BitterNews for Wednesday, February 17, 2010

• Snooki & Jwoww are not Italian!
• Hendrix Rock Band was confirmed today by the Hendrix Estate
• EMI / Terra Firma are about 20 days away from defaulting on a loan to Citibank. In the meantime, Guy Hands is scrambling to save his ass by begging, suing amd having a fire sale. He’s already tried to split the publishing arm of EMI from the record side, but was stopped. Now he’s looking to sell Abbey Road, where the Beatles and others recorded countless historic albums. Of course these days the name is worth more than the gear as any well equipped mac provides the basic tools to make a top flight digital recording. Good luck to all those at EMI.
• Amongst the lousy product DC Direct showed at Toy Fair is a 1:6 (well, DC Directs version of 1:6) movie Jonah Hex. Bring on Megan Fox.
• Toy Fair was every bit as bad as we expected it to be this year. It feels more like 1989 than 2010. CES is the new Toy fair.
• Diamond is going to release Universal Monsters figures, which shows that license is available to anyone with $15. The product looks largely awful.
• In related news, The Wolfman scared up about $35 million at the box office this weekend, less than the $40K Universal hoped for, but not bad considering it was A MONSTER MOVIE OPENING ON VALENTINES DAY WEEKEND! Good thinking Universal – put a gory monster film up against a couple of high profile rom-coms – that’ll work. Since the fate of future Universal Monster revivals is resting on the performance of this movie, I guess we’ll have to see how it plays out. It doesn’t help that this troubled film had considerable re-shoots and was delayed a few times, which apparently shows in the final product.
• 3A has confirmed the Tank Girl license as mentioned here last week.
• No surprise that January comic sales were lousy – so were the books, especially at DC where the shine is wearing off Blackest Night and DiDio is looking very very vulnerable. Buffy The Vampire Slayer is outselling most DC titles – handily. Since most of DC’s titles in the top 50 are tied to Blackest Night, it will be DEVASTATING to them when the event ends – leaving them largely outside the top 50 except for the odd bat-book, and sales there are down 25% or worse.
• In related news, the first 6 issues of DC’s Brightest Day event were announced as returnable today. What a coincidence!
• Kaare Andrews designs for the new Astonishing X-Men book were revealed today – very forward looking.
• Both Marvel & DC revealed their full May solicitations. I do not have the heart to look at them.
• The release date for the Losers has moved again. Is it done yet?
• Steve Jobs is writing an autobiography.
• So is Steven Adler, the drummer in Guns N Roses, who is also a frequent “guest” on Dr Drew hosted shows. I expect Adler’s book to have more blowjobs in it.
• Aerosmith (with Tyler) are booked to play a number of European shows this summer.
• Sade’s new album debuted at #1 on the top 200, ten years after her last release, which proves two things 1) Old people buy music and 2) One Sade album every ten years is the right number.
• Lady Gaga officially has female genitalia, as displayed at the Brit Awards last night. That said, still no word on if these are aftermarket parts.
• Jeff Beck has a new album coming out on Rhino (!!) in April.
• John Hughes is making the news again after dying last year. First the Oscars will feature a tribute to Hughes – not entirely surprising as the hosts both starred in Hughes films. Second, the new Vanity Fair features a large profile of Hughes, in which Molly Ringwald mentions that Hughes worked up a story around the Cure song “Love Cats”.
• In Cure news, the song Robert Smith sings in Alice & Wonderland is now available to hear online.
• Bryan Adams (yes, him) took some topless pics of Lindsay Lohan for some magazine. Both the photography and the tits are better than I expected.
• Megan Fox is insecure and hates other girls.
• Sasha Grey is making an album. Rinse before you step up to the mic, lady!