U2 unveiled its first new song in four years, “Ordinary Love,” last week on its Facebook page. A vinyl version comes out Friday as part of Record Store Day’s Black Friday sale.

The track was composed and recorded for the soundtrack of “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” the biopic about activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela slated to open in limited release Friday before expanding to more theaters in the U.S. and Canada on Christmas Day.

The video by Oliver Jeffers and Mac Premo features a dazzling stream of images. The song’s lyrics are written in longhand across each scene.

The song, which will appear on the film’s soundtrack but not on the new U2 studio album due next year, opens with spare instrumentation, just chords on electric piano under singer Bono’s voice before the full band kicks in after the first verse with a pulsing rock backbeat and reverberating guitars.

“Ordinary Love” is being released as a 10-inch vinyl single for Record Store Day’s Black Friday sale. The B-side is a new version of “Breathe,” dubbed “the Mandela version.” To find a copy, check local indie record stores like Grady’s Record Refuge (2546 E. Main St. Ventura; 648-5565) and Salzer’s (5777 Valentine Road, Ventura; 639-2160).

Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

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Some movies try to underscore their authenticity by flashing dates, names and locations on the screen. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom offers some dates and locations, but not much in the way of names. The result is a history of national transformation in which only two people really seem to matter.

One of them, of course, is Nelson Mandela, whose memoir is a major source for William Nicholson’s script. As embodied by Idris Elba, Mandela is a powerful physical presence. The movie shows its protagonist walking, running and doing pushups to freedom. Even during 27 years in prison, his vigor rarely flags.

The other dynamo is Winnie Mandela, Nelson’s second wife and eventual adversary, and Naomie Harris fiercely conveys the rage and certainty that make her the film’s most interesting character. The scenes in which she refuses to join her husband’s campaign for racial reconciliation are the strongest and most complex.

Elsewhere, however, complexity doesn’t seem to be a priority for director Justin Chadwick, whose previous historical pictures include the soapy, baldly fictionalized The Other Boleyn Girl. There’s a lot of Mandela’s 95 years to get on screen, plus a few corny dream sequences, and a mere 139 minutes to do it.

Chadwick begins, after a glimpse at the great man’s modest rustic childhood, with Mandela’s work as a lawyer in Johannesburg in the 1940s. The young attorney displays an erotic bravado that’s especially pungent — and risky — in piously racist South Africa. Mandela doesn’t just flirt with, fondle and cheat with black women; he embarrasses a white woman into dropping a theft case by displaying a contested pair of underpants to the court.

The story then leaps, and jarringly, to the 1960 massacre in Sharpeville, where police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators. That famous outrage is used here as narrative shorthand for Mandela’s radicalization, which in fact happened long before that. No matter: He begins to work with the African National Congress and its military wing, Spear of the Nation.

Arrested in 1962, Mandela is brought to trial with seven other men. One small detail is all that distinguishes them: The black “boys” are issued shorts, while the one prisoner of Indian descent is given trousers. Most of these men will still be Mandela’s cohorts 27 years later, yet they’re never introduced.

That’s typical of the movie, which focuses all too tightly on its namesake. Occasionally, the filmmakers crack open a window and context floods in, usually in the form of vintage TV news footage. Mostly, though, the movie is designed for people who already know some history of South Africa from 1942 to 1994, or who don’t much care.

The black-on-black carnage of the early ’90s is invoked but not explained; in fact this period is depicted almost grudgingly, as an annoying bump on the road to Mandela’s electoral triumph. Finally, South Africa’s first black president goes to greet his people, heralded by the tintinnabulating guitar of … U2’s “The Edge.”

Enlisting the Irish pompsters for that final musical flourish is a strange touch, and a telling one. The film was shot entirely in South Africa, and revels in golden light on dry yellow grasslands. But it’s still a very British movie, a respectful view from a suitable distance.

That approach is echoed by Elba’s performance, which is keyed to the public man, not the private one. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom scants both history and psychology, thus rendering its account of South Africa’s self-determination saga equally opaque to scholars and casual observers.

Copyright 2013 U2 France / http://www.u2france.com/actu

Longtime U2 watchers will recognise the signs. When there’s a new album in the offing, the soft spin campaign from the band gets slowly underway. You have stories like CDs going missing or someone walking past Bono’s gaff recording new music the singer is playing in his parlour. This little tidbit goes all around the world and, voila, the U2 campaign has begun in earnest. It’s a little trick which they’ve gone back to again and again over the last few albums to fire up interest ahead of release.

Conspiracy theorists, then, might point to the Paul McGuinness story as something from that well-thumbed playbook. They might even see the viral video of Bono and The Edge performing “Get Lucky” with Nile Rodgers in New York as more of the same. It probably would have helped if Bono had actually listened to and learned the words of one of the biggest hits of the year first. As Spin point out, Bono’s blundering doesn’t look great when you compare and contrast it with the the many better versions of the song out there. Indeed, it sounds as if he’s hearing the song for the first time in places.

But there are several flies in the ointment with this theory. For a start, the McGuinness, Principle Management and Live Nation story is still far from conclusion. When you delve a little deeper with what we know to date, you have to wonder what exactly Live Nation are buying here beyond mere goodwill. As we pointed out a fortnight ago, Principle are not a big management company compared to the mammoths like Quest or Q Prime so there are no clients to catch, especially since Live Nation already have the big ‘uns wrapped up tight. The company’s only other recent big management client, PJ Harvey, left some months ago and is now managed by Brian Message and Sumit Bothra at ATC Management. If I was a Live Nation shareholder looking at a lot of red ink, I’d wonder what we were doing here. But, then again, what’s $30 million when you’re looking at losses of $41.5 million?

U2′s omerta on this is quite telling. Aside from the lack of a public statement praising their former manager or welcoming Guy Oseary to the gang, there’s also been very little spin channeled through trusted sources. Look at those personalities and media outlets who consider themselves to be inside the tent and they’re spinning the same story as everyone else. Even those trusted names have nothing else to be going on with. All the stories and analysis from the pals-of-U2 read the same as the non-pals-of-U2. It’s a rum one.

Then, there’s the fact, which emerged via Billboard, that Guy Oseary has been handling the band’s business for ages. While OTR sources indicate that McGuinness was thinking about stepping down some time ago and a scheme to recruit a successor was in train, it’s striking that not a word about the new manager emerged over the last few months when he was making calls and taking meetings on their behalf. In a time when everything gets leaked one way or the other, especially with so many meetings and loose lips, this is better security than the NSA. Then again, isn’t the job of managing a band like U2 at this stage of their career more about administation than anything else?

All the loose ends which existed a fortnight ago when this story broke are still there. And it’s worth noting that all the other stuff which has been part and parcel of the U2 story over the last while haven’t gone away either. We talk, of course, about tax. It’s the elephant in the room which comes up every time a microphone is pushed in front of Bono – be it home or away – and it’s one which he is sounding more and more exasperated having to deal with. The fact that he’s spun Ireland’s “tax competitiveness” into both interviews shows what’s in his crib-notes about how to try to deflect these questions.

The singer may look upon it as a stick to beat the band with, but it doesn’t sit well with the social ventures which the singer has championed in recent years. It also means the band, who have always valued their standing with right-on movements and organisations, are now seen as dwelling on the other side of the fence. Of course, as members of the one per cent, U2 were always on that side of the barricades, but they played a good game in pretending otherwise.

In that interview with Gay Byrne (transcript of the relevant sections here), the singer talked tough rather than fuzzy to show a difference between Bono the businessman and Bono the artist. It doesn’t wash because one thing always shadows the other. For as long as U2 will be written about or talked about or commented on, the tax will follow them around like one of the Edge’s hats. It’s inevitable. It doesn’t help a singer who takes up the cudgels and goes out to fight the good fight on behalf of others that his own tax affairs don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The lads when they weren’t worrying about tax
Still, they’ll try their best. You can expect more announcements about the new album and forthcoming tour (watch for the spin about “their last tour ever”) to come as the machine begins to crank up. It will be interesting to see if Oseary begins to bring his own men and women into play or if he’ll stick with the old loyalists across the board. It will also be interesting to see if U2 move any more of their business interests abroad – they’ve started so they might as well finish – and what that will mean for perception at home. Then again, judging by the tone of that Bono interview above, they may have reached the end of their tether with the views at home.

Copyright 2013 U2 France / http://www.u2france.com/actu

Johannesburg — Former president Nelson Mandela’s daughter Zenani is pleased that Irish band U2 has written a special song for the film “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom”, she said on Tuesday.

“Bono and the band have been supporters of my father and the 46664 campaign for many years,” Mandela said in a statement.

She was at the screening of the film at The Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on Monday, “…and I am delighted that they hosted the screening tonight together with Anna Wintour”.

Wintour is the editor of American Vogue magazine.

The film’s producer Anant Singh thanked Mandela for representing South Africa at the screening.

“The venue of The Ziegfeld Theatre is of special significance to us and to Zenani as she was with Madiba when he was the guest of honour at the benefit screening of ‘Cry, The Beloved Country’ for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund which took place there 18 years ago,” Singh said.

Actors Idris Elba, who plays Mandela, and Naomie Harris, who plays Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and the film’s director Justin Chadwick were at the screening.

The film will be released in South Africa on Thursday, and in other countries thereafter.

Copyright 2013 U2 France / http://www.u2france.com/actu