In Contention

Tag: Bruce Springsteen

  • So we closed our eyes and said goodbye

    I remember the first time I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band vividly. I was late to the party. Springsteen’s music — still one of my earliest childhood memories — had been thrilling fans for decades before I finally saddled up to what is probably the greatest live show in the business (for my money — money I’ve spent six times since, once in London). But I actually took something pretty specific away from that night.

    The lights dimmed and then it hit: a long, slow, nuanced saxophone build-up to “The River.” It was beautiful. It was haunting. It was emotional, tender and, above all, spiritual. The very same show solidified for me what is still my favorite Springsteen track — “Spirit in the Night,” from his debut album, “Greetings from Asbury Park” — and that can be attributed in a big way to to the frolicking saxophone that dances through the story of that song. And now, the voice, the breath, the man behind that instrument has been taken from us.

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  • Springsteen and Joel open up to Fallon and Stern

    By the way, I wanted to mention, in case there are any music lovers who missed them, this week was a strong week in music interviews solely on the basis of Jimmy Fallon’s one-hour sit-down with Bruce Springsteen and Howard Stern’s even longer chat with Billy Joel (the shock-jock’s long-time friend but first-time guest).  Both interviews, oddly enough, happened on Tuesday.

    Joel’s appearance was perhaps the best interview Stern has ever given, while Springsteen’s made for a unique lengthy session (and The Boss’s only TV appearance to promote the epic re-release of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” which is accompanied by Thom Zimny’s fantastic documentary “The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town.”)  Stern also had Jay-Z on the show this week, which was another great one-on-one.

    Seek these out if you get a chance.  Great material.  I’m going ahead and posting an embed of Springsteen’s spot after the jump.

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  • 11/1 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Four Lions’ on tour, Thompson remembers ‘Back to the Future,’ The Boss talks ‘The Promise’

    • Devin Faraci goes on the road with Chris Morris and his film, “Four Lions.” [Badass Digest]

    • Brian Truitt talks “Back to the Future” with Lea Thompson, 25 years later.  I always forget it was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.  (AWESOME.)  [USA Today]

    • Bruce Springsteen talks the making of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” at the London premiere of “The Promise.” [The Guardian]

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  • TIFF: Invasion of The Boss

    How do you follow up a massively successful, iconic, generation-defining album like “Born to Run?”  How to even attempt to approach that level of stratospheric impact?  Well, Thom Zimny’s documentary “The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town” made its way to Toronto last night to help answer those questions, and I knew I could count on The Wrap’s Steve Pond to be there, front and center, with a hell of a breakdown of the event (which probably had the biggest draw of the fest), the screening and Springsteen’s onstage “Mavericks” discussion with Edward Norton.

    Most fascinating is the fact that the conversation (naturally) dealt with the impact of cinema on Springsteen’s work.  “Martin Scorsese once said that the artist’s job is to get the audience to care about your obsessions,” he said.  He called the small-town America of the 1960s and the rumbling underneath which Bob Dylan bubbled to the surface “Lynchian.”  He counted the “dark, bloody” pictures of the 1970s as an influence, as well as the work of John Ford, and he outright called his albums “cinematic,” which is difficult to argue against.

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  • Steve Pond on Oscar’s “broken” song category

    Kate Hudson in NineThe Best Original Song race gets an awful lot of stick for its wonky voting system and sometimes questionable musical judgment — problems that have lately converged to scupper the hopes of many well-regarded contenders, with last year’s snub of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” raising particularly widespread ire.

    I’ll start, however, by saying a few words in the category’s favor. The odd egregious snub aside, the standard of competition has improved notably in recent years — some have complained that the Academy no longer recognizes familiar chart hits with the regularity that they did in the 1980s, but their musical range has expanded. The last decade has seen them embrace hip-hop, world music and folk, including several numbers that were imaginatively integrated into the cinematic fabric of certain films.

    Do they still nominate the occasional stinker? Sure. But by and large, we’re in a better, more adventurous place than we were 10 years ago, when dreary MOR balladeering from the likes of Phil Collins, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston ruled the race.

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  • Grammy nods for ‘Basterds,’ Giacchino… and Steve Martin

    UpI’m always interested to see what cinematic musical achievements the Grammy Awards single out for recognition each year, largely because their pop sensibilities are so different (and their eligibility criteria so much looser) from those of the Oscars that they may as well exist on different planets.

    Last year, for example, they selected “The Dark Knight” as the year’s best score, though it didn’t manage a nomination from the Academy. A similar shaming shows up this year, as the Grammys show the respect for Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” theme that the Academy’s music branch did not.

    An earlier cut-off date means a few late-2008 titles show up here, including “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Milk,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Cadillac Records” — a song from the latter counting for one of Beyonce’s field-leading 10 nominations, incidentally. (I won’t even say anything about the non film-related categories.)

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  • The Boss fights hunger

    Bruce SpringsteenYou all know I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan, so no need for the background on that.  When I was at the two Los Angeles shows last week I saw that the Los Angeles Community FoodBank had a set-up with some memorabilia for sale, all proceeds going to the fight against hunger in the area.  Springsteen has been affiliated with the organization for some time now.

    I received the following email from a guy working with the New Jersey FoodBank as a result of my Boss posts last week and I thought I’d relay it here since, after all, it’s a good cause, and there might be some folks interested:

    I got excited when I saw that you were a Springsteen fan because the PR firm I work for does pro bono work for the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, which has a solid relationship with the Boss. Starting [April 22], fans can go on the Backstreets Web site (www.backstreets.com/hunger/), donate $25 and be in the running for one of 14 prints of Bruce taken by prestigious photographers over the past 30 years. Each of the prints is autographed by the respective photographer and the donations go to the FoodBank, which is pretty cool.

    Since this has nothing to do with the content of In Contention, I figured I would just shoot over this note simply to let you know about it…I figured a guy who goes to see Bruce two days in a row might appreciate this.

  • Boss, take two

    Nothing else from me today.  I’m off to see The Boss one more time at the Sports Arena.  Here’s hoping Tom Morello comes back for another stab at “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” because that was friggin’ awesome.

  • Off to The Boss

    I’m catching Bruce Springsteen tonight and tomorrow night over at the Sports Arena here in Los Angeles.  He hasn’t played my favorite tune on the tour yet — “Spirit in the Night” — so here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise.  “The Wrestler” has been a regular feature, however, and I’m sure he’ll play it either tonight or tomorrow.  I’ll try to grab a video of the performance with my still camera if he rocks it out.

    Gone for the rest of the night.  Call this an open thread if you have anything on your mind (though it’s been a pretty sleepy week).

  • Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” gets a music video

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 pet peeves of the 2008-2009 Oscar season

    Rachel Getting Married

    The season is winding down this week.  The slow President’s Day holiday yesterday seemed to be more of a harbinger than a lull in the excitement.  This time next week, we’ll probably be over the fallout of the circuit and on to debating the contenders we’re likely to see a year from now.

    It’s a vicious, beautiful, sad, interesting circle.

    But before the 81st Annual Academy Awards telecast puts a bow on the festivities Sunday night, it seems a decent enough time to reflect.  And not to be too negative, but this became one of the most irritating seasons I’ve ever covered, both in the lack of excitement to the dichotomy that circumstance presented for me (given that my favorite film of the year has lead the field throughout).

    With that in mind, I fully expect this piece to grate the nerves of more than a few readers.  Then again, I’m sure plenty of these views are shared by a handful as well, but whatever the case, a list of pet peeves began to stack up early on in the season.  I thought it reasonable to collect them here, so feast your eyes (or roll them), this is what got under my skin this year.

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  • Penn to Rourke: “It’s your time, brother.”

    Mickey RourkeNot to be all Rourke all the time, but I’ve been sitting here watching/listening to the Charlie Rose interview finally and around the 35:00 mark, Rose pops the big question about the year’s Oscar season: “How does it feel to be in this competition with Sean Penn?”

    Rourke took it right along in stride, like everything else in the interview (it really is a grand slam one-on-one).  I don’t know if this tid-bit has popped up elsewhere this season — it very well may have.  But apparently Penn talked to Rourke when “The Wrestler” was making the rounds in Toronto and he sensed a major awards circuit on the horizon, so he sat him down and essentially coached him through what was sure to be a heady process for the formerly disgraced actor.

    Here’s Rourke:

    I love him like a brother.  I’ve known him for over 20 years.  He’s definitely the best actor of his generation.  He’s somebody that I respect because he works so hard at what he does and he does it really well and he’s smart.  He’s his own man.

    When we did this movie we didn’t have a distributor.  We won an award in Venice and then we were in Toronto.  Sean and I saw each other and he gave me a big smile.  I went over to his table, we hugged and he told me, ‘Listen, this is what’s going to go down.’  I had no clue about this campaign thing.  He said, ‘Do this, do this, don’t do that, don’t do that.’  He was supporting me and he says, ‘It’s your time, brother.’

    Rourke also talks more in-depth about that letter he wrote to Bruce Springsteen, how he now had “access to change,” etc., which of course led The Boss to pen an amazing track that would ultimately get the AMPAS shaft.  And I’m glad he got into “gigging,” too, which he told me about when we spoke a few months back and I’m sure he addressed elsewhere, too.  But I haven’t seen him address it in a video format yet.

  • Oh, one more reason the Academy missed the boat this year…

    The Grammys saw fit to give Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard the award for best score soundtrack last night. The HFPA, as you know, gave The Boss a Golden Globe earlier this year. Did the Academy distinguish itself by snubbing these two works or just further prove that music branch to be off its rocker?

  • 2/6 Oscarweb Round-up

    Richard Jenkins• David Poland is probably wrong on two counts at the top of his recent Oscar column (certainly plkenty of us had our sites set on Davis and Shannon going into this awards season), but we’ll give him some slack. [Movie City News]

    • David Carr, via video, talks about Bill Condon and Larry Mark futzing with the traditional Oscar show format. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Dammit.  I thought something was fishy when I had to shell out money hand over fist for some Boss tickets Monday. [The Big Picture]

    • Getting to know Oscar nominee Courtney Hunt. [The Guardian]

    • Dave Karger bangs the drum for Oscar underdog Richard Jenkins. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • The annual “how the Oscar statuette is made” feature. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Was “Waterworld” an “eco-parable” ahead of its time? [Slate]

    • Claufia Puig reviews the Oscar shorts.  High marks for “Toyland,” “The Pig” and “Manon on the Asphalt.” [USA Today]

    • Andrew O’Hehir also digs in. [Beyond the Multiplex]

  • 2/5 Oscarweb Round-up

    New Boy• Patrick Goldstein, in a well-reasoned piece that even I — a dedicated Boss fan — can’t disagree with, says Bruce Springsteen “had to stoop to conquer” Sunday night. [The Big Picture]

    • Jeffrey Wells bizarrely reviews Best Live Action Short nominee “New Boy.”  Beware careless spoilers. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Michael Cieply, reports on the on-going discussion of how to handle the Best Original Song performances, from a cost stand-point, of course. [The Carpetbagger]

    • David Carr, meanwhile, in addressing the Christian Bale situation, takes another swipe at “The Dark Knight.”  But he should really watch the film again and understand that the ending isn’t “unsatisfying,” but merely poorly integrated into the whole. [The Carpetbagger]

    • Speaking of Bale, Tom O’Neil wonders if the actor threw away his Oscar hopes for “Public Enemies” by shooting off at the mouth. [Gold Derby]

    • Dave Karger previews Saturday’s WGA awards.  “Milk” and “Slumdog” have it in the bag, right?  Anyone expecting an upset? [Entertainment Weekly]

    • Three weeks in the life of an Oscar ballot. [Little Gold Men]

    • David Fincher: “‘Benjamin Button’ was a semi-confection that became resonant.” [The Guardian]

    • Treading waters we were swimming through back when the film was set for a 2008 bow, Brad Brevet wonders if Stephen Frears’ “Chéri” is an Oscar contender.  Considering it’s Miramax’s best bet, then yeah, it probably is a contender. [Rope of Silicon]

  • Go Cards?

    The other season comes to a close today, and I don’t know.  The Steelers are one of my favorite teams but I love the Cardinals’ story this year, so, that’s where I’m rooting.  I was going to put some money down on it but the payoff isn’t enough to reward the risk I was prepared to make.  Ah well, go Cards.  Enjoy the game.  And give praise to The Boss.

  • Ways the Academy blew it, episode #4,623

    Bruce SpringsteenI haven’t really dug into the stinging Bruce Springsteen snub from eight days ago properly yet, but really, how off-the-mark could the Academy possibly be?  Not that the membership considers itself in the business of appearing relevant, but The Boss just played in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  He’s got a new album out as of Tuesday (though admittedly one of his weakest to date).  He’ll be performing in front of one of the largest audiences in the country tomorrow.

    Oh yeah, and his song was clearly the best “original song” from a movie this year.  One that combines the ethos of the central character and the performer in such a way that its existence over a credit roll simply shouldn’t have been a factor.

    Way to miss the boat.

    Of course, I thought this was going to be his second Oscar.  And maybe I’m biased, since I worship at Springsteen’s altar.  I’ve seen him play four times, once in London, and the guy simply puts on the best show in rock and roll.

    This would have been a fine way to prove yourself in the groove of what’s now, fresh, tangible.  I love the nomination of “O…Saya,” mind you.  I think it’s a much, MUCH better choice than “Jai Ho” (which never spoke to me), and of the nominees, the M.I.A./A.R. Rahman track is, I feel, the best of the lot.  And it’s hard to argue with “Down to Earth,” the likely winner (I’d imagine), but good lord.

    Am I alone here?

  • After cooling off a bit…

    Michael Shannon in Revolutionary RoadYesterday the Academy displayed just what a fractured organization they are, championing a small film like “Slumdog Millionaire,” for which I applaud them, but snubbing “The Dark Knight,” one of the best reviewed films of the year and a titan at the box office. All day I was asking, ‘How?’  All day I wondered just how out of touch this organization truly is and what a major overhaul is needed.

    Call it ageism if you must, but we I think we need new blood in there.  I have been covering the Academy Awards for more than 20 years and have had my share of disappointments and shocks over that span of time. One would think I’d get used to it.

    I remember the rage when “Ghost” was nominated for Best Picture and when Roberto Begnini won Best Actor. That anger and shock was nothing like I felt yesterday morning at 8:30 Ontario time.

    I could not speak. I closed my office door and quietly raged, trying to make sense of it. Reading the other reactions helped ease the wound (I take it personally you see when my films are snubbed) and tried to see the good in the nominations this year. And as Guy astutely points out, there is some good.

    Melissa Leo in “Frozen River” made the cut, as did Richard Jenkins for “The Visitor.”  Both deserved, both terrific performances. “Wall-E” grabbed a screenplay nod, as well as sound nominations, and “Slumdog Millionaire” did very well indeed, with 10 nods. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” lead the pack with 13 and Brad Pitt finally got a nomination for Best Actor — long overdue.  Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei made the list for “The Wrestler” and all four major actors from “Doubt” are nominees.

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