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Written by Don Kowalewski
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Thursday, 31 December 2009 09:00 |
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 So much happens on Adam Lambert's second attempt at a debut CD, For Your Entertainment, I don't know where to begin. Yes ...Adam Lambert had a CD a few years ago that didn't sell because he hadn't been on American Idol, yet.
If you like Richard Marx, and rock operas, and Queen, and ear piercingly high falsetto ala The Jersey Boys, and a male vocalist singing lyrics meant for Britney Spears (the world doesn't need a male-Britney), then you'll love this CD.
Tell me that "Whataya Want from Me" isn't Richard Marx reincarnated (and not the man himself, just Marx's 1980s voice and musical styling ...Richard Marx is alive, right?). If I could objectively look at this CD as simply a collection of songs and music, I'd probably call it boring and manufactured. And that's pretty much par for the course from American Idol alumni, at least on their first CDs. But considering who Adam Lambert is, what he did on last seasons show, the music cannot be taken by itself.
Maybe you heard, Adam Lambert is out of the closet. And that's OK. For regular people in real life it's OK.
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Written by Don Kowalewski
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Wednesday, 30 December 2009 14:02 |
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 Your kids are still home from school. They are still bored and fighting with each other, driving you crazy, and if you are somewhere in the Midwest, you are snowed in or freezing - or both. Why not head to your local multi-screen mega movie complex and see Disney's The Princess & The Frog?
I was recently talking with someone about the lost art of the animated feature length movie. Heck, or even actual drawn cartoon shows. Everything is CGI nowadays. And I wondered aloud if Hollywood and Disney had determined that "cartoons" were ancient devices and not worth the time. Or maybe animated cartoons, which might just be computer animation created to look like drawings, were too expensive - and why would kids want 2-D when they can have 3-D?
Turns out, I don't care about the answer. Disney knows it doesn't matter if you use hand puppets made from paper bags; what matters is the story you tell.
Disney's The Princess & The Frog, like most every animated Disney classic, is based on a timeless fairy tale, this one being E.D. Baker's The Frog Princess, which is based on the Grimm fairy tale, The Frog Prince. And what Disney does, as it has done 48 times previously for nearly a hundred years, is tell the story better, and with brilliant scoring and compositions, and endearing characters and sub-plots.
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Written by Don Kowalewski
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 08:52 |
 If you had told me a week ago that by Wednesday of this week I would have watched 4-hours of an a cappella singing competition, I would've said you were crazy. I mean, what kind of person goes around trying to predict a person's television viewing habits? Next I suppose you'll tell me how many Christmas cookies I ate in the breakroom ...and you'll tell me 17 was too many. Stop telling me what to do!
NBC doesn't always get things right these days, but their latest effort, The Sing-Off, is brilliant. Hosted by Nick Lachey, the show seems like an experiment, but I hope it works enough that they bring it back again with or without re-tooling. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now, I'm just going to love it for what it is - a mid-season fill-in with talented singers, great entertainment value, and some quality television exposure for things I love - awesome singing, creativity, Ben Folds, and Boyz II Men.
The Sing-Off has come out of nowhere but everyone I know seems to be watching it. If there's one thing we've learned about America over the past decade is that we love singing and dancing competitions on TV.
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