They did work it out: Beatles to iTunes

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War is over. 
After years of legal wrangling, years after the digital invasion, the Beatles are finally coming to iTunes.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that, effective 7 a.m. Tuesday West Coast, 10 a.m. in the East, Apple’s iTunes Store will begin carrying the music of the Beatles, according to people close to the situation — in the process fixing a hole in the world’s dominant music-retailing service and offering iTunes users access to one of the sturdiest musical franchises in recorded history.

“They’re arguably the biggest band ever, and their music is now on sale on what has become the biggest music retailer,” said The Journal’s Ethan Smith. “It was a little weird that they didn’t have it on the iTunes store.”



The Apple-Beatles war has gone on in varying degrees for more than 30 years, predating the iTunes era; the earliest salvos concerned trademark infringement claims that, resolved, led to new squabbles when the iTunes store first launched.

Now, three weeks before the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death, the oldest feud between rock music and technology, all the fussing and fighting, my friend, ends Tuesday morning.

                                                        Read the full Journal report here

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Trailer Hitch: Blood on the tracks …

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Ever get that feeling that it's all out of our control? Two new films opening Friday seem ready to capitalize on that sinking feeling common to everyday life. Unstoppable, the latest from Tony Scott, finds two train workers — a grizzled engineer (Denzel Washington) and a game rookie conductor (Chris Pine) trying to stop a runaway freight train loaded with hazardous chemicals and diesel fuel. It's the second train movie for Scott and Washington; both were aboard for the subway crime thriller The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. For Pine (Captain Kirk in Star Trek), this conveyance moves a little slower than the starship Enterprise. But with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 90%, this one may have legs. Or wheels.

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… and death from above

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Skyline, the new sci-fi feature from the Brothers Strause, finds the city of Los Angeles awakening to a new horror: mysterious blue lights descending all over the city, lights dispatched by an army of extraterrestrials that lure people like moths to a flame. And they've got company: What's first thought to be a local extinction-level event is happening all over the world. Six people work to keep  themselves from seeing the light. Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson and Donald Faison (Turk in Scrubs) star in this alien invasion thriller. Rotten Tomatoes is not optimistic: 20% (one critic called it "A minor step above a Sy-Fy Original sauteed with the theatrics of a "Melrose Place"-type nighttime soap").

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Seattle: Nirvana, in retro

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In three years Nirvana blindsided the worlds of rock music and popular culture. The group and its role in cultivating the grunge scene will be the focus of "Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses," an exhibition that opens at the Experience Music Project in Seattle next April 16th. Already being hailed as the most comprehensive of its kind, the exhibition will include 200 band artifacts and unseen photos of Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl back in the day, before the deluge, while the wave was still building. 

                                            Check the Rolling Stone slideshow

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Conan gets back in the late-night swim

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Mostly minus the (masturbating) bear but definitely plus the beard he’s been sporting for months now on his enforced hiatus, Conan O’Brien returned to the airwaves on Monday. The most celebrated redhead in entertainment since Lucille Ball debuted his long-awaited TBS talk show with guests Seth Rogen, Lea Michele and Jack White (minus the other White Stripe). Perennial Conan foil Andy Richter was in tow, too. The verdict? For Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times, it’s so far so good. 

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The age of the Everygeek

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The United States — incurious, self-absorbed and nervous — is going through one of its phases, a period in which an aggressive anti-intellectual spirit has taken hold. But CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, one of TV’s most popular shows, is a success that runs contrary to the new dumbing down. For Virginia Postrel of The Wall Street Journal, it’s because the show’s uber-nerds are “a new kind of Everyman — representatives of a culture in which nobody's normal.”

                                                                     More in Television >>>

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Brooklyn: An interview with Chappo

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If you’ve seen the iPod ads on TV this just-ended summer or had the radio on a respectably forward-leaning station, you’ve heard it: the sweet, spacey, strangely irresistible “Come Home,” The song, from the Brooklyn group Chappo, is part of the band’s equally infectious Plastique Universe EP, which has been building buzz and airplay since its release in April. The group — Alex Chappo and Chris Olson — has been eight ways busy since then. Just getting back up to speed after a triumphal stand at the CMJ Music Marathon, Chappo sat for an interview (thanks to the mercies of e-mail).

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Seattle: The movie theater that might

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In the six years since it opened, Seattle’s Columbia City Cinema, has endeared itself to moviegoers weary of trekking downtown. The cinema has been hit by serious economic headwinds, a result of the nagging recession. Now, faced with a need to generate about $50,000 by January 1, the movie house has embarked on a novel plan to raise much-needed capital, offering the public lots of $1 shares in the business. This "crowdfunding" approach has a populist punch that’s worked successfully before. It's a chance to buy an equity stake in a fixture of one of Seattle's emerging neighborhoods. 

                                                                      More in Movies>>>

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MPAA chases the pirates

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Warner Bros. and Disney on Wednesday won a legal victory in their ongoing fight against online piracy when a judge signed a consent judgment against a company that referred ads to sites streaming pirated movies and TV shows. The decision may make other studios bolder about pursuing other anti-piracy initiatives. Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times reports.
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New York: Reviving Miss Daisy

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Tony Award winner James Earl Jones always hoped to tackle Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, despite the popularity of the Oscar-winning film. For Uhry, the story of an elderly Jewish woman (played by Vanessa Redgrave) coming to love and trust a black man in the bigoted South resonates in 2010. 

                                                            More in Stage >>>

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Seattle: Change afoot at Bumbershoot?

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Layoffs at its parent nonprofit and talk of split weekends have aroused concerns over the future of Bumbershoot, a staple of the Pacific Northwest music and arts scene, and a fixture on the U.S. touring calendars of bands from indie to established. As a result of declining attendance (down significantly compared to previous years), changes are being contemplated — some of them central to the groundbreaker ethos of the region’s biggest music and arts festival, a barometer of national trends and talent. Chris Kornelis of Seattle Weekly breaks it down.

                                                                   More in Music >>>

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The recluse in the light

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J.D. Salinger made as much a career of hiding from the public as he made doing the writing that made his being a recluse necessary in the first place. His celebrated novel The Catcher in the Rye, captured the imagination of postwar America; reading the exploits of Holden Caulfield became a signpost, a literary rite of passage for generations. Salinger died in January, steadfast in his withdrawal from public life. On Jan. 25, 2011, Random House drags him into the light with Salinger: A Life, a biography of the author by Salinger scholar Kenneth Slawenski, according to the book-publishing Web site Galleycat. (The book’s already out in the U.K.) And when it rains it pours: Galleycat reported previously on a mammoth (800-page) bio also in the works by director Shane Salerno and author David Shields. 

Slawenski’s Dead Caulfields research Web site recently posted this undated video of Salinger late in life — a brief but tantalizing look at the man of mystery.

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New York: David Mamet grows up

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For years he’s been considered the profane enfant terrible of American theater, but at 62, David Mamet — playwright, screenwriter, director and father of four — finds his enfant sensibilities facing down the shadows and realities of late middle age. A new Broadway production of A Life in the Theatre (which he wrote while in his 20’s) has given him a whole new perspective on his art and his life. The Wall Street Journal checks in.                     
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Prince gets set 2 hit the road

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With his new album 20Ten set for release soon, Prince on Thursday night announced plans for a limited U.S. concert tour starting on “a Purple Day in December in the year 2010.” The “Welcome 2 America” tour — his first big tour since 2004 — will feature a host of players on stages in the New York metro area. His Purpleness speaks below:

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Gordon Gekko’s extreme makeover

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We know the “greed is good” speech by heart. We’ve committed enough of the dialogue from the original film to memory that, with the release of Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, the temptation might be to write off this sequel to Oliver Stone’s barbed paean to the amphetamine 80’s. But surprise: Stone has reinvented and updated Gordon Gekko, the rapacious securities trader played by Michael Douglas. The character we’ve loved to hate for 20+ years is back with what The Daily Beast’s Randall Lane calls “a winningly contemporary makeover” in a film whose verisimilitude owes much to two hedge-fund managers who helped make Gekko II — and Wall Street 2010 — all too greedily real.  
        
                                                                                      More in Movies>>>

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A writer’s crack-up, and part way back

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For acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the triumph of writing some of the more memorable movies and television  series of the last 20 years (and the much-awaited Facebook movie The Social Network, out Oct. 1) is tempered by the pain of his battles with drug use — abuse he fights to keep in the rear-view mirror. “The hardest thing I do every day is not take cocaine. You don't get cured of addiction — you're just in remission." Excerpts from the W interview with Lynn Hirschberg.                                  
                                                                                  More in Movies>>>

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