Music awards and some random stuff

Just some random stuff:

Wanted to post my thoughts on the Grammy Awards even though it's been a couple of weeks now. Anyway: Coldplay totally deserved to win song of the year (or was it record of the year? The categories are kind of confusing with song, record, and album) for Viva la Vida because that song manages to make you smile even if you've been crying 5 minutes before. And of course because Coldplay rock anyway. Can't understand why they didn't win anything at the Brit Awards this week. But back to the Grammys. Jonas Brothers sucked even more than I expected. Katy Perry can't sing, especially not when she's jumping around at the same time. The performances I enjoyed were Justin Timberlake with Al Green, Neil Diamond, Radiohead, Kanye West & Estelle and the Motown medley by some old and some young guys.

Speaking of the Brit Awards, they were not shown on German TV so I only read about them - and watched Kings of Leon play Use somebody on YouTube. They rock, too. And Duffy deserved to win.

Tonight, the German music award show Echo took place (and is still going on on the telly behind me). Don't think anything of interest happened. Oh no, wait, Razorlight performed Wire to Wire which I loved.

Will tape the Oscars tomorrow night. Hugh Jackman, yay!

What else? It's still very cold and snowy here. I still haven't taken my car to a place where the electronics problems might be fixed. I still haven't planned any vacation for this year and I still haven't bought any boots or ski pants for the weekend in the snow I'm supposed to go on in mid-March with my co-workers although I so don't feel like it. Argh.

More on Bale

I guess I was the last person to talk about the Bale incident. Apparently, it made huge waves on February 3. So much so that it was even featured on one of the websites in my links section, Mashable. I find that kind of strange cos Mashable normally deals with new mobile apps or online music services or social media in general.

They call Bale's rant a "social media going mainstream" event. Sorry, but I don't get it. What does Bale's meltdown have to do with social media? The audio file was first posted on gossip site TMZ, not by a blogger or facebook user or something similar. I guess what Mashable means is that people talked about it very much using social media such as Twitter. I still find it strange.

A day later, Mashable asked the same questions that came to my mind in the entry I posted yesterday, i.e., was it all a publicity stunt? I still believe it wasn't because this is Christian Bale we're talking about. He's always been a very private person who hardly ever attends awards shows or parties and still hasn't officially released the name of his daughter. Since he became part of the new Batman franchise, he's become a much bigger name than before and has been seen more at movie biz events (at least that's my impression). But I still won't believe that he would have agreed to letting that tape be used to promote Terminator 4 because it really puts him in a VERY bad light. Yes, there are those that say even bad press is good press, but Bale really doesn't need that. He's probably in a better position as far as being able to chose his film projects goes than ever before. And as I said, he's not someone who enjoys the limelight.

What might be possible (as I mentioned yesterday) is that the studio couldn't stop the tape from being put online and forced him to apologize. The standard way would probably be an official statement, but maybe making him call in on a radio station is version 2.0 of that. Hm. I'm not sure, but here, too, I like to believe that Bale wouldn't be part of such a manipulation.

I guess I still care more about him than I thought. But it's not just that, it's also that I don't like to be manipulated by the media and that I'm curious to find out the truth behind stories - which is hard because I'm just a normal person with hardly more knowledge about what really goes on behind the scenes of the media businees than most people.

Rambling mode over. Move along and enjoy your Sunday.

How often can you say the f-word in 4 minutes?

Very often, apparently. So, what am I talking about? Christian Bale totally freaking out on the set of Terminator 4 a.k.a. Terminator: Salvation back in July. One report of the original incident here. I think what happened was that the director of photography walked through the background of a scene they were just shooting and Christian didn’t like that at all, to say the least.

Now, why does this matter more than half a year later? Because now the audio to go with Christian’s rant has become available. It goes on for more than FOUR MINUTES. And as I said, the f-word is in it probably 100 times, if not 1000. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a long-time fan of Christian’s and am not surprised or shocked because he is known to be very intense. What I find interesting is his accent, which now seems to be a mixture of English and American. Okay, so everybody is appalled by Christian’s behaviour and the incident was even reported on German TV (Exklusiv on RTL). Whatever. Let’s move on to the good sides of the story:

The remix. I find it hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing when I heard it.

The mash-up: Maybe even funnier. It mashes the trailer for Disney musical Newsies (the first film I saw Christian in back in 1992– awww, so cute!) with bits of the remixed meltdown. Simply amazing.

His apology: He actually called in on an L.A. radio show himself and tried to explain everything. Wow. I mean, he could have just made his agent release a statement or something similar. But no, not him. As I said, he’s intense and passionate and real because he’s not perfect and makes mistakes like everybody else. Okay, if I was more cynical than I am I could say this was just a way to promote the Terminator movie because he does say how great it turned out and so on. Or I could say he was forced by the studio to apologize in public. But I’m not that cynical (yet) and I do want to give him the benefit of the doubt and I like to believe that he is genuine. I'm not sure I'd want to run into him on a bad day cos I believe he can be a little scary, but I continue to see him as a good guy deep down. Yup. And his explanation that they were filming a difficult scene where he was trying to portray a certain craziness does make sense. End of my praise of the wonderfulness that in my eyes is CB. : )

Okay, have to add something: there's another clip which I don't find very funny, to be honest (most of all because I don't know who Bill O'Reilly is) but if you scroll down to the comments, you'll find someone saying "Christian Bale has nothing on Klaus Kinski." with a link to a YouTube clip of Klaus Kinski going off against director Werner Herzog back in the 70s (?). Oh boy, it's a small world. Here's why: just yesterday in the office, my boss brought that up. I can't remember at all in what context, but he started walking from his office to his co-worker's office (with my room being in the middle between the 2) and he was talking about crazy Klaus Kinski freaking out on sets and not answering questions on talk shows etc. I think there's a whole documentary feature about Herzog's and Kinski's difficult times on the set of a film called Aguirre. So when my boss brought this up, what came to my mind was of course that CB has also worked with Werner Herzog - on a film called Rescue Dawn. I haven't seen it and it's just been released on DVD here I think. Hm. Small world, isn't it? Everything's connected. Sigh.