poprock wrote:

She was exec producer, wasn’t she? You would assume she had a legitimate say in distribution …

From the article I read it seems that her pay was based on the box office take, so I understand her position.

House of Gucci is looking pretty great.

Worse than that, she tried to instigate that promised renegotiation and Disney refused to talk.

I thought it was a particularly disgusting touch for Disney to play the Covid card as well.

Yup. I know I know she doesn't need the money etc but it's the principle to me. If they're willing to fuck over someone who is such a major star and has the money to go to court, how badly are they screwing everyone else?

It has always been thus.

https://www.cracked.com/article_30588_animators-once-threatened-walt-disney-with-a-guillotine.html

I saw The Sparks Brothers last night.

As most of you probably know it's Edgar Wright's much anticipated documentary about Sparks.

It's a pretty magnificent love letter to the band. What it isn't is a revealing expose of who the Mael brothers really are. After seeing the film I know almost as little about them as I did going in. Which is probably as it should be, really.

What the film does incredibly well is to make the case for Sparks as both an important part of collective musical history, and as an almost unassailable example of the power of sticking to your art irrespective of what everyone else might say.

Mainly though it's Edgar Wright convincingly going "I Fucking Love Sparks Me And So Should You" for two and a half hours.  Every single one of their 25 albums is discussed, as well as various side projects.  Every now and again Someone Very Famous pops up to tell you that they love Sparks too, but really all Wright needed to do was point the camera and Ron and Russell.

The bits featuring the brothers themselves are easily the highlight. They are clearly humble passionate artists, and very funny to boot. Every time someone popped up to tell us one anecdote or another I found myself hoping we'd cut back to Ron and Russell soon, and to Wright's credit, the film usually did.

There are little hints of tragedy - the realisation that much of the band's power comes from Ron writing songs about his misfit status and putting them in the mouth of his prettier, more popular brother.  (The irony being that Ron is clearly awesome, and doesn't know it.) The period in which the band sat writing songs for literally nobody. But mostly, it's a gleeful thing, and left me wanting to listen to all 25 albums right now.

The film's a little too long perhaps - a victim of that insistence on treating every album with equal (ish) love - but it's certainly effective.

So, yeah, tl;dr - I Fucking Love Sparks Me, and So Should You.

I saw them supporting Blur at Mile End at the first big concert I attended when I was, I dunno, 14? 15? Something like that. I definitely did not get them back then, but I’ll be willing to give the doco a go, my tastes have matured since then, perhaps I’ll be convinced.

Great write-up, Tin. I really enjoyed it and had no knowledge of the band whatsoever. Seeing how influential they are I was a bit confused about how I'd barely heard of them. But then they mentioned that wilderness period of around 8 years or so when they practically disappeared and I realised that period pretty much coincided with me first getting into music and watching Top of the Pops etc. It's a lovely doc.

The Boyle Sex Pistols series looks intriguing.

Currently Lydon is trying to block the Pistols' music being used in it but I suspect he won't get very far.

He doesn't have a leg to stand on from what I've heard.

Lydon is a fucking head case at the best of times tbh.

Sid & Nancy.

Peter Andre.