Moviefone Copyright 2011, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Moviefone Good old fashioned elbow grease. "Bad News Is Coming." It's already here! So let HuffPost Entertainment's Spotify playlist of good music take away the sting.

Europe's leaders met again, looking in vain for a way to get their economy to "Stop Breaking Down." But investors looking for a "Safe European Home" for their money had "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide." The "Greek Style" of economic management has thriftier nations shaking their heads and vowing, "No More Mr. Nice Guy," but France's new Socialist president wants to pursue a new policy -- one where Germany says, in effect, Here, "You Take My Money." Maybe it's time for "A Little Less Conversation," a little more compromise.

Meanwhile, back at home, Facebook's shareholders were asking themselves, "With Friends Like These," who needs enemies? With the stock stuck in the low 30s, jerked-around investors and rage-baiting regulators summoned a legal "Wave of Mutilation" that could make Mark Zuckerberg a very "Lonely Boy" indeed.

President Obama's week wasn't much better. "The Process of Leaving" Afghanistan is dragging on longer than he or his supporters would like, and the message from the White House is "We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place." His "Generals and Majors" disagree, and you can bet that Republicans will show no "Mercy" if America's "Emergency Exit" ends up enabling "Terrorists in the City" to reclaim control of the nation.

The GOP is already trying to paint Obama as a "Big Spender" who's turning the nation into one big "Bleeding Heart Show" -- a criticism White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed as "Bullshit" (though he used a family-friendly abbreviation). But Democrats' efforts to paint Mitt Romney as the kind of guy willing to "Party on Fifth Ave." while ensuring that "The Working Man Can't Get Nowhere Today" are so far falling flat. Even Cory Booker complained about the attacks on Romney's old company, Bain Capital. Team Obama responded right away, telling Booker to "Shut Up, Man." Seems the Newark mayor will have to shelve his "Policy of Truth" until after the election.

There was some reasonably good news this week: two years after the "Arab Spring" began, Egyptian voters are getting an overdue taste of "Freedom!" in what's being billed as the Arab world's first free presidential election. Unfortunately, the choice is between Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the heirs of "Mr. Big Thief" himself, Hosni Mubarak.

And in New York, police announced a break in the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz, whose case inspired Ronald Reagan to create National "Missing Children"s Day (which happens to be today). "Confessions" like the one reportedly offered by suspect Pedro Hernandez aren't enough to close a case, but here's hoping the Patz family will soon have some long-overdue "Peace of Mind."

Check out the Spotify playlist below to hear this week's songs, and let us know in the comments section what headline-worthy songs we should have included here.

]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 11:28:00 EDT 1545795 "Men in Black 3" star Will Smith loves having a movie to promote and absolutely adores being the center of attention.

And thank heavens for that. There are enough sulky, misunderstood artists clogging the red carpets these days, and not nearly enough movie stars willing to give an impromptu rap concert on a decommissioned aircraft carrier with help from their two kids and the D.J. who helped make them famous in the first place.

Yes, Will Smith performed a handful of songs with his old partner D.J. Jazzy Jeff on the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City on Wednesday night at a post-premiere party for the sequel that had guests wondering just how much, exactly, Sony Pictures had paid for the event. There were 4,000 guests. There was a performance by Pitbull. There were never-ending supplies of deli sandwiches, chinese noodles, Dunkin Donuts and Bombay Sapphire gin. And there was a no-messing-around fireworks display by the Grucci Family -- the same people who light up the entire Hudson River on July 4 every year.

The first sign that Smith would make a cameo as his hip-hop alter ego, the Fresh Prince, came when his 13-year-old son, Jaden Smith, joined D.J. Jazzy Jeff on the stage to spit some precocious rhymes of his own. The crowd of industry insiders and Fleet Street sailors cheered when Will joined the Karate Kid for the second song, and cheered again when he helped daughter Willow up onto the stage not long after. She never sang, but danced along gamely to the theme to "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "Men In Black," and the 1991 hit "Summertime."

Earlier in the night, Smith had navigated the red carpet at the Ziegfeld Theatre without incident. Publicists had warned journalists not to ask about last week's confrontation in Moscow, when Smith pushed and lightly smacked a reporter who tried to kiss him. (Apparently, that's the poor guy's schtick.) Tommy Lee Jones, however, either didn't get the memo or ignored it. "How's life in Moscow?" he asked, more than once. When Smith laughed and hugged him, Jones mimed giving him a smack of his own.

The pair's teasing dynamic was on display inside the "Men In Black 3" premiere event as well. Smith, who apparently has no "off" button, wouldn't keep quiet during director Barry Sonnenfeld's opening speech. Finally, the director shouted -- with mock outrage -- "WILL SMITH!" Smith blamed Tommy Lee Jones for the interruption, claiming the actor just wouldn't shut up. Later, when Sonnenfeld introduced Jones, Smith launched into a chant of "TLJ! TLJ!" And as the actors were returning to their seats, Smith loudly called out, "All right, where my wife and kids?"

That irrepressible extrovert energy helps carry the film -- a well-crafted spectacle that should amuse families of all ages, as long as they don't think too hard about how the various time-traveling parts fit together -- and made Wednesday's event on the Intrepid one to remember.

]]> Thu, 24 May 2012 09:56:57 EDT 1542307 Google Doodle in honor of what would have been the inventor's 78th birthday. (He died in 2005.)

If you're like most people, you're probably wondering how the heck that thing on Google.com's main page works -- and I'm not here to tell you, though I'm pretty sure you can tweak the sound that comes out of the keyboard by twiddling the various knobs. Instead, I'll just say that the Moog synthesizer was the Kubrickian obelisk that pointed the way to everything from "I Am the Walrus" to "Wanna Be Startin' Something," to "Mitt Likes Music, Including This."

Yes, there had been other synthesizers, but this was the first one that was versatile and druggy-sounding enough to break up pop music's guitar-bass-drum hegemony. The Beatles used the Moog on Abbey Road, Stevie Wonder used it on his classic 70s albums, the late Donna Summer used it on "I Feel Love," the Beastie Boys and Q-Tip sampled it on "Get It Together" and 90s indie-rock stalwarts Stereolab basically built an entire identity around it.

Robert "Bob" Moog was born in New York City on May 23, 1934, and developed his classic synthesizer models in the late 60s and early 70s. He was the subject of a 2004 documentary, simply titled "Moog," and his legacy inspired the creation of an entire festival, Moogfest, which presented its first-ever Moog Innovation Award to the 1980s art-punk band DEVO in 2010.

Moog never claimed to be a musician -- "I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers," he once said -- but his vision helped change the sound of our lives.

Below, check out HuffPost Entertainment's Spotify playlist of songs that make use of various instruments in the Moog family.



]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 13:11:56 EDT 1539621 "Spotify the News" is a new HuffPost feature designed to translate the week's big headlines into a weekend-worthy playlist featuring classic hits, unfairly overlooked obscurities and a good deal of what's in between.

Well, "Today Is The Day" we've been waiting for -- the big Facebook I.P.O.! Will Mark Zuckerberg remember to say "Thank You Friends" when he tallies up his zillion-dollar haul, or is the social network saddled with an "Ungrateful Little Father"? Certainly, the company's earliest investors have to be crowing, "We Are the Champions" -- it's "A Beautiful Day" for Bono of U2, who stands to make $1.2 billion from his chunk of Facebook, and even Eduardo Saverin must be singin' in "Singapore." (UPDATE: Looks like we spoke too soon. With shares closing no higher than they opened, the smart money may be saying, "Don't Believe the Hype.")

The news wasn't nearly as good for JP Morgan Chase C.E.O. Jamie Dimon, who went from Wall Street's "Last Man Standing" to America's favorite "Whipping Boy" after his firm lost $3 billion in one fell swoop. "Regulate"!, fed-up Democrats demanded, but Mitt Romney took a more forgiving view, saying that kind of "Reversal of Fortune" is just "the way America works." Translation: Jamie, "You Fucked Yourself," and now you're on your own.

"Maybe Partying Will Help." That seemed to be the philosophy at the Upfront presentations in "New York City," where the networks put on a major "TV Party" for advertisers. And the festive spirit stretched across the Atlantic, where Lana Del Ray and Bill Murray were among the "Jeunes Femmes et Vieux Messieurs" who helped kick off the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Speaking of femmes, advocates are still wondering why, when it comes to the festival's competiton slate, "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World." Some blame the festival's culture of information lockdown. "We Have No Secrets," critics say -- why should you?

Moving on to "Politics As Usual," The New York Times exposed the "Master Plan" for an ambitious "Smear Campaign" aimed at forcing President Obama to admit that, yes, when it comes to the inflammatory preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "He Was a Friend of Mine." The money quote came when the authors of the report accused Obama of framing himself as a "metrosexual, black 'Abe Lincoln,'" a phrase that launched a thousand Internet tribute illustrations.

In the "Outer Realms" of the race, meanwhile, Dr. Ron Paul announced his decision to "Give Up the Ghost." His libertarian supporters refused to accept defeat, claiming that their hero would "Fight to Finish," appearances notwithstanding. Others expressed relief at not having to say, "Come On In My Kitchen" to door-to-door Paulites for another four years, at least.

The week also saw the tragic loss of an "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground." So in memory of Donna Summer, Spotify the News urges you to "Dim All the Lights" and dedicate one "Last Dance" to the Queen of Disco.

To suggest newsworthy songs for next week's edition, tweet your tips to @HuffPostEnt with #SpotifyTheNews.





]]> Fri, 18 May 2012 13:23:11 EDT 1527880
The trailblazing reggae singer, who succumbed to cancer in 1981 at the age of 36, remains a hugely inspirational figure to millions of people from Division Street to Dar es Salaam, and the producers of a recent documentary about his life, "Marley," are using every available method to connect his fans with their film.

On April 20 (when else?), they released the movie simultaneously in theaters, on iTunes, on VOD and on Facebook, where it has set the record for most streams of a feature film. (Theatrically, the film has grossed just under $1 million on well fewer than 100 screens.) And on May 19, Ziggy Marley -- Bob's oldest son, who served as co-executive producer on the film -- will join fans on Facebook to watch the documentary live and answer their questions about it. (You can sign up at apps.facebook.com/ziggylive/.)

"We'll be just chillin' and chatting about the film as it goes along," said Ziggy, who's a star musician in his own right. He cracked the Top 40 with the Melody Makers, a group composed of his siblings, and now performs as a solo artist. (His most recent album, Wild and Free, leads off with a duet with actor Woody Harrelson.)

"I won't be sitting there in people's living rooms or wherever they are, but for me, it's just like that, in terms of how I feel about it," he said of the Facebook chat. "We want it to be fun. We don't want it to be this kind of stiff thing."

"Marley" is no ordinary music documentary. Sure, there's plenty of sex (Bob had 11 children by seven women), drugs (the Rastafarian religion views marijuana as a sacred herb), and rock 'n' roll (Island Records president Chris Blackwell first marketed Bob Marley and The Wailers to English audiences as a black rock group). But Marley's intensely eventful life -- he rose from grinding poverty to become one of the most powerful and respected figures in Jamaica, then went on to inspire the world -- makes the average rags-to-riches-to-rehab saga look like an after-school special. And with Ziggy's endorsement, director Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland") got the whole story from the people who were along for the ride.

"The opportunity to speak to the people who actually knew Bob could only have happened because we said, 'Hey, these guys are coming down there, it's okay to talk to them,'" Ziggy explained. "We had to make some phone calls and get some opportunities and some doors open to get some information. I think once people knew that we were involved, and me personally was involved, they were comfortable speaking without holding back everything on Bob."

The Marley inner circle has spent a lot of time and money wrangling with bootleggers, knock-off artists and even some relatives over control of its patriarch's image, and it is wary of biographers and filmmakers looking to cash in on Bob's legacy. "I have an issue with everybody writing books about Bob, everybody doing films, all those authorities on Bob," Ziggy said. "Who are these people? I don't watch the stuff, because I know. I been around the real people who know Bob."

Macdonald won the family's trust in part because he wasn't "Bob-crazy," Ziggy said. "Fans love Bob, and they feel like they know Bob. We didn't need that. That's not the perspective we were looking for. We needed an objective view, not somebody that was making a film about their love of Bob."

Ziggy said the decision to release the film across multiple platforms all at once was a no-brainer.

"It's just a way of using all the avenues that are there. Why wouldn't you use them? The old models are slowly dying out," he said. "It's not a big marketing thing -- it's not all about that. It's about the people that love Bob. I mean, we don't need to be in every theater to reach his fans now. We have access over the Internet and by Facebook and other means to reach them. So we don't need the old route of distribution. We can find new routes."

One old route he wouldn't mind traveling is the path to Oscar gold next February. "With what we've seen, I actually expect and hope that it will be nominated," he said. "It deserves it, you know?"

A 2011 Billboard magazine feature titled "The Business of Bob Marley" detailed the Marley family's ambitious commercial enterprises, including an eco-friendly line of headphones positioned to compete with Dr. Dre's Beats by Dre. Did the family choose this moment to cooperate with a documentary in hopes of creating buzz for their other products?

According to Ziggy, the answer is no. "Everybody have them pet projects that they do," he said. "I was really involved in the movie -- that was my project, you know? Other people are involved in the coffee and the headphones and stuff like that, but we don't think about the film as a way to market stuff or whatever. We just think of the film as a documentary. to represent our father. If we get ancillary benefits from it, so be it, but we don't think about it that way."

Ziggy's other passions include politics -- he advocates legalizing marijuana and "liberating" the entire hemp plant, which can be used to manufacture clothes and other goods -- and superheroes. He recently published a comic book called "Marijuanaman," and gamely answered this reporter's admittedly goofy question about what superhero he relates to most.

"I'm digging Batman," said this wealthy scion who lost his father when he was just 13 years old and has devoted much of his life to social causes. "I'm digging that balance, that duality. He's always on the edge and trying to balance himself within the rules of what's lawful and justice, and being Bruce Wayne and being Batman. And because he doesn't have any superpowers, I think I relate to that more. He can't fly. I kinda like that. I kind of like that it's a little bit more realistic. So I relate to Batman a lot."]]> Fri, 18 May 2012 11:19:25 EDT 1527018 Introducing "Spotify the News," a new HuffPost feature designed to translate the week's big headlines into a weekend-worthy playlist featuring classic hits, unfairly overlooked obscurities and a good deal of what's in between.

Gay marriage led the "Headline News" this week, thanks to Vice President Joe Biden's unusual decision to utter "A Few Honest Words" about the right of same-sex couples to say, "Let's Get Married." The resulting "Controversy" seems to have forced President Obama to "Evolve" faster, and the White House quickly arranged a "Tete a Tete" with ABC's Robin Roberts. Obama's declaration that "same sex couples ought to be able" to join their hands in "Matrimony" struck most supporters as historic -- and a vocal few as "Too Little Little Late." The day after making the "Marriage" announcement, Obama ventured into the heart of Hollywood for a fundraiser at the home of "This Charming Man," George Clooney. There, movie stars and titans of the industry showered the president with "California Love" (it was a 15 "Million Dollar Bash," after all), causing a few starstruck attendees to declare that "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." The 99 percenters, meanwhile, were left to ponder, not for the first time, how utterly "Cash Rules Everything Around Me."

Elsewhere, Mitt Romney's "School Days" were in the news. According to The Washington Post, when Romney was a student at the prestigious Cranbrook prep school, the righteous young stickler went "A Little Bit Crazy" when a gay classmate departed from the prevailing "Crew Cut" orthodoxy and urged his classmates to "Beat on the Brat." Romney tried to pass the incident off as one of those "Things I Don't Remember," but was eventually forced to apologize. Let's hope that's the end of it -- after all, "What Can I Say After I'm Sorry"?

In other news, TIME magazine stirred up controversy with its cover showing a three-year-old enjoying his "Favourite Food" -- his mother's breast milk. "You Wanna Freak Out"? Go right ahead, but "Mother" and breastfeeding enthusiast Jamie Lynne Grumet says the practice will help her son develop a "Healthy Body" -- and makes her feel like a "Natural Woman."

Spotify the News will respectfully steer clear of whatever "Natural Disaster" dominated world news this week and instead end with "A Salty Salute" to the late children's author Maurice Sendak, who died on May 8 at the age of 83. Good sir, this "Rumpus" is for you.



RELATED: Celebs React to Barack Obama's Same-Sex Marriage Announcement
]]> Fri, 11 May 2012 09:46:53 EDT 1509101
In the 1980s, McDaniels' group, Run-D.M.C., and Yauch's group, the Beastie Boys, were tag-team partners locked in combat with music's status quo. Today, both groups are safely ensconced in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but it wasn't always obvious that they were destined for immortality.

"You know, it was early, so people thought Run DMC's a fad, Beasties is a fad, you know, all of this is a fad," McDaniels said. "Run-D.M.C., we crossed over with the rock -- but then it was Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys that took it to venues. We started playing Madison Square Garden, L.A. Coliseum, and all the critics were like, 'There's no way these black hip hop guys, these black B-boys, and these white punk rockers gonna go into these venues and anything good's gonna happen, because there's gonna be racial tension, fighting and gangs and all that.' But it was no problem."

A 1987 concert review in The New York Times confirms McDaniels point: "Airport-style metal detectors on the way into Madison Square Garden, and helmeted, club-wielding police officers on the way out, lent Monday's sold-out rap show by Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys the air of a concert in a prison," Jon Pareles wrote. "But inside the arena, it was clear that most people came to party -- to dance, wave their arms and shout rhymes along with the rappers."

McDaniels, who formed Run-D.M.C. with Joseph "D.J. Run" Simmons in 1982 and shortly thereafter recruited Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell to complete the trio, credits his group and the Beastie Boys with spreading the gospel of hip-hop far beyond America's borders. "We took it overseas -- France, Germany -- and you know, all the metal kids, the punk rock kids, the goth kids, and the B-boys and the breakdancers came together. So we did a beautiful thing."

Since The Moth is a venue for storytelling, The Huffington Post asked McDaniels to recount his favorite story about Yauch, who died on May 4 at age 47 after a long battle with cancer.

"It was in Europe, and this was when [the Beastie Boys] used to drink and have penises on stage and naked girls in cages," he said. "They used to open the cans of Budweiser and put it all over the stage. So the stage got real wet. So me, Run and Jay, we on the side of the stage, like, 'Yo, somebody gonna bust they ass tonight.' Sure enough, MCA slipped. He went about 10 feet in the air, came down real hard. We knew he was dead. Like, boom. Then he got up and kept rapping.... Coolest thing ever."

McDaniels first got involved with The Moth when a member of the group saw his Emmy-nominated 2007 documentary, "DMC: My Adopted Journey," and asked him to tell the story onstage. "I found out I was adopted at age 35," he says. "I didn't know my whole life. And I went through this real crazy depression, you know. And one of the people at the Moth saw [my documentary] and asked, 'Do you wanna come tell your story?' And I was like, 'Noooo.'

"But I did. And the funny thing is, rapping is easy. This was way more scary, I ain't have the beat back there, the D.J. wasn't with me, you don't have the music, it's just you and the people. But I was helped when I told my story. I got it out of me, because it was killing me. And I been down with The Moth ever since."

Others who are down with The Moth include Barneys "creative ambassador-at-large" Simon Doonan, who emceed last night's festivities; New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who presented the 2012 Moth Award (designed by Jonathan Adler, natch) to director Martin Scorsese; NBC Universal chairman Bonnie Hammer, who received a special award in honor of her work with "Characters Unite," a pro-tolerance program supported by Nathan Lane, Octavia Spencer and other entertainers; the Reverend Al Sharpton, who presented the 2012 Mothshop Scholarship Award to Humanities Preparatory Academy senior Heriberto Altieri; jazz bassist Christian McBride, who told a gripping yarn about his Herculean efforts to arrange a collaboration with his boyhood hero, James Brown; and assorted guests including Tyra Banks, Padma Lakshmi and TV On The Radio's Kyp Malone.

In his introduction of Scorsese, Gopnik enumerated no fewer than four reasons the Oscar-winning director deserved The Moth Award. The first was his "velocity" -- "he's a very fast talker" -- and the fourth was his possession of the "ultimate gift of a raconteur." Gopnik explained: "Not only does he tell wonderful stories, but everything around him becomes a Scorsese story.... The world becomes Scorsesefied when you're with him."

As if to prove the point, Scorsese told a story that he'd just been reminded of on the ride down to the the evening's venue -- Capitale, on the Bowery in downtown Manhattan. Scorsese had grown up nearby, and in 1952 he and a small group of classmates made a field trip to the Bowery Savings Bank, where Scorsese's father and grandfather kept their nest eggs. Scorsese recalled being taken to an upstairs room and introduced to "a very interesting gentleman in a three-piece suit. He held in both hands a $1,000 bill. And we had to go up, one by one, and touch it."

The Bowery Savings Bank, he then revealed, had been reopened decades later as Capitale. We were sitting in the building where a 10-year-old Martin Scorsese was invited to touch a $1,000 bill.

"I want to put it in my next picture," he said. And here's hoping he does.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article stated that Run-D.M.C. was signed to Def Jam Records. They recorded their seminal albums for Profile Records.]]> Wed, 9 May 2012 11:27:23 EDT 1503064 UPDATE: According to news reports, Beastie Boys founding member Adam Yauch has died at age 47. The original story continues below.

The Beastie Boys and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame have one major thing in common: they both hit the big time in 1986. That was the year the former released its first full-length album, "Licensed to Ill," and the latter inducted its first honorees, including Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and James Brown.

Twenty-six years later, in a ceremony that will be broadcast on HBO this Saturday, May 5, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, the Beastie Boys became just the third rap group to enter the Hall, after Run-D.M.C. (2009) and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (2007). They were joined by fellow new inductees Laura Nyro, Donovan, The Faces, Guns N' Roses and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name a few.

Rappers Chuck D and LL Cool J introduced the Beastie Boys at the event, which took place at Cleveland's Public Hall on April 14. "They brought a whole new look to hip hop," Chuck D said. Unfortunately, Adam "MCA" Yauch, who is battling cancer of the lymph node, was too ill to attend the event and had to express his gratitude in a letter. His fellow Beasties, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond, collected their trophy in person but declined to perform without their comrade.

Instead, the Roots linked up with Kid Rock and Travie McCoy to perform a medley of Beastie tunes that included "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," "So What'cha Want," "Sabotage" and "The New Style."

Check out a videos above and below for exclusive previews of the complete broadcast, and tune in to HBO on Saturday to see the whole ceremony, featuring performances by Donovan, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slash, George Clinton, and Ronnie Wood.]]> Fri, 4 May 2012 08:59:46 EDT 1477109
"The Avengers" is two and a half hours of pure, unadulterated fun -- the cinematic equivalent not just of a roller coaster ride but of the whole damn amusement park. Drop tower, log flume, Tilt-A-Whirl, Gravitron -- you name it, it's in there.

No, it's not a dark, moody critique of our fallen social order in the mold of Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" series, but it's not mindless either. As Mark Ruffalo recently acknowledged, the endlessly bickering Avengers -- Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Hulk -- serve as a pretty good metaphor for today's ultra-partisan America, where we're all too busy taking cheap shots across the aisle to even think about tackling any global threats.

But unlike Nolan, director Joss Whedon doesn't want you to walk out of the theater pondering a political message. He wants you flying like Iron Man, propelled by a twin jet pack of smart comedy and face-melting action.

And make no mistake: the action is epic. There's an obvious comparison to the city-smashing mayhem of "Transformers 3," but the difference is that it's actually possible to follow what's happening in "The Avengers." There is a crispness, despite the high-octane velocity. It's not a blur.

My opponent in this debate complains that there are no stakes in this story because the good guys can't lose. And he has a point: we learn early on that Thor and The Hulk are effectively immortal, and Tom Hiddleston's Loki isn't the most threatening villain we've ever seen. But when's the last time you faced death in the course of a week, or a month, or a year? Does that mean you're living a pointless existence with no "stakes"?

If you ask me, their invincibility makes these superheroes more relatable: like you and me, they are preoccupied not with survival but with such all-too-human matters as pride, vanity and comfort (Bruce Banner's main complaint about his Hulk alter ego is that it really hurts). Only after they've made a mess of everything by pursuing their own selfish interests are they finally able to stand together and fight for what's right.

Look, I won't try to convince you to care about the tesseract or Loki's pact with evil aliens or any of the rest of it. I don't think even Whedon thinks that's possible, which is part of why this movie is so much fun. The point is to spend time with the characters, whom we know not just from the previous films in the series but from comic books and assorted childhood memories.

There must have been times when Whedon felt like Nick Fury as he tried to manage all the movie-star egos in this mix, but the results are really extraordinary. Everyone from Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr. to Tom Hiddleston and Gwyneth Paltrow is in fine form, and by now you've heard how Mark Ruffalo quietly steals the show. That said, I probably had the most fun watching Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth -- two guys who weren't really movie stars until Marvel cast them in these roles. For that reason, it was possible to suspend disbelief and pretend that I was flying along not with two increasingly well-paid actors but with Captain America and Thor, defenders of the universe. (And no, I wasn't able to sit through "Thor" either.)

All I ask when I plunk down for a superhero movie is to be delighted, transported, not bored. So maybe the best thing I can say about this 150-minute extravaganza is that I laughed, cheered, gasped and clapped, and never once looked at my watch.]]> Thu, 3 May 2012 16:15:39 EDT 1475581
Still, the venerable paleontologist and conservationist -- who was introduced last night as "the man many believe responsible for saving the elephant population" of Kenya -- and the legendary folk-rock musician hit it off when the latter paid a visit to T.B.I. about four years ago. Simon's experience there inspired him to propose a benefit concert, which took place last night at the Highline Stages in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.

Real-estate developer Leonard Stern, philanthropist David Rockefeller Jr. and IMAX C.E.O. Richard Gelfond were among the 200 deep-pocketed guests on hand when Simon and veteran guitarist Mark Stewart took the stage for a stripped-down acoustic concert that bore no resemblance to the stereotypical phoned-in charity gig. The set was bookended by classics from Simon's days with Art Garfunkel -- "The Sounds of Silence" to begin, "The Boxer" to close -- and steered entirely clear of "Graceland," Simon's Grammy-winning collaboration with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other black South African musicians. (That may be just as well, as it's hard to imagine what "Gumboots" or "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" would sound like on two acoustic guitars.) A medley that segued into "Mrs. Robinson," another Simon & Garfunkel favorite, prompted two rounds of applause -- one from hardcore fans who recognized the opening lyrics of the verse, and a second from everybody else when the chorus kicked in.

As a musician, Simon has aged gracefully indeed. His voice is in mint condition, his touch softer than ever. Charity audiences are notorious for yammering through concerts, but this audience was reverentially silent -- so much so that a fist fight nearly broke out following the performance when two guests accused a third of talking over the music.

Their irritation is understandable, given that the cost of entry was so high. The dinner alone raised $1 million -- a figure matched by Euclidean Capital president James H. Simons and his wife, Marilyn, bringing the total to $2 million. And that was before the auction, which brought in another six figures, as everything from a signed acoustic guitar ($19,000) to a painting by the Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu ($42,000), to a nine-day Kenyan safari ($46,000), commanded eye-popping prices. Their generosity was spurred by the witty antics of auctioneer C.K. Swett, who told the crowd, "You'll never have an opportunity to advance scientific progress and drink so much at the same time."

In his speech, Leakey -- whose legs were amputated after a 1993 plane crash that some believe was orchestrated by his foes in the poaching underworld -- explained how the genetic record shows that all modern humans emerged from the Turkana Basin area 60,000 years ago. (There were humans elsewhere before then, but their lines appear to have died out.) He said T.B.I., which he co-founded with New York State's Stony Brook Institute, is working toward a "Eureka!" moment that will enable scientists to say, "This is where [human evolution] happened, this is how, this is why."

Which would be nice. Though it won't change the truth expressed in a verse Simon wrote for "The Boxer" that was left off the recorded version but surfaced again last night: "After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same. After changes, we are more or less the same."

For more information on the Turkana Basin Institute, including how to donate, visit turkanabasin.org.

Photos by PatrickMcMullan/PatrickMcMullan.com
]]> Thu, 3 May 2012 09:41:01 EDT 1473979
"Oh Susannah," which debuted on Stereogum this morning, isn't instantly recognizable as a cover of "Oh! Susanna," the 19th-century minstrel tune written by "Camptown Races" composer Stephen Foster. Like such venerable Crazy Horse tracks as "Powderfinger" and "Tonight's the Night," it features shambling rhythms, haunting harmonies, and the serpentine meanderings of "Old Black," the 1953 Les Paul that Young has been playing for most of his career.

But Young promised nothing less back in March, when he announced that he and Crazy Horse would be releasing "Americana," their first album together since 1996. At the time, he told Rolling Stone that the album, due out June 5, would feature "songs we all know from kindergarden, but Crazy Horse has rearranged them, and they now belong to us."

Not everyone is a fan of the signature Crazy Horse sound. According to Jimmy McDonough's Shakey: The Neil Young Biography, David Crosby once said of Young's longtime backing band, "They should've never been allowed to be musicians at all. They should've been shot at birth." But many fans prefer Young's raw recordings with Crazy Horse to his polished creations with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

What do you think of Neil Young and Crazy Horse's "Americana"? Is it a new classic, or a bastardization of an American heirloom?]]> Tue, 1 May 2012 12:21:04 EDT 1467836
Those were just two of the juicier revelations that emerged as the actress and filmmaker, two of Hollywood's most unabashed liberals, chatted with audience members and one another in a 75-minute conversation sponsored by the Tribeca Film Festival.

After an audience member asked the pair if they believed they were "under surveillance," Sarandon said she didn't just believe it, she knew it. "I've had my phone tapped ... I've gotten my file twice under the Freedom of Information Act," she said, before mentioning the security clearance snafu. She said she had no idea why the clearance was denied, and jokingly asked the questioner if he knew the reason. (The Huffington Post has reached out to the White House for comment.)

Moore, responding to a separate question, said he had been the target of a "disinformation campaign," possibly engineered by the federal government. "I was told this by some people in the Bush administration. They went bonkers when 'Fahrenheit' came out and thought it would throw the election to Kerry," he said, referring to his 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which came out five months before the election that pitted sitting president George W. Bush against Senator John Kerry. "The reason I'm a poster boy on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh is because my films reach a large group of people in the middle, not just on the left."

Moore's scalding remarks about "Waiting for Superman" came in response to still another questioner, who asked whether he planned to "follow in the footsteps" of Guggenheim. "Well, I wouldn't follow in those footsteps, because I hated that film," Moore said. "The point I was left with with 'Waiting for Superman' was that teachers and their unions are the problem, and they are not the problem." (Moore declined to say what subject he would tackle in his next film.)

Moore dismissed the notion -- timidly raised by one audience member -- that he should appear less in his own films, but noted that there is a sign in his editing room that reads, WHEN IN DOUBT, CUT ME OUT. He added that it has become more difficult in recent years for him to persuade subjects to let him interview them. "I wish they wouldn't be afraid of me," he said. "I'm a really nice person. I'm not violent. I'm an Eagle Scout."

Noting that she and Moore are both introverts -- a fact Moore rightly acknowledged is hard to believe -- Sarandon asked the famously pushy filmmaker how he gets up the nerve to barge in on powerful subjects and chase them around for interviews. "I am terrified," Moore said. "I've always been terrified, and I'm trying to hide it as best I can, trying to convince myself that I'm going to get through it alive and that no harm will come to me."

Describing the aftermath of his famous confrontation with actor and NRA president Charlton Heston -- which formed the climax of Moore's 2002 anti-gun film, "Bowling for Columbine" -- the director said he and his team were momentarily trapped inside Heston's property, separated from their vehicle by a 14-foot automatic gate. Reasoning that Heston had called "someone from the NRA" whose goal would be to confiscate their footage, Moore instructed his team to toss the film over the gate to an assistant. "And once they saw that all the film had been heaved over the gates, they opened the gates," Moore recalled, adding that his cameraman felt so sad about the encounter that he cried in the car. "We all loved Charlton Heston," he explained. "We grew up with him."

Several audience members asked questions about the changing distribution landscape -- a hot topic at any film festival in these days of digital transformation. Moore, whose first film, "Roger & Me," was picked up by Warner Bros. after its debut at the New York Film Festival, repeatedly returned to what is clearly a core theme for him: "The only thing you should be worried about is making a great movie," not what technology you will use to distribute it.

"Stay true to the fact that you have chosen cinema. Too many documentaries -- the people making them should be running for office," he said. "If you make something that people want to see as a movie, in theaters, you will find distribution."

At times, the event had the cheerfully combative feel of an old-time labor rally, and toward the end Sarandon asked Moore to give the audience some concrete advice on how to make the world a better place. After hemming and hawing for a moment or two, Moore warmed to the topic: "First of all, be part of Occupy Wall Street," he said, before urging those in attendance to run for office and "get involved with any organization that is working to get money out of politics."

One audience member admitted that she had come to the event not liking Moore. "I was feeling the same way about myself," he replied, in a charming display of self-deprecation. "I've got this gnarly hoodie on. What am I doing here?" The audience member went on to say that she had been working in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that she had avoided "Fahrenheit 9/11" because she "wanted revenge" for the attacks. Only later had she come around to the view that they had been exploited by politicians. Moore said he understood her anger, but noted that "this sense of revenge that took over, it didn't do us well."

"It's been a difficult decade," he added. Which is one thing we can all probably agree on.

Snapshots From This Year's Festival:

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The novelist Martin Amis delivered a heartfelt but unsentimental eulogy, praising his late friend's good looks ("More handsome than a man has a right to be, he liked to say") and voice ("He had none of the poncey affectations that I can't seem to eradicate") but gently mocking his self-mythologizing tendencies. Noting that Hitchens' habit of referring to himself in the third person was in no way a sign of mental illness -- "Hitch was penetratingly sane; he knew who he was" -- Amis nevertheless observed that Hitchens, who hated to go unrecognized, once endured 15 painful minutes of not being stopped by admirers, causing him to conclude that everyone in the vicinity was hopelessly uncultured.

Above all, however, Amis spoke admiringly of how Hitchens, unlike so many journalists, refused to fall into the trap of impartial observation. "He made intellection dramatic," he said.

Most of the afternoon's presenters -- including Hitchens' wife, Carol Blue -- were content to let the late journalist, author, debater and "scallywag" (host Graydon Carter's word, not mine) do the talking. They sampled his vast output of books and articles from the past four decades, summoning a torrent of impossibly eloquent words aimed against his cherished targets (Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, God) and in favor of his revered ideals (skepticism, liberation, civilization).

The playwright Tom Stoppard read a dispatch from Prague, where Hitchens was arrested at a meeting of reformists; the author Salman Rushdie read a virtuoso takedown of religious injunctions against eating pork, adding, "Christopher always appreciated the loss of my porcine virginity"; the actor Sean Penn read from Hitchens' exposé on the biological horrors inflicted on Vietnamese civilians by America's deployment of Agent Orange; the editor Cary Goldstein read Hitch's frank and funny words of advice about drinking (doing it alone is perfectly acceptable, but never mix, never drive, and never combine booze with narcotics); and the actress Olivia Wilde -- whose parents, journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, relied on Hitchens as a babysitter -- read a heartbreaking report from post-earthquake Haiti.

British multi-hyphenate Stephen Fry prefaced his reading with some amusing remarks about his sometimes contentious relationship with Hitchens. After quoting Hitchens' declaration that "the four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics," Fry, who is gay, remarked, "Three out of four isn't bad."

James Fenton read his poem "For Andrew Wood," which begins by asking, "What would the dead want from us," and the scientist Lawrence Krauss spoke proudly of having once identified himself as Hitchens' "personal physicist." And the filmmaker Alex Gibney produced a gripping montage of Hitchens jousting in public and on TV, not omitting the moment when the great verbal swashbuckler resorted to giving Bill Maher's audience the finger and shouting, "Fuck you."

There were more luminaries in the audience, including Steve Kroft, whose 60 Minutes profile of Hitchens turned up in Gibney's montage; SNL player Jason Sudeikis, who is dating Olivia Wilde; former U.S. Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, with whom Hitchens formed an unlikely alliance during the run-up to the Iraq war; and a full contingent of Graydon Carter's fellow Condé Nast editors, including The New Yorker's David Remnick and Vogue's Anna Wintour.

In the end, it was Carter who had the last word. After reading the transcript of a hilariously brutal phone message that Hitchens once left for an unlucky detractor, he sent us all off with a very Hitchens benediction: "As Christopher would say, may you all thrive."]]> Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:24:23 EDT 1441508 The Tribeca Film Festival kicked off its 11th annual edition with the world premiere of Nicholas Stoller's "The Five-Year Engagement" at the Ziegfeld Theatre in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday night. Stars Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Alison Brie, Dakota Johnson and Kevin Hart joined Stoller, producer Judd Apatow and assorted A-listers from Robert De Niro to Julia Louis-Dreyfus for the screening and a wedding-themed post-party at the nearby Museum of Modern Art.

Stoller, who reunited with co-writer and star Segel after directing him in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," began the evening with a joke from "the old country" -- "Marriage is a three-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, suffering" -- and then introduced the actors with whom the audience would be spending "the next six hours."

He was almost half serious, it turned out, as the unconventional romantic comedy unspooled over the better part of two hours. But the home-team audience stayed engaged throughout, laughing along to the ups and often brutally painful downs experienced by Segel and Blunt, who play a loving couple whose wedding gets serially postponed owing to a succession of increasingly unpleasant circumstances.

Afterward, the well-dressed throng walked the two long blocks to MoMA, where the lobby and the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium had been transformed into a faux-wedding, complete with his-and-hers buffet offerings and dessert displays studded with candy-colored petit fours. (The wait staff wore pinks ties, which not only completed the wedding theme, but also recalled the cult television series "Party Down.")

VIPs were ushered into a cordoned-off area on the ground floor and seated at tables reserved for ROSENTHAL (festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal) and DE NIRO (obvious; the Oscar-winner munched salad and chatted with table mate Cuba Gooding Jr.). Others observed making the pseudo-post-nuptial rounds: Michelle Williams (whose relationship with Segel is the talk of the celebrity blogosphere), Elizabeth Banks, Leelee Sobieski, Bill Hader, Judd Apatow and Beau Bridges, who exchanged a hearty bro-hug with De Niro.

"The Five-Year Engagement" hits theaters on April 27, one day before the Tribeca Film Festival closes for the year. Check out Huffington Post's full coverage of the 11th annual fest by clicking here.

PHOTOS: "Five-Year Engagement" Premiere
]]> Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:48:37 EDT 1437312
It's become something of a cliché to say so, now that the German pioneers of electronic music have been inducted into the art-world canon thanks to an eight-date engagement at the Museum of Modern Art that wraps up Tuesday.

But what do we really mean when we say that Kraftwerk predicted our present?

Certainly, today's music owes a debt to the music Kraftwerk -- and Kraftwerk alone -- was making back in the 1970s and early '80s. It's compulsory to mention that hip-hop founding father Afrika Bambaataa sampled Kraftwerk in his early track "Planet Rock," but Kraftwerk's influence can be heard everywhere from Coachella's Sahara tent, where the festival's biggest house and dubstep DJ's perform, to Top 40 radio, where Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry can be heard crooning over synthetic bloops and blips.

(I can remember hearing Fatboy Slim's subtly sampled "Praise You" not long after it came out -- sometime in 1998 -- and thinking, "My God, everything has changed. No one will ever settle for music made without digital trickery again." Of course, I was wrong -- but not entirely. And even though that was 14 years ago, it was also almost a quarter century after Kraftwerk released its groundbreaking album, Autobahn.)

Kraftwerk's Rolf Hütter is too smart to claim credit for inventing electronic music. "We're the antenna catching information, the transmitter giving information, back and forth," he told The New York Times in a recent interview. But Kraftwerk gets credit for being first. At a time when music's biggest names were rocking arenas, igniting disco infernos, hopping the soul train or leaving the lite on, Hütter and his bandmates (he's the only original member left) were trying to sound like computers.

What made them do that?

For one thing, they needed a differentiator -- what used to be called gimmick. No one else was making pop music that sounded like it originated on a mainframe. But it's also true that, for Germans in the 1970s, looking forward was probably a lot more fun than looking back. If the past was defined by political catastrophe, and the present by tension and division, perhaps the future would be better. And if it wasn't going to be better -- was, in fact, going to be even worse -- who better to warn of the dangers than four Germans whose society had been through the fires of hell?

On their song "The Man-Machine," released in 1978, they left open both possibilities, describing the titular being as both "pseudo human being" and "super human being." In an age that encompasses the pettiness of Twitter fights and the promised magic of Google glasses, that sounds about right. In a recent TED speech, the sociologist Amber Case came out and said that "we are all cyborgs now." Hard to argue with that logic when so many of us are incapable of settling an argument -- or driving 5 miles -- without consulting a smart phone.

Even sex has increasingly become an act that happens not between two people but between one person and a computer. "Guys my age watch so much pornography," Lena Dunham, the 25-year-old creator of the new HBO series Girls, recently told The New York Times. And that steady diet of full-color fantasy is having complicated effects on real-life relationships -- ones we probably won't understand until they're just ... the way things are.

Watching Kraftwerk's mesmerizing presentation on Saturday night -- the four men performed, unsmiling, in front of a giant projection of 3D animations -- I had two, intertwined realizations. The first is that Kraftwerk was indeed right (as were, to be fair, plenty of other people): under the influence of technology, the human race is morphing into something new and strange. We're part of the way through now, but my guess is that the journey has just begun.

The second is that I'm not scared by this. In fact, I find it exciting. Sure, there are disturbing implications, most of which have been mapped out by science-fiction writers and professional doomsayers. But if the human brain is, ultimately, a very powerful computer, then we've always had a bit of a man-machine quality to us -- one that set us apart from our fellow grunting beasts on the savannah.

And if the choice is between testing the limits of what we can accomplish using digital technology and sitting around wishing things were like they used to be, I'll take the former any day of the week.

After all, just as Kraftwerk's once-radical style now sounds familiar and comforting, there's little doubt that the changes that throw us off balance right now will someday seem quaint and charming.

Or, to put it another way, today's Brave New World is tomorrow's good old days.

PHOTOS: Kraftwerk At MoMa:

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