Allen Stone

TUNES!

I don't know. Maybe because I'm older. Maybe because I've heard so much music in my life nothing seems surprising or fresh. Maybe it's because Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake just really suck. It's not because I'm old, that music empirically sucks.

So when an old buddy calls and says to check something out, I do it reluctantly and without much enthusiasm. What can it be?

Great, that's what.

Allen Stone is a early twenty-something kid from the great northwest, somewhere around Takoma, Washington. He is the son of a preacher, and as such was never allowed to listen to secular music. So for the first sixteen years of his life he didn't have much if any familiarity with pop music. And then a friend from school gave Allen a Stevie Wonder album that he snuck into the house. Not only did the music throw a switch somewhere deep inside of Allen, but it was his only point of reference. So he didn't have lots of rockabilly, country, rock and roll, or jazz influences. He had Stevie. And R&B in general. So when Allen started writing songs of his own, naturally they were R&B songs.

Allen Stone recorded this his first album on an indy label - the self titled Allen Stone. It is a collection of wonderful blue-eyed soul tunes with the emphasis on soul rather than blue-eyed. These songs are upbeat and bright. They are hummable songs that make me smile. This kid is so young, fresh, and enthused about music that it makes his songs infectious.

The album kicks off with the up tempo Sleep, a ditty about not getting enough rest. And with the way Mr. Stone's career is taking off, it's not difficult to figure out what inspired this. This song goes right into my personal favorite Celebrate Tonight - a sweet whimsical ballad. Other stand outs are the get-you-off-yer-butt and do some dancing Say So. But don't sit down! The next song is a great slow, look in her eyes hold her close moment called The Wind. Every song is great, there's not a clinker in the bunch. Contact High is another fun stand-out. And Your Eyes. I could go on and on.

Allen looks nothing like he sounds. He's a slightly chubby white boy with long stringy unkept hair and his face sports large eighties style glasses. Slap a hat on along with a thick northwest style sweater, and there you go. He can be seen all over Youtube as you might expect. I suggest you check out his appearance on the Ellen Degeneres Show. She was very enthusiastic about Allen and his music saying that she put his CD in her car and she can't listen to anything else. Another must watch is Live At Daryl's House, the show hosted by Daryl Hall (of Hall and Oates fame), from Mr. Hall's home. One can tell how much Mr. Hall really likes Allen. Their styles are very similar which made for nice heartfelt playing and singing by the two of them.

This music is fun, fresh, and brings back some faith that there is still music out there to get excited about. Go to iTunes, listen to samples and then buy this record.  
Thank me later.

OZ - The Great and Powerful

FLIX!

This prequel to one of the greatest films of all time - 1939's The Wizard of Oz is maybe the of the most noteworthy disaster films since The Poseidon Adventure.
For all of the money, effort, ambition, - not to mention kahunas for messing with such an iconic motion picture as The Wizard of Oz, - this movie falls flat. With a sound so loud that it usually takes the effects of that man behind the curtain to make this big of a thud.

Director Sam Raimi, the king of giant special effects mega movie blockbusters - ala the first Spiderman - should have been the guy to pull this off. They were smart to hire him. He would have been one of my first two choices....JJ Abrams being the other, and I would have mixed their names up in a hat and been happy with whichever came out. But what this movie suffers from is bad casting, and most importantly a weak story. It tries too hard to blend as much from the original as possible without getting sued, and to cash in on the 3-D effects.

Okay, the framework for this story is that a womanizing circus magician, (I know Walt, but try to at least slow all that spinning in your grave) Diggs, ticks off the wrong guy, the carnival strongman (a Lansing native by the way), and has to make a hasty exit in a hot air balloon. He gets caught in a tornado, naturally, and in a sequence that seems to go on and on and on (who cut this anyway, and why didn't you do your job?) he finally ends up in a magical land. How charming. He then goes through roughly 3 parts of a ride on water while still in his balloon gondola that is all too unsubtle about setting us up for what the ride at Disney World will be like. And all the while every single conceivable chance the producers get to have something coming at you in a 3D way, they do. Constantly. To the point of annoyance.

After meeting the first of three witches he will encounter, Diggs realizes he is supposed to be someone named Oz who fulfills some King's prophecy and tries to play along, especially since there's gold involved. Then he meets a little flying monkey (aka his "Scarecrow") tangled in some vines and he frees the little guy. The monkey, Finley, then pledges to always be by his side, and this means we have to endure this awful little "buddy" throughout. Usually when they ruin any movie by introducing a cute little side-kick, they're usually...well....cute. This monkey is Red Buttons right before he died. Not cute. Not remotely cute.

The story drags on and on and on, and he meets Glinda, whose powers only seem to be creating fog and bubbles to travel in, and she becomes Oz's primary love interest. But the scorned first witch he met, turns out to become the bad one, and that's just in the over-acting department. Honey, "I knew Margaret Hamilton. I worked with Margaret Hamilton,...You're NO Margaret Hamilton" I hear the ghost of Ray Bolger saying. The actress here, Mila Kunis, just can't pull this off.  Hey, Sam, when it's apparent the actor or actress hired isn't going to be able to do this, it's okay to fire them. It's done all the time.

And I wish the Red Buttons monkey was a bad as it gets, but then there's this China doll wench hanger-on that Oz erroneously glues legs back on to. Gosh this was awful. Although true to some of the L. Frank Baum books (I think there were 14 Oz books), this is just terrible. But who am I to criticize? I really think I might have dozed off during the "gluing legs back on and having a chat segment." But then again, that was 20 frickin' minutes of my life I won't get back. Again, who cut this piece of crap?

James Franco, you were so cool when you were in "Freaks and Geeks". Very James Deanesque. And the first Spiderman movie. But hey, if you ever decide to phone in another performance, at least get the number right. Sheesh! "Oz" was not for you. It didn't work. It's not an indictment of Franco as an actor, but sometimes some people are better at some things than others. And this wasn't him. Franco is just the victim of bad casting. And James, you only got this because Heath Ledger is dead.

Another casting error was Theodora, the first witch Oz encountered, played by the aforementioned Mila Kunis. She went way over the top trying to shriek and be wicked. The other evil witch Evanora, played by Rachel Weisz, was the vague, wicked, um.....excuse me, why the heck are you here again? Oh yes, because it was somehow important to have a convoluted, vague storyline cluttered with meaningless characters. They had the poppy field in front of the Wicked Witch's castle instead of in front of the Emerald City for crying out loud! And they somehow even stuck Munchkinland in the Emerald City! Okay, maybe I got the Munchkinland thing wrong, but in this mess, who knows?

Okay, I could go on and on why 'Oz - The So-So and Lame' should be avoided at all costs, but I will end by talking about the original Wizard of Oz movie of 1939. Warner Brothers owns it and are very sensitive about sharing any of it. Any slight infringement and the lawyers were undoubtedly poised to pounce. In fact, this film was forbidden to even use the exact same color green for the Emerald City. There were enough similarities that if this movie makes a trillion dollars as a runaway hit, Warner Brothers will go for it. But there isn't any need to worry about that happening. So WB lawyers, step down.

At the end of the movie there is a ridiculous "Luke and Darth" fight scene, and then even the send off moment where all of his sidekicks get a gift from the "Wizard". The deathly Red Buttons flying monkey (this is no Ray Bolger Scarecrow folks) gets something, the China Doll gets something etc. Awful.

So instead of dropping 8 or so bucks a head to see this train-wreck, drop about $14 and buy a copy of Argo. It'd be a much better investment.