Freebird with plenty of cowbells. (and just an update, Viveca gave birth to their third son today. His name is Axel).

(Another update: NBC raided YouTube and disabled every version of this incredible performance they could find. The version now available was taped off of someone’s television, has poor sound quality and ends abruptly. It’s still worth taking a look. Screw you NBC. You keep making the bad decisions.)

If we only could pick one...

As the new year 2010 gets underway, it’s time for the Daily Helping to weigh in with it’s own little list saluting what we consider the cream of the crop for the past ten years in music, books, film and television.  This is most definitely the opinion of Daily Helping and takes into account a particular appetite and is by no means a comprehensive examination of every book, album or broadcast.

It’s been no secret that music appreciation is an Achilles heel for the staff at Daily Helping.  Those among it’s readership can acknowledge as much.  There’s an effort underway to introduce a few lesser known talents, but for a list such as this, it’s important that the top album of the past ten years be a something familiar and memorable.

The Daily Helping salutes Hot Fuss, by The Killers as the best of the past 10.  This was the first studio effort by the Las Vegas rock band. The album came out in 2004 and was nominated for a Best Album Grammy.  There’s a lot of hits on this 4 times Platinum effort and a lot of hit songs.  “Mr Brightside”, “All These Things That I’ve Done”, “Somebody Told Me”, are fantastic. Everything is actually quite good, unique and made memorable by the vocals of lead singer, Brandon Flowers.

It’s hard for anyone at Daily Helping to imagine the band is not known to you. The group’s popularity has been remarkable and stems from both critical and popular success. A follow up album, Sam’s Town (2006) wasn’t nearly as huge a hit for the Killers, but it still did extremely well and confirmed that this was a band that was going to survive and mature.

If you’re not familiar with the Killers then you’re in a very enviable position. How nice it would be to hear this amazing album for “first time”, once again.

“Up in the Air” had the most nominations this year,  followed by the musical “Nine,” with five, including top musical or comedy.  The recently released science-fiction epic “Avatar” and director Quentin Tarantino’s  “Inglourious Basterds” were nominated for four awards, including best drama.

The Hurt Locker looks like Best Drama

Other film nominees for Golden Globes were the Iraq war movie “The Hurt Locker“ and the urban tear-jerker “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.”  Others in the category for best movie musical or comedy was Meryl Streep’s  cooking movie “Julie & Julia, this years comedic breakout hit “The Hangover” and the independent darling, “(500) Days of Summer.”

The Golden Globes are given out in January by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and are seen as a key indicator of which movies will compete for the world’s top film honors, the Oscars, in March. The Golden Globes will be presented mid January, 2010.

The best actor nominees were Clooney, Jeff Bridges who plays a down-and-out country singer in “Crazy Heart,” Colin Firth as a gay man suddenly alone in “A Single Man,” Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in “Invictus” and Tobey Maguire for “Brothers”, another wartime drama.

Nominations for best actress in a drama went to Sandra Bullock for the surprisingly popular football film “The Blind Side,” Helen Mirren for “The Last Station,” Emily Blunt in “The Young Victoria,” Carey Mulligan with “An Education” and  Gabourey Sidibe in the title role,  “Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire.”

A great way to know you’re looking at the Golden Globes and not the Academy Awards is that you can have Sandra Bullock nominated twice in an evening. This time it’s for best actress in a musical or comedy in  “The Proposal.”  She’s joined by Marion Cotillard in “Nine,” Julia Roberts in “Duplicity” ( really intelligent and fun movie!) and Meryl Streep once again, pulling a Sandra Bullock for “It’s Complicated” and a second for “Julie & Julia.”

The Coen Brothers have a serious claim for the Golden Globe

Nominees for best actor in a movie musical or comedy were Daniel Day-Lewis for “Nine,” Matt Damon in the black comedy, “The Informant!,” Robert Downey Jr. for the unbearably hyped “Sherlock Holmes,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt in “(500) Days of Summer” and Michael Stuhlberg for the Coen Brother’s wonderful fable, “A Serious Man.”

Lastly, the foreign language film nominees are the Italian movie “Baaria,” Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces“, the fabulous Chilean movie “The Maid,”  “A Prophet” from France and Germany’s “The White Ribbon.”

It’s worth noting that one film in particular seems to be on every critic’s top ten list for the year.  It’s Kathryn Bigelow’s tense Iraq drama,” The Hurt Locker”.  Though it’s still quite early and there are many films to still see, it’s the Daily Helping’s opinion that Ms Bigelow could have a Best Picture on her hands.  This is all the more interesting since she’s James (Avatar) Cameron’s ex-wife.

There was a vigorous debate as to whether this would be posted.

This is one of a growing number of “lip-dub” videos spreading through video sites like YouTube.  A lip dub is a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. The popular, highly watched  videos provide more than just adequate lip syncing. The song has to be engaging and there’s no substitute for energy and imagination.

This song, “I gotta Feeling”, by the Black Eyed Peas,  may be so overplayed these days that you probably hate hearing it.  The DailyHelping prefers this version performed by 172 communications students at de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). This is a terrific effort that utilizes one single camera shot.  Not so easy, and you’ll appreciate it more once you’ve taken a look.  (We’re sorry if you hum this song all day now).  We gotta feeling you’re going to really enjoy this! (It’s already been downloaded over 2 million times.

The New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a very exciting retrospective underway.  It’s the comprehensive film and artwork collection of the brilliant director,  Tim Burton. The show opened on November 22.

Burton’s bizarrely imagined films have an instantly recognizable style and feature characters that are more folklore.  He is an artist first…and it shows in everything that he does. MoMA’s exhibition “Tim Burton” shares never- seen before pieces of artwork that date back to the artist’s childhood.

Sketches, paintings, maquettes, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, costumes, and cinematic ephemera comprise the more than 700 works that will be on display at MoMA.

A retrospective of key films directed and produced by Burton will be shown during the exhibition include The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd. A comprehensive list of film works that inspired and influenced the director will also be on show.

Highlights and popular items from the exhibition will be featured on a dedicated website along with an interactive presentation of many of Burton’s works. The website, located at MoMA.org/timburton.

Tim Burton will run from November 22, 2009 until April 26, 2010 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art before travelling to the Australian Center for the Moving Image in Melbourne, Australia  (June 24 to October 10, 2010) and The Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Canada (November 22, 2010 to April 17, 2011).