Month: November 2015

 

“He trod on sacred ground he cried aloud into the crowd”

 

imablackstar.com

 

 

#Blackstar  #imablackstar

 

“If we can sparkle he may land tonight”

 

Good luck to all involved with the production of Lazarus.

Preview performances begin this evening at the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) and the play will commence the run proper from December 7th through to January 17th.

A limited number of last-minute tickets for select performances will be released by the theatre. Check for availability by following NYTW on Twitter @NYTW79 and by keeping an eye on the NYTW website.

 

#Lazarus  #LazarusNYTW  #TJNewton  #TMWFTE

 

“We are the best jazz you’ve ever heard”

 

The 10″ Parlophone pressing of David Bowie’s Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) was released in the UK a year ago today. (The record was issued eleven days later by Columbia in the US as part of RSD’s Black Friday on November 28th 2014.) Bowie was backed by The Maria Schneider Orchestra (TMSO) on the recording.

Coincidentally TMSO perform a rare show in London this evening as part of their current European Tour.

Here’s a bit from her tour page…

 

“On this tour we will be playing a variety of music, featuring songs from our latest album “The Thompson Fields” The Maria Schneider Orchestra will be featuring Steve Wilson, Dave Pietro, Rich Perry, Donny McCaslin, Scott Robinson, Greg Gisbert, Augie Haas, Frank Greene, Mike Rodriguez, Keith O’Quinn, Ryan Keberle, Marshall Gilkes, George Flynn, Ron Oswanski, Lage Lund, Frank Kimbrough, Jay Anderson and Johnathan Blake.”

 

Most of those musicians who will be playing tonight, also played on Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime).

Earlier this year Maria gave an interview for Jazz Times, regarding working with David. Titled: David Bowie and Maria Schneider’s Enigmatic Collaboration, the article/interview discusses the creation of the track, from inception to completion. Here’s an excerpt…

 

The two worked closely together, exchanging and trying out new ideas—but freely rejecting them as well. “He was very good at saying, ‘No, I don’t like that. Yes, I love that.’ And that made it really easy, that he didn’t hem and haw around things he didn’t like,” says Schneider. The music came first; the words followed and reshaped the music around them. The opposite was also true, with Bowie’s final lyrics adapted to what he and Schneider had written. Schneider and Bowie then called in the orchestra’s rhythm section to workshop the tune—along with McCaslin and Keberle, whom Bowie had handpicked to solo. After further refinement they went into the studio in July. It took only a few takes, with the band laying down their parts before Bowie added the vocal; Schneider had imagined that he would sing in between the orchestral figures she had arranged, but his delivery instead crossed bar lines and overlapped organically with the ensemble. “It was kind of mind-blowing,” she says. “He automatically heard the unexpected.”

 

Read the full online version over at JazzTimes.

 

#BowieSue  #TMSO  #MariaSchneider

 

“And the shame, was on the other side”

 

The new issue of Classic Rock magazine (#217) has a double-page article on the creation and recording of “Heroes”, in their regular The Stories Behind The Songs feature.

The piece is peppered with archive Bowie interview segments and here he recalls the day he performed “Heroes” live at the Platz der Republik Festival on June 6th, 1987, in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, right across from the studio where the song was conceived.

 

“I will never forget that. It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They backed up the stage to the wall itself so that it was acting as a backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realise in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concept, where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. And I guess I never will again.”

 

Read the full thing in the current issue of Classic Rock.

 

#BowieHeroes  #ClassicRockMagazine

 

“In the Villa of Ormen”

 

DAVID BOWIE ★ (Single) SHORT FILM BROADCAST PREMIERE 19th NOVEMBER 8.50pm ON SKY ATLANTIC

 

★ (pronounced Blackstar) video trailer live now: http://smarturl.it/BlackstarVidTease

 

★ the new single by David Bowie will receive its broadcast premiere on Sky Atlantic on November 19th at 8.45pm.

 

Taken from the forthcoming new Bowie album of the same name ★ is featured in the opening credits of the Sky/Canal+ drama ‘The Last Panthers’, directed by Johan Renck.

The short film for the track, also directed by Renck, will debut on Sky Atlantic just prior to the second episode of the show airing.

This is the first time that the full ten-minute track will be heard in the UK and Europe.

DAVID BOWIE’s ★ (Album) will be released on RCA 8th January 2016.

 

#Blackstar   #LastPanthers   #imablackstar

 

 

Sky to broadcast world premiere of David Bowie’s brand new music video, ★

 

 

13 November 2015

 

Sky customers across Europe will be the first in the world to see the short film for David Bowie’s brand new single, ★ (pronounced Blackstar).

 

The ten-minute video will be simultaneously released to Sky’s 21 million customers in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria at 8:45pm (GMT) on Thursday 19 November.

 

The track was written for the opening credits of brand new crime drama, The Last Panthers, which launched across Europe on Sky Atlantic last night and the video was directed by the series director, Johan Renck.

 

Zai Bennett, Director of Sky Atlantic, said: “Hosting the world premiere of David Bowie’s short film for ★ on Sky channels is very exciting. It means Sky customers will be the first people in the world to see this video and enjoy the song in full, following a unique collaboration between Sky, David Bowie and Sony Music.” 

 

Sky customers in the UK can watch the video and hear the full track on Sky Atlantic and Sky Arts at 8:45pm (GMT), Thursday 19 November, ahead of the second episode of The Last Panthers.

 

The six part series, a joint pan-European commission from Sky and CANAL+ in France, stars Academy Award nominee and BAFTA winner Samantha Morton alongside double Cesar award winner Tahar Rahim, Croatian star Goran Bogdan and two time Academy Award Nominee, three-time BAFTA winner and Golden Globe winner John Hurt.

 

The series is produced by France’s Haut et Court TV (‘The Returned’) and the UK’s Warp Films (‘This is England’) and directed by the acclaimed Johan Renck (Bloodline, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead as well as videos by Madonna, New Order, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey) and was filmed in Marseille, Belgrade, Montenegro and London. 

 

“On the day of execution”

 

Extended listen of David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ released to celebrate the launch of Sky Atlantic drama, The Last Panthers: http://smarturl.it/DirectorCutTLP

 

10 November 2015

 

To celebrate this week’s launch of major new crime drama The Last Panthers, a further 45 seconds of David Bowie’s brand new song ‘Blackstar’ has been released exclusively by Sky Atlantic.

 

The unveil comes just two days before the series launches simultaneously across Europe on Sky Atlantic at 9pm, 12 November 2015, and is the soundtrack to 90 seconds of never-before-seen footage from The Last Panthers. 

 

‘Blackstar’ is the title track for the series and is a result of collaboration between David Bowie and the director of The Last Panthers, Johan Renck.

 

The six part series, jointly pan-European commission from Sky and CANAL + in France, stars Academy Award nominee and BAFTA winner Samantha Morton alongside double Cesar award winner Tahar Rahim, Croatian star Goran Bogdan and two time Academy Award Nominee, three-time BAFTA winner and Golden Globe winner John Hurt.

 

The series is produced by France’s Haut et Court TV (‘The Returned’) and the UK’s Warp Films (‘This is England’) and directed by the acclaimed Johan Renck (Bloodline, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead as well as videos by Madonna, New Order, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey) and was filmed in Marseille, Belgrade, Montenegro and London.  

 

The Last Panthers is screening on Sky Atlantic in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria from 12 November.

 

#Blackstar  #LastPanthers

 

“It’s not that I don’t trust you”

 

Great piece by Alexis Soloskinov in today’s New York Times, titled: A Visit to the Strange, Secretive World of David Bowie’s ‘Lazarus’.

An appropriate title considering the nature of T J Newton’s character. In fact, you may have noticed that today’s lyric quotation is actually a line of dialogue spoken by him in The Man Who Fell To Earth.

Soloskinov caught up with director Ivo van Hove during rehearsals and he managed to wheedle a few tantalising snippets out of him, such as this:

 

“Lazarus focuses on Newton as he remains on Earth, a man unable to die, his head soaked in cheap gin, and haunted by a past love. We follow Newton through the course of a few days where the arrival of another lost soul might set him free.”

 

The feature also points out that Lazarus has become the fastest-selling show that the Off Broadway New York Theatre Workshop has produced in its 36 years.

Lazarus begins preview performances a week tomorrow on Wednesday, November 18th, and it opens on December 7th.

Read the full New York Times piece here.

 

#Lazarus  #LazarusNYTW  #TJNewton  #TMWFTE

 

“I’m hoping to kick but the Planet Bowie is glowing”

 

The insanely talented Dr Leah Kardos has been in touch with details of a talk she is giving at Homerton College in the UK this coming Wednesday (November 11): http://smarturl.it/PlanetBowieLK

This follows her much-loved presentation at the Stardom and Celebrity of David Bowie symposium at ACMI back in July. Over to you Leah…

 

“My talk will look in some detail at Bowie’s representations and contributions to culture, and how these contributions are entangled with issues related to aesthetics, queerness, politics, authenticity and performance. I’ll also talk about recurring sounds and themes within the catalogue, and together we’ll analyse the imagery and sounds of ‘Blackstar’ for clues as to where he might go to next.”

 

Admission is free, but if you are thinking of attending please RSVP here: lms56@cam.ac.uk

Keep reading for more information and be sure to check out Leah’s superb Bowie covers project, You Can’t Hide Beat, made for/with the Bowienet community in 2011: http://smarturl.it/LeahKardosYCHB

 

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PLANET BOWIE

Multiple creativities in practice

Leah Kardos, Kingston University

 

Weds 11th November

19.30 – 21.00

 

Paston Brown Room

Homerton College

Hills Road

Cambridge

CB2 8PH

 

RSVP to: lms56@cam.ac.uk

All welcome

 

David Bowie’s contribution to culture is undeniable; far-reaching, multifaceted, intersecting many fields, social scenes and artistic disciplines. If one was to take a broad view of this contribution, Planet Bowie can be viewed as the location for rich expressive languages of fashions, personas, stolen ideas, queerness, outsider perspectives, mythologies and a cast of recurring characters and themes, sounds and musical motifs. This presentation will turn attention to the way his career has been narrated across constant creative transformations that flow parallel against a consistent musical voice and through the recasting of his star image and performative self across the media and art platforms that he is found in.

 

Leah Kardos is a musician and pop culture enthusiast active in contemporary classical, experimental, media and commercial music circles. As a writer, her fascinations include the arts of record production, digital creativities and the semiotics of sound in popular music. A signed artist with Bigo & Twigetti, her creative work focuses on the communicative power of timbre, memory and pattern recognition, and the beauty of spaces, having recently worked with performers and ensembles such as Ben Dawson, Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, and Australian chamber orchestra Ruthless Jabiru. Originally from Brisbane, Australia, she currently lectures in music at Kingston University, London.

 

#LeahKardos #PlanetBowie

 

“Watching all the world and war torn”

 

Film director Duncan Jones (whose father is the successful British rock star/actor/etc., David Bowie), has been a very busy man recently.

Today the first trailer for his latest film, WARCRAFT, is released (http://smarturl.it/WARCRAFT1stTrailer), and work is well underway on his next project, MUTE.

Our good friend @Unklerupert has kindly supplied us a brief summary of Duncan’s activities. Over to you Unk…

 

‘Where are we now?…’

 

So sang David Bowie on his surprise return on January 8th 2013, this was also the question asked at the beginning of Duncan Jones’ feature film debut MOON in 2009. A stunning debut that went on to garner much critical success winning multiple awards worldwide including the prestigious BAFTA for Outstanding Debut By A British Director, a promising new British film director had arrived. Duncan stepped up in budget and scale with his follow up ‘Source Code’ starring Jake Gyllenhaal released in 2011, 5 years ago, so some may be once again asking “Where are we now?” with regards to Duncan’s career. Some of you may know Duncan stepped up in budget and scale once again when he was chosen in 2013 to direct the big screen adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s phenomenally successful MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) World of Warcraft.

 

Starring Travis Fimmel, Toby Kebbell, Ben Foster, Paula Patton, Clancy Brown, Daniel Wu, Dominic Cooper, Ben Schnetzer, Ruth Nega & Robert Kazinsky, WARCRAFT was shot over 123 days from January 20th 2014 to 23rd May 2014 and is ‘a spectacular saga of power and sacrifice in which war has many faces’ based in the fantasy realm of Azeroth. Featuring the best in the business on duty for special effects both practical (Weta Workshop) and computer graphics (Industrial Light & Magic), WARCRAFT brings the world of World of Warcraft alive for the first time on the big screen to tell the story of the first encounter between Humans and Orcs setting the stage for a potential Trilogy, something Duncan discussed recently at San Diego Comic-Con 2015:-

 

 “We have a movie we’re very proud of. I don’t think anyone is going to be disappointed after this, and if it goes well I’m pretty convinced that Chris Metzen from Blizzard and I have a very good idea of what story we can tell in three films given the opportunity”

 

WARCRAFT is pretty much complete now ready for release on June 10th 2016, Duncan and the gang have worked hard to ensure it’s a film that will appeal to everyone as well as the massive existing worldwide World of Warcraft fan base, and as he said back in 2010, spookily enough:-

 

 “I really believe World of Warcraft could be the launch of computer games as good films, it’s about creating the world of the game and investing the audience in that world.”

 

To wet your whistle, the very first WARCRAFT trailer has just been released: http://smarturl.it/WARCRAFT1stTrailer

 

It’s around seven months until the release of WARCRAFT, and with it being almost complete, what’s a film director to do while waiting for the release and promotional campaign? Why make another film of course! Duncan also let slip during interviews at San Diego Comic-Con 2015 that he was trying very hard to finally make MUTE, a return to sci-fi and as Duncan himself has described “a love letter to Blade Runner”. MUTE has been bubbling away for many years and was initially planned as the follow up to MOON. Written by Duncan, MUTE is set in the same fictional universe as MOON. Duncan has often compared getting MUTE made to the experience Terry Gilliam has had getting his version of Don Quixote made, fraught with setbacks (would very much recommend Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha documentary for those that have not seen it).

 

Well, Duncan popped over to Berlin last month on a location scouting mission and it was announced on Monday 2nd November that MUTE is indeed the next film on Duncan’s slate. Paul Rudd (ANT-MAN) will be joined by Alexander Skarsgard (TARZAN,TRUE BLOOD) in the title role, for the sci-fi thriller MUTE. But what’s it all about I hear you think…

 

Berlin. Forty years from today. A roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West in a science-fiction Casablanca. Leo Beiler (Skarsgard), a mute bartender has one reason and one reason only for living here, and she’s disappeared. But when Leo’s search takes him deeper into the city’s underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons (led by Rudd) seem to be the only recurring clue, and Leo can’t tell if they can help, or who he should fear most.

 

Duncan is quoted in the press release for MUTE as saying:-

 

“I’ve been working towards making MUTE for 12 years now. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that we’re finally going to shoot this utterly unique film. The fact that I get to make it with Alexander Skarsgard and Paul Rudd makes it all the more exciting! MUTE is a film that will last. It is unlike any other science fiction being made today.”

 

MUTE is due to begin production in March 2016 and as well as getting Paul Rudd and Alexander Skarsgard on board there are a couple of other reasons to get excited as MUTE will also see Duncan reunited with MOON star Sam Rockwell and MOON composer Clint Mansell returning to provide the soundtrack. As Duncan’s long-time producer partner Stuart Fenegan said “…can’t do sci-fi without Sam and Clint!”

 

MUTE is also being developed as a graphic novel with Dark Horse Comic featuring artwork by the incredible Glenn Fabry. (Scroll/swipe images to view a taster)

 

So for everyone that may have been wondering “Where are we now?” with regards Duncan’s film making, 2016 is looking like the year your desire to see new work from Mr Jones hooked up to the silver screen again could be the one for you.

 

Follow Duncan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManMadeMoon

Follow Warcraft Movie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/warcraftmovie and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WarcraftMovie

Take a virtual flight over the skies of Azeroth with Legendary VR: http://www.legendary.com/legendary-vr/

 

For all other news on what Duncan is up to follow ManMadeMovies on Twitter: https://twitter.com/manmademovies and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ManMadeMoviesFB

 

Finally, Collider have posted this handy guide: ‘Warcraft’: 35 Things to Know About Universal’s Massively Ambitious Epic Fantasy: http://smarturl.it/35WARCRAFTfacts

 

#WARCRAFTmovie  #DuncanJones 

 

“We spoke of was and when”

 

Today we celebrate the November 1970 US release of Mike Weller’s ‘cartoon sleeve’ version of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, which you can see in the advert reproduced here.

Following the brouhaha over Bowie’s original intended artwork for the album, TMWSTW wasn’t released in the UK for another six months.

But that’s a whole other story that we’ll be looking at shortly.

Meanwhile go have a listen to this fine Tony Visconti produced recording on the David Bowie (Five Years 1969 – 1973) box set.

 

#FiveYearsBox  #DavidBowie #TMWSTW  #TheManWhoSoldTheWorld