CMT Blog: Movies

Sandra Bullock. Faith Hill. It doesn't matter who she is, Tim McGraw just wants to be around women who rule. In his new movie, The Blind Side, Bullock plays his wife who takes charge of every situation. McGraw tells Parade.com that he was at home with that. "In our family, my wife Faith Hill is very much in control of our life. She works out everybody's schedule. I wouldn't be able to function without her. So I can totally relate to a wife like that, and I feel that it is a blessing for me because I would be a mess without her giving me that kind of structure." How nice is that? While some men (my own husband, for one) would find a take-charge woman controlling, McGraw says Hill's a blessing. The article is about way more than the way the McGraw/Hill household is run, but to me, that says it all. That, and the fact that he made the list of the hottest celebs in the upcoming Sexiest Man Alive issue of People.

That's what he said. "I couldn't go pop with an ass full of firecrackers," were the exact words Tim McGraw used in an interview on the Dan Patrick Show. They talk incessantly about sports, Peyton Manning, the potential of coaching at LSU and what his "man cave" looks like. (Recliner and 72-inch flat screen and not much else.) But eventually they get around to talking about music. McGraw admits he's a huge '70s rock fan. He said he likes to play the Eagles, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, the Little River Band and Led Zeppelin. Of his daughters, McGraw admits, "They're not fans of my music. They're good girls, but dad's just uncool to them." Oh, yeah, he also talks about how great his new movie, The Blind Side, is.

Sometimes celebrities seem to dart in and out of concerts without really doing much listening. It's like they are more about the appearance than the actual music. But at Friday night's (Nov. 13) Keith Anderson and David Nail concert in Chicago, Vince Vaughn was there for the music. He was there with his mother and his fiancé Kyla Weber. And after being bombarded with fan requests for pictures, autographs and chit chat before the show -- which he doled out graciously -- he finally sat down when the concert started. He even told the remaining fans, as kindly as possible, "No more pictures, please. I'd like to watch the show now." I'm not suggesting Vaughn is a hardcore country music fan. But I do love seeing everyone -- movie stars and common folk -- pay attention when the country comes on.

If you know anything about Dolly Parton, you've heard a Dolly-ism. Like, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap" or when a fan shouts that he loves her, her reply is always, "I thought I told you to stay in the truck." Take for instance yesterday afternoon's (Nov. 9) private screening of a new CD/DVD combo, Live From London, or as she jokes, her "Double D, Double Disc set." As I anxiously waited in a Nashville studio with other reporters, I could see the anticipation rising in each person's face as she walked to the podium. And in her regular fashion, she quickly turned the press conference into an intimate gathering of friends. And you guessed it, with more Dolly-isms. Here are a few favorites from last night's event. Because if you're anything like me, you just can't get enough of her words of wisdom:

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Everyone's already been talking, blogging, writing and podcasting about the fact that Taylor Lautner (Jacob Black from the Twilight movies) was at Taylor Swift's Chicago show on Friday (Oct. 9). But I was actually there, so at first I thought I'd give you my perspective on things. Then I thought, better yet, I'll give you my teenage daughter's perspective on things. So here's a recap of the night from my 14-year-old's point of view, as she was getting ready to meet Taylor Swift.

Maddy: Oh my God. She so tall. She is SO TALL. What's that sign around her neck say? "Voice Rest :( Have a nice day? :)" She can't talk? Oh my God. Oh my God. What should I say to her? She's so pretty. She's being so nice to everyone. Oh my God. We're next. WHAT AM I GOING TO SAY???

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Well, technically, Jennifer Aniston is not going country. She's just acting country. But she is going to actually sing and play a resonator guitar in a new movie. And all I can say is, if she plays as well as she sings, she might just have a career in this. Watch her sing "I've Got a Crush on You" to Ellen DeGeneres. It's all part of her role in a film she's about to start shooting called The Goree Girls. A quick synopsis: It's based on the true story of a group of women in jail in the 1940s. The only way to escape or be pardoned was to be on a radio show called Twenty Minutes Behind Walls. So they teach themselves to sing and play music and form one of the first country girl bands. Aniston tells DeGeneres, "They were like the Dixie Chicks of their time." There's no word on what the girls were originally incarcerated for. But if there's country music and Aniston in a movie about tough girls, I am in. 

Photo credit: Mark Rolston/AFP

First, he got a taste of the TV bug on Celebrity Apprentice. Then he had a part in last year's An American Carol. And now the multi-faceted Trace Adkins is going full-on silver screen. He's joined the cast of this cool new film called Lifted, which is about a talented singer named Henry Matthews who has to find a different road to success when his Marine dad is deployed to Afghanistan. His road is through a faux show, Teen Starquest, where Adkins plays a country star turned singing-competition judge. (Sound familiar?) Ruben Studdard, of American Idol fame, is in the movie, too. It's currently being shot in Birmingham, Ala., even though Adkins is currently on tour pretty much everywhere else. The film is expected in September 2010.

On Wednesday (Aug.19), I went to see Any Day Now, a documentary that followed the 2008 Ten out of Tenn tour, and left feeling a renewed sense of pride for the music scene here in Nashville. The film features Butterfly Boucher, Andy Davis, Katie Herzig, Griffin House, Tyler James, Matthew Perryman Jones, Jeremy Lister, Will Sayles, Erin McCarley, K.S. Rhoads and Trent Dabbs, but every year the tour spotlights different independent Tennessee artists, and is the brainchild of Dabbs and his wife, Kristen. Basically 10 musicians pile on a bus and become something of an indie super-group, touring the country to show off the unknown music coming out of Nashville. Any Day Now was a fascinating look at the show they put together, but more interesting was the stuff that happened after, and in between, their gigs.

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Of all the early '90s movies you could choose to make into a Broadway musical, why would you pick Pure Country? And why would you go ahead with plans to cast it and produce it even though a similarly-themed show packed with country music had its full Broadway run cut short? God only knows. But Joe Nichols and Lorrie Morgan are all set to hit the stage for the Broadway version of the 1992 movie starring George Strait. Nichols and Morgan will play Dusty (who will now be named Rusty, but will always be Dusty to me) and Lula, respectively. This just after the announcement that the production of the Tony-nominated 9 to 5: The Musical will close earlier than planned. One thing Pure Country has going for it, besides Nichols and Morgan, is that Grammy nominee Steve Dorff will compose the music. So that's a good sign. He co-wrote two classically Strait songs that were in the original movie ("Heartland" and "I Cross My Heart").

To most, the word Entourage brings to mind the popular HBO series with the overconfident agent Ari, played by Jeremy Piven. Yesterday (July 13), when Piven's new film, The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard, premiered in Nashville, he and fellow cast members walked the red carpet along with several country music artists. Most of the artists talked to reporters about meeting Piven in person and their devotion to the HBO series -- but what I found the most interesting was what Jimmy Wayne told me about Entourage: "I'm trying to figure out what that even means," said Wayne, pictured with comic actor David Koechner.

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