Guitar legend Carlos Santana says he plans on entering the studio with his old drummer, Marcus Malone, after a California news host recently reunited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee with the now-homeless percussionist.

Malone performed as a member of the Santana Blues Band up until 1968 when he was convicted of a crime and sent to San Quentin Prison, according to Bay Area station KRON4. The next year Santana performed with his eponymous rock group at the first Woodstock music festival in New York state alongside the likes of The Who, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, but by then had last contact with his ex-drummer.

Screenshot from youtube video by user TVman1981

Neither Santana nor Malone has seen each other in the four-and-a-half decades since, until just recently when KRON’s Stanley Roberts reunited the two in Oakland, California.

Roberts met Malone earlier this year while filming a segment on illegal dumpsites in the area. Malone identified himself as a homeless man who lives in a camper and rummages through garbage for a living.

He also told Roberts that he was an original member of the Santana Blues Band, which the legendary guitarist was able to confirm when the two were recently reunited.

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“I brought you a friend,” Roberts is heard telling Malone as he walks the homeless man from his camper in Oakland to a pickup truck parked nearby.

“Man!” the old drummer exclaims as Santana begins to exit the automobile.

“Marcus ‘the magnificent’ Malone,” Santana says in the clip as the two embrace in the first hug between the two in nearly 50 years.

The news clips of their latest encounter has gone viral after being published by the station, and now Santana says he wants to work with Malone once again: getting him off the street and back into the studio.

Screenshot from youtube video by user TVman1981

“I want to offer my brother Marcus Malone an opportunity to record on the next album with the original band, with Greg Rolie,”Santana told CNN this weekend. “We wrote a song for him called ‘Magnificent Marcus Malone.’ We want him to play on it and we’re going to start, Lord willing, in January or February. So I would like to get him some congas so he can get his hands hard again because he hasn’t been playing the congas in a while.”

“It’s gone viral,” the guitarist admitted during this weekend’s interview when asked about the reaction so far in the days since the KRON clip has surfaced. “It’s in India, it’s in Malaysia, and people are crying. They don’t mind crying tears of gratitude and joy that two brothers can get back together. We all have people in our family who get misplaced, not lost but misplaced. A lot of people all over the world are connecting with this story. They in return will do something for someone that will bless them.”

“We will offer him whatever we can offer him to get back on his feet with elegance and grace to live a happy life,” he said.

KRON’s Roberts said “This is the biggest story I’ve come across. It all happened by happenstance, being at the right place at the right time. I firmly believe there is a reason for everything and I want to see Marcus perform with the band again.”

Screenshot from youtube video by user TVman1981

There is nothing I enjoy less than watching a “road movie”.  They’re tedious and boring, or worse yet, they’re silly and juvenile; especially in films where grown men are seen behaving badly.  The scripts of such fare are usually mediocre at best.  Besides, who needs a well-plotted story and an intelligent script when the audience they’re targeted to could care less?

Dame Judi Dench never behaves badly either on the stage or in a movie.  She is too much a gifted professional actor.  So when I saw her name starring in a movie called “Philomena”, a drama about a young unmarried mother who gave birth to a baby boy who was then subsequently given to strangers for adoption, but now finds herself, fifty years later, obsessed with locating him – well I just had to check this movie out for myself.

The odyssey-saga of  “Philomena”, wonderfully portrayed by Academy Award winning actor Judi Dench, and her co-star, a wry, world-weary Steve Coogan (who also co-wrote the screenplay with writer Jeff Pope) sends these two unlikely “detectives” on a journey to track down Philomena’s son Mark Anthony, the baby she gave up for adoption fifty years ago.  Okay, so I’m watching another “ road movie”, but this time there is a difference.  This story has grown-ups in the driver’s seat.   The script is carefully and intelligently crafted which is always good news for talented actors.

The story begins in Ireland with Coogan, portraying real life author Martin Sixsmith, a sacked BBC journalist who is now searching for a story to tell.  Martin has a chance meeting with Philomena’s daughter Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin) at a party who tells Martin that her mother Philomena Lee (Dench) is setting out on a journey to locate her birth son, a child she gave up for adoption more than fifty years ago.  Martin’s journalistic nose smells the elements of a story and agrees to help Philomena find her son.  Thus begins a journey that will take them to the United States and then back to England and Ireland.

The appeal of the movie lies in the absolutely splendid performances of Dench and Coogan who’s on-screen chemistry begins carefully at first but warms up and ultimately ends with respect and a genuine fondness for one another.  Dench just shines as a grandmotherly lady on a mission that will not be denied.   In the beginning, Martin sort of accepted Philomena as merely a source for a human interest story for his new project.  But it soon becomes apparent that he has developed a genuine mother-son relationship when people begin to stonewall Philomena’s inquiries in her efforts to locate her son.  That’s when he becomes protective toward her.  Martin requests assistance from his former American media and government contacts in an effort help find Mark Anthony.  There are story points that are best explained when seen in a movie theatre.  So no “spoiler alerts” here.

Suffice it to say, there is an air of suspense and drama in “Philomena” that should appeal to the broad 25 through 65 year-old demographic.  Also, it’s pretty certain that Dame Judi will get a Best Actor nomination, and that Coogan will be in the hunt for a Best Supporting Actor nod, as well as a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

“Philomena”, directed by Stephen Frears is a small, compelling and poignant movie about a large and ever growing emotional subject.  More and more cases of children seeking their birth mothers are turning up in the news.   Produced by Gabrielle Tan, Tracey Seaword, and Steve Coogan, the issue has not been lost on movie executive Harvey Weinstein, the canny and highly successful head of the Weinstein Company, who is distributing the film.

Weinstein has an enviable track record of picking up small movies for distribution and turning them into Academy Award Best Picture winners and/or blockbusters at the box office.  Remember “Shakespeare in Love”, (seven Oscars), “The King’s Speech”, Best Picture and Best Actor AA Awards, and last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner and Best Actor Award winner “The Artist”? are just three movies among many and all films were distributed by the Weinstein Company.  Better catch a screening before the lines start forming.

“Philomena” is in full distribution nationwide.

The Irish are wonderfully poetic as storytellers. As Celts, they come from a long line of cultural story-spinners who are steeped in myths and tales that are rich with whimsy like O’Casey, and long on emotions, like Millington-Synge, and very long on their love of language like Joyce.

They also have been at odds with their English-speaking cousins, the British, ever since Pope Adrian IV gave “permission” to English King Henry II, around 1171, to subjugate Ireland; claiming its people as British subjects. That’s over eight hundred years of lamenting the loss of their ancient culture, their language, their freedom, and their beloved Emerald Isle. And we wonder why the Irish are so pugnacious, love and celebrate their ancient brews so much, and protest their historical plight with such “suffering” yet charming eloquence?

Some of these cultural issues are currently being explored in The Mark Taper Forum production “The Steward of Christendom”, by Irish playwright Sebastian Barry. The play set in the early 20th century before, during and after the volatile Irish Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the bloody 1919 – 1922 Irish Civil War, is deftly and steadily directed by Steven Robman, and stars Brian Dennehy as Thomas Dunne, the former police superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police Force.

His story begins in a mental home in County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1932 and is told in a series of memory flashbacks where his three daughters and his young deceased soldier son flow in and out of the story from time to time. Dennehy delivers a highly nuanced and forceful portrayal of a man caught between duty to his country and family, all the while trying to remain true to the tenets of his religion. It’s an ancient problem still plaguing society to this day.

Dennehy’s many soliloquies are: colorful, soul-searching rambling, and lengthy which have a tendency to test the audience’s power of concentration. Also, the lilting rhyme and meter of the Irish brogue could benefit from sub-titles, from time to time, if such a convention could be employed (which I doubt). A rough barometer of how engaged the audience is, is to count the coughs emanating from it. Coughs or not, the actors are first-rate and are working hard to deliver an evening in the theatre that one will remember. And Dennehy delivers a towering performance in the bargain.

The daughters played by Abby Wilde (Annie), Kalen Harriman (Maude), and Carmela Corbett (Dolly), and their brother Willie, played by Grant Palmer, on the night I attended, offer solid support, as does James Lancaster as Mr. Smith, Mary-Pat Green (Mrs. O’Dea), and Dylan Saunders (a recruit and suitor to Maude).

It’s the story crafted by playwright Barry that appears to be the fly in the ointment, so to speak. Barry loves his language and imbues his characters with a love of it as well. However, there are just too many words in those soliloquies that force the show to run two and a half hours sorely testing the audience’s fidelity to remain engaged.

The technical credits at the Taper are always first rate. The creative team led by director Robman (who delivers a smooth effort in the traffic management department), and Set Designer Kevin Depinet, along with Lighting designer Robert Wierzel, and costume designer Leah Piehl, plus the splendid projection designs by Jason H. Thompson (I could swear I saw the grass actually growing on the stage at times) carry the audience along and ease the lengthy ride. I just wish the Irish weren’t so verbose and interesting as characters. The women in the play, it seems to me, have far more interesting stories to tell if allowed to develop. Alas, that’s not the story playwright Barry wants to share with us. Besides, it’s difficult to share a stage when Brian Dennehy is in command. He’s a force of nature.

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Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and several other EU countries were named among “third party partners” in the NSA-led global signal intelligence program, a new leak submitted by journalist Glenn Greenwald to Danish TV reveals.

According to the document, obtained by Swedish TV program ‘Mission: Investigate’, that has been probing Sweden’s participation in global spying operations, nine European countries were added to the list of NSA accomplices.

The “third party partners” to the Five Eyes nations has now grown to include nine states – Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

The newly-leaked document from Edward Snowden is the first written confirmation of Denmark’s formal agreement with the NSA, the Copenhagen Post writes.

Denmark’s role in US spying scheme was labeled “very worrying”by Enhedslisten’s Pernille Skipper, Danish parliamentarian.

“When Denmark is one of the US intelligence services’ close allies, one must ask themselves what it is we are giving in return,”Skipper told public broadcaster DR.

“When you consider this along with the other revelations that have come out, which insinuate that the US systematically spies on residents throughout Europe in violation of very basic rights, then you can naturally fear that the collaboration between Denmark and the US means that Danes have been spied upon.”

The list of new NSA partners was made public last week as part of the new batch of NSA-documents from the Snowden-Greenwald collection. The ‘14-Eyes’ group, the document also revealed, send their staff for training to the US. The group is also known as the SIGINT Seniors Europe or SSEUR.

On its website the NSA writes that foreign Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is “specifically limited to gathering information about international terrorists and foreign powers, organizations, or persons.”

It adds “SIGINT provides a vital window for our [USA] nation into foreign adversaries’ capabilities, actions, and intentions.”

Until the recent wire, the trickling of NSA leaks suggested that a number of countries were involved. France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Belgium and allegedly Spain were perceived to be the NSA’s 3rd party partners.

Sweden, Denmark and especially the Netherlands were not listed as such, but SVT’s earlier episodes revealed the Swedish signals intelligence agency (FRA) spied on Russian leaders and businesses and shared the data collected with the US.

The third party “partners” need to worry about being “victims of NSA surveillance,” because of negative “trust” relationships they will have with the US based on economic interests, whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, of the Government Accountability Project told RT.

“The NSA has not only violated the trust of its own citizens by conducting mass dragnet surveillance on innocent people but doing it to the innocent populations of the allied nations.”

NSA’s global reach is “completely unnecessary”, because it destroys diplomacy and undermines economic relations with other countries. Radack argues the NSA is just gathering intelligence on people that are suspected of doing “absolutely nothing.”

“I think we see these reverberations not just among the 5 eyes countries, some of whom have been colluding in helping the NSA gather this data, but we see reverberations worldwide and they are far reaching, because again, NSA tentacles have been far reaching” she added.