I stumbled upon this YouTube video of Matt Damon on David Letterman’s Late Show from a couple years back and felt it was worthy of a spot on my blog.
Matt Damon is definitely high on my man-crush list. Excellent actor and a seemingly great guy off screen. And he’s got a hell of a good sense of humor.
Mark Knopfler is one of those artists I feel I should like even more than I do. He’s written and performed some truly magical songs (and albums) and I have to believe he has a ton of music I’ve never heard that I’d really love.
Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms is, of course, a masterpiece. And Making Movies is another stellar album, full of Knopfler’s other-worldly guitar work and terrific songwriting. Tunes such as ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and ‘Brothers in Arms’ would make my short list of the greatest songs ever written.
And yet I don’t own any other Dire Straits albums and haven’t even tried to seek one out. I’m not sure why. It could be that their time sort of came and went before I got into them so there wasn’t the reminder that comes with new releases. And with so much new music to explore, it’s easy to forget about back catalogs.
I’ve been in a dry spell lately, movie-wise. Haven’t seen anything in the theater or on DVD since Tropic Thunder a few weeks ago. And as a result, this blog has been dedicated almost entirely to the Song of the Day (with the occasional aside on the presidential race).
To remedy that and show a little love to my true passion — movies — I’m introducing an occasional series on ‘Great Scenes’ in cinema.
Of all the unlikely pairings you can imagine, a few years ago Jack White and Loretta Lynn might have been near the top of the list. But White’s turn in Cold Mountain and some of the tracks on The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan made it pretty clear that he has a real affection for country music.
He teamed up with the coal miner’s daughter on her Grammy-winning album Van Lear Rose, producing all the tracks, playing on many of them and singing co-lead on this one. He also inspired her to pick up a pen and write her own songs, something she’d never done before on a full album, with tremendous results.
Elvis Costello has done a lot of duets in his time. He’s been around so long now, and worked in so many different genres, that there’s really not a thing he hasn’t done in the music business.
His stellar album The Delivery Man, a concept album about a love triangle in the deep south, contains three duets: two with Emmylou Harris (who must appear as a backup/second singer on far more songs than she sings on her own) and this one with Lucinda Williams.
Meet Me In Montauk 