Brandon's Buzz

Gym Class Heroes (featuring Ryan Tedder) — “The Fighter”
(from The Papercut Chronicles II) —

Now that the cauldron is lit — the creative process of which action was easily the highlight of director Danny Boyle’s otherwise oddly muted (if not downright droll) Opening Ceremony event, a massive comedown from the stunning spectacle that kicked off the 2008 Games in Beijing — and the initial contests are underway, the Buzz officially has Olympic fever. It’s a fever that only grows more intense whenever I run across this hopelessly inspirational tune, the smashing video for which features the extraordinary John Orozco, the Bronx-born reigning national champion in men’s gymnastics who is set to score a handful of shiny hardware in London over the next couple of weeks. Over the course of the last few Games, most of the spotlight’s white-hot glare has justly tended to fall on Team USA’s female gymnasts, but hear me when I tell you that, at least on paper, we are fielding the strongest and most roundly talented quintet of young men — including past Olympian Jonathan Horton, Cuban-born sensation Danell Leyva, blue-eyed cutie Jake Dalton, and that shaky-ankled wonder boy Sam Mikulak — that we have ever placed on the world stage. As ever, stiff competition looms from China and Japan, but with the team competition beginning later today (and concluding Monday, setting up what looks to be the most hotly-contested individual all-around race in memory later in the week), I hereby predict you’ll quickly see that these five men belong squarely in the middle of the conversation for gold. (Best of luck, boys; I know I’m gonna drive my beloved nuts with it over the next few days, but I’ll be savoring every last second of your superlative brilliance.)

Best Coast — “The Only Place” (from The Only Place) —

So many musical love letters to the mysterious magic (and magnetic allure) of the Golden State, and whereas Joni Mitchell made hers bittersweetly poetic, and Dre and 2Pac made theirs an on-and-poppin’ party jam for the ages, Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno travel a more nakedly straightforward route, taking special care to punch up the peerless practicality of the paradise life. (To wit: “We wake up / with the sun in our eyes / it’s no surprise / that we get so much done!”) A perfectly harmless summer treat which I hereby predict my Cali-‘shipping boyfriend is gonna slurp up with an overflowin’ ladle.

W.G. Snuffy Walden & Stewart Levin — “Theme from thirtysomething”
(from thirtysomething [Music from the Television Series]) —

Today would be my thirty-sixth birthday, and while I pray I never become as whiny and irritating as the ever-yapping self-involved yuppies on ABC’s beloved late-’80s drama series, I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that the idea that I’m now officially closer to forty than I am to thirty doesn’t chill me straight to the bone. (True, you’re only as old as you feel and age ain’t nothin’ but a number and blah blah blah, but that number can sometimes be awfully daunting if you stare at it from the wrong angle.) Still, among the lessons to take away from the tragic events of this weekend must surely be: we gotta embrace all that this day holds, and live it, fully and completely. (Many, many thanks for all the birthday wishes on all of the Brandon’s Buzz’s various social media platforms; they’ve all made me smile, and I deeply appreciate the sentiments.)

Wilson Phillips — “Get Together” (from California) —

I’m finally getting caught up with these girls’ batshit wacky reality series Still Holding On (which ran for seven incalculably crazy episodes earlier this year on TV Guide Network, and which has introduced me to my new favorite catchphrase, courtesy of über-Christian Chynna Phillips, who uttered some variation on it in every single installment: “When the Lord is on board, anything is possible!”). The series has been infinitely more entertaining than the new record — Dedicated, a collection of covers of their collective parents’ (the founding members of The Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas) most memorable material — the series was ostensibly designed to help promote, and that has sent me scurrying back in time to 2004 and to Dedicated‘s soothing, sterling progenitor, a terrific tribute to the music that made southern California the mecca for an entire generation of war-weary artists, musicians, and soul siblings searching for the promise of peace half a century ago.

fun. — “Some Nights” (from Some Nights) —

What, you didn’t think these boys were gonna be one hit wonders, did you? (What I’m about to say may seem like irreparable heresy — if only because I can’t quite believe I’m about to make my fingers type the words — but don’t you get a distinct Fleetwood Mac-esque vibe from the entire presentation here, as though this fearlessly talented Nate Ruess kid could be Lindsey and Stevie’s long-lost love child or great-nephew or somethin’? Time will tell, obviously, if these avant-garde pop-drenched punks — probably the most compelling breakthrough act in a year loaded with same — can keep themselves relevant and riveting the way their spiritual forerunners have for nearly four full decades, but go cue up “What Makes You Think You’re the One” or even “Tusk” on your iPod and then try to tell me your ears don’t instantly detect the unique DNA markers that compose this brilliant tune’s biochemistry.)

Nelly Furtado — “Big Hoops (Bigger the Better)”
(from The Spirit Indestructible) —

Summer is officially upon us, and while that abominable Ke$ha has apparently crawled back under the rancid rock from which she sprang (dare we pray forever and ever?), women are still ruling the roost at pop radio, as we seem to be settling in for a stifling season full of Katy Perry (whose wholly unnecessary 3D concert film has landed in theaters with a resounding thud this weekend, although — full disclosure and all — I’m crazy about her sizzling new single, “Wide Awake”) and that brilliantly irritating import Carly Rae Jepsen (whose wafer-thin, inescapably catchy smash “Call Me Maybe” has been playing on a nonstop loop in our home ever since A stumbled upon the video, which makes me wish harder than ever that my domicile could come equipped with whatever would be the aural equivalent of a V-chip, so that only music I explicitly approve of would ever have the chance to pervade these walls). But summer 2012 promises to not be a total loss on the top 40 dial, ’cause Miss Nelly is blessedly back on the prowl, previewing her fourth English-language album with yet another adventurous, typically bombastic ball-buster that once again — as though we’d forgotten! — re-establishes Furtado as pop’s most nervy maverick.

Matchbox Twenty — “She’s So Mean” (from North) —

Knotted, tangled angst has always been this band’s money zone, and even their more lighthearted tunes — think “Unwell,” think “Real World” — mask an unmistakably dark, treacherous undercurrent rumbling beneath their vivid sing-along veneers. So what a surprising, oddly enjoyable treat to find Rob Thomas and the boys marking the fifteenth anniversary of their brilliant breakthrough (and previewing their forthcoming fifth album, due in September) with this carefree slice of sunny summer pop. (A little disheartening to understand that you’ve gotta beat La Bieber playing the game on his terms, but if this piffle gets Thomas back on pop radio during the dog days, I’ll take it.)

Michael Kiwanuka — “I’m Getting Ready” (from Home Again) —

Think Adele meets Jack Johnson — with a peck of Wilson Pickett peppered in for garnish — if you absolutely must have a point of comparison. But there’s something wholly original about this kid, a twentysomething Brit ’bout to enjoy a massive breakthrough with his bracing and utterly lovely debut. A wrenchingly glorious triumph.

The Newbeats — “Bread and Butter”
(from The Imus Ranch Record II) —

“Oh God, I don’t know. I think about it though. And I absolutely think about, you know, things like: the importance of eating bread while you’re at my age, because we’re all trying so hard to be thin, you know? We’re all trying so hard to be healthy and thin, in an era where there is the greatest bread in the world. We have never had bread like this, in America or anywhere else! In New York, in L.A. today, you can get bread that’s as good as the bread in Paris! And we should not avoid it, because it might not be what we die from: too much bread.”

— the late great screenwriter / director / essayist Nora Ephron — who passed away earlier this week at age 71 following a largely silent bout with leukemia — speaking with Charlie Rose in 2006. (The question Rose posed which prompted Nora’s brilliant digression: “What do you think will be the first line of your obituary?” And I’m not sure why I found Ephron’s response to be so touching and so powerfully amusing, except that I happen to share my life with a man who I’d wager can very nearly count on one hand the things in this world he reveres more than a quality hunk of warm, freshly-baked bread, so I can at least kinda sorta understand the origins of her relatively singular line of thinking. Fare thee well, Nora, and nothing but best wishes to your friends and family.)

Mary J. Blige & Julianne Hough — “Any Way You Want It”
(from Rock of Ages [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]) —

I had already fallen out with many a critic this month over the rampant, gracelessly gleeful bashing of the brilliant Aaron Sorkin, who makes his hotly-anticipated return to dramatic series television this weekend with the premiere of HBO’s The Newsroom. See, I suspect that, because Sorkin has now overseen a couple of dynamic, dynamite programs that are focused on the inner workings of television — ABC’s late-’90s hybrid masterpiece Sports Night and NBC’s magnificent mid-aughts flameout Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — and because in said series, Sorkin has had some not-so-nice, not-so-veiled commentary for those who make their livings writing about the medium, most of the advance reviews of Newsroom that I have taken the time to read have seemed to be less critiques of the actual show than they are critiques of Sorkin himself, whose work is marked by several easily-mocked signatures (crackling, whip-smart dialogue; scenes of actors walking fast and talking faster; impassioned, electrified, idealistic speechifying on any number of relevant topics, as though it’s such a crime against creativity to present characters within the framework of a story who — gasp! — want the world to be a better place than it currently is and who take steps, however small or meek, in an attempt to make that happen) and whose brain operates on a plane so far above theirs (and, hell, all the rest of ours). (It bears noting that many of these same writers have been sharpening their knives for Sorkin ever since NBC and Warner Bros. essentially forced him out of The West Wing in 2003, and you could just see them rubbing their hands together and laughing wickedly when Studio 60 crashed down in flames four years later.) Naturally, one is led to believe that many of these people are simply seething with jealousy because Sorkin is leagues smarter than they are and, furthermore, is never afraid to present his work as though he knows this fact; ergo, the hysterical harangues centered on the way Sorkin writes rather than what he writes. Aaron certainly doesn’t need me to defend him, but this hoary horseshit nonetheless drives me mad.

Here’s what else makes me crazy: film critics who seemingly believe that their possession of a black-and-white byline means they can no longer enjoy the singular thrill — the thrill that, if we’re lucky, we all first experience as children — of spending two hours in a dark, enclosed room full of total strangers (who, when everyone is doing it right, are just as primed and excited as you are) training ours eyes on a ginormous white screen and surrendering our minds to an ever-unspooling series of moving pictures whose lonely, only reason for existence is not to teach us a history lesson, nor to make some statement — be it grand or bland — for or against the wavering whims of society and/or the human condition, but simply to make us smile for a spell. I can’t even begin to speculate what exactly any of the writers who thoroughly trashed the film were expecting to see when they sat down to watch Rock of Ages, Adam Shankman’s feather-light but enormously fun film adaptation of the smash Broadway musical. A pleasant patchwork of surprisingly well-aged ’80s guitar rock tunes — among them, Poison’s “Nothin’ But a Good Time,” Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart” (presented in the film as a marvelous mash-up with Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night”), and Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” — fashioned into a story of a star-crossed pair of impossibly gorge whippersnappers chasing dreams and destiny amidst the loud razzle-dazzle of Sin City (a.k.a. Hollywood, circa 1987), Ages never presents itself as the second coming of Gandhi; it’s just a hilarious high-concept popcorn flick, a couple of easy, breezy hours you won’t mind never getting back, a film that never stops winking at us to make sure we know that it knows it, too, is always in on the joke.

Beyond the music (which is stitched together pretty flawlessly, crafting a pitch-perfect aural mosaic of the era from which it springs forth), the saving graces here are the performances. Yes, indeed, Tom Cruise goes a soupcon over the top as aging rock god Stacee Jaxx (taking his motivational speaker role from Magnolia to a whole new level of self-deluded megalomania), but, as the aforementioned star-crossed young ‘uns, Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta make for affably harmless leads, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is a slow-burning riot as a buttoned-up bible-thumping bitch-on-wheels with the heart of a man-hungry minx beating beneath her bountiful bosom. And the riveting revelation here is Blige, tearing the roof off the joint as a bittersweet blues-mama who owns a high-class strip club into which our hapless heroine stumbles on an aimless rainy night. I don’t know how deep into the planning stages Blige is on her next album, but her bewitching voice — still oozing with soul, no doubt, but also burning with gravel and grit — slides so seamlessly onto these percussive, primitive gems, one becomes certain as Ages struts toward its money shot that Miss Mary could totally have given Ann Wilson and Lita Ford a run for their considerable money back in the day. (No jokes, here: if Blige decided her next project should be a Pat Benatar covers record, I swear to Jesus I’d be the first fool in line to buy ten copies the day the album dropped.) And if you axe me, any critic who can honestly say he or she wasn’t tapping his or her toes throughout the entire duration of this film’s running time needs to dig deep and try like hell to rediscover what made them fall head over heels for the uncompromising magic of movies in the first damn place.

Not before — and scarcely since — has television created a pop culture phenomenon on the level of CBS’ classic prime-time soap Dallas, which ruled Friday nights around the globe and, in many ways, epitomized and perfectly encapsulated the American ethos of the 1980s for much of its unprecedented thirteen-season run. (Indeed, at its delirious peak in the early part of the decade, some ninety million viewers sat glued to their television sets captivated by the scandalous exploits of the Ewing family and their friends and foes, and salivating over the ever-churning plot’s next wickedly delicious twist.)

Only two cast members stayed aboard the Dallas express for the entirety of its run: Larry Hagman, whose dastardly, devilishly charming oilman J.R. Ewing would become an instant classic television character; and Ken Kercheval, who, as J.R.’s ever-embattled bitter rival Cliff Barnes, often gave the audience someone with whom they could relate amidst the larger-than-life backstabbing and brilliant chicanery. And as brought to life by two astoundingly fine actors, the fabulously frothy feud between J.R. and Cliff helped lure the audience back to Southfork week after torturous week.

After a two-decade hiatus, TNT has commissioned a ten-episode reboot — or, as Dallas principals prefer to call it, a “continuation” — of the classic series, which premiered last week to stellar ratings and uncommonly glowing critical notices. And though the updated Dallas now focuses primarily on the impossibly gorgeous (natch!) Ewing offspring, Kercheval — who returns as Cliff in episode three, airing this week — advised me when we spoke by telephone recently not to count out the so-called “old guard” quite yet.

BRANDON’S BUZZ: For the five people out there who never saw the original Dallas, or who have slept in the past twenty years, give us a quick primer on the hows and whys of Cliff Barnes.

KEN KERCHEVAL: He’s a nice guy. He’s a real nice guy, Cliff. People would say I was a bad guy, but I’ve always contended that if it weren’t for J.R. and all of his devious ways, Cliff wouldn’t have to — Cliff only defends himself as best he can. I just [never saw] Cliff as a bad guy. But then again, I don’t know; with this new show, I’m not so sure I’ll [still] be able to say that.

You know, I heard – I think it was Linda Gray — say that when she was back on set, it was only as if she had worked with everyone just six months ago or so — did you find that to be the case as well?

Oh yeah. Yep, it was almost like we had had a holiday, a Christmas vacation, and then came back to work. Seriously!

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Jason Mraz — “I Won’t Give Up”
(from Love is a Four Letter Word) —

You well know I try like hell to keep this space a Mraz-free zone, but I owe Sherry Ann one, because I very nearly forgot her birthday yesterday, and she always looks forward to her annual tribute here on the Buzz. (In my defense, I had a wild and woolly week at work, and while I had seen it coming on the calendar earlier in the week, the significance of the date almost got lost in the hectic shuffle. She should take heart, though: I also missed my mother’s birthday last month, and it didn’t dawn on me for a full two weeks, so this really isn’t so bad at all by comparison.) So much love from A and me (and 70,000 of your closest friends here on the Buzz!), Sherry Ann, and here’s hoping you have a magnificent day after your birthday.