With today’s selection, I’m breaking from my usual rule of featuring only album cuts. This is an interesting clip of ‘Shot With His Own Gun’… it appears to have been filmed as a simple music video more than a live performance. I’m not sure where it originally aired.
I’m OK using the non-album cut in this case because the song as it appears on Trust is similarly bare-bones. It’s just Costello on vocals and the fabulous Steve Nieve on piano. I do regret that this version leaves out the nice piano solo in the middle of the album version, but mostly it’s spot on.
In 1979, Costello stirred up controversy and damaged his career with some drunken racist remarks about Ray Charles and James Brown. He made them in a bar during a fight with some other musicians and days later saw them plastered on the news.
And so Battlestar Galactica, one of television’s greatest shows, has come to an end, signing off with a rousing finale that highlighted both how wonderful and how frustrating it could be. The series was as maddeningly imperfect as its characters but at its best it was among the most resonant and meaningful works of art I’ve seen in any medium.
Once in awhile an album or song you’ve owned for awhile winds up surprising you. Maybe you never really gave it a proper listen in the first place or maybe something in you changed in the meantime and you’re somehow hearing it with fresh ears.
Part spy caper, part romantic comedy, Duplicity is one of the smartest and most satisfying movies I’ve seen in a long time. Sure, it’s rather lightweight, but I really can’t find a thing wrong with this film. Writer/director Tony Gilroy, who penned the Bourne trilogy and helmed the acclaimed Michael Clayton, has emerged as one of the brightest new talents in Hollywood today.
