by Daniel Robert Epstein

“It’s my job to fool people into seeing me in another way.”
– Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe worked with Mr. Cronenberg on the film eXistenZ and delivered a creepy performance. Creepy performances in films like Shadow of the Vampire, Auto Focus and Wild at Heart seem to be Dafoe’’s stock in trade, but for Wes Anderson’’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou he trades all that in to play Klaus the goofily tragic first mate aboard Zissou’s ship.

Read our exclusive interview with Willem Dafoe on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“It’’s my theory that 90 percent of acting is the other actor.”
– Angelica Huston

Should I be lusting after Angelica Huston, a woman that’’s almost twice my age? I don’’t know if it’’s a holdover from when she used to glide across the room as Morticia Addams but she is wicked sexy. Plus, now that she is an intimate part of the Wes Anderson oeuvre, it makes her even sexier. She has a serious lock on the loving ice queen in films which she continues as the estranged wife of Bill Murray’’s lead character in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Read our exclusive interview with Angelica Huston on SuicideGirls.com.

by Brad Warner

People have been asking me for my thoughts about the shooting at the sikh temple outside of Milwaukee. It’s hard to say much except to once again state that there are too damned many guns in the United States. But I’ve already given that rant.

Lots of people are speculating that the shooter probably believed that the Sikhs he killed were Muslims and that this was some sort of revenge for the attacks in New York and Washington, DC on Sept. 11, 2001. Some have said that he was a white supremacist. Some are saying he was in a punk rock or heavy metal band supposedly called End Apathy. The Huffington Post has the most information on that aspect of the story. According to them the guy played bass in some of what they’re calling “hate rock” bands.

Of all that stuff, it’s the idea that he was a punk rocker that bothers me the most. The other things are all kind of obvious. White supremacists are bad. People who kill others for their religion are bad. People who can’t tell the difference between Muslims and Sikhs are stupid. Blah-blah-blah. I agree with all that. Who needs to hear yet another person say those things?

But I’ve always been one of those people who said that violent music or art did not necessarily lead to actual violence. I still believe that. But I also believe that violent art and music definitely can tend to make unbalanced people believe that real violence is OK. That appears to be at least part of what happened here.

All of the punk rock that I liked was very left-wing. But there was plenty of hateful stuff in there. The Dicks, who Zero Defex (the band I play bass in) played with a few times had songs like “Dicks Hate the Police”. MDC, whose name at one time meant Millions of Dead Cops, often had violent messages in their songs. MDC were big supporters of Zero Defex back in the day and we even played with them in Cleveland this year.

The photo of Zero Defex I put on this blog bugged some people who saw it when I posted it years ago because there’s a Nazi flag behind us. That’s me on the far left, just under the logo for The Dale, the bar we were playing at that night. The scowling skinhead in the middle is Tommy Strange, our main songwriter and guitarist. Although this was apparently taken during one of the songs that he sang while Jimi, our vocalist, played guitar because you can see Jimi just behind and to Tommy’s left with a guitar strapped on. I Photoshopped the picture to bring out the duct tape “No” symbol we put over the swastika on the flag to make it clear that we were against the Nazis and not for them. A lot of people didn’t catch that when I originally posted this picture. I still wonder where we ever got a Nazi flag. Think of the money we could’ve made selling that! A lot more than we got for the gig, I’m sure.

In any case, I never really thought those violent anti-police and anti-government messages were to be taken literally. To me it was a verbal working out of the frustrations we all felt at the way police and government power was abused. I didn’t think those bands were trying to incite people to literally go out there and murder police officers. Perhaps I’m naive, but I still don’t think it was meant to be taken literally.

Then again, maybe I’m like the dumb guys in the comedy heavy metal band Spinal Tap who said, “We say love your neighbor. Well, we don’t literally say it. And we don’t literally mean it either. But in any case that message should be clear.”

I feel like the problem isn’t so much the violent messages, even if some of the people who send them possibly really do want us to commit violent acts. It’s people’s inability to differentiate between art and reality. Even if you might argue that this isn’t the root problem, I still think it’s the problem we have to deal with because violent art is not going away. It’s been with us as long as art has been with us. And in the age of the internet it’s as impossible to control access to violent artistic images as it is to control access to pornography. So rather than trying to make all art conform to some kind of arbitrary code of niceness I think it’s better to try and educate people that it’s one thing to say “kill the cops” and a whole different thing to actually do that stuff.

In Buddhism there is an idea that right thought leads to right action. Conversely non-right thought can lead to non-right action. Thích Nhat Hanh cautions his followers not to consume what he calls “poisonous entertainment” that feeds our agitation. Dogen, too, told his followers much the same thing 800 years ago. I do not disagree with this approach. And yet I wonder…

As I have said many times, in my own case punk rock saved my life. It literally did. I was a suicidally depressed teenager. And one of the few things that kept me going were the so-called “negative messages” in punk rock music as well as in horror films and other supposedly “poisonous entertainment.” These messages let me know that I was not the only one who was frustrated by the status quo and wanted things to change.

Without these supposedly “negative messages” I would have felt totally lost and alone in the nice, clean suburbs of Ohio. Who knows? My frustration at all the supposedly “positive messages” I was receiving, which really just reinforced the false notion that everything was OK in the world, might have led me to take up a gun and shoot all the preps and the jocks in my school. So-called “positive messages” are often just propaganda intended to help big corporations and the like control the populace, keeping them docile by insisting that everything they do makes life peachy keen.

It’s impossible to say anything really conclusive about all this. But I think it’s good to say something non-conclusive. I don’t have the great answer to this problem and neither does anyone else. I think it’s really vital, though, to look at all sides of this issue.

Just moments ago I did an interview on Freedomizer Radio out of Houston, Texas. You can listen to it at freedomizerradio.com

Oct. 26-28 Weekend Sesshin Kajo Zendo in Finland

Oct. 30 – Nov. 4 International Lay Buddhists Forum in Malaga, Spain

Nov. 9 Dogen Zendo in Frankfurt , Germany

Nov. 10 Balance Yoga in Frankfurt, Germany

Nov. 11 – 21 Possible dates in The Netherlands and/or Germany (Most likely Nov. 16-18 in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, but nothing is confirmed yet)

Nov. 23-25 Weekend Sesshin at Fawcett Mill Fields in Penrith, Lake District, UK (Sponsored by Yoga Manchester
)
Nov. 25 Manchester, UK (Sponsored by Yoga Manchester)

[..]

by Alex Dueben

“I wanted it to be the kind of book that I love to read”
– G. Willow Wilson

G Willow Wilson first made a name for herself in comics in 2007 when the graphic novel Cairo which she wrote was published by Vertigo. It made quite a splash, combining fantasy and realism in an attempt to capture life in Egypt’s capital city. She followed it up with the series Air, which was illustrated by her Cairo collaborator M.K. Perker. Her other comics work includes Superman, The Outsiders, Vixen, and most recently Mystic. She’s also published nonfiction in many places including The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times. In 2010 her memoir The Butterfly Mosque, was published about her move after college to Cairo where she met her future husband and came to fall in love with the country.

Her new book, Alif the Unseen, is her first novel. It tells the story of a hacker in an unnamed Arab Gulf country, and involves the jinn, a battle with the state security services overseen by “The Hand,” the nature of storytelling, the power of the internet and climaxes in a revolution. It’s also a book that was written before The Arab Spring erupted last year. We caught up with Wilson and spoke about the book and the current political climate in the Middle East following the Egyptian Presidential election.

Read our exclusive interview with G. Willow Wilson on SuicideGirls.com.

by A.J. Focht

Following the tremendous success Joss Whedon’s The Avengers found in theaters, Whedon has been signed on to write and direct the second film. Even more exciting, Whedon is helping develop the unnamed ABC television series set in the Marvel universe. The top current theories as to what show might be are either the Hulk show or a spy series based on S.H.I.E.L.D.

Thor: The Dark World is set to release on November 8, 2013. Aside from incorporating the Dark Elves, not much is known about the storyline. Former Dr. Who Christopher Eccleston has been cast as one of the film’s villains, and the current rumor mill suggests he will be the king of the Dark Elves. According to Rene Russo, Thor and Loki’s mother, Frigga, will also have a larger role in the movie.

Marvel’s got a lot of movies in the works, and the next new original project is going to be Guardians of the Galaxy. Three-time Black List writer Chris McCoy has been hired to pen the script. Guardians of the Galaxy will be the cinema premier for several of Marvel’s lesser known characters. The announced cast of heroes includes: Star-Lord, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Groot, and Rocket Raccoon. The movie is scheduled in theaters in August 2014.

Marvel and Fox Studios have been working trade deals all week. The original offer consisted of extending Fox’s rights to Daredevil on the condition that they let Disney/Marvel take back Galactus from Fantastic Four. Fox has decided to turn down the offer and they are talking about letting the rights revert to Disney, unless the home of the Mickey Mouse is interested in co-financing a Daredevil movie.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises recently hit theaters, but that hasn’t stopped Warner Bros. from thinking about the next Batman reboot. The Batman reboot is rumored to take flight just four years from now in 2016. Thought to be titled The Batman, it will take place in the Justice League universe of DC’s planned 2015 Justice League movie. The Batman won’t be an origins story, but instead will follow Batman’s second year of crime fighting.

The long awaited World of Warcraft movie has gained some recent movement. Sam Raimi recently confirmed he would not be directing as has been suggested as far back as 2009. Writer Charles Leavitt has been hired on to direct the script. There is no mention of release dates or cast lists, but this bit of information at least lets us know the project isn’t dead.

Speaking of movies we haven’t heard about for a while, Bryan Singer’s Battlestar Galactica film is also still on the table. The last big news was that John Orloff had been brought in to write the movie, now Singer has confirmed he is looking through Orloff’s script revisions. Singer didn’t have much more to say other than “it’s very cool” and that the movie would exist “quite well between the Glen Larson and Ron Moore universes.”

The ground breaking 48-frame release of The Hobbit is actually going to be quite limited. Warner Bros. might be convinced that high-frame rates are the way to the future, but their first high-frame release won’t even make it to all major cities. This won’t be their last chance though. Not only does The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have one sequel already planned, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, but there is the possibility of up to two more sequels. New Line has registered two potential movie titles: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The first Hobbit is set to release on December 14, 2012, and the second a year later on December 13, 2013.

by Alex Dueben

“It was bitter for all of us when Brandon Lee was killed”
– John Shirley

John Shirley may not be a household name, but for three decades he’s been an incredibly influential and prolific writer. He was one of the most important early writers in the movement that would later be called cyberpunk, and William Gibson and others have paid tribute to his influence. Shirley’s novel City Come A-Walkin’ and his later trilogy A Song Called Youth – which has recently been re-released in a single volume omnibus edition – remain among two of the best cyberpunk works ever published. Shirley is also an award winning horror and fantasy writer perhaps best known for novels like Demons, Bleak History, and Dracula in Love, and short story collections like Heatseeker and In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley.

A singer/songwriter who’s fronted a number of bands and has written lyrics for bands including Blue Oyster Cult, Shirley is also a screenwriter who’s worked in film and television. He was the original writer on the movie The Crow and has written episodes of TV shows including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Profit, “VR.5, Poltergeist: Legacy, Batman Beyond, and The Real Ghostbusters.

Shirley’s newest project is The Crow: Death and Rebirth, a comic miniseries released by IDW, the second issue of which has just been released. Shirley spoke with SG over e-mail to talk about his return to the concept of The Crow, which also marks his return to cyberpunk.

Read our exclusive interview with John Shirley on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“Every good director makes his actor think every idea was his own creation.”
– Jeremy Irons

Jeremy Irons is best known for starring in the David Cronenberg film, Dead Ringers. But of course that was back in 1988, now Jeremy Irons is transporting us even farther back in time by starring in The Merchant of Venice which is directed by Michael Radford. Irons plays Antonio to Al Pacino’s Shylock.

Read our exclusive interview with Jeremy Irons on SuicideGirls.com.