The new Jackass feature film is spectacularly shitty – in an awesomely gross kind of way. And because it’s shot in 3D, the excrement literally comes flying right at you, giving the MTV-rooted franchise the opportunity to connect with its audience in a whole new, and yet familiarly meaningless way.
It’s been announced that 300 and Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder will helm the latest installment of the Superman film franchise. The news has been much anticipated after producer Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) met with several major directors including Tony Scott and Darren Aronofsky.
There are only a handful of comedians whose album releases qualify as cultural events, but Patton Oswalt is one of them. Tracks from his new CD, My Weakness is Strong are already being dissected by comedy enthusiasts in coffee shops around the country and picked apart on social networks like Twitter for the exquisite one-liners, the acutely-lobbed political grenades, and moments of inspired lunacy that compare to his memorable tangle with a screaming heckler on his last album, Werewolves and Lollipops. That CD, released during the death throes of the Bush administration, was widely hailed for its stance of supreme indignation and undercurrent of soul-weariness that mirrored the national mood at the time, and cemented Oswalts reputation as a comedian who loses no ground by going topical and getting angry.
The time warp has flipped and landed The Rocky Horror Picture Show at its 35th anniversary. Marking three and a half decades as the premier cult classic, the “sweet transvestites from Transsexual, Transylvania” are celebrating by invading your homes. Comic-Con 2010 brought the announcement that Glee would be doing a RHPS episode (which is set to air on Oct 26th), and now it has been confirmed that Dr. Frank-N-Furter & Co. will also be taking over your games console with a Guitar Hero track pack.
You can’t always control the situations you find yourself in, but you can control how you react to them. This is a lesson that Runaways frontwoman, singer and rock & roll icon Cherie Currie learned the hard way.
After a chance meeting with vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett and demented pop n’ rock Svengali Kim Fowley (a producer whose credits at the time included the novelty hit “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa”), Currie found herself at the eye of the storm that was The Runaways at age fifteen. The year was 1975, and the male-dominated industry was keen to dismiss the fledgling Los Angeles-based all-girl quintet (which, during Currie’s tenure with the group, featured Lita Ford on lead guitar, Jackie Fox on bass, and the late Sandy West on drums).
Under the guidance (or, it could be argued, misguidance) of Fowley, who was a formidable taskmaster, the girls relentlessly rehearsed until they were a beyond tight unit and a force to be reckoned with. Creatively and musically, Fowley’s berating and bullying – his primary motivational tactics – paid off. Over the course of the next two very hectic years The Runaways would leave an indelible mark on the music industry, smashing the misconceptions of those who ever doubted that women could rock.
“People’s wildest dreams are about to be answered.”
– Linda Blair
The Exorcist is considered the scariest movie of all time. Generations cowered before VHS copies, and new audiences got to see an updated version which retained the infamous upside down spider-walk in 2000. Now on Blu Ray, both versions of the film are re-mastered in high definition, and are packaged with a bonus behind the scenes documentary about the making of the film.
Linda Blair played Regan MacNeil, the teenaged girl possessed by a demon. She famously floated over the bed and her head spun 360 degrees with the help of old school special effects that still look better than any CGI creation. She then returned to the franchise for the critically panned Exorcist II: The Heretic and, in 1990, a spoof of The Exorcist called Repossessed (Leslie “Naked Gun” Nielsen was the comedy priest.)
“Their relationship is tender, and also drenched in blood.” – ”
– Matt Reeves
Tomas Alfredson’s brilliant Let the Right One In, which made SuicideGirls’ distinguished Top Ten Films of 2008 list, is no less brilliant for having been remade as Let Me In, the Americanized version in theaters this week. In fact, the exquisite direction of the remake by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) has earned it surprisingly good reviews from critics still enamored with the original, and sparked a debate in some quarters about which version is the definitive one. Whichever you prefer, the very fact of this dark story now having been positively received twice in two years is proof of its poignancy and emotional heft. With the action moved from an apartment block in Sweden to the creepy suburb of Los Alamos, New Mexico, Let Me In retells the story of Oskar (now called Owen), a shy, possibly disturbed young boy who is seeking a respite from severe school bullying when a savior appears: a quiet, severe-looking girl named Eli (now called Abby), who teaches him to stand up for himself in exchange for nothing more than his companionship, at first.
