The Washington Post (bugmenot: notarealaddy@notarealdomainname.net / bugmenot) profiles pop auteur Adam Schlesinger of Fountains Of Wayne and Ivy, as well as Oscar nominee for the title track of the Tom Hanks film, That Thing You Do. It’s a good long piece that gets into the head of the man who is seemingly content to stay in the shadows. While he defers frontman role in FOW to Chris Collingwood and it’s hard to pay attention to anyone in Ivy besides Dominique Durand – he nonetheless is the songwriting and production engine that powers both acts.

Ivy released their fourth album In The Clear last month and Fountains Of Wayne are releasing a b-sides compilation on June 28. Touring-wise, there’s nothing confirmed but I am hoping to see an Ivy date in Toronto sometime around the second week of June. I will keep you posted, of course.

Achtung Baby! links to some sweet radio session at KEXP. Make with the clicky.

Paste talks to Garth Jennings about the pressures of making Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, opening April 29.

Intersting coincidence yesterday – while I was at the Bloor watching Constantine, The Constantines were playing across the street at Lee’s Palace. How freaky is that? Another intersting (to me) parallel was that last week, I was seeing a completely faithful film adaptation of a comic that should have been unfilmable (Sin City), whereas this week I was seeing a completely unfaithful film adaptation of a comic that should have been perfectly filmable. BUT. While I certainly set myself up to hate it, and even figured I’d regret parting with my hard-earned $4.25 to see it, I was pleasantly surprised.

As I feared/hoped, they gutted the John Constantine mythos so thoroughly that trying to compare it to the comics was pretty much futile and it could be enjoyed for what it was. I still think that a film based on the original stories could be excellent, but that’s moot now. Making Constantine’s primary motivation as seeking entry into Heaven isn’t nearly as interesting as keeping him a self-serving bastard, but I understand it. Los Angeles (which was quite obviously Vancouver) was also a reasonable setting if you were going to move the locale to America. The casting remains odd – Keanu thankfully doesn’t have to do too much in the title role and isn’t offensive, Gavin Rossdale comes off like a weird cross between Jude Law and Steve Carell and Peter Stormare is more mincing than menacing as Satan – but the special effects are quite decent and the film, as a whole, wasn’t awful. It wasn’t even bad. Not great, certainly, but you take what you can get. IMDB has some trivia about the making of the movie. Too bad they cut the character of Ellie out… Succubi are hot.

The Toronto Star (bugmenot: danshack49@yahoo.ca / 123456) has a fun piece about the phenomenon of hipster burnout in the Big Smoke. I would expect the local hipsters to begin condemning the right about now, but they have bigger things to whip them into an indignant frenzy. Today, the natives are buzzing about the sale of Can-indie ground zero, the 20Hz message boards, to new faux-indie, likely-corporate overlords. And this isn’t the good kind of buzz, more like the swarming of killer bees kind of buzz. I am astonished that someone has paid good cash for a basic phpBB message board – do they not realize that the rats will flee the ship at the first sign of corporatization or Hummer banner ad? Do they not realize who their audience is? Someone did NOT do their due diligence on this. It will be fun to see how it plays out.

I got my tax return! I’m buying a pony.

np – Mum / Finally We Are No One

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