of
French colonial rule became targets.

News of atrocities committed against foreigners reached the monks and
forced them to decide between staying true to their mission and facing
likely death or fleeing the country.

The government of Algeria, the Algerian military, and people aware of
their plight urged them to leave, but the local population they had
served for decades urged the to stay. The monks ran a small infirmary,
the only medical care in the region, which made them essential to the
locals and soon nonjudgmental if not entirely willing allies of the
local insurgents–an uneasy alliance that turned the military against
them as well.

Historically, we know 6 of 8 monks in the monastery and a visitor from
the Trappist order were kidnapped, held for two months, and then
beheaded. The movie takes us through the almost unbearable tension that
built between the murder on the 14th of December, 1993 of 12 Christian
Croatian construction workers near the Monastery and the abduction on
the night of the 26th of March, 1996.

The movie leaves ambiguous the final fate of the monks in deference to
the controversy surrounding their actual fates. While it is clear they
were abducted by jihads, and they were beheaded, there is some
controversy as to whether the Algerian army may have killed them by
mistake while strafing a camp, and then covered the story up with the
beheading.

Each of the actors put in a powerful and compelling performance, but
Michael Lonsdale stood out as Luke Dochia, the doctor who had, in real
life, been in the monastery for 50 years, and was 82 at the time of the
abduction. Lionsdale and some of the other actors went on retreats to
prepare for their roles, learning the routines and liturgies of the
order first hand.

Highly recommended.

Chico and Rita is the story of Chico, a gifted pianist in Cuba in the
late 40s who is playing small clubs and hoping to enter a contest. He
and his agent spy the beautiful and talented Rita singing at a club and
so begins a pursuit that lasts 50 years from Cuba to New York to
Hollywood, Paris and Las Vegas.

The animation is stylish and fun to watch. Trueba made a significant
effort to be accurate to the period, going so far as visiting Cuba and
finding photographic records of every street that were taken in the
1950s to guide street repairs. But the music is the guiding force of
the movie and includes work by Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Nat
King Cole.

Dramatically, the arc of the story was somewhat predictable and, not to
be too harsh, but a bit Disney-like in the predictable estrangements by
circumstances of the heart, by geography, by the machinations of
villains, by careers, by tragic misunderstandings, by politics and
revolution.

It was fun to watch: enjoyable, touching, and aurally enchanting; but
neither challenging nor revelatory.

In the previous episode, Kenny, Ladder Company 62′s overweight member with heart problems, had a lot of trouble breathing in a burning building as the crew were making their way out. He almost collapsed, and the other guys had to help him, slowing their progress. Tommy Gavin’s nephew Damien, a “probey” who has been struggling with whether or not to remain a firefighter, had gone ahead of the others. He subsequently ran back to tell them to hurry up and get out. Just then, a large wall collapsed on top of his head.

The assumption viewers were supposed to take away from this — reinforced by the coming attractions after the show — was that Damien had been killed. When the finale starts, we see Sheila, Damien’s mother and Tommy’s erstwhile lover, in her bedroom apparently trying to deal with her grief over her son’s demise. When she walks into her kitchen, we are surprised to see Tommy there. He had promised Janet, his wife with whom he is negotiating a reconciliation of sorts, not to see Sheila again. And we had a clear sense that this time Tommy really meant it.

But that wasn’t the shock. After Sheila has a few words with Tommy, the camera pans back, and Sheila takes several steps across the room. Then we see Damien, crippled and apparently severely brain-damaged, sitting in a wheelchair. My first thought, knowing Tommy’s predilection for speaking with the dead, was that Sheila had somehow caught Tommy’s fever and was communicating with her son’s ghost. But then it hit me, and my heart actually thumped, that Damien was alive, if you can call his diminished condition really living. This was one of the best TV moments of the summer.

Now Tommy Gavin is in a real pickle. He had promised Janet to focus more on his immediate family, her and their two daughters, one of whom is — like Tommy — a recovering alcoholic. But Tommy’s guilt over his role in convincing Damien to become a firefighter in the first place has grown exponentially and has cemented him to his nephew and, by extension, Sheila. Where all this is taking Tommy in his excruciating journey through the emotional fires of his complicated life remains to be seen next year in the program’s last season on the FX channel. According to Wikipedia, “The [series] finale is expected to coincide with the 10th anniversary of 9/11.”

The armed man has been identified as James Lee and is confirmed as to be holding one other person hostage. It has also been confirmed that the 100 person daycare in the building has been evacuated.

Well, here’s the logic to it. At this point in TV-watching history, viewers are so aware of what commercials are trying to accomplish (encouraging you to spend money) that when we’re paying attention to the commercial we’re more likely to be using our brain to dismiss the commercials claims. It’s when we’re not paying attention, and thus aren’t auto dismissing what the commercials are saying, that the not-so-subliminal messages are able to do make their way in and do their dirty work.

So advertisers = stupid, yeah? They’ve been trying to “capture” our attention all this time, not stealth their way in, as the study now shows they should, right? Well, not quite. As it turns out the types of commercials we’re most likely to not pay attention to are commercials that are a.) creative and b.) enjoyable. That is, the kind of commercials that advertisers have been trying to make for a long time now — albeit for the wrong reasons.

So for those of us who still watch TV with commercials, stay vigilante and fight the good fight. We can’t let the advertisers win. Then again, what’s the point of relaxing in front of the TV if we can’t turn our brains off for a little while?

Ugh.

William Zabka as Johnny Lawrence in The Karate Kid