The Wrap: Celine's Back

OK. So in addition to my review of Celine's perfect new show, I've got some other goodies from Opening Night.

First and most importantly, I just posted to The Strip Podcast feed a 14-minute video report on the opening that includes some priceless footage of Robin Leach (at about the 5:00 mark) and his date giving an impromptu review, a Celine fan singing for me in exchange for a Celine thumb drive and some choice moments from the post-premiere press conference.

Download that by right-clicking here to watch it at your leisure on the device of your choice. Here it is, as well, on YouTube:

The video comes from livestreaming via iPhone from Caesars Palace before and after the show. (Unlike Rosie O'Donnell, I didn't think it appropriate to Tweet a video.)

If you're really interested, you can go to this UStream site and watch all the raw footage, including most of the footage from the press conference. I didn't including it in the video partly because the audio and video quality wasn't great -- Celine looks like a ghost for some reason -- but if you want to browse it, it's all there.

A few stray thoughts beyond my review about the opening evening's events:

* I know some folks will be surprised by my raves for Celine's show. It's just that good. Any of the too-cool-for-school folks who loved the Old Vegas should be able to appreciate how hard she works and how impressive her talent is, even if it's not their musical tastes.

* I have never seen a star not involved in a scandal do as exhaustive and comprehensive a press conference as Celine did last week. She was patient, complete and gracious. I just wish my colleagues wouldn't ask her stupid questions about how Japan's earthquake or violence in Mexico impacted her show prep and, also, that she wouldn't give such verbose and mundane responses. But more importantly, this was when the media ought to get to spray a star with questions, AFTER they've seen her performance. How I wish Garth Brooks had done one of these AFTER his debut at Wynn; I opted out of a one-on-one with him prior to the show's opening because I knew I'd have better questions after. Once we know what they've created, we can ask questions about their creative processes and decisions that they won't answer before it's revealed to the public.

* I was quite disappointed to see the publicists for AEG Live and the Colosseum at Caesars Palace continued to indulge Bill Cody and Chris Rauschnot, aka the Twitter Twerps. I know that since my Las Vegas Weekly column and Chuck Monster's VegasTripping.Com expose the central publicists at Caesars Entertainment have learned not to invite these swindlers and freeloaders to join proper journalists at press conferences. I'm told they were seen late into the evening chowing down on the free food. These guys are not legit, their Twitter follower numbers are artificially inflated and their material is scarcely seen. Also, they bully. It needs to stop. This goes to you, too, Venetian.

* I was also dismayed that when, during the show, ushers informed journalists they could not Tweet, they demanded special permission to do so. I just don't get this and never will. Yes, tweeting is a terrific medium, but it doesn't erase the obligation of someone at a show to obey the rules and not disrupt the experience of other patrons. There is nothing so important about something happening during a show that it needs to be tweeted. Rather, it shows a tremendous amount of self-importance and disrespect. If something newsworthy happens, then by all means whip it out. But it's not news that Celine was in a silver gown singing "Open Arms."

* I now have an extra Celine's Back wristband and thumb drive. Listen to the next proper edition of The Strip, due out next week some time, to find out how they can be yours.

Reviewing "Celine": A+

Yes, this is a bit late. I took some time off for some family stuff and just couldn't get motivated to post this until today. But I'm back now and feeling recharged. So here's the full review I did for The Daily, the iPad-only newspaper. For space reasons, they shrank it considerably. Also, you can see my 14-minute video report on YouTube or via The Strip Podcast, read other thoughts on the opening itself and view my Flickr slideshow from Opening Night. Enjoy.

Celine: A+
By STEVE FRIESS

Queen Celine was at the center of two performances in one as she reclaimed her throne as reigning Strip monarch. There was her new show in Caesars Palace’s gargantuan Colosseum, of course, and that was 90+ minutes of grandiose, eye-popping brilliance. And then there was the circus surrounding her long-awaited re-coronation which was as schmaltzy and over-the-top as you’d expect from Vegas.

You knew that going in, of course, because Caesars Palace had no intention of soft-pedaling the moment. For months, a 40-foot-tall banner of Celine peering over her shoulder overlooked the casino floor with the tag: “Celine’s Back.” Get it? Her back? She’s back? Yup.

Then, in February, she, her husband and her three sons, including those newborn twins, arrived at Caesars in an Escalade direct from the airport for a welcome ceremony in the main entrance through which she bestrode a carpet of rose petals and was cheered by 1,000 employees hoping she alone could revive this gambling town’s sagging fortunes. USA Today, Newsweek and both Las Vegas newspapers have all asked in different ways whether she could “save” Vegas.

That’s a lot to put on anybody’s svelte shoulders, let alone a pop star. But if performing a fantastic production show is all it takes to turn around the nation’s worst home foreclosure and unemployment rates, Celine absolutely would be the panacea. Her first pass at Vegas, that legendary run from 2003 to 2007 of “…A New Day” in the 4,000-seat, $95 million showroom built to her specifications, was an overblown affair of Cirque du Soleil-style theatrics, costumes, dancers and props that left her looking small and marginalized, almost part of the band.

“Celine,” by contrast, is a simpler, less sprawling tour de force in which she is firmly the centerpiece at all times in a succession of glittery gowns that occasionally showed perhaps a bit too much leg. The film that opens the act serves almost as a “And That’s What You Missed On (Vegas) Glee” segment, first showing her closing “…A New Day” on this very stage, then trotting the globe on tour, then snuggling with the twins, then arriving at the aforementioned Caesars welcome event. Finally, she appears in a floor-length silver dress with structured bodice, the 300-foot-wide stage seemingly shrunk by curtains and lighting as she begins belting Journey’s “Open Arms.” Just as the giddy audience got acclimated to being in her presence, the stage opens up in a chillingly effective reveal (that I won’t spoil) and suddenly she’s fronting three backup singers and a 31-piece orchestra. That earned the second of the night’s 10 standing ovations.

There are no dancers this time, just lots of black-tie musicians and one self-assured songbird whose powerful voice is, in all sincerity, a magical instrument that makes younger people understand why their parents were so in awe of Streisand. The graphical imagery serves her, but when the music stops so she can hit high notes in “All By Myself,” it’s like watching Evan Lysecek land a perfect jump. She bops between genres – some Ella Fitzgerald here, a little Janis Ian there, a Bond-song medley, a Stevie Wonder virtual duet, a Michael Jackson tribute and a French song that made her actually weep – leading to the inevitable “My Heart Will Go On” closer. (Aside to Celine: You’re not required to do that song with underwater visuals just because the song is tethered to “Titanic.” Just saying.)

The gee-whiz visuals also enhance the Legend of Celine. She is adored because she blossomed from gawky teen to beautiful icon while insisting she retains the heart of commoner, a happy-ending version of Evita or Diana. So in “Where Does My Heart Beat Now?” a dozen screens show her at various career stages – bad hair, odd makeup, ascendant star – and when she sings Billy Joel’s “Lullaby” we become privy to home movies of her boys’ milestones.

That’s where the schmaltz overflows. The opening-night crowd were die-hards, many from here native Canada, who devour each homespun morsel. In one odd moment, the crowd erupts when young Rene Charles is seen blowing out his birthday candles, as if he actually were doing so in person. That’s devotion.

She tells corny jokes, too, that her partisans devour. Of her 10-year-old, she cracks: “He loves baseball, football, basketball. He’s having a ball!” And even the softest bits of the show – she does “How Do You Keep The Music Playing” as a duet to herself, singing to a creepy, Princess Leia-esque hologram of her herself – yielded standing ovations.

As the show closed, an 11-year-old girl from Boca Raton, Fla., seated ahead of a row of journalists held her hands up together to make the shape of a heart, then kept attempting to frame Celine inside it. Her father turned around, pointed at a notebook and barked to the reviewers: “One word: Divine. Write that down. Deee-Vine!” Then he shouted his daughter’s name and insisted, “She’s next. This is the next Celine, right here.”

Their joy was so pure, it would have been unkind to disabuse him of his vision. But, as Caesars Palace and the Strip just found out, it’s safe to say there’s just one Celine. And, yes, she’s back.

LVW Col: Criss Angel's Show Is Better But Still Not Good

Criss Angel went on a charm offensive with certain media figures recently, inviting them to his home to schmooze in hopes of more kind press treatment. Not only was I not among them, but a couple weeks ago I was specifically uninvited by Cirque du Soleil publicists to attend "Believe" when my collaborator in the big Newsweek piece on Celine was in town to see it. It can't be that they don't trust me as a reviewer because they seem perfectly thrilled when I rave about certain of their other shows. The only conclusion is that they remain very uncertain of "Believe" and its quality even now or perhaps they're terrified of the combustible, mercurial Angel. So I bought a ticket, and here's the column that came of that. Enjoy.

‘Believe’ is a better show,
but that doesn’t mean it’s any good
By STEVE FRIESS

I tried. Really, I did.

I tried to put everything I knew about Criss Angel aside as I sat down in his Luxor theater last weekend. Criss Angel Believe has changed dramatically since last I saw it in early 2010, and Mike Weatherford, in his Review-Journal re-review in November, upgraded Cirque du Soleil’s first headliner vehicle to a B. Gone was the borderline-racist plot that required dreadful acting by Angel and most of the outlandish and distracting Cirque costumes and imagery; this was now a wall-to-wall, straight-up Angel magic show.

So I decided it was time to give it another shot, and that’s when the trying began.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

The M Resort And My 10-Year-Old Nephew

Earlier today, my 10-year-old nephew did some FriendBuzz thing where the site generated a mosaic of his "top friends" on Facebook. If you were included, as I was, you got a notification. Some little girl he knows was quite excited to have been included, see...


My nephew, however, hasn't been taught very much tact yet. So this was his response:


"I don't really talk to you." Ouch. That's perversely funny because it's just so wrong and so unnecessarily honest. I'll talk to him about the tactlessness of this, I promise.

But, again, he's 10. What if the entire (presumably adult) marketing and promotions division of a Vegas resort did essentially the same thing? They would call that the M Resort, and it would be, well, somewhat less amusing.

A listener and reader passed this along. On Wednesday afternoon, he got this:



Exciting, right? A MYSTERY BONUS on March 22 and March 29. Wheee!!! I'm sure it's big riches! Thrilling!

Except, just like Facebook's error including that girl as one of my nephew's besties, M Resort wrote back the next day with this gem:

Dear iMagine Rewards Member,

Due to some technical issues yesterday you might have received an email with the subject line "Redeem Your Mystery Free Play March 22 & March 29!" This email was sent in error and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

We do have some exciting events currently available such as our
Happy Hour 24/7 Guarantee, Basketball Madness Ravello Viewing Parties and of course our Half-Off Dining for iMagine Rewards Members who pay with their points.

We value your patronage and look forward to seeing you soon.

Translation:


Nice way to treat your customers, M!

#CelineReturns, Live! (Hopefully)

I'm going to attempt to broadcast some live scenes from my iPhone tonight via UStream before Celine Dion opens her show at Caesars Palace tonight and then stream her press conference after the show. You can watch whatever I do in the box below and/or check back between 5:30-7:30 pm PT and then again at about 10 p.m. PT if you want. Or follow me on Twitter and I believe UStream will Tweet when I begin broadcasting.

The dicey part is whether my MiFi will work at that fortified cave known as Caesars tonight. I'm sure there'll be WiFi available to reporters at the press event, but it's never clear how well that will work, either. So this could be a great big fail or totally cool. We shall see.

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

The Show is UP: The Caveman & The Chip Monk

Can't give too much of a prologue because I gotta take a pre-Celine nap. So here's the show. Enjoy. As always, you can click on the date below to get it to play or right-click on it to download it to listen at your leisure. Or, of course, subscribe for free in iTunes or Zune. -sf

March 15:The Caveman and the Chip Monk

A Caveman and a Chipmonk walk into a bar. Actually, they’ve never even met, but they have one thing in common: They both were interviewed by Steve last month. The Caveman is comedian and actor Kevin Burke, who has clocked more than 1,500 performances in “Defending The Caveman” first at the Golden Nugget, then the Excalibur and now Harrah’s Las Vegas. And the chip monk is the nickname earned by Arthur Nelson, the organist who has cashed in casino chips for Guardian Angel Cathedral on the Strip for decades.

In Banter: Sahara closing, Celine opening, re-reviewing Criss Angel, geocaching shut down, earth-moving extravagance ramps up, Rumor for rent and Gladys on the cheap.

Links To Stuff Discussed:

Get tickets for Defending The Caveman
See the column and pictorial about the Guardian Angel Cathedral and the Chip Monk
The Strip episode with Richard Marx
Jean Bartel podcast and Strip Sense column
VegasHappensHere.Com on Sahara closure
Dr. Dave Schwartz’s comment on the Sahara closure via David McKee’s blog
Gladys Knight is the Trop’s Celine Dion
A photo of the Alabama lady’s betting slip
Sinatra Dance With Me Extended to April
The R-J TV columnist Christopher Lawrence in the Sister Wives moving to Vegas
Spirit Air helps LA-LV flights plummeting
Rent Rumor for $13,000 the whole thing, 180 rooms
Go move earth for $400 for three hours in Vegas
Adrienne Packer’s column on the geocaching shut down along the Extraterrestrial Highway
A bill pending in the Nevada Legislature as an end-run around the federal restrictions on Web poker and gambling

The Strip is LIVE Tonight!

We are back on again tonight at 8 p.m. PT! You can watch and listen via UStream by going here: http://ustre.am/tGQx

I'm debating who we're using for our interview, so you'll have to find out by tuning in. Plus, all the banter about the Sahara closing, Criss Angel's show and a few other bits and pieces. And to make you all happy, we have a super-awesome Tourist Tip of the Week.

So join us or wait for the podcast version, probably out on Tuesday. That's your call! I'm heading out to Sam Ash at the moment to look at some new equipment. No, really. Woo hoo.