Fifty Shades of Mixed Emotions

The sexually charged movie, Fifty Shades of Grey, hit the big screen on Valentines Day weekend. It pulled in $81.7 million at the box office for its opening weekend. forbes.com reports that Fifty Shades trails behind The Passion of the Christ, The Hangover part 2, American Sniper and The Matrix Reloaded for R-rated movie debuts. (See Fifty Shades of Grey’ Whips Record $81.7M Weekend.) 

The numbers shows that people were definitely waiting for the movie to come to their city. Not in the sleepy suburban Township of Montclair, N.J. This is where I chose to see the movie. When my friend Shirley and I entered the theater, there was no line, and the seats weren’t even halfway full for the 4 o’clock show. 

The movie ran for about two hours and five minutes, but it didn’t feel like it. “WHAT! That’s it?” This is what I yelled when the credits started to roll. “What the …?” I didn’t realize that two hours went by so fast. From the moment the movie started and played the first song, “I Put a Spell on You,” the Annie Lennox version from the Grammys, I just knew the movie was going to be good and the soundtrack was going to be even better.

Grammy Recap: It’s About the Music

It’s been a week since the 57th Annual Grammy Awards took center stage in the middle of my living room. The sweet voiced, British male vocalist, Sam Smith, made quite the impression to America’s pop music scene as he walked away with four Grammys. But I am not going to give you a run down of who won what because you can get the full list at www.grammy.com. 

The social media audience certainly had their fun with the Grammys. Most of the comments that scrolled through were folks expressing their thoughts about who should win, how people performed, and others were trying to figure out who the hell is Beck and why he beat out Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and Pharrell Williams for Album of the Year.

My high school years were spent listening to all types of genres of music from the early 1990s, so I was fully aware of who Beck is. However, I didn’t know he came out with his Morning Phase album last year.