VIVA LAS VEGAS!

You would think that at a Las Vegas concert featuring the Spice Girls on their Worldwide comeback tour that the fab five would alter the lyrics to their delicate ballad Viva Forever to honor Sin City. You would think such a thing would happen, but alas it didn't. However, that omission was the only disappointment in an otherwise fantastic concert I had the pleasure of seeing in Vegas on Saturday night.

The show opened with a montage of the now vintage girls; a five screen montage of Posh, Scary, Sporty, Baby and Ginger pre-Posh/Becks mahjuh power couple, pre-Roberto Cavalli designs, pre-Eddie Murphy baby daddy Drama. That's right the when the girls were all girl power and Ziga Zig Ah! Following the montage, the five women finally appear in their comeback glory to a crowd full of 20 something girls and gays. They were lifted out of the stage on five platforms as they belted out Spice Up Your Life. The girls know how to put on a show. They are certainly not great singers or artists. But they became famous because they were supreme entertainers. Set list went as followed:

STOP: You should have seen the gays in the audience performing those iconic dance moves. AMAZING!
Say You'll Be There: I loved how the girls Timbaland-ified the classic harmonica vamp with some hip hop lyrics to make the song feel more current.
Headlines: I find this song so boring. If they wanted a real comeback song it should have been at least up tempo and fun n'est ce pas?
Lady is a Vamp
Too Much: They were in a five person phone booth with heart doors scantily removing their clothes, but really it was just an excuse to create another Cavalli outfit.
2 Become 1: Dancing around stripper poles is not the most original staging idea. It was very pussycat dolls of them, but I still give them props.
Who Do You Think You Are
Are You Gonna Go My Way
Maybe
Viva Forever: I filmed this entire number on my Digicam so that I could hear the altered lyric VIVA LAS VEGAS and it didn't happen. Regretfully yours Mike Yerxa
Holler: Ginger was MIA during this number. I guess that's what you get for abandoning your BFFs!
It's Raining Men
I Turn to You: Mel C or as I like to call her Dykey Spice really does have a great voice.
Let Love Lead The Way
Mama: Featured a montage of the five girls with their own moms partnered with shots of them with their own children, save Mel C, whose baby bucket has yet to produce spawn.
Celebration
Goodbye
If U Can't Dance
Wannabe: I loved this song so much that I might even offer sexual favors for the playing of it at a bar. Great way to end the evening.

General musings:

Posh sang two solo sentences all night and both were completely inaudible. Let's just say she's not a member of this group on talent. The highlight of the concert was when she put on a massive dress and walked the runway to Madge's Material Girl. All other spices sang a solo song and she just walked down a runway and disappeared into the stage. It was amazing.

Baby and Sporty can really sing. I was quite impressed.

The concert could have been more flashy and perhaps a bit more tight. But all things considered, at the end of the concert the LCD screen read Mission Accomplished and that was true. The concert wasn't mind blowing or life altering, but it was constantly entertaining. And Posh's solo was worth every penny.

Back to Black Kate Moss Tonight.

Grammy Nominations were announced today and I am very happy because Amy Winehouse was nominated for all four major awards. Apparently voters looked past the female Pete Doherty's bad rep and listened to her glorious music. Kanye West lead with 8 Nominations. Winehouse trailed closely with 6. Here are my general reactions:

Album of the Year : YAWN... Vince Gill??? Herbie Hancock seems kinda boring too. Foo Fighters not really my thing. Kanye is great, but dude has an ego. The Boss and Mr. Heather Mills were both surprisingly shutout I would say Miss Wino is the front runner here.

Record: Rehab, Irreplaceable, Umbrella. All three are as catchy as hell. This is a toss up.

Song: Umbrella, Rehab, and perhaps my guiltiest pleasure of the year, Before He Cheats. I mean if Carrie can get a song nom with Jesus Take the Wheel, then she might even win for her own white trash version karaoke catalogue fave.

Best New Artist: DAUGHTRY thought to be the front runner doesn't get nominated. I was hoping this category wouldn't be inundated with American Idol Class of 06 and it's nice to see that it isn't. No Lily Allen either, which is odd in my opinion. Happy for Feist because she is awesome. Safe to say Amy will win in a Fleetwood Mack landslide.

Two other great surprises:

Happy to see Feist up for Best Pop Vocal Album, which is a very competitive category.
And especially happy to see Fantasia up for a couple of awards because bitch can sing.

Ziga Zig Ah!

All press is good press?

...Or so the saying goes. I am starting to hear rumblings that Amy Winehouse may not score major Grammy noms today because of her erratic and tumultuous behavior. Between all the drugs, the arrest in Norway, her drunken performances, her carving her husband up with razor, her husband going to jail, and her cancelled tour, it is safe to say Amy Winehouse is not having a banner year personally. She is on par with Courtney Love and Britney Spears to win the train wreck female musician lifetime achievement award. But I plead with the Grammy voters to not forget her music. Back to Black is brilliant. Every song scores and it is the only album I've listened to in a long time all the way through in one sitting.

Yes that beehive and those Cleopatra eyes are on the cover of every tabloid. And yes she is a complete disaster, but she is a wonderful musician and don't the Grammy's reward that?

National Board of Review picks No Country.

Oscar pre-cursor season kicked off today with the National Board of Review announcing their top films and performances of the year.

Nothing really exciting. There were no major shocks in top categories. They picked people that many have already deemed strong competitors in this year's race. By picking No Country for Old Men, they have confirmed it's a major contender. But Oscar pundits already knew this film would play a major part in the race. Critics groups can sometime shuffle up contenders and bring a completely out of left field presence into the race, however NBoR's picks were pretty obvious. Don't get me wrong they still picked great films and performances, but I was hoping for a major surprise. I'll have to wait for LA and NYC.

Best Film - No Country for Old Men

Best Director - Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd

Best Actor - George Clooney for Michael Clayton

Best Actress - Julie Christie for Away From Her

Best Supporting Actor - Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Best Supporting Actress - Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone

Best Foreign Film - The Diving Bell and Butterfly

Original Screenplay - Juno & Lars and the Real Girl

Adapted Screenplay - No Country for Old Men

1 2 3 4 Ella Ella Eh Eh No No No.

Apparently to be nominated for the music industry's largest prize this year you actually don't need song lyrics. You just need to inundate your song with numbers, abrevs. or repeated uses of a negative used to express dissent, denial, or refusal, as in response to a question or request.

All kidding aside, tomorrow when the Grammy nominations are announced it is my belief that Feist, Rihanna, and Amy Winehouse will be very happy as they will be the trio leading the pack of nominations. It's really a pretty good time, musically that is, to be one of these three ladies. Maybe not such a great time, private life/health wise, to be Miss Winehouse. Also expect the boss and Kanye to do very well too.

Here are my predictions for the major awards nominations:

Album of the Year:

Bruce Springsteen - Magic
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Kanye West- Graduation
Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
Maroon 5 - It Won't Be Soon Before Long

Record of the Year

Umbrella - Rhianna ft. Jay Z
Rehab - Amy Winehouse
Irreplaceable - Beyonce
Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood
Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen

Song of the Year

Stronger - Kanye West
Rehab - Amy Winehouse
No One - Alicia Keys
Irreplaceable - Beyonce
1,2,3,4 - Feist

Best New Artist

Amy Winehouse
Daughtry
Feist
Lily Allen
Taylor Swift

I find record and song the hardest categories to predict. Aren't they the same thing? Should be very interesting to see what develops early on Thursday... eh eh eh!

I shall overcome...

Nobody puts baby in a corner, but Mirvish does put a piece of shit in a theatre. That piece of shit is entitled Dirty Dancing, which I had the misfortune of seeing on opening night here in Toronto. You know a show is a turkey, when you receive a comp ticket and you are still wanting to leave at intermission. I seriously cannot imagine spending money on this crap. It is the theatrical equivilent of food you would put in a trough for a sow.

The whole show is bland and boring and no scene in the second act is longer than fifteen seconds. The whole thing had a very Rocky Horror-esque feel to it with women, who loved the 80's classic, waiting anxiously to join in with the actors as they yelp out the iconic "I carried a watermelon" or "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner" lines.

Any redeeming factors you ask? The set was cool, but looked like a theme park ride. Baby offered the only remotely human performance. I stand by that I think Melissa O'Neil (Season Three Canadian Idol Winner appears in various Supporting roles) has a decent voice. Johnny's body was nice. Hmmm... yeah, that's it.

Perhaps the most insulting thing of all, and there are too many to list, was the scene in which the token black female castmate was forced to sing "We shall overcome", while a projection of Martin Luther King Jr. is projected on the back wall. At that moment, which is possibly the most offensive thing I've ever seen in a theatre, I'm sure that MLK Jr. must have been convulsing in his grave, while the singer on stage wishes she could just escort herself to an early one.

Safe to say I will not be returning for a second viewing of Dirty Dancing the Musical. However, I shall overcome...

I've been waiting for a film like this....

Last night I had the amazing fortune to finally see Enchanted. The eagerly anticipated new Disney film featuring animation and live action. Essentially, the new century's Mary Poppins. The film is utterly enchanting. It is wonderfully charming, lively and has a huge heart. You really can't help but smile the entire time. The main reason for your 107 minute long ear to ear grin is because of one thing and that one thing is the phenomenal performance of Amy Adams.

What makes Enchanted so clever and watch-able is that it sends up the Disney Princess genre while also honoring it. Who doesn't love the idea of a Disney Princess standing at the window of her Forested cottage calling out, in song of course, to all woodland creatures to come help her clean her house or make a new dress for the ball?

Amy Adams's Giselle walks a very fine line in the film. Adams performance is brilliant because she never turns Giselle into a caricature. It never enters the land of spoof or camp. Adams naivete, innocence, and earnestness are genuine and note perfect. Speaking of note-perfect Adams is a great singer as well.

Enchanted is currently at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, which would make it one of the top reviewed films of the year. It's cotton candy and sweet but not really serious Oscar fare. However, every review mentions how extraordinary Amy Adams is. Here's a sampling:

"Ms. Adams proves to be an irresistibly watchable screen presence and a felicitous physical comedian..." New York Times

"It has its own fabulous femme in the irrepressible Amy Adams (Junebug), a most worthy successor to Andrews' song-and-dance crown." Toronto Star

"I hadn't seen in a long, long time: an honest-to-goodness movie star brightening an actual movie… Here she becomes a star before our eyes, and it's like witnessing an entire garden grow in under two hours." The Boston Globe

"Amy Adams is the movie" Richard Roeper

"Adams is the wish your heart makes when you want a storybook princess for the ages. She's wicked good." Rolling Stone

"Playing perky and gee-whiz, Adams never overdoes the earnestness or even hints at condescending to the role, and it is impossible to think of "Enchanted" without her." Los Angeles Times

"The film, anchored by an entrancing performance by Amy Adams… Adams is spot-on in portraying the pure-hearted Giselle.." USA Today

Across the board raves for a ravishing, entrancing, star-making performance usually means a knock on the Forrest cottage from Oscar. It is my prediction that Amy Adams will be amongst the five nominees for Best Actress. Otherwise the Academy hasn't been waiting for love's true kiss in the form of Amy Adams' Giselle.