Evans Above

An amazing package landed in the mailbag today. Apple Corps Ltd. has released a newly restored DVD of The Beatles’ 1965 film Help!. Actually, let’s make that lovingly restored, as each frame of this DVD looks great and sounds fantastic.

The first disc of this two disc set features the film with an amazing 5.1 soundtrack, while the second disc is packed with goodies like a 30 minute documentary with director Richard Lester that also features a behind the scenes footage of the Fab Four, several theatrical trailers, and another doc looking at the scene by scene, frame by frame restoration of the film. The set also includes a booklet that contains an essay by Martin Scorsese outlining the importance of the film.

A deluxe version of the DVD set is also available. This package includes a shooting script and additional goodies.

Dancing with the Stars judge Len Goodman created a firestorm on the ABC message boards Monday night when he made the following crack:

“Just because you come from Brazil doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be good at the Samba. In the same way, just because you come from Texas doesn’t mean to say you’re going to be a good President.”

Some viewers were up in arms and demanded that ABC ship the Brit judge back overseas, while other viewers have this thing called a sense of humor. So what do you think of Len’s comments?

Sigh.

New crotch photos of Britney Spears have appeared on the gossip sites and the sad star is not wearing underwear again.

She’s already lost custody of her two boys. Did she lose custody of her panties as well?

The band KISS has always epitomized the “go big or go home” mentality. So when they release a DVD package for their fans you know it’s not going to be some flimsy little package. Their latest release, Kiss: Kissology Volume II 1978-1991, contains 4 discs and 407 minutes of material. You read that right, over 6 and a half hours of material.

Now while the film KISS in Attack of the Phantoms won’t be making the AFI’s best lists anytime soon, the inclusion of the infamous Tom Snyder interview alone is almost worth the price of admission. Add to that some mini-docs and concerts from Australia, Brazil, and the US and you have a package that’s sure to be on the wishlist of any member of the KISS Army.

By now, everyone has seen the video of Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, making her oddly rambling answer about “U.S. Americans” and their ability to read maps. But have you see the video of her parents in the audience?

Tuning into the Sydney portion of Live Earth and can’t wait for the set by Crowded House.

I really like what CTV Globemedia is doing with their coverage here in Toronto. They own several nets and specialty channels so while they’ve got edited “best of” coverage on the main CTV network, they’ll be showing the unedited feeds of the different cities on their other channels. E.g., when they’re changing sets between bands in Sydney, you get a feed of the stage. Meanwhile, I’ve got Tokyo going in the PIP window. It’s the next best thing to being in the master control room.

While some people started a petition to pardon their beloved icon, porn starlet Paris Hilton, others think it’s only appropriate to make sure that she does the time with a Don’t Free Paris Hilton petition. Sign away.

Raunchy, crude and profane. But enough about my weekend.

Dipped into the mailbag last week and pulled out the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner DVD. As a reformed Trekkie — I don’t live with my parents, I have a girlfriend, and I don’t speak Klingon — I thought it would be amusing to see a roast of a man who is routinely the butt of many jokes, especially about his acting style.

Hosted by Jason Alexander, it would be an understatement to say this roast is uncensored. Nobody, not even Golden Girls’s Betty White is safe from being the target or launcher of sexually explicit and crass jokes. We’re even told Bea Arthur, a fave of the Pamela Anderson roast, won’t be attending because she’s having a testicle removed.

Sandra Bullock talks about Shatner getting his prostate massaged, Andy Dick has a bone to pick with him and Leonard Nimoy, and Farrah Fawcett seems like she’s the one lost in space. While comedians like Greg Giraldo, Patton Oswalt, and Jeffrey Ross target Shatner well, it’s Star Trek’s George Takei who takes a lot of phaser hits for coming out of the closet. Takei gives as good as he gets, but that just sounds like the setup to another joke…

The audience cutaways are quite amusing too, as we see the shocked reactions of Trek’s René Auberjonois and Jeri Ryan and TJ Hooker’s Adrian Zmed.

DVD extras include behind-the-scenes footage, red carpet interviews and a “Making of the Roast” featurette. Not for the faint of heart, but amusing nevertheless.

Sanjaya Malakar has made it though another week of American Idol. What the heck is his appeal?

Considering that the media, especially the right-wingers over at FOX News, love to create moral outrage, I’m surprised that they’re not all over the fact that some of the racy photos of American Idol contestant Antonella Barba were taken at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C.

Some of Barba’s photos show her in a wet t-shirt, tugging at her panties (with one or two possibly bottomless) while wading in or reclining on a monument where people go to pay respects to their loved ones and the other men and women who fought in WWII.

The stories I’ve seen on TV seem to focus on how she’s a victim of a friend who made private photos public or how all teens these days have nude photos of each other. Surprisingly, they don’t seem to be going for an easy attention-getting hit of playing the offended party. Couldn’t Wolf Blitzer interview some outraged vets? Couldn’t the FOX News gang…oh wait, Idol airs on their sister network and makes tons of money for Rupert Murdoch. As Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella character would say, “Never mind.”

Funnily enough, the real outrage over the issue is coming from the blogosphere’s writers and commenters. The old media entertainment reporters can trash the gossip blogs but while Mary Hart breathlessly tells us all the sordid details of Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral, Todd over at I Don’t Like You In That Way has this to say about Barba’s photos:

If he’s alive, be sure to show them to your grandpa. I’m sure he’d be happy knowing that the freedom he fought for while holding his guts in with his helmet allows a spoiled whore from New Jersey to desecrate his national monument.