“I can get it to a point where I know I could probably do it better, but…”
-Mike Cooley
Georgia-by-way-of-Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers are by nature what so many bands today aspire to be by artifice: authentic, American, rootsy rock’n’roll. They first hit the national radar with their third album, Southern Rock Opera, an ambitious double-album which used the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd as a metaphor for the decline of the South as a whole.
Ever since, even while weathering lineup and label changes, they’ve cranked out a great new record on a near-yearly basis in a decade-long winning streak that few bands have equaled.
Directed by Joe Wright (whose previous credits include Atonement and The Soloist), Hanna is a boldly original suspense thriller which stars Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement and The Lovely Bones), Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Eric Bana (Star Trek and The Time Traveler’s Wife).
Hanna (Ronan) is a teenage girl who has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a soldier; these come from being raised by her father (Bana), an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own (Blanchett). As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity.
To mark the release of Hanna, which will be in theaters on April 8, SuicideGirls has teamed up with Focus Features for a special competition.
“I’m ready to fight and I’m ready to sing.”
– Pearl Aday
It’s a cool Los Angeles night at the Standard Hotel and the scantily clad girl in the Plexiglas cage above the concierge desk is nodding off… but then again, Mondays are always a little slow. A drifter ambles past the front entrance, down the sidewalk, mouthing along to whatever voice rattles through his head. Meanwhile rock singer Pearl Aday and I are holed up in a booth in the hotel’s the street-side diner. As she drinks tea and I sip merlot, we talk about the current state of music, more specifically women in rock-n-roll, and Pearl is pissed off.
The first time I saw Che Smith was in the basement of the Purdue Student Union in West Lafayette, Indiana. The Malcontents, a local ska band, were playing a free show in the student center on what was hopefully a weekend night, given the amount of substances I consumed. That evening, while The Malcontents were jamming out a reggae-vibe number called “We Make Profits,” and I was three-quarters into a bottle of Captain Morgan, someone started free-styling over the song – Rhymefest.
Despite starting the night in the basement of a Purdue building and waking up some sixty miles away at Butler University, I remember that song. It was, and remains, one of the single greatest live music moments in my life. But the reason I’m writing about Rhymefest, or rather Che Smith, isn’t because of his music, it’s because Che Smith is running for Alderman of Chicago’s 20th Ward.
Most of the media has defined Che Smith as a childhood friend of Kayne West, a Grammy-winner for “Jesus Walks With Me,” and the winner of a hip-hop battle with Eminem. All of these things are true, but that’s not the entire story.
Filmed on a budget of just $4 million dollars, Red State shows a side of Kevin Smith that the world has never seen before. Known for his raunchy nerd comedies, the pseudo-horror Red State defiantly stands out from his other works.
Red State has been the fuel of many an internet fire since its announcement in back in 2006. To start things off, the film’s budget did not include advertising money. As an attempt to avoid the “studio math,” the Harvey Boys studio intends to advertise the movie with viral word of mouth. Then in January, at the Sundance Film Festival, Smith announced his plans to self-distribute the film as the first SModcast Picture, launching things with a road tour that started on March, 5.
On Tuesday, March 22, Red State made its stop in Denver, CO; where I had a chance to catch the movie and a Q&A after with Smith.
In the previous installments of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys. Meanwhile, Katya is similarly “enjoying” a night out with the girls. However, though the no-longer happy couple are experiencing separate but parallel nights out, they exist in the same universe, so there’s a chance their worlds will collide at some point. Unfortunately for Mikhail, the collision comes just as he strikes up a promising conversation at the bar with an intriguing female called Bridget.
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Please Use Rear Exit: Chapter 11 – Confrontation @ Anything
Katya peaked around Jayson and smiled bashfully before striking a weird pose in some joke of a gesture. Whether it was intuition or the knowledge that he had ignored all those calls after breaking her heart or that Katya was just that transparent, Mikhail didn’t know, but he certainly knew that his ex was fucking furious. Her surprise and subsequent movements were aggressive, even as anyone else would probably perceive them as playful…Katya was livid.
“Theres as much chaos in planting vines…”
– Maynard James Keenan
Ghost towns have a bad reputation: Shop doors creak, saloons swirl with phantoms of unloved prostitutes, rotting jail cells are haunted by remorseless outlaws, and the dusty streets are patrolled by spirits of hardened deputies.
For some, ghost towns are merely creepy roadside attractions; for others they are American landmarks brimming with history’s shadows and latent inspiration. The abandoned mining settlement of Jerome, Arizona is one of the oldest and largest American ghost towns. Until recently, its roads lay ruined and its doors were boarded up. It quietly waited for some headstrong thrill-seeker to dust it off and polish its potential. Now a vibrant artist community, Jerome is the place that Maynard James Keenan calls home.
