Kanye West is sizing up Middle Eastern regions as potential locations in which to make a short film, The New York Observer reports. West has apparently sent representatives out to the Persian Gulf area to scout various sites and to liaise with local officials and production crews, with a view to begin filming in March.

It’s thought the short will take a similar form to that of his 30 minute ‘Runaway’ video, made back in 2010 as part of the campaign for the rapper’s last solo LP, ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’. The new film is said to have been inspired by West’s experience of performing in Abu Dhabi as part of that album’s promotional tour.

The Observer quotes a source close to West as saying: “A bidding war is going on between various government entities and private investors to fund the film. There’s pretty intense rivalry here between Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar. They all want to claim the film as their own and take credit for generating the publicity”.

The source adds: “His reps seemed genuinely enthusiastic about creating a piece which highlights the culture accurately. They discussed how Kanye is looking to bridge the cultural divide and break misconceptions”.

The company behind new Libertines documentary ‘There Are No Innocent Bystanders’, Pulse Films, has teamed up with PledgeMusic to offer fans access to all sorts of extra material filmed by director Roger Sargent when he followed the band on their brief 2010 reunion, which climaxed with their sets at the Reading and Leeds festivals.

The film is due to be screened at various Academy venues around the UK in March before going on general release in April. Fans can pre-order the DVD version and other related content, including a live EP, artwork, and all sorts of extra stuff via the Pledge website, which is offering a number of different packages in different price ranges. The Pledge initiative has enabled Sargent to delve deeper into his footage and make lots of extra bits and pieces available to fans.

Says PledgeMusic MD Malcolm Dunbar: “The Libertines are a hugely important band and we are extremely pleased to be able to help them connect with their loyal and committed fanbase for this fantastic new project. The fact that we have already reached our original target in such a short space of time demonstrates the appetite out there for this new film and highlights the viability of getting fans involved at an early stage”.

More here.

David Gest is hoping to donate an album of songs he and Michael Jackson wrote to the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire. Which might sound like a slightly strange thing to do. And it still does, even when you know that the songs form a musical based on Burns’ life. Jackson and Gest were both fans of the celebrated eighteenth century Scottish poet it seems (Gest still is), so much so they collaborated on the previously unheard Burns musical in the 1980s.

Explaining how the record came about, Gest told BBC Alba in a recent documentary: “I said to Michael, let’s do a play [based on] Burns’ life and he said he would help me with the music. Michael believed in the project so much. We took about eight or ten of Burns’ poems and put them to contemporary music, such as ‘A Red Red Rose’, ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ and the story of ‘Tam O’Shanter’”.

The songs were both written and recorded, but never released, and it doesn’t look like the Jackson estate has any plans to give them an airing now the king of pop is dead, motivating Gest to try and regain control of the songs, so he can hand them over to the Rabbie Burns museum, who might even release them.

Nat Edwards, the Director of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum told The List: “We had a chat and thought it would be great if we could play them at the museum and he offered to look them out and provide copies so we could do that. We would very much be looking forward to getting hold of these recordings and if possible for us to produce some sort of CD that could help raise money for the museum. That would be fantastic”.

LCD Soundsystem may be dead, but its zombie corpse lumbers on in the form of ‘Shut Up And Play The Hits’, a new documentary film charting the collective’s farewell gala performance at Madison Square Gardens.

Credited to Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, who also directed Blur’s 2010 feature ‘No Distance Left To Run’, the film also includes footage by Spike Jonze. It will premiere on 22 Jan as part of the Sundance Film Festival, and is expected to be released on DVD at some point this year.

So, with scenes of LCD leader James Murphy appearing as a sort of forlorn, Bill Murray-esque character (waking up alone in a crumpled dress shirt, walking the dog in his pyjamas), you can watch the trailer here:

Madonna has revealed that the seeds of her debut film as a director, ‘WE’, were sewn when she moved to the UK in 2000. Apparently friendless in her new home, she spent her spare time researching our country’s history and that’s when she was first inspired by the story of King Edward VIII’s 1936 abdication from the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

Speaking to the Radio Times, Madonna said: “I really didn’t have any friends, I didn’t know anybody, and I found myself in a strange world, so I decided that I was going to educate myself and find out about the history and culture of this new world that I lived in. So I started studying English history – I started reading about the monarchy, starting with Henry VIII, and then I worked all the way up to the Windsor family”.

She continued: “I’d heard about Edward VIII abdicating when I was in school. I knew that he had given up the throne for this American woman from Baltimore and that was it. I researched it more and I was kind of transfixed by the idea that a man would give up such a powerful position for love. I felt that there was something kind of Shakespearean about it”.

‘WE’ hits UK cinemas later this week.

Kanye West has met with the people behind a planned live action movie adaptation of ‘The Jetsons’, a producer of the film has confirmed. A keen admirer of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon, West had already hinted via Twitter that he had worked in a creative capacity on the forthcoming flick. And producer Denise Di Novi has revealed that the rapper did, indeed, take a role in early discussions.

She says: “He was interested in creatively brainstorming what we were doing with the movie and what ideas he might have. It was a really friendly, preliminary conversation. He was going to think about it more and see if he got inspired visually. He’s a very visual artist”. It’s not clear if the brainstorm will actually result in anything.

A spokesperson for Amy Winehouse’s family has denied a report in the Daily Mail claiming that any attempt to licence the singer’s music for use in a biopic would be blocked. As previously reported, the newspaper quoted her father Mitch Winehouse as saying: “It would hardly be a biopic without the music and we’d never allow the songs to be released”.

But, speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the family rep said: “Mitch and the family would entertain ideas perhaps for a film, but only one they were sure would tell the truth”.

Mitch Winehouse has said that he would block any of his daughter Amy’s songs from being used on the soundtrack of a biopic about her life.

There have been various rumours that such a biopic might be in the works, and the singer’s former boyfriend, filmmaker Reg Traviss, recently revealed that he had turned down the opportunity to direct a film abouther life.

Winehouse Senior told The Mail: “It would hardly be a biopic without the music and we’d never allow the songs to be released”.

The Chemical Brothers have announced that they will screen their new concert film ‘Don’t Think’ in cinemas in the new year. There will be screenings in 20 cities around the world, including London, on 26 Jan, before going on general release in the UK on 3 Feb.

Filmed at this year’s Fujirock Festival in Japan, ‘Don’t Think’ was directed by long term Chemical Brothers collaborator Adam Smith and is apparently the first ever concert film to be made with Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound, which was mixed by The Chems themselves.

Says Smith: “After eighteen years of working on The Chemical Brothers’ live show we have finally captured it on film; you could almost say it’s eighteen years in the making. The aim was to create a different type of concert film for a different type of show. I wanted to capture what it is like to experience the show from right in the middle of the crowd as well as showing and combining the visuals featured in the show with the footage we captured on this one night; to see how the music and visuals emotionally affect and connect with the audience. Over the course of the film, we are taken on a journey through the psychedelic trip that is the Chemical Brothers live experience”.

Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands added: “In the recording of a single show – a single night on a Japanese mountainside – Adam Smith has managed to capture the atmosphere of a very special festival appearance. Come see how it feels to feel, be overwhelmed, intoxicated, swoonerated. Surrender to the void”.

You can see the trailer here:

Having played on Broadway for over a year, the stage adaptation of ‘American Idiot’, named after and featuring songs from Green Day’s 2004 album, will make its way to the UK and Ireland towards the end of 2012.

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, who wrote the book on which the musical is based, says: “We can’t wait for our friends across the pond to see the musical. We played to some of the most insane crowds when we toured the album there”.

Tour dates:

9-13 Oct: Southampton, Mayflower Theatre
15-20 Oct: Cardiff, Millennium Centre
22-27 Oct: Edinburgh, Playhouse
29 Oct-3 Nov: Glasgow, Clyde Auditorium
5-10 Nov: Dublin, Grand Canal Theatre
12-24 Nov: Manchester, Palace Theatre
26-30 Nov: Birmingham, Alexandra Theatre
3-8 Dec: London, HMV Hammersmith Apollo

Reps for David Bowie have denied reports that the singer has licensed songs from his catalogue for use in a new stage show called ‘Heroes: The Musical’.

The Observer, among others, reported this weekend that one Deep Singh had devised a musical including various songs from Bowie’s repertoire, and that – having got the green light from the singer’s people – the show would debut at The O2′s IndigO2 venue next March. The paper quoted Singh as saying: “We could not really believe it when they gave us permission. His people had warned us that it was very unlikely that he would be interested and that he had been asked many times before. We did not want Mr Bowie to think it was going to be a tribute show, and that seems to have had an effect”.

But it seems Singh may have jumped the gun, because Team Bowie deny any knowledge of the show. A statement posted on the official David Bowie website reads: “Neither the David Bowie Organisation, nor its co-publishers EMI Music and Chrysalis, has issued a license for a Bowie musical at The O2, as has been reported in the UK. There are no negotiations pending for a long-running musical featuring the music of Mr Bowie”.

So look at that, apparently some things are sacred.

Previously unreleased footage on Michael Jackson on his 1993 ‘Dangerous’ tour is to be auctioned in London later this month, it has been announced.

According to The Independent, the video, recorded in Buenos Aires, was given to a Brazilian chauffeur as “a bonus” for his time spent ferrying the singer around during the tour. The driver kept the VHS tape a secret until after Jackson’s death in 2009, when he posted a short section to YouTube. That clip was then taken down due to a copyright notice, and Sony Music and the Michael Jackson estate both subsequently claimed ownership of the footage. However, the driver was seemingly later named the legal owner of the recording, allowing the big sale.

According to reports, the two hour tape features performance and backstage footage, and features appearances from Jordy Chandler, the teenager who later launched the first child abuse lawsuit against the singer. As a result, the tape has a reserve price of £4 million, which it is expected to be exceeded when it goes up for sale on 26 Nov.

Ted Owen, CEO of Fame Bureau auctioneers, told The Independent: “I’m very excited that this tape is finally going to be seen because of its quality, the amount of cameras used and the sheer closeness you are to the performance when watching it”.

Elsewhere in Jackson news, the singer’s former PA (and brother of Jackson producer Eddie Cascio) Frank Cascio is due to publish a book, entitled ‘My Friend Michael: An Ordinary Friendship With An Extraordinary Man’, detailing his time spent working with the singer and the friendship he had with him as a child. In it he apparently admits to paying off doctors and getting prescriptions in his own name to feed the singer’s desire for prescription drugs, claiming that he first saw Jackson taking propofol (the drug that ultimately killed him) after he was legitimately prescribed it for injuries sustained in a fall in 1999.

I’ve no desire to ever see the U2-penned ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’, but when they make the movie about its making, I’ll be there. Actually, apparently a documentary has been made about all of this, so that’s something to look forward to.

Anyway, in the latest chapter in this long saga, Julie Taymor, the Broadway musical’s original director, is suing the show’s producers for a million dollars claiming she is owed money for her work on the production, and that her creative rights have been violated.

As previously reported, Taymor – best known for her work on the ‘Lion King’ stage show – was eased out of her role on the hugely expensive Spiderman-themed musical after various technical problems and a negative critical response during a long drawn out preview period forced a rethink. New director Philip William McKinley stood in during a three week closure of the show and revamped various elements of the production before an eventual official launch in June.

According to the BBC, Taymor’s lawsuit is seeking half of all the profits from the original version of the show, and a permanent ban of her name and likeness being used in connection with the aforementioned ‘Spider-Man’ behind the scenes documentary. A spokesman for the show’s producers said that Taymor had been properly compensated for her work on the project, and that they are glad that “the court system will [now] provide, once and for all, an opportunity to resolve this dispute”.

Move over Justin Bieber and your ‘Under The Mistletoe’ record, there’s another apocalyptic stocking filler on the scene. MJ Hibbett & The Validators, who are firm favourites here at CMU, are to release a new album entitled ‘Dinosaur Planet’ on 5 Dec. In short, it’s a sci-fi rock opera, based on Hibbett’s Edinburgh Fringe show of the same name, about what it would be like were the dinosaurs to return to Earth.

“It’s like a cross between ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’ and ‘Giant Steps’ by The Boo Radleys, or an indie ‘War Of The Worlds’”, says Hibbett of the LP, which features more sounds of things exploding than any other concept album, ever.

Assorted guest artistes appearing across the album include Phil Wilson of The June Brides, BBC 1 continuity announcer Claire Gibb, Chris T-T, Keith TOTP and BBC Radio Tees DJ Bob Fischer.

You can get stuck into the video for ‘Theme From Dinosaur Planet’ below, or download it for free here.

Soulja Boy has been discussing a new documentary about his rise to fame, entitled ‘Soulja Boy: The Movie’, which was released in the US last month. Directed by Pete Spirer, who made Tupac Shakur documentary ‘Thug Angel’ and ‘Bigger Than Life’ about the Notorious BIG, the film explores the rapper’s life from his early YouTube videos onwards.

Soulja Boy told XXL: “[Spirer] approached me in Los Angeles with the idea for this project, and the way they presented it to me I couldn’t say no. I wanted my story to be told. I’ve been in it for a minute, but I’m still new to the game. It’s like what I did for hip hop, I definitely want that to be showed. I want my fans to be able to know more about me; the person behind the name”.

But what sort of exciting things can we expect to see in the film, Mr Boy?

“It goes from the first single, to the ‘Crank Dat’ dance craze, to the YouTube views, to the third album not doing good, to the robberies, to the sold out concerts; tours across the world, Brazil Amsterdam, London, Paris, Tokyo, Japan, the whole United States. It’s just gonna give all the fans just that insight that they’re lookin for. They wanna know as much as they can about their favourite rapper, and that’s what this movie [is] here for”.

Yes, that does seem to cover quite a lot. And what’s more, he adds, all those ‘haters’ are covered too. “They touched on that in a certain chapter. Anything you do you’re gonna have haters with it. That’s just life. If you a girl and you look good in school, the other girls gonna start hatin on you. If you a good rapper, you gonna have other rappers that are gonna hate on you. The hatin, the criticism and everything, I’ve just gotten better with it, and take it in [my] stride. I could be in way worse positions than somebody hatin on me. As long as I’m still doin me and I’m great at it and I’m on top of my craft, hatin is just whatever”.

In summary: haters gonna hate. Check out the trailer here:

Liam Gallagher is considering turning the story of Oasis into a film. Or at least he sometimes considers it when he’s drunk. He does own a film company though, so if he stays drunk long enough it might just happen.

Speaking to The Independent, Gallagher said: “Sometimes, when we’ve had a few drinks, we sit about telling stories and talk about putting them in an Oasis film. I’d be up for that. But I’d start it with Paris [where the band split]. I wouldn’t want it to end on such a bummer. I’d start at the end and work my way backwards. It’d be a long film but it’d be a film worth watching, believe me. It’d be a funny film n all”.

How about a stage musical full of Monkees songs? Actually, as those tedious jukebox musicals go, I can think of worse choices of oeuvre. Yes, a new musical called, wait for it, ‘Monkee Business’, and featuring songs by The Monkees, will open in Manchester next March. The band themselves are not involved in the project, but will be invited to the premiere, so that’s nice.

The show is debuting in Manchester as part of a scheme called Manchester Gets It First, an initiative to encourage theatre producers to launch shows in the city. The ‘Ghost’ musical opened there first as part of that programme, and everyone I know from Manchester is still getting over the excitement.

Howard Panter of the Ambassador Theatre Group told the Manchester Evening News: “Following the incredible success of the world premiere of ‘Ghost The Musical’ at the Manchester Opera House earlier in the year, we’re delighted to be premiering yet another landmark new musical, ‘Monkee Business’, as part of our Manchester Gets It First campaign. Manchester is the ideal place for the original creative process necessary for developing large-scale new musicals like ‘Monkee Business’, as it is a city with a great foundation in music with knowledgeable and sophisticated audiences who love and understand fantastic musical theatre”.

Damon Albarn’s opera ‘Doctor Dee’ will be performed at London’s Coliseum next summer. The shows will take place on 25-26 and 28-29 Jun, plus 4, 6 and 7 Jul. Tickets will go on sale on 4 Nov.

And because he just can’t sit down for five minutes, Albarn debuted a new band with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, called Rocketjuice And The Moon, last weekend. And he’ll be reviving The Good, The Bad And The Queen for two shows in London next week.

Beastie Boys’ Adam Horowitz (aka Ad Rock) has scored a new play by playwright Israel Horowitz (aka Ad Rock’s dad). Entitled ‘Gloucester Blue’, the show will premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre off Broadway in New York on 23 Nov and run until 3 Dec, bringing the Barefoot Theatre Company’s Stripped Festival to a close.

More information at www.barefoottheatrecompany.org.

MySpace Creative Director and former pop star Justin Timberlake is to star in new Coen Brothers movie, ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’, according to Variety. Sometimes I wonder if his heart’s really in this whole making MySpace less shit lark.

The film is based on the 1960s folk scene in New York’s Greenwich Village. Although a fictional story, Llewyn Davis, who will be played by Oscar Isaac, is based on real life musician Dave Van Ronk, a key figure in that scene and a close friend of Bob Dylan. Timberlake will play a mentor to the lead character.