This Sunday (Feb 5) on SuicideGirls Radio we’ll be learning How to Survive the Apocalypse with A Burning Opera, a musical extravaganza inspired by Burning Man, which is returning to Hollywood’s King King (Feb 21-23) after a successful run this past summer. SG Radio hosts Nicole Powers (SG’s Managing Editor) and Lacey Conner (our resident recovering reality TV star from VH1’s Rock of Love and Charm School) will be joined in-studio by Mark Nichols (The Burning Opera ’s composer), Daphne Vega (one of the LA producers), and a couple of the LA cast members.
Tune in to the world’s leading naked radio show for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don’t let yo’ momma listen in!
Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight on Indie1031.com
Got questions? Then dial our studio hotline digits this Sunday between 10 PM and midnight PST: 323-900-6012
Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…
By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.
Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.
When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.
(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)
More information has come out about Arrow, the Green Arrow pilot in production by the CW. Instead of tying the show back to Smallville and trying to capture that audience, they have really reworked the Green Arrow’s story. Oliver Queen’s mother is still alive and he will have a little sister that seems to be a catalyst for most of the trouble he has to stop. Some DC characters will show up, such as Black Canary, but they will not play their superhero roles, at least not as of yet. The part of Oliver Queen aka the Green Arrow has been given to Stephen Amell.
Marvel’s major comic event this year, Avengers VS. X-Men will be starting this March. Marvel has released a sneak preview of the Avengers VS. X-Men #0 where all the problems will start. This first issue sets up the crucial roles of Scarlet Witch and Hope Summers. The two most powerful ladies in the Marvel universe will be going head-to-head, each with a super powered team to back them.
Speaking of new comics, IDW Publishing, will be starting a Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms comic series. D&D fans have a chance to have their characters featured in the comics. You can find all the rules for the character creation contest here.
One of the biggest names in comics, Stan Lee, is launching his own website. You can sign up for updates from the site and a chance to win autographed merchandise right now, but the full site won’t launch till February 8. On top of contests and games, the sites main function will be behind-the-scenes looks into Stan’s new projects.
Zoe Saldana talked Star Trek 2 in a recent interview. While she couldn’t say much, she all but told us that there is more to come between Spock and Uhura. Star Trek writer Robert Orci also came out with a few comments, these ones directed at fans. In a fan driven industry like Star Trek, the fans are the best and worst part of it, and Orci has had enough of them second guessing him. In short, Orci pointed out that they did well with the first remake and that success has earned them a lot of leeway with the studio. He doesn’t promise the movie will be good, but he does promise it will be exactly what they want it to be.
On a final note, you can stop holding your breath waiting for Blizz Con 2012 to be announced, it’s not happening. Blizzard Entertainment would rather focus on releasing Diablo 3, Heart of the Swarm and Mists of Pandaria than wasting their time organizing another convention. This doesn’t mean they don’t love their fans and the convention will be back in 2013. As someone who has personally attended multiple Blizz Cons, they should take a break. Doing it yearly means they never have enough new news to justify bringing out thousands of fans from around the world. Hopefully, this way they will have something substantial to show us next time.
This past Sunday (January 30), SG radio presenters Nicole Powers (SG’s Managing Ed), Lacey Conner (all round rockstar and recovering VH1 reality TV star), and Darrah de jour (SG’s Red, White & Femme post-feminist sex and sensuality columnist) were joined in studio by actress turned lifestyle guru Mariel Hemingway and her partner, stuntman and fitness expert Bobby Williams. Together they have developed a holistic regimen, which they call The Willing Way.
The pair spent a full two hours in the SG Radio studio explaining their all-encompassing mind, body, and soul philosophy. Going from yin to yang, we discussed the importance of getting enough sunlight in your life (Mariel and Bobby like to watch the sun rise and set each day, though they avoid the burning midday rays), and how to keep darkness at bay. With her life having been touched by several suicides, Mariel spoke about how she battled her own depressive tendencies, and how she has empowered herself to find a sense of wellbeing.
This being SG Radio, there was also plenty of laughter, and lots of conversation on our favorite subject – sex. Thus, the first hour of our show was devoted to talk of orgasms – and the importance of having a healthy diet of them, in order to achieve a truly balanced life.
Suicide Girls are more than just pretty faces. When they’re not taking their clothes off and posing for pictures (and writing blogs), they’re making videos showcasing their many other talents. Some are jokers, some can do strange things with their tongues, some are ultra geeky, some even have strange robotic friends, some can sing, some are dancers and/or contortionists, some can do knife tricks, some share their secrets to getting laid (a lot!), some are having bad hair days, and all are 100% amusing.
This compilation, put together by Shotgun Suicide, highlights some of the best, the most memorable, and the plain silliest, from this past year.
“The way they portray bands in movies, a nine year old wouldn’t buy…”
– Courtney Taylor-Taylor
Courtney Taylor-Taylor is best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the band The Dandy Warhols. The band is favorite of many of here at SG and the favor is returned by many in the band. Taylor-Taylor is responsible for writing some of the group’s best known songs including “We Used To Be Friends” and “Bohemian Like You.” The band is still going strong and last year announced that a new album The Machine will be released in 2012.
Taylor-Taylor’s new project is something completely different however. One Model Nation is a graphic novel and an album coming out on January 31. Taylor-Taylor described the project as “We invented a German art noise band that disappeared in 1978 and then I wrote a book about the last three months of their career.”
We reached him at his home in Oregon and it’s clear from our conversation that the project is a very personal one, driven by Taylor-Taylor’s personal history and his thoughts on the world as much as it a look at late seventies Germany and events that are almost too strange to be true.
Jeremy Kasten has forged a name for himself in the filmmaking business as a brilliant, ego free person whose resume includes producing, directing, and editing films and feature content. Some may remember Kasten’s work on the Suicide Girls Must Die film or The Wizard of Gore which also starred several Suicide Girls along with Crispin Glover. When he’s not directing feature films, he spends his time editing behind the scenes footage for major films including Step Brothers, Spider Man 3, and Water for Elephants to name but a few. We caught up with Kasten to discuss his most recent work, The Theatre Bizarre which opens January 27th, 2012 in select cities. The Theatre Bizarre takes a rare and unique approach to the horror genre. The movie is comprised of six segments, each with its own director: Buddy Giovinazzo (“I Love You”), Douglas Buck (“The Accident”), David Gregory (“Sweets”), Karim Hussain (“Vision Stains”), Tom Savini (“Wet Dreams”) and Richard Stanley (“Mother of the Toads”). Jeremy Kasten was given the demanding job of tying all the segments together with a cohesive storyline of his own featuring the legendary Udo Keir.
For cities and screenings, check out The Theatre Bizarre Facebook page. If you’re a fan of horror films, you won’t want to miss this summit of brilliant directors doing what they do best.
Justin R. Beckner: May I start off by saying how much I enjoyed The Theatre Bizarre. I’ve always been a fan or horror films and I’m not quite sure why. Why do you think people are so drawn to horror films? Why do people like to be scared from time to time?
Jeremy Kasten: I think movies in general are cheap thrills. There are lots of ways people get thrills – there’s chick flicks where you get emotionally attached to the character and then you get worked up. Then there’s the shock factor which goes all the way back to silent film, The Kiss, where people were first seen kissing in a film. I think horror taps into that primordial part of our brain that responds to fear because fear is a part of us. There’s another way horror affects us in a more surreal way where a film can replicate the experience of having a nightmare. It’s like when you have a nightmare and you wake up and you’re happy to be alive, So I think horror movies can tap into our fears and affect us in that kind of way.
JB:The Theatre Bizarre is a very unique movie in that it is several short story style films within a film – each with its own director. How did all of the directors come together for this unique style of film?
JK: David Gregory and the executive producers handpicked the directors to make the film. I came on after all the films were written and a couple of the directors had already made their films but they did not have a director for the wrap around at that point. I suspect that because of the film The Wizard of Gore, which I did with SuicideGirls, they knew I could deliver a theatrical Grand-Guignol quality to the wrap around part and hold the movie together. They knew they wanted it set in a theatre, they knew they wanted some sort of lead character who would pull you through all of those short stories and give a sense of grounding to the overall story. So I got together with Zach Chassler who is my creative partner who writes a lot of my movies and he had some great ideas. I knew I wanted to do something automatons so we put our heads together and we came up with the idea that became what you see in the film after Udo [Keir] came in and added his own specific and phenomenal sensibility to it.
JB: I noticed several connections between HP Lovecraft stories and the stories in the film. Was that an intentional parallel or simply the result of each director’s influences showing through?
JK: HP Lovecraft has been a huge influence on every horror filmmaker in the twentieth century. I don’t know if it was intentional but it’s hard to look at a horror movie from the era that Lovecraft is known and not see an influence on the movie. I know that there are a couple scenes in a couple of the films that are pure Lovecraft influence – it’s not like anyone talked about it, but it’s certainly there. David Gregory took away a lot of the constraints on the directors for this film and I think that freed them up to let that Lovecraft influence shine.
JB: Did you and the other directors work in close proximity throughout the making of the film?
JK: I’m not sure anybody knew each other until this film happened. I knew David Gregory, the producer – he brought me on – but I didn’t know any of the other directors and I’m not sure that they knew each other. We’ve been to film festivals and done panels together and we all get along very well but there was not of communication among the filmmakers leading up to the movie other than reading each other’s scripts. Because I was doing the wrap around I was given all the scripts and was able to get a glimpse at a couple of the films before making the wrap around. We really all met at the first film festival the movie was at. There wasn’t a lot of communications between us until the movie was done. Since the movie has been done, we’ve formed some friendships that I think will last a long time. I was really glad to have the opportunity to work alongside some filmmakers that I admire and some of them I’ve even been influenced by their work.
JB: The Theatre Bizarre opens on Friday, January 27th, where can people go to check out this movie?
JK: It’s opening in select cities which can be found on the film’s Facebook page or at Shocktillyoudrop.com. Its opening this weekend and then they’re doing a platform release over the next couple weeks in other cities. Then eventually it will be coming out on DVD and will be available in that format as well. But if you look on the Facebook page and the film is not paying in your city, you can demand it on there and a theatre chain in your city will be more likely to book it. That’s the way it goes these days in the movie business. All the theatre has to do is pay for a person to run the projector, so if they know people will show up it makes sense for them to book the movie for a couple days. So if you’d like to see The Theatre Bizarre and it’s not in your town, I’d encourage you to be vocal about it and demand it on the Facebook page.
JB: You mentioned previously that you worked with SuicideGirls in the movie The Wizard of Gore. How was that experience?
JK: I have to say, it was really an amazing experience because when I first started that project, SG was not the brand that it has become today, it was still very much coming up. As one of the producers and editors of the Suicide Girls Must Die video, I joined that after they shot it, I was lucky enough to work with Sean and Missy on that project and get closer to SG and seeing what it had become was pretty amazing.
JB: With all the directing, producing, and editing, you’re a busy guy. What have you been working on lately aside from The Theatre Bizarre?
JK: Last fall I did the recut for the movie 11/11/11 and that came out on 11/11/11 of this past year. So it was a movie that had a really obvious promotional release date which made for an intense end of the summer for me because we basically did a total recut. But it was really cool and I learned a lot. Now I’m back doing what is essentially my day job which is where I produce and edit behind the scenes specials for movies. I’m currently working on Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Men in Black 3 which is going to be out this summer.
JB:Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter, that sounds pretty awesome.
JK: Yeah, it’s gonna kick ass. It’s by the guy who did Nightwatch which was the movie that really broke him out and then he did Daywatch. He’s pretty much a genius.
JB: Do you have any advice to people who may want to enter the filmmaking business?
JK: I would say if you’re going to do it, take yourself seriously – don’t half ass it. I think a lot of people dip their toes in the water and think that maybe they might want to try to make a movie. You’ve got to commit to it and really go for it and make every effort to know what you need to know for something, that makes a big difference. The people who are successful are usually the ones who immersed themselves and educated themselves about something. In order to break the rules, you have to know what the rules are; that’s a big part of filmmaking now in an age where everything is so wide open as far as independent films go.
JB: I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Do you have any final thoughts comments or plugs?
JK: I guess I’d like to say about this movie that I was most pleased about was what a pleasure it was to work with one of my heroes. I’ve always been a huge fan of Udo Keir, and it was a privilege to work with him because he’s so much fun and he’s so good at what he does. That was really special to me, it was a dream come true.
