American Masters on PBS has produced an amazing film about Loretta Lynn. This woman has had an interesting life and a long-running career. In her 80s now, she is still singing, performing, and writing. Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl explores her Appalachian roots, her marriage, her family, and her career. This is one woman who has had an enormous impact on the world of country music and music in general.

The 1980 film Coal Miners Daughter starred Sissy Spacek as the famous singer/songwriter. The title was taken from Lynn’s popular song about her early life. “I liked Coal Miner’s Daughter, the movie,” Lynn told the media. “I really did. And I thought Sissy did a great job, you know, and I thought Tommy Lee did too.” Lee played Lynn’s husband Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn.

Lynn and her family associate themselves with her hometown of Butcher Holler, and even one of her daughter’s says the family’s roots in the tiny town is engrained in all of them.

The film includes interviews with Lynn, some of her children and granddaughter, as well as others in the business like Willie Nelson, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks, and Reba McEntire. Lynn is called “The Queen of Country Music,” and rightly so. Her songs strike a chord in people. She writes about real people and deep feelings.

She entertained the media with a story about how she wrote one of her hit songs. “Well, you know, when I write a song, it’s usually something that I’m going through that day, or that week, or that month, or somebody that I know that’s going through that problem. Like, when I wrote ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough,’ this little woman come backstage, and she said, ‘Loretta, my husband didn’t bring me to the show tonight.’ She said, ‘He has got a girlfriend, and he brought her.’ And she says, ‘She’s sitting out in that second row with my husband.’ And we kind of pulled the curtain back and looked at him, and I looked around at that lady that came backstage, and I said, ‘Honey, she ain’t woman enough to take your man.’ I went in the dressing room right then and wrote that song before the show ever started.” Talk about the ability to put pen to paper. This woman can do it in a blink of an eye.

Lynn is a hard-working woman with a new album being released the first week of March. “I ain’t never stopped touring. I work all the time. I couldn’t sit down and quit working if I wanted to.”

Lynn admits the worst part of touring was being away from her children. She had 6 children, four of which were born before she was 19 years old.

Most of her songs were written about her husband. “But every time I’d write a song, and it would be about him, and he would look at me and grin, you know. He knew I was writing it about him,” she said with a smile to the media gathered to hear from this iconic woman. He definitely gave her a lot to write about. Their children discuss how volatile their relationship was through the years, but they continued to stay married. After all, because she was away so much, the distance did their marriage good.

In the film Lynn discusses her tragic loss of their son and her husband’s life and the loss of the man who had been her constant admirer.

The documentary is an exceptional in-depth look at the life and career of Loretta Lynn. With insights from the family as well as singing by Lynn, her family, and others in the business, this is a film that is the true story of this woman whose influence on the music industry will last forever.

For those interested in more about Loretta Lynn, after the movie make a reservation to visit Hurricaine Mills, Tennessee. It’s a small town west of Nashville and owned by, you guessed it! – Loretta Lynn.

Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl premiers on American Masters March 4, 2016 on PBS. It’s the quintessential story of the Queen of Country Music.

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment industry for 20 years. She also writes about products and travel. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as Internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

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For many of us we know exactly where we were the first time we heard Carole King’s landmark album Tapestry. That album spoke to us. Carole King was singing just to us. Her voice, the lyrics, and the melodies combined to make an album that has lasted 45 years and is still considered one of the very best in music history. Carole King: Natural Woman is a documentary exploring the life, loves, and mostly the music of this amazing singer/songwriter.

In the 1950s the idea of a singer/songwriter was unique. People either wrote songs or sang them. King began in New York as simply a songwriter, with her husband Gerry Goffin supplying the lyrics. They were a great team, at least when they were writing songs. The history of their writing careers is an interesting and enlightening story.

“One Fine Day” written for the Chiffons, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” written for the Shirelles, “Take Good Care of my Baby” written for Bobby Vee, “The Loco-Motion” written for Little Eva, “I’m into Something Good,” for Herman’s Hermits, “Up on the Roof” for The Drifters, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and more were from the talented songwriting team of King/Goffin. Songs we never knew were penned by this team are part of our lives, not simply the songs sung by King herself. Even “Chains” which was written for someone else was picked up by the Beatles and made it onto one of their albums.

King had an interesting life, which was anchored in her music. She has two daughters and admits in the film that the hardest part of her career was when she had to be on the road.

From the time she was a child, King was a musician and stood out in every way. She knew what she wanted to do and she went ahead and did it. She is an inspiration to women everywhere. When her personal life crumbled, her music never suffered. She is definitely amazing and one of the truly talented songwriters in American history.

Tapestry was an album that was produced 45 years ago this month. The album has become a staple in many households and continues to be a favorite among music lovers. Carole King’s mark on the industry was made well before the release of this album, but Tapestry permanently cemented her in the hearts and souls of listeners.

This documentary will enlighten viewers to the life and amazing career of Carole King while bringing up many nostalgic moments. It’s difficult to believe this one woman wrote so many fabulous and memorable songs, but watching the film viewers will understand the true talent she has.

Carole King: A Natural Woman premiers on American Masters on PBS February 19, 2016.

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment industry for 20 years. She also writes about products and travel. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as Internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

Follow her on Twitter
 

When you think of dinosaurs, you probably don’t think of something this big. In 2013 a shepherd in Argentina discovered a bone and called the authorities. When they explored this find, they discovered the bones of a rather large dinosaur. The excavation and study of this huge animal is the focus of the documentary Raising the Dinosaur Giant on PBS.

Sir David Attenborough narrates this amazing story. Attenborough, the brother of actor Richard Attenborough, is a lover of nature and history. Coincidentally, his brother starred in the film Jurassic Park, which was brought up at a press conference. “It’s just a coincidence that my brother should have taken the part of a paleontologist. He didn’t base it on me, but he based it on some of the paleontologists that I know,” explained Attenborough with a trace of whimsy.

This is a fascinating documentary for anyone interested in the history of this planet and dinosaurs in particular. The find in South America is the largest dinosaur ever discovered. It’s part of the plant-eating family known as “titanosaurs” and the excavation of this area where the first bone was discovered by chance yielded some incredible findings.

Dr. Diego Pol, Chief Paleontologist at MEF Museum in Patagonia, Argentina, explained, “These findings are very special because it is the first time we have a fairly complete skeleton of a giant dinosaur. So we have found over 200 bones of this animal. It’s a brand new species, and this represents about 70 percent of the skeleton, and that is pretty much what you need to really understand these animals as living organisms.”

What this film shows viewers is not only the excavation of the bones, but also how the dinosaur compares with animals living today. The thighbone is eight feet long. When they put the rest of the 70 percent of this animal together, they discovered the weight of the dinosaur was about 70 metric tons which is equal to 15 African elephants. This particular find produced the largest animal on the planet to date.

To put the skeleton together they used 3-D scanning to create replicas of the actual bones. That, along with CGI and animation, gives viewers a pretty good idea of this huge dinosaur that lived over a hundred million years ago. In fact, these particular bones were dated to 101.6 million years ago!

The excitement about this discovery is apparent with those involved in the excavation and this film. “The first time we went to the site when a rancher indicated to us that he had found some bones, we started to uncover a really, really large bone,” Dr. Pol told the media. “It was a femur, the thigh bone. So it was after three days working there we realized that this was probably the largest dinosaur bone ever found. That was a very special moment.” Attenborough was also excited about this discovery, which is evident in the film. He was enthusiastic as he told the media, “It is thrilling, and to be there when it’s being discovered is a great thrill… So I had a ball. I just enjoyed myself every second of it while I was there.”

As viewers see in this film, to understand how this dinosaur moved and lived is not simple. They studied how elephants today carry such large weight on their bodies. This is one of many interesting ways the scientists learned about the life and anatomy of this large titanosaur.

What is also amazing about this film is how complete the discovery was. They found a large area covered with dinosaur eggshells and even an egg with an embryo inside. That was able to tell the scientists what a titanosaur skin looked like which they used to create a complete and most accurate animation of the dinosaur.

“Dinosaurs lived in every continent and especially titanosaurs, the family to which the new species belongs, was in all continents, including Antarctica, so Africa, South America, North America, Asia. They were really conquering the entire planet for millions and millions of years,” explained Pol. The discovery off this new species is one more piece of the puzzle of the history of the planet.

This documentary provides the most accurate look at the life of the titanosaur on the planet 100 million years ago and how many of today’s animals mimic those huge dinosaurs. Raising the Dinosaur Giant premiers on PBS’ Nature February 17, 2016.

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment industry for 20 years. She also writes about products and travel. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as Internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

Follow her on Twitter

Worth the two decade wait, HBO’s new series Vinyl transports viewers back to 1973 New York City’s music scene starting this Sunday. Light years removed from today’s sanitized image, it was a time when the Big Apple was riddled with crime, the streets were grimy, and the birthing of punk, disco and hip hop threatened to destroy rock ‘n’ roll’s domination on the music charts.

The impetus for Vinyl can be traced back to 1996 when Rolling Stones’ frontman Mick Jagger pitched Academy Award winner director Martin Scorsese the idea of collaborating on a movie about the vintage music industry. It wasn’t a hard sell because music had always been an integral element in Scorsese’s films stretching back to Mean Streets. Five different scripts were written, revised and discarded. In 2007, Terence Winter, who was working with Scorsese as show runner for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, climbed onboard.

Shortly afterwards, the economy collapsed and it became painfully clear that movie studios weren’t interested in making a three hour, 40 year-spanning epic period piece about the music business. No longer second best to feature films, television had by then attained a level of respectability and profitability. So shifting gears, Winter reinvented the story, and wrote the pilot for what would become the arc of Season One of Vinyl.

Sharing with a group of journalists, Winter, who wrote the screenplay for The Wolf of Wall Street, provided some insight on the series’ protagonist Richie Finestra’s mentality. “In terms of what’s on the page, we are starting with an extremely unreliable narrator who starts the piece off by telling you that this is his story clouded by lost brain cells, self aggrandizement and some b——t. So right out of the gate you know you are in the hands of somebody who might not be remembering things exactly as they happened. This gives us creative license going into the piece to push the bounds of reality.”

Heading the cast is handsome, charismatic Bobby Cannavale as record producer Finestra. Fans of Boardwalk Empire will remember his Emmy winning turn as the short fused mobster Gyp Roselli. The beleaguered music executive is desperately trying to sell his label, American Century Music, to the German media conglomerate Polygram. He aptly describes his occupation, “I’m in a business where professional interaction has a personal component.”

A compulsive liar by nature, he’s selfish, sexist, anti-Semitic, and has an unquenchable appetite for sex and drugs. And has little regard for human decency having already ruined the career of blues singer Lester Grimes (Ato Essandoh) without a pang of guilt. He’s even become an accessory to a murder that’s so gory that even a hardened homicide detective would flinch away in disgust.

As the series opens, Finestra is dialing the car phone of his green Mercedes to confess his role in the crime, but fate intervenes as some guy walks on his car while heading to yesteryear’s famed Mercer Arts Center. Rickie follows the guy into the venue and becomes instantly mesmerized by David Johannsen’s New York Dolls playing their classic “Personality Crisis.” It’s raw, pulsating and also hypnotic, judging from the response of the packed, gyrating crowd. In that split second, Finestra envisions both the future of his label and his own personal redemption.

Cannavale seems born to play this role, but a large measure of credit rightfully belongs to his fellow actors, who in many cases have virtually reinvented themselves. For starters, there’s Ray Romano as Zak Yankovich, Richie’s head of promotions, who with just a few fine strokes has totally demolished his Everyone Loves Raymond image. Hang in for Episode Seven if any trace of resistance exists.

There’s no denying that actress Olivia Wilde is beautiful, but too often in the past she’s been delegated to the role of eye candy. As Richie’s wife Devon, a former Andy Warhol Factory girl, Wilde is given a free reign and the prerequisite script to explore unchartered emotional territory. Minus the pompadour and leather jacket, Andrew Dice Clay checks in as Frank “Buck” Rogers, a disc jockey, played with signature bravado, while supplying some comic relief is Max Casella as Julia “Julie” Silver, the label’s head of A&R.

That sneering young rocker named Kip Stevens, the lead singer of Nasty Bits, might understandably look familiar. In real life, he’s Jagger’s son James. Determined to ride on the coat tails of Stevens’ emerging notoriety is Juno Temp as Jamie Vine, an A& R assistant, who still lives with her conservative aunt. Reinforcing the time period are cameos by celebrity look-alikes Zebedee Row as Robert Plant, Dustin Ingram as Alice Cooper, along with Matt Bogart as Robert Goulet.

Ironically, HBO doesn’t have a monopoly on the 1970’s. Netflix will be debuting The Get Down from creators Baz Luhrmann, while Showtime moves the action to Los Angeles’ comedy scene with I’m Dying Up Here. Vinyl premiers Sunday, February 14, 2016 on HBO with a season run of 10 episodes.

About the Author
Winnie Bonelli is a former entertainment editor for a daily metropolitan New York City area newspaper. She is passionate about movies and television and loves to take readers behind the scenes.