Lady Gaga previews two new R-O-C-K songs

Nearly a week ago, I wrote that it wasn’t too late for Lady Gaga, who was threatening to go over the handlebars of her promotional cycle—pressuring fans to buy multiple copies of “Applause” and artificially inflate the video views, unleashing followers on Perez Hilton, making whatever the heck that video was with Marina Abramovic.

Well, six days can seem like one meeeellion years in pop, at least when they include an especially spicy Video Music Awards. So how’s Gaga got her nuttiness working for her right now? She managed not to do anything ill-advisedly wackadoo during her opening slot at the VMAs—unless you count the pre-recorded boos she had cued up for when she revealed her soon-to-be-stripped-off nun’s get-up, which presumably symbolifies (to coin an appropriately ridumbulous term) the controversy she thinks defines her.

The performance didn’t damage her, but it didn’t seem to renew any good-faith connections with her fans, either. Of course, it was also reduced to a vanishingly small blip of cultural insignificance by Miley Cyrus’s festival of raging signifiers.

Gaga has since plowed ahead, teasing her next big thing: a performance Sunday (Sept. 1) at the iTune Music Festival. In two raw rehearsal clips, she presented a more human-seeming weirdo –and revealed some potentially very kick-ass new music.

First, “Swine,” a real shocker with Nine Inch Nails lyrics and bull-in-a-bong-shop Deep Purple groove:

This bit of music would be incredibly exciting even if it didn’t show Gaga headbanging, synth-noodling and pounding some random drums absolutely silly.

And then earlier today we got “Manicure,” a song with a name that is—impossibly!—as cool as “Swine”:

This one sounds pretty damn R-O-C-K, too. It’s possible, in fact, that Lady Gaga will make the skull-cracking rock-and-roll album that’s nowhere on the horizon this fall. (That Kings of Leon album may be great, but will it make you think of “Smoke on the Water”? Highly unlikely.)

So Gaga zoinked us with some scratchy, teeny-weeny bits of new-song goodness. We’ll have to hear them in full, of course, before we can know whether she’s fighting Katy Perry fire with Gary Glitter … glitter. (The iTunes fest will be streaming live, so you might want to cue that up.)

And the big question remains: Is she really ready to let some of the old Gaga art-goo burn off as she reenters the atmosphere? The evidence this week is encouraging. And meanwhile, ”Applause”—which is sitting semi-pretty in the top 10—feels more and more like a sensible opening salvo, with its ridumbulous lyrics hardly holding its supermarket-friendly club-bumping back.

Gaga’s noise-to-music ratio is now at a very healthy level. I’m excited for whatever’s next. How about you?

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Robert Downey Jr. previews 'Iron Man 3'

Robert Downey Jr. stars as Tony Stark in "Iron Man 3."Robert Downey Jr. is bringing Tony Stark back to the screen on May 3 in "Iron Man 3"He'll be wearing a new upgrade of his weaponized wardrobe"Iron Man 3" brings in Shane Black, who made his directorial debut with "Kiss Kiss"

(EW.com) -- When Robert Downey Jr. brings Tony Stark back to the screen on May 3 in "Iron Man 3," he'll be wearing a new upgrade of his weaponized wardrobe, this one with a brassy, reduced-red color scheme that could be viewed as color commentary.

These are, after all, golden days to be Downey, the movie star who is ranked No. 1 in the latest Forbes listing of Hollywood box-office heroes. The 47-year-old actor was once the film industry's most talented and frustrating question mark, but now he's Hollywood's human exclamation point, and as the rakish Stark, the world's favorite canned ham.

EW caught with the two-time Oscar nominee by phone not long ago for a lengthy conversation about the new film, his career, and Marvel Universe after the success of "The Avengers."

We'll run installments from the interview all week. In this first part, he talks about new additions to the franchise (led by writer-director Shane Black, the "Lethal Weapon" screenwriter whose hiring was championed by Downey) as well as familiar faces (such as Don Cheadle, who returns as Stark's military pal Rhodey, who will be using some warfare wardrobe of his own).

var currExpandable="expand15";if(typeof CNN.expandableMap==='object'){CNN.expandableMap.push(currExpandable);}var mObj={};mObj.type='video';mObj.contentId='';mObj.source='us/2012/07/14/vo-nc-iron-man-3-stunt.wect';mObj.videoSource='WECT';mObj.videoSourceUrl='http://www.wect.com/';mObj.lgImage="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/120714062418-vo-nc-iron-man-3-stunt-00000502-story-body.jpg";mObj.lgImageX=300;mObj.lgImageY=169;mObj.origImageX="214";mObj.origImageY="120";mObj.contentType='video';CNN.expElements.expand15Store=mObj;Entertainment Weekly: "Iron Man 3" brings in Shane Black, who made his directorial debut with you and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" in 2005. You've worn the suit in battle scenes in three films now -- two directed by Jon Favreau, one by Joss Whedon — and I'm curious if Shane's arrival changes any of the fundamental approach to action scenes?

Robert Downey Jr.: We've just been talking about one sequence -- the top-secret name is the Boot/Glove Sequence, I can tell you that, just between you and me -- it's where Tony only has one gauntlet and one boot and he has to escape multiple captors. It's really fun, dude. We're taking everything from his first gauntlet test in the first movie up through the most extreme stuff we thought up for "Iron Man 2" and "The Avengers" and pulling on all of it and making this one big, extended challenge of physics.

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I loved how the action in "Kiss Kiss" was such pulpy metaphor. Like when your character is there dangling above a freeway, holding the hand of a corpse that's jutting out of a casket. So he's in danger of being consumed by the big city, but if he doesn't let go of a murder victim, he can figure out a way to get back on his feet? That's pretty much the film's plot, isn't it?

He's definitely keeping that idea -- that way of storytelling -- alive. It's a hallmark of the Shane Black [scripts] since the beginning of his career, and it's been really fun to bring that to Tony Stark's world.

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You mentioned earlier that the cast and crew of Iron Man had film-appreciation gatherings -- a movie club, basically?

It was a group of us going to the Cineplex and blocking out a theater on the weekends and taking in John Toll [the two-time Oscar winner and Iron Man 3 cinematographer] and taking in sometimes a ton of people and sometimes less. We do something that involves movies and our love of movies.... One was [a movie that Toll shot] the Wachowskis' film Cloud Atlas. We were impressed with how cohesive the direction was, and obviously everything that John shot was amazing. We saw Flight, which was great, and before that it was Argo, which was also kind of cool. It's nice knowing that you can to theater every weekend and see something good. And it's great to see what people are doing and to get excited about it.

With Iron Man 3 there are some new faces coming in to the franchise: Guy Pearce, James Badge Dale, Rebecca Hall, and of course, Ben Kingsley as the villain, the Mandarin. And then there's the returning ensemble with Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, and Jon Favreau. Circle one of those names and tell us something they brought to the project.

Since I was just talking about Flight and Don is on my mind, I'll start with him. Rhodey is much more in the dead center of things. He's much more dynamic. We've made this decision that while Tony is a technical guy, he's not really a trained guy. There's a lot of fun to be had with Don because he's really good with hardware and he's a martial artist, so it's been really fun exploiting this possibility of Tony having moments like the one in Avengers, like the one with Cap where he decides, "Oh screw it, he probably knows what he's doing." So there's a lot of that and a lot more fun and a lot more depth to Rhodey this time around.

See the original article at EW.com.

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