Pop Culture Safari!

Bat villains!

Stephen Fry to play Sherlock Holmes' smarter brother

The great British comic/actor will play Mycroft Holmes opposite Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock in a sequel to last year's Holmes movie.

Now streaming on Netflix: Isis and more!

I have fond memories and I'm not sure why of Isis and the Captain Marvel live-action series of the 1970s. Pure nostalgia, I suppose. Anyway, I may watch some of these episodes. Can somebody tell me why the Shazam series isn't available on video? Some rights thing I suppose, but why?

Anyway, here are some new offerings I found interesting, now available on your computer or Roku box:

Michael Palin travel specials.
A Bit of Fry and Laurie Season One.
Isis.
A whole ton of National Geographic specials.

Hear Neil Young's new guitar album

Also on NPR. This one's pretty interesting, both to listen to and the story behind it:

As producer Daniel Lanois puts it, there is no band, no overdubs, just "a man on a stool and me doing a nice job on the recording."

...To record the album, Lanois gave Young an electro/acoustic guitar; he'd spent years perfecting the instrument's electronics.

"I wanted to give him something he'd never heard before. He picked up that instrument, which had everything — an acoustic sound, electronica, bass sounds — and he knew when he played it that we had taken the acoustic guitar to a new level. It's hard to come up with a new sound at the back end of 50 years of rock 'n' roll, but I think we did it."

Hear Sean Lennon's new band

His new duo with girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl has a bad name (Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger) but performs some good music. You can hear them in session on NPR here.

New Hembeck!

I haven't mentioned it, but I love these "sketch cards" Fred Hembeck has been doing. Most are in black and white, but check out this in-color cover re-do! You can buy 'em on e-Bay.

New Ray Davies album features questionable duets

Oh man, after a couple pretty darned good solo albums, Ray showed signed of backtracking with his "Kinks Kovers with Khoir" last year. Now there's this: More Kinks Kovers, but this time with duet partners. Some seem cool (Bruce Springsteen, Alex Chilton, Lucinda Williams) but others make me wince (Bon Jovi?! Metallica?! Billy Corgan?!). Yikes. I'll be skipping this one and hope that Ray will hunker down and record some new songs, on his own, next time around.

Here's the whole dodgy track list:

'Better Things (Featuring Bruce Springsteen)'
'Celluloid Heroes (Featuring Jon Bon Jovi & Richie Sambora)'
'Days/This Time Tomorrow (Featuring Mumford & Sons)'
'Long Way From Home (Featuring Lucinda Williams & The 88)'
'You Really Got Me (Featuring Metallica)'
'Lola (Featuring Paloma Faith)'
'Waterloo Sunset (Featuring Jackson Browne)'
'Til The End Of The Day (Featuring Alex Chilton & The 88)'
'Dead End Street (Featuring Amy Macdonald)'
'See My Friends (Featuring Spoon)'
'This Is Where I Belong (Featuring Black Francis)'
'David Watts (Featuring The 88)'
'Tired Of Waiting For You (Featuring Gary Lightbody)'
'All Day And All Of The Night/Destroyer (Featuring Billy Corgan)'