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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Kevin Costner loves the Tampa Bay Rays
Remember how you endocringed the first time you heard Robert Mitchum sing “I Learn a Merengue, Mama”? Well...get ready.
No worries that Kevin Costner will ever star in a musical remake of Bull Durham or Field of Dreams. Because as a singer, Costner makes for a really great actor.
Costner and his band Modern West have just recorded a song for the Tampa Bay Rays to celebrate their AL East division title.
Called It’s All Up To You, the song sounds like a typical honky-tonk rocker and features lyrics that begin, “You got to swing for the fence. Give a hundred percent. Dust yourself off. Get up and do it again.”
Here’s the Filburt McClinton tune...
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Go Brewers!
Upside of Anger (he is really good in that)
Thirteen Days (watchable)
Tin Cup (watchable)
Wyatt Earp (watchable)
A Perfect World (one of the most underrated movies of the 90s)
Field of Dreams (great)
Bull Durham (classic)
No Way Out (watchable)
Untouchables (very good)
Would have been even more watchable with more Sean Young.
I don't know about 'most', but it is a real gem of a movie.
I think I'd take away Tin Cup and add Open Range.
I'll bet, in years to come, Costner will be recognized more for his good films than his bad ones.
Seconded!
Kris Kristofferson?
And to be perfectly honest, I think he's an underrated actor. Open Range is hands-down one of the best Westerns I've seen (the final gunfight is perhaps my favorite film gunfight ever), and The Upside Of Anger is, as sj said, a fantastic film precisely because of Costner. He carried two of the all-time classic baseball films (Bull Durham, Field Of Dreams) and did a third that I enjoy as a guilty pleasure (For The Love Of The Game). Hell, I even get a goofy kick out of The Postman.
Mick Jagger in Freejack?
Zooey Deschanel's album is pretty good too.
Even with her it was an awful movie maybe even Costneresque.
I'll see your The Postman and raise you Waterworld.
"I've sailed farther than most have dreamed!"
Would have been even more watchable with more Sean Young.
Specifically, more Sean Young with less clothing.
So when does Costner get his @ss kicked for sleeping with Evan Longoria's wife?
Leads the list. End of debate. Flying a helicopter onto JC's estate, "Sunday Morning Coming Down", and "A Star is Born" cannot top anyone.
Billie Piper
Tupac
Frank Sinatra (possibly my most-hated singer of all time, but I liked his acting.)
Jason Schwartzman
Not to mention, William Shatner.
Watchable, but I almost turned it off after 20 minutes because Costner was sofa king bad. Eventually I was able to tune him out and focus on everything else.
Untouchables (very good)
I agreed when I was younger. Last time I saw it it didn't do as much for me. Costner is tolerable.
Wyatt Earp (watchable)
Field of Dreams (great)
Bull Durham (classic)
I don't remember any of these well enough. I'm sure I'd find Field of Dreams really lame now. Bull Durham is good, no classic. Maybe Costner's best performance. I saw Wyatt Earp in the theater and probably never thought about it again.
I haven't watched Dances With Wolves since I saw it in the theater. Is it as bad a Best Movie pick as I think it is?
We need to develop an actor-musician score, akin to BJ's Power/Speed #, to recognize those with the best combination of talents. Anyone who sucks in one of the fields does not score well overall. Those who would do the best are Sinatra and Kristofferson. Ice Cube might be up there but he's now made so many stupid movies I don't watch it's hard to assess where he's at as an actor. I'd almost like to list Andre Benjamin just for the "Hey Ya" video. Unfortunately, Idlewild was a horrible, horrible movie, and I haven't seen 4 Brothers, so I can't quite rank him as an actor yet.
Will Smith was nominated for Oscars? For what? He's competent, he's not good.
2Pac was great in Juice, but unfortunately he never stopped acting the part when the cameras stopped rolling.
Ice-T is just awful (not musically).
I second Ice Cube. Levon Helm. There are a fair number.
Kurt Russell. Chuck Connors. Johnny Beradino.
Will Smith doesn't count. He is a bad bad rapper. Though I suppose Big Willy Style does have a certain charm.
sweet jumping baby jesus on a teeny-tiny pogo stick, The Postman is awesome.
You get Costner doing Shakespeare.
You get Tom Petty AS TOM PETTY, telling Costner's The Postman, "naw, i'm not famous, not famous like you!"
You get scenes where The Postman can gallop past a lonely mailbox and KNOW there's mail to garnered ... like he's got Postal Spidey Sense!
You get an ending where everyone stands around a giant statue of KEVIN COSTNER and then you watch the end credits to the strains of a closing song WRITTEN AND SUNG BY KEVIN COSTNER!!!
1st 6 minutes of Mr. Baseball were stone-cold great ... everything after that ... wasn't.
His 2nd album is a classic.
Not to mention, William Shatner.
Anyone check out Steven Segal's CD, "The Crystal Cave"?
Yeah, me neither...
He and Bob Hoskins appear together in a film entitled Lassiter. Comparing Hoskins and Selleck in that film is like the 1927 Yankees taking on the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.
I saw Wyatt Earp in the theater and probably never thought about it again.
Well, that's a shame. It's self-indulgent, but far more weighty fare than the comic book Tombstone. If you set Dennis Hopper's Doc Holliday against Val Kilmer's, the only thing Kilmer's has going for him is the chance to talk Latin.
I like JFK. While most of it is BS and Oliver Stone is reckless, it's a damn compelling film. Costner's performance is very good, especially considering the heft of his role.
Well said.
Will Oldham is a pretty decent actor.
I liked him in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He was also good in that HBO movie with Alan Rickman. The guy can hold his own on screen.
I don't agree with that, but Burt's possibly the best of that bunch. And you left out James Garner, who may well have been best of all.
I like both the acting and music of Huey Lewis more than they deserve. Paul Simon is perfect in Annie Hall and always good as a Saturday Night Live host, which isn't necessarily to say that he's a good actor.
This seems to be a pretty exhaustive actor-singer album list. Who could forget #159, Keir Dullea's 1968 self-titled work?
Hoskins has been great as both Kruschev and Manuel Noriega, which is 2/3 of the way to some sort of trifecta.
I'd say David Bowie, but I don't like him as a musician. I do think that he's a great actor. I loved The Prestige for a lot of reasons, but how can you not like a movie with David Bowie as Nikolai Tesla? The Man Who Fell to Earth is also very good.
I haven't watched Dances With Wolves since I saw it in the theater. Is it as bad a Best Movie pick as I think it is?
Yes, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that it beat Goodfellas, which is stone cold brilliant. Best mob movie ever.
Kevin Costner has been in a lot of movies I like, but his acting always grates on me. Even in Bull Durham he gets on my nerves. It's his voice, and the way he delivers his lines. He always reminds me of someone who has a great joke to tell, and mangles it.
The Postman is on the short list for the largest gap between a great book and a terrible movie ever.
I haven't read The Postman, but I have trouble imagining a bigger gap than the one that exists between the book and the movie The Bonfire of the Vanities. I at least made it all the way through watching The Postman.
Does Steve Van Zandt count as someone with career as a singer and an actor?
Did anyone mention Lyle Lovett? He was pretty good as a cop in "The Player".
Do Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx and Leaf Phoenix count for their roles in "Beyond the Sea","Ray" and "Walk the Line"? They did their own singing. Or so we're told.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a very good book, but it's not in the class of The Postman. Some of that will be taste. As a stylist, Tom Wolfe is in rarefied air, but for ideas, David Brin is ******* brilliant. Wolfe was better when he was doing non-fiction.
You just made my head go all Scanners. Fred Astaire wasn't a good singer, Fred Astaire was a great singer.
I am more fascinated by the opposite combo. But it's an impossible topic to debate because nobody has read them
That is an ok movie - nothing special though. I think an episode of Dexter kicks its ass to be honest...
"Ali"
"He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper" won the first-ever Grammy for Rap Performance. It was controversial, because Pubic Enemy was the critics' choice. I think it was the same year Metallica lost the first-ever Grammy for Metal Performance to Jethro Tull, of all performers.
Hell yes.
Jason Alexander never sings in anything he's in, but he's a great singer, did some Gershwin work on the stage. (Although now that I think about it, he may be a better performer than singer, I'd have to revsisit.) And there's always Mandy Patinkin.
Technically, no, he wasn't that good of a singer. This was a common criticism of him at his height, so it's not just me making it up. He didn't have a lot of range, he didn't have much depth or weight to his voice. What he had was phrasing, diction, and expressiveness, and an outstanding ability to choose songs that fit his talents (and it didn't hurt that he had people like Cole Porter and George Gershwin writing for him). You might say that he had excellent training and a stage actor's ability to deliver lines, and that overcame a pretty limited physical gift. A different way to put it would be to say that Astaire could do a great job with the right piece of music, while a truly great singer like Perry Como can do a credible job with almost anything you put in front of him.
Another way to put it is that Perry Como had 5 tools and Astaire was a scrapper who played the game the right way.
And I'll second Dwight Yoakem, purely on his performance in Sling Blade.
Also, if you're going to be discussing baseball, acting and singing together, Gene Kelly deserves a mention. (Sinatra, too, but he's already been so.)
I thought the book was better than the movie, but nothing special. The ending was pretty silly.
I second Bonfire for best book/worst movie combo.
I see your Jerry Springer and raise you a "Glitter."
Kenny Rogers was pretty good in "Six Pack," which also stars a young Diane Lane.
Wasn't it Dennis Quaid that played Holliday?
Whomever it was--his performance makes the whole movie. That will always be my mental picture of Holliday.
Best Regards
John
There's probably at least 10 albums which would have been better choices for best rap album. But 1988 was an incredible year. He's the DJ is a great album, even if it's not on the level of It Takes a Nation of Millions....
I think if Fred Astaire was truly a great singer his body of work would be around today and yet it really isn't.
The Natural might qualify for bad to ok book/great movie.
Nope, it was Kilmer in Tombstone. I love that movie, but I hate Kurt Russell and Kim Delaney in their roles. It would have been a great movie with different actors in those 2 roles.
Jared Leto?
Ugh, his band is TERRIBLE.
He's a got a good cameo in "Red Rock West," too. But yeah, he and Thornton *make* Sling Blade.
Dennis Quaid's "Closer to You" on the Big Easy soundtrack is the worst song in the history of civilization. (Well, at least the worst on my iTunes.)
I enjoyed Yoakem in Crank as well, an all-time great bad movie.
Dennis Hopper did play Doc Holliday once though way back in 1980.
So you think Tupac would have a shot, huh?
It's okay. It's not as good as the (first two) movies, but that's an awfully high bar to clear.
"Ali" (as mentioned above) and also apparently he was one of the producers of "The Pursuit of Happyness". I guess that one shouldn't count as an acting nomination. I always find it a little jarring when a movie stars "Oscar-Winner Matt Damon", you know?
Didn't he get a Best Actor nom for Happyness?
Fandango and For the Love of the Game were watchable Costner movies.
Well, except for songs like "New York, New York" and that one about Chicago, which I understand is a toddling town. And "My Way". And a half dozen other standards. Oh, and the entire channel on Sirius Radio devoted to nothing but Frank Sinatra music 24 hours a day.
Am I missing something here?
It wasn't a very good book, standard crime drama.
A very mediocre book that became a much better movie was Jaws. Also, anything by Tom Clancy, who creates great plots, but is an awful writer.
The Devil Wears Prada?
Hmm. So we're talking about "Fred Astaire", not "Frank Sinatra", then? I see. But that would make my response complete gibberish, wouldn't it?
Phooey.
...yes. Yes he did.
Nice post, me!
Others are Gone With the Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons both really lousy books. Also, Die Hard is based on a awful pot-boiler Nothing Lasts Forever.
Pluto Nash?
The Graduate. The French Connection. Bridge over the River Kwai. The African Queen. Raging Bull. Midnight Cowboy.
Some of those books are probably great. But I have no idea. I assume that There Will Be Blood is about a thousands times better than the obscure book it is loosely based on, but I will probably never find out for sure. I assume that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is better than the Chinese novel upon which it is based, but given that it has yet to be translated I am sure I will never find out.
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