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jack white collaborates with adele

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I personally love it when really, really talented musicians get together to simply make music.  Not in the fake Chris Brown and Rhianna type of way, where their individual record labels plot their takeover of the pop charts by pairing two superstars.

But in the way where Kanye West, TI, Lil Wayne and Jay Z got together to make “Swagger Like Us” – something that’s meant to blow the minds of hip-hop fans, and not be turned over for a Double-Mint commercial.

Well, Jack White is about as pure of a musician as I’ve seen, and he seems to truly love the music he makes – not making money off of it – but simply producing sound that’s meant to make many, many people feel really good.

Along with The White Stripes, White co-headlines The Raconteurs – a fantastic rock n roll band I’d seriously advise you to listen to.

Outside of his two bands, White also loves to collaborate with other artists.

Many of which, you may not expect.  For example, White joined forces with Alicia Keys to make the theme for the latest James Bond film, and also recently teamed up with Adele to make a song.

“I was well annoyed with him [White] because we’d arranged studio time together but then he had to go and record the James Bond theme tune,” Adele told the Daily Star. “But we ended up doing some stuff in London. He’s a good laugh and I’d like to do more.”

Adele’s history with White is rather extensive – they worked on this song, and she also did her own version of The Racounteurs “Many Shades of Black,” which you can hear on the deluxe version of “19″ in April.  For those of you who haven’t heard The Raconteurs, check out this video…

four christmases makes nearly $50 million

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Four Christmases took in an impressive $46.7 million this weekend, in an amount that can be equated to the Thanksgiving holiday (coupled with black Friday) and the fact that schools were out because of that holiday.

With its’ performance over the weekend, Christmases became the third highest grossing film to open over the Thanksgiving holiday.  Toy Story 2 debuted to $80.1 million, and last year’s Enchanted opened to $49.1 million.

The team of Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn easily defeated competition from Twilight, Bolt, Quantum of Solace and Australia.  Those four films, respectively, took in $39.5 million, $36 million, $28.1 million and $20 million over the five-day gross period.

The most interesting performance from this weekend wasn’t in the top-five. 

Milk, Gus Van Sant’s film starring Sean Penn, pulled in $1.9 million in just 36 theaters.  Milk, at the moment, is one of the favorites for the Best Picture Oscar.

On a personal note, I saw Role Models last night, and it was one of the most enjoyable movie-going experiences I’ve had in a while.  I highly recommend it, unless you have young kids (like one couple had last night), then you might want to protect them from the movie’s foul language and actions.

Did you see any of these films over the weekend?  What did you think about them?

solace kills at box office

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This weekend has seen the biggest movie opening since the summer, with Quantum of Solace‘s expectedly making a ton of money.  But the crazy thing is that it made more than $30 million than Casino Royale, the first Bond film starring blonde-haired Daniel Craig, in this time of economic downturn around the world.

Solace is expected to rake in $70.4 million when the weekend ends, according to insiders’ estimates, which also crushes Die Another Day – the previous highest opening-weekend grossing Bond film. 

A key factor in the film’s success, besides the success of the most recent film and the fact that critics hailed Solace as fantastic, is that it’s the first direct sequel in the film.

This doesn’t force the writers to develop a new story, which caused many of the Brosnan films to struggle.

So, if you have a few extra dollars this weekend and want to get out of the cold, head over to the theater and see Quantum of Solace.  And if you don’t have any money, or no way to get to Coralville to see the film, explore other ways to see it (likely using a method that rhymes with long road).