Word: singers
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Understanding Adam is a tough task for those hobbled by age or taste. The typical Sandler comedy (not this year's amiable The Wedding Singer, in which he plays a borderline grownup, but Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and the new film) is about a nerdy sociopath who learns to channel his rage into an acceptable format: winning a spelling bee, playing golf or tackling football players. "You don't have what they call the social skills," he is told in The Waterboy; that is Sandler's gimmick and, for many, his charm. The plot is a competition for which...
...movies tend to remind us of being in sixth grade again," says Frank Coraci, director of The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy--and, like Sandler-film screenwriter Tim Herlihy, a pal of the star's since they were all at New York University a decade ago. That's exactly right. The films are full of preadolescent aggression, exaggerated for laughs. In Billy Madison, Sandler gets his kicks by leaving a bag of flaming feces at a neighbor's door, saying the F word in a roomful of first-graders, mocking a stuttering boy. As a clumsy hockey player in Happy...
Tony Bennett's greatest gift as a singer has always been his warmth, the sheer joy and geniality that radiate from his pipes. The same goes for this memoir, which skates pleasantly over the surface of his life--just about everyone he ever worked with is "the greatest"--and doesn't even wobble on the choppy patches (the divorces, the cocaine, the time he beat up Don Rickles). One especially wishes the book dug more deeply into Bennett's music--a surprising lack, since co-author Will Friedwald is one of the sharpest jazz writers around. Still, this...
...their potential fans. In "We Care," the lyrics are almost whiney, addressing the audience, "Thanx for calling us sell outs," and "We always thought you liked our band/I'm not talkin' about everybody/I'm sorry to waste a song." Similarly, in "The Kids Don't Like It," the singer complains that "We tried to do something new/It may sound real good/But I don't think we're getting through." The singer directs resentment at the "kids," who in all fairness should be showering him with adoration...
...clean room bodysuit, the band seemed bewildered, even a little subdued. Though winsome Emm Gryer, who opened the concert with a derivative, folky set, seemed entirely in her element with the crowd, the Cardigans were adorably incongruous in their neat, Eurotrash sweaters and sleek leather pants. In fact, as singer Nina Persson revealed during the performance, their native Sweden observes Halloween not as a night of costumed revelry, but as a solemn day of remembrance, putting flowers on the graves of ancestors. If the Cardigans' demeanor tended towards the sober, the music was never less than thrilling. Judging from Nina...