The first thing you notice in the trailer for Predators is the lack of muscle. The original Reagan-era film boasted Arnold Schwartzenegger, Carl Weather, and Jesse Ventura at the height of their buffness. Twentieth Century Fox’s upcoming reboot stars Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, and Topher Grace. “You can’t compete with Arnold,” says producer/cowriter Robert Rodriguez, “so it’s much better to go the other direction and do something the audience isn’t expecting.”
Maybe. We’ll see. What I do like about the new film is how they’ve put our heroes in enemy territory, on a hostile planet rather than Earth. “This planet is a game reserve,” says Brody’s character. “And we’re the game.” It’s almost like some Predator and Alien DNA got mixed up during the two crossover hybrids of the two franchises.
But the trailer delivers one important quality all of the sequels lacked: chills. Does the Predator rattle still make the hairs on your arm stand up?
Published: Mar 10, 2010 by adminFiled under:
Music
Just hours after Lil Wayne began his one-year prison term yesterday (March 8), another hip-hop king announced his return to the game. T.I. premiered his latest track, appropriately titled "I'm Back," yesterday on his official website.
He also revealed on a conference call held an hour after the song's
debut that his upcoming seventh studio album will be released on August
24.
"I ain't never let you down, I'mma shine on sight / Keep
your mind on your grind and off of mine's, all right?," Tip raps on the
song. "Hard, I'mma ball on those squares, I flow/ A quarter million
dollar cars everywhere I go ... No matter what they doin' they don't do
it like me / like a G I hold it down for the town I'm at, in a flash
like that / recognize I'm back."
Later in the first verse,
T.I. dismisses wanna-be thug rappers atop the Trackslayerz' beat, and
name checks rappers that like himself earned their stripes by serving
time. "You ain't got a pimp bone in your body, I can tell you ain't
never bought a key or caught a body/ N*gga probably just seen Wayne,
Gucci Mane, me and Boosie all go to prison/ Now he flip his whole
image/ N---a trippin'," he rhymes.
Although T.I. didn't take
any questions during the conference call, which included a select group
of DJs, the rapper did reflect on the track. There is a title for the
album, but he declined to disclose it.
"I appreciate the
support and how hard I was going in during the brief hiatus," Tip said.
"The support don't [sic] go unnoticed and I don't take it lightly. This
marks a special day for us, because we putting out the first song off
the album - not an official first single, just something to keep the
streets warm. It's properly entitled 'I'm Back.' It's a lot of things
that needed to be spoken on. In my absence, it [sic] was a lot of
things that went down, a lot of matters that needed to be addressed.
This was the greatest platform for me to do it. It was the first song I
did when I came home. You get me fresh out the box going in. I'm sure
you guys will enjoy it."
Tip spoke for a little over three minutes. He said that he should be traveling from city to city this summer.
"It ain't gonna be long before all this is behind me," he promised, in
reference to his prison sentence on weapons charges, which is expected
to end in the next few weeks. T.I. was released to a halfway house in
December and made his first public appearance since heading to prison
last month when he accompanied girlfriend Tamika "Tiny" Cottle to an
event. "Middle of April, beginning of May. Y'all gonna start seeing me.
Y'all already know, once again it's on. Like we always do this time,"
T.I. said about future appearances.
"As long as there is air
in my esophagus, champ, I'mma keep going," T.I. said in closing.
"Nothing is gonna stop that. Nothing short of a 12 gauge is gonna stop
me from doing what I do, champ. I just wanna say thank y'all and we
gonna keep movin' on."
Published: Mar 10, 2010 by adminFiled under:
Music
Troubled rapper DMX
was arrested in Arizona on Tuesday (March 9) for violating his
probation by regularly using illegal drugs during the last nine months,
authorities said.
The rapper, whose real name is Earl Simmons,
told a probation officer that he used cocaine and was not complying
with the terms of his treatment plan, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe
Arpaio told Reuters.
He faces five counts of violating probation
Simmons was booked into a Phoenix jail late Tuesday afternoon and was isolated from other inmates, sheriff's officials said.
"We would hope that he is finally sent to prison," Arpaio said. "We've
arrested him five times already. How many times do you have to violate
the law?"
The rap star has faced continued legal trouble in
Arizona, and was serving probation for throwing a food tray at a
detention officer inside a Phoenix jail last year. Simmons spent 90
days in jail on drug, theft and animal abuse charges.
His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
Published: Mar 10, 2010 by adminFiled under:
Music
British newcomer Taio Cruz
sets the record for largest jump to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 by
an act with its first charting single as "Break Your Heart," featuring Ludacris, soars 53-1. The Hot 100 will be updated in its entirety Thursday (Mar. 11) morning.
"Heart" shifts 273,000 downloads in its first full week of
availability, according to Nielsen SoundScan, to also claim the No. 1
slot on Digital Songs. Last week, the track moved 31,000 in a partial
sales frame (approximately three days), which prompted its Hot 100
entry.
The song, which also topped the U.K. singles chart
when it debuted at No. 1 in September, is growing rapidly in airplay,
climbing 70-53 (up 21%) on Radio Songs.
The record for largest climb to No. 1 on the Hot 100 by an artist's premiere single had belonged to Kelly Clarkson's "American Idol" victory song, "A Moment Like This," which flew 52-1 on the chart dated Oct. 5, 2002.
Clarkson does retain the mark for biggest jump to No. 1 among all
tracks with "My Life Would Suck Without You," which nearly leapt the
entire chart length (97-1) just over a year ago (Feb. 7, 2009).
Lil Wayne is set to begin an expected jail term on a New York gun case, after a dental problem and a courthouse fire pushed his sentencing back a month.
The rap star is scheduled to be sentenced Monday to a year in city jail. He pleaded guilty in October to attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He admitted illegally having a loaded gun on his tour bus in July 2007.
His sentencing was initially pushed back from Feb. 9 so he could have surgery on his bejeweled teeth. It was postponed again last week when a fire shut down Manhattan's main criminal courthouse while he was on his way there.
Lil Wayne has been one of rap's most prolific and profitable figures in recent years. His "Tha Carter III" was the best-selling album of 2008.
As a former member of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, Slash knows more than most musicians about what he calls "band drama."
"It just goes hand in hand with rock 'n' roll," the 44-year-old guitarist says with a seen-it-all laugh. "It's a very volatile world. And I actually thrive on it -- but at the same time it makes it really hard to get anything done."
Getting stuff done was the primary motivation behind Slash's self-titled solo debut, due April 6 in the United States on the artist's own Dik Hayd Records via EMI Label Services.
"After the last Velvet Revolver tour, I was like, 'I just need to do something on my own,'" says the musician, who's also released a pair of discs with Slash's Snakepit. "'Something where I can make my own decisions and do whatever it is that I want to do, without having to conform to anyone else's taste.'"
Not that "Slash" is free of other creative input: The 13-track set contains collaborations with an eclectic roster of guest vocalists, including Ozzy Osbourne, Chris Cornell, Kid Rock, Ian Astbury and Iggy Pop. Slash says the idea behind the all-star hookups was simple: "I just wanted to get different people I admired and thought were great on my record. I'd been doing that on other people's records forever."
Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows -- who lends lead vocals to the hard-rocking "Nothing to Say" -- insists that despite the expansive guest list, the album is undoubtedly Slash's show. "You can tell he's doing the record as a way to try different things," Shadows says. "He definitely branched out, and the result is all over the place. But the guitar playing is so obviously Slash. That holds it all together."
"Slash is a guy who appeals to everyone," says Maroon 5's Adam Levine, who sings "Gotten," a bluesy ballad. "He was in Guns N' Roses but he also wasn't afraid of playing on a Michael Jackson record. I've always loved his attitude toward music, the way he embraces tons of different styles."
Slash says the album's stylistic diversity -- where you can find Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister ("Doctor Alibi") rubbing elbows with Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas ("Beautiful Dangerous") -- developed in an organic fashion. "Once I came up with the concept, there was no forethought as to who exactly should be on the record," he says. "I just started writing music and compiling stuff from old tapes. Then I sat down with it and kept thinking, 'This song would great for so-and-so.' Once I got the songs into reasonable demo form, I'd send them out to different people and just hope they were interested."
After contacting friends and acquaintances, he moved on to artists he didn't know, such as Shadows, Rocco De Luca of alternative rock act the Burden ("Saint Is a Sinner Too") and Wolfmother frontman Andrew Stockdale, who appears on the lead single, "By the Sword." "He's Australian and kind of hard to find," Slash says of Stockdale. "But after months of looking, it turned out he lives right up the street from me."
Shadows and Levine both say Slash welcomed their contributions. "Before we met he sent over a verse riff and a chorus and basically said, 'What can you do with this?'" Shadows recalls. "At first I was just doing some vocal melodies, but after a while I was like, 'I kind of want to make this a little more in-depth,' so I brought in a new verse and turned the chorus into a pre-chorus. Slash was super laid-back. He wasn't pissed that I was coming up with new things."
Slash wasn't inclined to enter a traditional record deal. "One of the things he was really keen on was full control," says Jeff Varner of Slash's management firm, Collective Music Group.
That led Collective to establish strategic partnerships with the likes of Guitar Center and Ernie Ball. With the former, Slash is involved in a promotion called Your Next Record, where unsigned bands can upload songs that fans vote on; the winner gets to record a three-track EP with Guns N' Roses producer Mike Clink, with one song featuring a solo by Slash. Guitar accessories manufacturer Ernie Ball is running a Shred With Slash campaign that awards consumers who find special picks inside packs of guitar strings with attendance at a Slash-taught master class.
Varner says that every aspect of the album's promotion is subject to Slash's "gut check."
"It's this innate thing of, 'Is this cool or is this corporate-y sellout?'" Varner says. "He knows who he is and he knows when something doesn't pass the smell test. But he's also said to us, 'Look, I realize times have changed and that you can't market records the way you used to.'"
Slash didn't even have a MySpace profile when he started working with the Collective, so the firm set him up with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts. "Within a matter of weeks he had over a million friends on Facebook," Varner says.
"All that stuff was new to me," says Slash, who'll begin touring in support of his album in late May, with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge performing vocal duties. "I mean, I literally didn't own a computer until, like, 2002. At some point I got a BlackBerry, and that kind of opened up the whole thing for me. Now I've come to terms with the way things are. Social networking is great for interacting with fans and being able to talk to people in real time."
"He thinks it's cool, so he does it," adds Varner, who stresses that the guitarist's Twitter feed -- which he's used to urge Madonna to "sit on Justin Bieber's face," among other things -- is most definitely not fake. "It's really Slash. He's like, 'Love it or hate it, this is me.'"
