Tag Archives: Elvis Presley

Aug 08 2025
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DVDs, Humor, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

What to watch, and more! Aug. 8 – 14

A hunka-hunka weeklong dose of Elvis, a new ‘Alien’ invasion & supermarket food that knows how to party!

Watch ‘Blue Hawaii’ and other Elvis flicks all this week!

FRIDAY, Aug. 8
Freaky Tales
Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn and Jay Ellis are among the cast of this movie, set in 1987, about a group of colorful characters (an NBA star, a corrupt cop, a female rap duo, teen punks, neo-Nazis and a debt collector) on a collision course in Oakland (HBO Max).

Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Prequel to the hit romantic series (below) stars Hermoine Corfield, Jeremy Irvine, Harriet Slater and Jamie Roy and is set in the Highlands of 18th century Scotland (8 p.m., Starz).

SATURDAY, Aug. 9
Finding Faith
Paula Patton stars as a woman whose life is shattered by an unexpected tragedy that makes her lose faith in God, but then embarks on a journey of rediscovery, hope an purpose (Lifetime).

American Prince: JFK Jr.
Documentary examines the remarkable life and enduring legacy of President John F. Kennedy’s son, John Jr., from his father’s assassination to founding the political magazine George and beyond (9 p.m., CNN).

SUNDAY, Aug. 10
Professor T
Season four of the British crime drama stars Ben Mlller as professor Jasper Tempest, a criminologist working at Cambridge University using his genius intellect to solve crimes, all while suffering from OCD and an overbearing mother (PBS Masterpiece).

MONDAY, Aug. 11
Irish Blood
Alicia Silverstone (who’s come a long way since appearing in Aerosmith’s 1993 video for “Cryin'”) stars in this new crime drama series (above) as a divorce lawyer who discovers the truth about her father…and about the family she never knew even existed (Acorn).

Marvel’s Iron Man and His Awesome Friends
The title kinda says it all. The Marvel Comics superhero gets kid-sized for preschoolers in this new animated series also featuring Captain America, Black Panther and Iron Spider (Disney Jr.)

Elvis Week
Seven days of The King’s movies, including Roustabout, G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii and Fun in Acapulco, starts today. It’s a hunka-hunka Elvis flicks, for sure! (4 p.m., AXS TV).

TUESDAY, Aug. 12
Alien: Earth
New series spinoff from the film franchise, about a ragtag group of soldiers who make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat. Starring Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther and Timothy Olyphant (FX and Hulu).

Chef Grudge Match
Boxing champ Laila Ali jumps into the ring for the new season of this series, a winner-takes-all culinary battle between elite chefs (9 p.m., Food Network).

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 13
Sausage Party: Foodtopia
The bawdy for-adults-only animated comedy series—featuring various supermarket foods as characters—based on the 2016 movie now returns for season two (above), with voices of creator Seth Rogen plus Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera and Ed Norton, among others (Amazon Prime).

Butterfly
Character-driven spy thriller that explores complex family dynamics within the treacherous world of global espionage, starring Daniel Dae Kim and Piper Perabo (Prime Video).

THURSDAY, Aug. 14
It Could Have Been Us
Feature film sheds light on the harsh realities of exclusion while offering glimpses of resilience, hope, and moments of joy as Emma Örtlund and Ida Johansson, from the Catwalk docuseries, explore the historical treatment of individuals with disabilities (Viaplay).

True Crime Story: Smugshot
Season two begins tonight, spotlighting more privileged individuals with a lot to lose who think they can get away with elaborate misdeeds (Sundance TV and Sundance Now).

NOW HEAR THIS

Fleetwood Mac’s first album is 50, and the remixed re-release of the band’s self-titled 1975 debut is now available from Rhino. (Happy anniversary, all!) Rediscover what made the album the pop breakthrough for Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Christie McVie, with songs including “Rhinnon,” “Over My Head,” “Landside” and “Say You Love Me.”

BRING IT HOME

Ben Affleck returns to the action-packed world of The Accountant in The Accountant 2 (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) with more murder, another deadly conspiracy and some serious cloak-and-dagger. With Jon Bernthal and Cynthia Addai-Robinson.

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Nov 02 2023
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Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Love Me Tender

‘Priscilla’ tells a melancholy tale of the little girl who married a king

Priscilla
Starring Cailee Spaeny & Jacob Elordi
Directed by Sofia Coppola
PG-13

In wide theatrical release Friday, Nov. 3

Like the B-side to a smash hit record, Priscilla flips the familiar Elvis Presley story to put the focus on someone other than Elvis. Cailee Spaneny (most recently seen in HBO’s murder mystery Mare of Easttown) is a revelation as the young Army brat who meets Presley when she’s only 14. (“Just a baby,” he tells her, almost admiringly, when she reveals to him her age.) Euphoria hunk Jacob Elordi plays Elvis, early in his ascent to the top of the world as he begins to woo the wide-eyed 9th grader while still a G.I. stationed overseas in Germany, then finishing his military service and skirting her away to Graceland, his Memphis mansion.

As she’s done in other films (like Marie Antionette, Lost in Translation and The Beguiled), director Sofia Coppola explores the experience of another young woman in an off-balance power dynamic. It’s a curious (and yes, admittedly creepy) relationship as Priscilla is swept away by the singing superstar, 24 at the time, only to become increasingly dissatisfied as a virtual captive in his castle. At six-foot-five, Elordi is considerably taller than Presley was, and his Elvis literally towers over the diminutive Spaeny, more than a foot shorter; their scenes together make a striking visual metaphor for the disparity of a grown, worldly adult man with an adolescent plucked from the nest of home, family and familiarity.

Priscilla is an arty, elegant film, a moody, often melancholy exploration of the girl who left her initially skeptical parents and eventually became Presley’s wife in 1967, when she was 22. (It’s based on Priscilla’s own 1985 memoir, Elvis & Me.) We’re transfixed as young Priscilla settles into her new habitat, a garishly ornate, male-dominated kingdom of sycophantic hangers-on, frenzied fans and a pill-popping husband who introduces her to drugs and tries to groom her into his expectations. Elvis is a control freak who chooses her clothes, dictates her makeup and hair style, and forbids her to accompany him on tour or movie sets. “Keep the home fires burning,” he tells her, while Priscilla comes to suspect he’s carrying on affairs with his Hollywood costars—like Swedish bombshell Ann-Margaret and Nancy Sinatra, Frank’s daughter—and possibly other women as well.

Elvis also has a mean, petulant, unpredictable streak; “I’ve got my mother’s temper,” he tells her after impulsively hurling a chair her way, missing her head by inches. And he has, um, intimacy issues in the bedroom.

As Pricilla’s rock and roll fantasy unravels (leading to their divorce in 1973), we come to see that Elvis and ‘Cilla have something in common; they’re both prisoners. He’s shackled to his fame, while she’s his bird kept in a gilded cage, a little girl lost in a dream, staring wistfully out Graceland’s windows to see what’s on the other side. Priscilla is her story, certainly, but it also surely chips away at the fabled mythology of the complicated superstar with whom she spent more than a decade of her young life.

—Neil Pond

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Sep 04 2014
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Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Return to Sender

Elvis-tinged parable of twins is bland exercise in make-believe

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The Identical

Starring Blake Rayne, Ray Liotta & Ashley Judd

Directed by Dustin Marcellino

Rated PG

The movie or its marketing materials don’t say it, so I will: The Identical is the strangest Elvis movie not about Elvis you’ll likely ever see.

It’s about a young man who grows up in the South, unaware that he has a twin brother who’ll grow up to become a hip-shakin’ singing sensation—just like Elvis. The young man shares his twin’s musical talent, his Elvis-y stage moves, his Elvis-y looks, and he even gets hired as an impersonator, becoming famous as the best Elvis-y copycat in the business.

But The Identical only makes one fleeting reference to Elvis. Instead, it pretends its characters exist independently, in a bubble, but parallel to real events and real people, including Elvis. It all makes for a curious, weirdly weightless little exercise in make-believe—especially since the movie make-believes it’s not about Elvis. (The movie doesn’t have any rights to actual Elvis music, or anything else “Elvis”—because those things cost a lot of money.)

Elvis actually had a twin brother who did not survive childbirth. What might have happened, though, had Presley’s twin lived? Perhaps something like this, The Identical suggests.

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Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd

A poor couple in Depression-wracked Alabama gives birth to twin boys, but can’t afford to raise them both. So they give away one to a traveling evangelist (Ray Liotta) and his wife (Ashley Judd), swearing them to lifelong secrecy. Then they stage a mock funeral, burying an empty shoebox behind their ramshackle house, so the neighbors won’t question why the infant is no longer around.

The years pass. Newcomer Blake Rayne (a former Elvis impersonator—for real!), making his acting debut, plays both the preacher’s kid, Ryan Wade, as well as the pop-rock sensation Drexel Hemsley, although Drexel has only a couple of scenes and one mumbled line of dialog. This is the story of the “other” brother, who’s tugged between the rock ’n’ roll DNA somehow in his genes and the wishes of his father to pursue a more righteous path.

The Identical is a modest little movie, made on a shoestring, no-frills budget of $3 million. Sometimes it feels just one rib poke away from a Saturday Night Live skit, or the kind of outright parody John C. Reilly did with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, his faux-Johnny Cash send-up. But it plays it straight—and narrow, constantly hammering its faith-and-values themes of reconciliation, forgiveness and discovering “who [God] made us to be,” and over-amping every emotional tone to eleven.

Seth Green and Joe Pantoliano provide hijinks that feel lifted from old Happy Days reruns. Judd spouts homilies like “Slap the dog and spit on the fire.” And Liotta (also one of the executive producers), best known for playing a mobster in Goodfellas, digs in to his role as a man of the cloth like it was made out of ham and cheese.

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Despite some scenes with howlingly high levels of hoke, some viewers will nonetheless likely find something to love about this bland, edge-less, Elvis-tinged parable, which has nothing to offend, shock or rub even the most sensitive of sensibilities the wrong way—like a lot of Elvis’ music, or his own movies. Come to think of it, Presley may have “left the building” long ago, but his spirit is still around, even in a strange little movie that pretends it’s not.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Aug 04 2014
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Books, Music, Pop Culture

Courting the King

Ginger Alden tells of life as Elvis Presley’s fiancé

Elvis and GingerElvis and Ginger

By Ginger Alden

Hardcover, 400 pages, $26.95, $10.99 Kindle edition (Berkley)

Much has been written about the late, great Elvis Presley, but none of it—until now—by the woman who was his last love, his fiancé at the time of his death, the 20-year-old native Memphis, Tenn., beauty who captured his heart and became a part of his home and his entourage for nine months, up until the fateful day she discovered his unresponsive body in the bathroom. Brimming with details and dish, this fascinating tale of Alden and the King’s courtship and life together, told against a backdrop of the final arc of Presley’s superstardom as it fell apart inside his claustrophobic castle walls, is one Presley fans have been waiting for—and about as “inside” as it gets.

 —Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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May 07 2014
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Books, History, Photography, Pop Culture

West Coast Wavelength

L.A.’s sizzling sounds in pop music’s formative years

Turn Up the Radio Final

Turn Up The Radio: Rock, Pop, and Roll in Los Angeles 1956-1972

By Harvey Kubernik

Hardcover, 336 pages, $45 (Santa Monica Press)

 

Fans of classic rock will flip over this treasure trove of photos, interviews and other insider info about how the sizzling sounds of Southern California spread to the rest of America—and the rest of the world. This lovingly detailed illustrated narrative shines the spotlight on the Doors, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Sonny & Cher, The Monkees, Elvis Presley and other acts that made the L.A. scene such a hotbed for performers of the era, plus the producers, recording engineers, studio musicians, DJs and others pivotal to the popular music’s formative West Coast years.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Feb 26 2014
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Music

Soul Sister

Martina McBride colors outside the country lines

Everlasting_Martina McBride

Everlasting

Martina McBride

CD $15.83 (Kobalt)

The Nashville hit-maker revisits some of her favorite R&B and soul classics of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s for this cover-song project she’s releasing on her own label, an obvious labor of love that shows the her passion for great music outside the genre for which she became famous. As McBride channels the spirit, if not necessarily the style, of Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, the Supremes, Van Morrison, Elvis Presley and other artists of those previous eras, on tunes including “Come See About Me,” “Wild Night,” “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” it’s a testament to the durability of not only these “everlasting” songs, but also to the wide-ranging vocal abilities of a world-class artist who proves she’s capable of much more than country sunshine.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Nov 05 2013
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Books, Music, Pop Culture

Gallery of Greatness

Robbie Robertson salutes musical movers & shakers

Legends Icons & Rebels

Legends, Icons & Rebels

By Robbie Robertson, Jim Guerinot, Jared Levine & Sebastian Robertson

Hardcover, 128 pages ($35, Tundra Books)

Robertson, one of the founders of the seminal music group The Band, collaborated with his adult son, Sebastian, and fellow music-biz veterans (and fathers) Guerinot and Levine, on this collection of tributes honoring 27 singers, songwriters and other performers across the spectrum of popular music “who changed with world” with their talent—and their tenacity. Featuring designs from numerous illustrators and including a CD with handpicked songs from each of the artists (including Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Marley and Carole King), it’s clearly geared for younger readers. But it’s a true multimedia treat for eyes and ears of any age.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Oct 01 2013
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Music, Pop Culture

Last Stand in Memphis

SONY DSCRe-released recordings show Elvis at final creative peak

Elvis At Stax

CD $24.89 (RCA/Legacy)

In a 12-day burst of creative steam, Presley hit the Stax studios in his hometown of Memphis, Tenn., for two sessions in 1973, yielding his final string of Top 40 singles (including “Promised Land,” “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby” and “If You Talk In Your Sleep”) and more than two dozen other tunes that let him stretch his style across the a spectrum of rock, country and gospel. This affordably priced, 40th anniversary 3-CD commemorative set includes them all, and also 27 outtake tracks, plus and a photo-packed booklet with extensive notes about the songs and the sessions.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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