last unicorn
Blue Crack Addict
Great interesting article!
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/sundance/2008-01-21-u2-sundance_N.htm
U2 writes Sundance soundtrack with new film '3D'
By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
PARK CITY, Utah — Bono and The Edge walk across a footbridge over an ice-crusted stream, surrounded by onlookers whose cellphone cameras are raised in a kind of group salute.
The U2 bandmates have just finished a lunch with Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford, and now they're heading away from the actor's ski resort in snowy Provo Canyon for the hour-long trek back to Park City, where the annual movie showcase is in full swing.
It's Saturday, and this evening the band will gather at the town's 1,200-seat high school auditorium for the premiere showing of their new concert film, U2 3D, a state-of-the-art three-dimensional immersion into their 2006 Vertigo tour that opens in select theaters nationally on Wednesday.
The Edge hops into the back seat of the SUV, and Bono takes shotgun. (Their driver, Jordan, says the singer likes to play with the stereo.) Some of the dozen or so fans gather at the passenger side, pressing their hands against the windows, and the singer and guitarist roll them down to wave goodbye.
One man in his mid-20s has watery eyes over his encounter with one-half of the world's biggest rock band and offers blessings, choking for words. Then they are off, leaving the onlookers with only memories. What's it like to have that intense effect on people?
"It's the weight of responsibility," The Edge says in mock graveness. He smiles. "And it's fun, really. It's fun."
Bono leans back. "Which is it, Edge? A weight of responsibility or fun? Come on, now. You can't have it both ways."
The Edge says flatly: "The first was irony on my part."
Bono: "Sorry, I might have missed that. We hate whinging rock stars. Come on, why else do this?"
Throughout the long drive through the northern Utah countryside, the pair banter like the schoolyard friends they are, discussing their past, present and future in the context of a movie they hope will set a new standard for concert films. By the end of the ride, they're playing a demo CD of songs they hope to include on an upcoming album.
The Vertigo tour grossed roughly $377 million from March 2005 to March 2006, a tally surpassed only by the Rolling Stones' Bigger Bang tour, according to Billboard. The band has sold more than 30 million albums domestically in the SoundScan era (since 1991) and won 22 Grammys.
U2's hits have resonated through the culture for decades with Sunday Bloody Sunday, Beautiful Day and One. They joke about it, but there is a power there.
"It's only when it's finished that you start thinking about … how people are going to receive it out there," The Edge says. "We're objective enough to know if we have a song that's going to resonate beyond just the way we're feeling about it at that minute. Objectivity is hard to keep."
It's all about the music
Bono says the movie tries to put the focus only on the music, not the personalities.
"This is what people don't understand. There are such strong attachments to the songs that we have nothing to do with," he says. "I went to see Bruce Springsteen, and he played Promised Land. I was screaming! I was grateful to Bruce, but what was going on was what was in my life when I heard that song first. That's the humbling bit that performers don't want to admit to; they're only a small part of what's really going on."
Sheer rock canyon walls drip with ice as the car maneuvers the icy road. Bono turns and says they try to write songs less about their internal feelings and more about the world outside themselves. "To express yourself, the kind of modus operandi for the iGeneration, can lead to some unpleasant results."
U2 3D, with its three-dimensional camera-roving, aspires to not just put the moviegoer in the best seat in the house, but the 50 best seats.
When he talks about the film, Bono grins and raises his eyebrows behind circular purple-tinted glasses. "It's got some rock 'n' roll. It's got some swagger, and that'll either annoy you, or it won't. But in the end, it's the emotional force of it."
He says his favorite sequence is the song Miss Sarajevo, which includes an opera part originally recorded by the late Luciano Pavarotti. "It takes on a lot of extra resonance, and it's very hard to listen to that." The Edge nods quietly, and Bono goes on: "It's my favorite U2 song, I have to say. Normally, when I hear a U2 song on the radio I cringe. Either, a) I sound like a girl, or the lyric isn't finished. … But there are some songs that I really, really do enjoy. Miss Sarajevo is one of them."
The Edge says, "For me, it was great to see the film for the first time because I've actually never seen U2 live." Bono laughs, and The Edge jokes: "I've been to a lot of U2 concerts, but I've never seen the band! So this is the closest I've ever seen to what the fans experience."
Bono says knowing he was going to be captured by some of the most advanced camera technologies in the world created a few moments of personal anxiety. "I think I was on the summer holidays, and I can, uh … I can put on weight when I'm on my holidays. I like to eat and drink wine."
When the band arrived in Mexico to start the film production on the South American leg of the tour, he says, "I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't looking the best. I don't think I'm the most vain of rock 'n' roll stars you'll meet, but I had a panic attack at the thought of a 3-D, 40-foot arse. But by the time we got to Buenos Aires, I was back on track. But some of the shots I can see, I can't help thinking, 'You fat bastard …' "
The movie also has had an effect on band unity, giving them all a clearer perspective on what the others do. Bono marvels at bassist Adam Clayton's renewed prowess, while The Edge says he wondered if Larry Mullen Jr. felt isolated stuck on the top platform of the massive stage with his drums.
"He's very assertive, Adam is, in this," Bono says. "On this last tour, he really came out of himself. He's kind of the 'wise owl' of the band, and he has become a bit of a hermit. He withdraws to his fine art and quite cerebral life, and on this movie, he's a real proper rock star."
Keeping emotions in check
Bono recalls the performance in Sydney during the early 1990s when Clayton "had a terrible turn" struggling with alcoholism and missed a show, threatening the unity of the band. In those days, Bono says, Clayton "was hanging on to his bass for dear life, and he's frightened about what's happening to him. You cut to where he is now, this person who is filled by the music and strength and joy … and he's with his friends, and he's alive and loving being alive. You can never know what that feels like."
Though fans might not notice such nuance, Bono says the movie captures the inner lives of his friends. "I see Edge's frustration. He was going through some tricky things at the start of this tour in Buenos Aires, and there's proper violence in the guitar playing. That is the right arena for your despair."
The Edge adds, "Some of my best shows and indeed probably the worst shows I ever played in U2 were filmed for this 3-D movie. The final show of the tour, for some very sort of personal reasons to do with family and health, what have you — it was the only time I ever played a U2 show where I didn't want to be there. Thankfully, looking at the film I can't see that."
What surprised him about the footage was "how separate we are onstage. When I'm playing and Bono is singing, we're lost in the music, and our physical proximity to each other is not actually that important. But when you see that happen in a 3-D movie, you see that Larry is at the back, and for a minute I thought, 'Wow, that must be a slightly lonely place,' to be sitting at the drums giving it everything he has as he does every night, but it's like his bandmates are scattered around this huge room."
Another reason they wanted to do the movie was to reach out to fans who can't afford tickets. Bono says they try to keep the price of some seats low, but there are never enough. "I'm hoping that all the people in high school or who are college-age and don't have the cash to go see us can go see us for a low price with this film."
So why Sundance for the premiere? Both men have been to Sundance as moviegoers in the past, and say they simply enjoy it. "There's a great nobility to the Sundance Film Festival," Bono says, describing it as "a nexus of art and commerce, culture and politics."
A wide, frozen lake spreads out next to the salt-whitened Utah freeway, and Bono points out the gauzy sundown, the sun slipping beneath white clouds that blend with snowy mountaintops in the distance.
"Can I interrupt this broadcast?" he says. "There's an amazing moment in Ireland, where we live, when the sea and the sky can have the same color and the line of the horizon disappears. And I look at these mountains, and it's just about to happen here."
He reaches beneath the seat and pulls out a CD case, withdrawing a hand-labeled disc. "I have just the right song for it … if I can find it."
He slips the CD into the player and heavy distortion fills the car. It's a song called No Line on the Horizon, which the band is developing for their next album. "It came out of a new distortion box that my guitar tech got," The Edge says.
"This is a little full on!" Bono shouts. "But it's worth it, just to get a flavor of this. It's only a demo."
The song is rough, weaving between brutal guitar blasts underscoring the mellow title refrain. "These are just first drafts," Bono explains. He slips in another CD, this one U2's version of a lively Irish folk ditty about folk singer Ronnie Drew, one of the founders of The Dubliners.
Bono sings along with his own voice from the speakers, stopping to point out when Sinead O'Connor and Andrea Coor come in to sing the chorus: "Here's to you … Ronnie Drew …"
The bandmates say they conceived it as a way to cheer up the 73-year-old Drew, who is ailing with cancer. They may put it out as a single in the next few months.
Since the recordings are still in the embryonic phase, it's not clear what direction the band will be headed with their next collection of songs, but as the car winds through the traffic of Park City's bustling Main Street, Bono and The Edge provide some clues to their mind-set while talking about what they like in other movies.
"Joy is the hardest thing, always, for any artist, for any writer, for any photographer," Bono says. "It's the hardest thing to capture because it's impossible to contrive, whereas despair — you can have a good go at despair."
"You don't have to try too hard to summon it up," The Edge adds.
"It's a little bit too easy," Bono agrees. "Or melancholy, which we can sometimes suffer with."
The car pulls up at their destination, they bid farewell and step out to where the crowd of fans from the start of their journey is seemingly waiting for them at the end of it. Different faces, of course, but they share the same expression. And it's definitely not despair.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/sundance/2008-01-21-u2-sundance_N.htm
U2 writes Sundance soundtrack with new film '3D'
By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
PARK CITY, Utah — Bono and The Edge walk across a footbridge over an ice-crusted stream, surrounded by onlookers whose cellphone cameras are raised in a kind of group salute.
The U2 bandmates have just finished a lunch with Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford, and now they're heading away from the actor's ski resort in snowy Provo Canyon for the hour-long trek back to Park City, where the annual movie showcase is in full swing.
It's Saturday, and this evening the band will gather at the town's 1,200-seat high school auditorium for the premiere showing of their new concert film, U2 3D, a state-of-the-art three-dimensional immersion into their 2006 Vertigo tour that opens in select theaters nationally on Wednesday.
The Edge hops into the back seat of the SUV, and Bono takes shotgun. (Their driver, Jordan, says the singer likes to play with the stereo.) Some of the dozen or so fans gather at the passenger side, pressing their hands against the windows, and the singer and guitarist roll them down to wave goodbye.
One man in his mid-20s has watery eyes over his encounter with one-half of the world's biggest rock band and offers blessings, choking for words. Then they are off, leaving the onlookers with only memories. What's it like to have that intense effect on people?
"It's the weight of responsibility," The Edge says in mock graveness. He smiles. "And it's fun, really. It's fun."
Bono leans back. "Which is it, Edge? A weight of responsibility or fun? Come on, now. You can't have it both ways."
The Edge says flatly: "The first was irony on my part."
Bono: "Sorry, I might have missed that. We hate whinging rock stars. Come on, why else do this?"
Throughout the long drive through the northern Utah countryside, the pair banter like the schoolyard friends they are, discussing their past, present and future in the context of a movie they hope will set a new standard for concert films. By the end of the ride, they're playing a demo CD of songs they hope to include on an upcoming album.
The Vertigo tour grossed roughly $377 million from March 2005 to March 2006, a tally surpassed only by the Rolling Stones' Bigger Bang tour, according to Billboard. The band has sold more than 30 million albums domestically in the SoundScan era (since 1991) and won 22 Grammys.
U2's hits have resonated through the culture for decades with Sunday Bloody Sunday, Beautiful Day and One. They joke about it, but there is a power there.
"It's only when it's finished that you start thinking about … how people are going to receive it out there," The Edge says. "We're objective enough to know if we have a song that's going to resonate beyond just the way we're feeling about it at that minute. Objectivity is hard to keep."
It's all about the music
Bono says the movie tries to put the focus only on the music, not the personalities.
"This is what people don't understand. There are such strong attachments to the songs that we have nothing to do with," he says. "I went to see Bruce Springsteen, and he played Promised Land. I was screaming! I was grateful to Bruce, but what was going on was what was in my life when I heard that song first. That's the humbling bit that performers don't want to admit to; they're only a small part of what's really going on."
Sheer rock canyon walls drip with ice as the car maneuvers the icy road. Bono turns and says they try to write songs less about their internal feelings and more about the world outside themselves. "To express yourself, the kind of modus operandi for the iGeneration, can lead to some unpleasant results."
U2 3D, with its three-dimensional camera-roving, aspires to not just put the moviegoer in the best seat in the house, but the 50 best seats.
When he talks about the film, Bono grins and raises his eyebrows behind circular purple-tinted glasses. "It's got some rock 'n' roll. It's got some swagger, and that'll either annoy you, or it won't. But in the end, it's the emotional force of it."
He says his favorite sequence is the song Miss Sarajevo, which includes an opera part originally recorded by the late Luciano Pavarotti. "It takes on a lot of extra resonance, and it's very hard to listen to that." The Edge nods quietly, and Bono goes on: "It's my favorite U2 song, I have to say. Normally, when I hear a U2 song on the radio I cringe. Either, a) I sound like a girl, or the lyric isn't finished. … But there are some songs that I really, really do enjoy. Miss Sarajevo is one of them."
The Edge says, "For me, it was great to see the film for the first time because I've actually never seen U2 live." Bono laughs, and The Edge jokes: "I've been to a lot of U2 concerts, but I've never seen the band! So this is the closest I've ever seen to what the fans experience."
Bono says knowing he was going to be captured by some of the most advanced camera technologies in the world created a few moments of personal anxiety. "I think I was on the summer holidays, and I can, uh … I can put on weight when I'm on my holidays. I like to eat and drink wine."
When the band arrived in Mexico to start the film production on the South American leg of the tour, he says, "I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't looking the best. I don't think I'm the most vain of rock 'n' roll stars you'll meet, but I had a panic attack at the thought of a 3-D, 40-foot arse. But by the time we got to Buenos Aires, I was back on track. But some of the shots I can see, I can't help thinking, 'You fat bastard …' "
The movie also has had an effect on band unity, giving them all a clearer perspective on what the others do. Bono marvels at bassist Adam Clayton's renewed prowess, while The Edge says he wondered if Larry Mullen Jr. felt isolated stuck on the top platform of the massive stage with his drums.
"He's very assertive, Adam is, in this," Bono says. "On this last tour, he really came out of himself. He's kind of the 'wise owl' of the band, and he has become a bit of a hermit. He withdraws to his fine art and quite cerebral life, and on this movie, he's a real proper rock star."
Keeping emotions in check
Bono recalls the performance in Sydney during the early 1990s when Clayton "had a terrible turn" struggling with alcoholism and missed a show, threatening the unity of the band. In those days, Bono says, Clayton "was hanging on to his bass for dear life, and he's frightened about what's happening to him. You cut to where he is now, this person who is filled by the music and strength and joy … and he's with his friends, and he's alive and loving being alive. You can never know what that feels like."
Though fans might not notice such nuance, Bono says the movie captures the inner lives of his friends. "I see Edge's frustration. He was going through some tricky things at the start of this tour in Buenos Aires, and there's proper violence in the guitar playing. That is the right arena for your despair."
The Edge adds, "Some of my best shows and indeed probably the worst shows I ever played in U2 were filmed for this 3-D movie. The final show of the tour, for some very sort of personal reasons to do with family and health, what have you — it was the only time I ever played a U2 show where I didn't want to be there. Thankfully, looking at the film I can't see that."
What surprised him about the footage was "how separate we are onstage. When I'm playing and Bono is singing, we're lost in the music, and our physical proximity to each other is not actually that important. But when you see that happen in a 3-D movie, you see that Larry is at the back, and for a minute I thought, 'Wow, that must be a slightly lonely place,' to be sitting at the drums giving it everything he has as he does every night, but it's like his bandmates are scattered around this huge room."
Another reason they wanted to do the movie was to reach out to fans who can't afford tickets. Bono says they try to keep the price of some seats low, but there are never enough. "I'm hoping that all the people in high school or who are college-age and don't have the cash to go see us can go see us for a low price with this film."
So why Sundance for the premiere? Both men have been to Sundance as moviegoers in the past, and say they simply enjoy it. "There's a great nobility to the Sundance Film Festival," Bono says, describing it as "a nexus of art and commerce, culture and politics."
A wide, frozen lake spreads out next to the salt-whitened Utah freeway, and Bono points out the gauzy sundown, the sun slipping beneath white clouds that blend with snowy mountaintops in the distance.
"Can I interrupt this broadcast?" he says. "There's an amazing moment in Ireland, where we live, when the sea and the sky can have the same color and the line of the horizon disappears. And I look at these mountains, and it's just about to happen here."
He reaches beneath the seat and pulls out a CD case, withdrawing a hand-labeled disc. "I have just the right song for it … if I can find it."
He slips the CD into the player and heavy distortion fills the car. It's a song called No Line on the Horizon, which the band is developing for their next album. "It came out of a new distortion box that my guitar tech got," The Edge says.
"This is a little full on!" Bono shouts. "But it's worth it, just to get a flavor of this. It's only a demo."
The song is rough, weaving between brutal guitar blasts underscoring the mellow title refrain. "These are just first drafts," Bono explains. He slips in another CD, this one U2's version of a lively Irish folk ditty about folk singer Ronnie Drew, one of the founders of The Dubliners.
Bono sings along with his own voice from the speakers, stopping to point out when Sinead O'Connor and Andrea Coor come in to sing the chorus: "Here's to you … Ronnie Drew …"
The bandmates say they conceived it as a way to cheer up the 73-year-old Drew, who is ailing with cancer. They may put it out as a single in the next few months.
Since the recordings are still in the embryonic phase, it's not clear what direction the band will be headed with their next collection of songs, but as the car winds through the traffic of Park City's bustling Main Street, Bono and The Edge provide some clues to their mind-set while talking about what they like in other movies.
"Joy is the hardest thing, always, for any artist, for any writer, for any photographer," Bono says. "It's the hardest thing to capture because it's impossible to contrive, whereas despair — you can have a good go at despair."
"You don't have to try too hard to summon it up," The Edge adds.
"It's a little bit too easy," Bono agrees. "Or melancholy, which we can sometimes suffer with."
The car pulls up at their destination, they bid farewell and step out to where the crowd of fans from the start of their journey is seemingly waiting for them at the end of it. Different faces, of course, but they share the same expression. And it's definitely not despair.
}
*waits for possible *etheric brickbats*.....but Nelson Mandela says w're SUPPOSED to give our mastery to the world...... and so particularly has my horoscope ( this is a serious & poetic (and funny/fun at times) astrologer.... Particualrly.....in the past year & now........
consider myself a lower level master on this......
