Archive for the ‘Madonna’ Category
In this May 22, 2008 photo, singer Madonna arrives for the 2008 amfAR Cinema Against AIDS benefit in Mougins, southern France. Madonna will introduce her documentary “I Am Because We Are” before its screening Saturday night at the Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Mich., founded by her pal Michael Moore. The movie deals with the orphans of Malawi, the African nation where she and husband Guy Ritchie adopted a son. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — She might be known worldwide as the Material Girl, but there’s more than a little of the small-town Michigan girl left in Madonna.
The pop superstar arrived in this northern Michigan resort town Saturday to introduce her documentary, “I Am Because We Are,” a highlight of the Traverse City Film Festival. The event was co-founded by filmmaker, author and fellow Michigan native Michael Moore.
Hundreds of fans cheered from behind barricades as Madonna, wearing a black dress, high heels and sunglasses, stepped out of a black sport utility vehicle that pulled up in front of the State Theatre. She hugged a waiting Moore, who sported an orange baseball cap, and posed for photos with him.
Madonna and Moore shared the stage at the theater before a screening of the movie, which deals with the orphans of Malawi, the African nation where she and husband Guy Ritchie adopted a son.
“It’s great bringing my movie to a place that I feel familiar,” Madonna told the audience. “Not like the Cannes Film Festival, where nobody’s speaking English, or the Tribeca Film Festival, where no one sits down.
“There’s something poetic about coming back to the place where I used to come for holidays — camping trips with my dad and stepmother and my very large family,” said the 49-year-old singer, born to the southeast in Bay City and raised in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills.
Madonna was accompanied by her 11-year-old daughter, Lourdes, and the film’s director, Nathan Rissman. Ritchie was not present.
Moore, who won an Oscar for his 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” said he was humbled to be able to call Madonna a friend.
“She has such an incredible heart and such a generous spirit,” he said. “She does so much out of the glare of the lights to make the world a better place.”
Madonna had praise of her own for Moore, 54, a Flint-area native who has a home near Traverse City.
“There aren’t a lot of role models for us in the world, or people we can look up to,” she said. “People who are not afraid to stick their neck out, people who are not afraid to stand up for things and be unpopular, to go against the grain, think outside the box.
“And we need, and I need, Michael Moore in my life.”
Die Another Day – Madonna
Posted on: August 6, 2008
- In: 15792302 | Clickry | Halle Berry | Madonna | news | pierce brosnan
- Leave a Comment
Die Another Day – Madonna
Posted on: August 6, 2008
- In: Clickry | Die Another Day | Halle Berry | Madonna | news | pierce brosnan
- Leave a Comment
- In: fans | for | Is | It | Madonna | New York Times | The | Wait | Worth
- Leave a Comment
Madonna performs at Roseland on Wednesday in New York City. More Photos >
Halfway through her 32-minute set on Wednesday night at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan, Madonna offered a message of sympathy.
“All you people I saw sleeping in the street last night,” she said, “this song is for you.”
It was “Hung Up,” about the agony of waiting. And as she finished the song, she added, just in case the message wasn’t clear: “Anybody who knows me knows how much I hate to wait.”
New York may be a city of the impatient, but for Madonna’s fans, Wednesday’s show proved that seeing her for free in a 2,200-capacity hall — minuscule by her usual touring standards — was something worth waiting for. And waiting for a very long time.
The line outside Roseland, on West 52nd Street, formed 60 hours before show time. By late Tuesday it had stretched around the block as the faithful stood and sat and slept and caffeinated themselves for the chance to score one of the 750 wrist bands that would guarantee free admission.
Erica Gabriel, a 28-year-old makeup artist, waited through the night on line with friends. Once duly wrist-banded some time after 6 a.m., she returned home to prepare the elaborate, swooping hairstyle and “stewardess-Madonna-tricky-tranny look” that she sported early Wednesday evening — as she waited on line again to receive a second wristband.
“Gays don’t camp out,” said one of Ms. Gabriel’s friends, as the group laughed, “but we’ll camp out for this.”
Even those who joined the queue relatively late proved to be professionals of a sort.
“I’m not fanatical,” said Walter Sharpe, 36, an interior designer from Brooklyn. “But I do collect Madonna magazine covers, and I’ve got maybe 170 of them.”
Review: Madonna’s Hard Candy
Posted on: April 16, 2008
- In: actor | actress | artist | awards | baby | Britney Spears | Hard Candy | Madonna | pictures | Pregnant | premiere | Quotes | Red Carpet | review
- Leave a Comment
4 minutes video
On Madonna’s 11th album, Hard Candy, the queen of pop invites us to imagine her as a confectioner running a musical sweet shop.
But, after sitting through the 12 tracks on offer here, you’ll begin to wish she’d stocked more than two varieties of candy.
Those flavours come from two of America’s most bankable songwriting teams: The Neptunes and Timbaland, who between them have conjured up hits for the likes of Britney Spears, Jay-Z, Missy Elliot and Justin Timberlake.
Timberlake himself crops up on five of the tracks, posing a particularly pertinent question about who is running the show when he asks “Who is the master? Who is the slave?” as the album closes.
This sort of top flight production is an unusual step for Madonna, who has a reputation for seeking out relatively obscure dance producers like Mirwais, Shep Pettibone and Stuart Price to helm her albums.
This time round, however, the queen of reinvention is trying to win back the hearts of the US audience – who were largely unimpressed with her 2005 love letter to disco, Confessions On A Dancefloor.
 |
 The main themes are love, revenge, sex and music – subjects on which Madonna surely has little left to say  |
It all starts off well enough. Opening track Candy Shop is an agenda-setting call to arms, with Madonna promising a “special connection” and “plenty of heat”.
The minimal, skittering drums are punctured by colossal stabs of synth, while Madonna purrs weak sweet shop-related innuendos: “Don’t pretend you’re not hungry, there’s plenty to eat… I got Turkish Delights.”
You get the picture.
Things step up a gear with the Justin Timberlake collaboration 4 Minutes, which features the best use of cowbell in pop since Free’s All Right Now, but sounds so futuristic it could realistically have been beamed in from the end of the world.
‘Pop moments’
Lyrically, the album plays it safe. Madonna may have been inspired to make a documentary about the Aids epidemic in Africa when she adopted two-year-old Malawian orphan David Banda, but you would be hard pressed to find any social commentary in her music.
The main themes are love, revenge, sex and music – subjects on which Madonna surely has very little left to say at this stage in her career.
Hard Candy featurs five collaborations with Justin Timberlake
|
She even repeats herself, echoing Into The Groove when she sings “Don’t you know, can’t you see? When I dance I feel free” on Heartbeat.
Then again, Madonna has always been at her best when extolling the virtues of music as a release, and it is on Hard Candy’s club-orientated tracks that she excels.
She’s Not Me, a Neptunes production, feels like a five-minute musical summary of her career to date.
It kicks off with Chic-esque guitars that are reminiscent of Holiday before morphing into a pulsing club groove that could have been lifted straight from her last album.
Track three, Give It To Me, is already pencilled in as the album’s second single. It is one of the record’s few out-and-out pop moments, featuring a cute, bouncy beat and a sense of humour that has been missing from Madonna’s music since her Dick Tracy days.
“If it’s against the law, arrest me, if you can handle it, undress me,” she chirps as the song builds to a blistering crescendo that will surely be the highlight of any future live set.
Valleywag - valleywag.wordpress.com 
Recent Comments