by Fred Topel
“It’s rare that you see the daughter killing the mother.”
– Joe Wright
Hanna is the first action movie from director Joe Wright, whose previous credits include Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and The Soloist.
The film stars Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) in the title role of a teenage assassin, who was raised in isolation and given a military-style training by her mysterious ex-CIA father Erik (Eric Bana). When she re-enters society at 16, secret agents, led by Marissa (Cate Blanchett), come looking for her, and a thrilling cat and mouse chase of sorts ensues. On the road, Hanna meets a traveling family and befriends their daughter Sophie (Jessica Barden). With their help, while in pursuit of her mission, Hanna finds a conscience and comes to question her very being.
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by Keith Daniels
“Oh, it can be done. I just didn’t do it. That will be on my tombstone.”
– Bill Corbett
Rifftrax is perfect for fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the beloved cult cable TV series about a man stranded in space with two robots who is forced to watch terrible sci-fi movies. Created by former MST3K writer and star Michael J. Nelson, Rifftrax continues his earlier show’s tradition of riffing movie commentary to go along with cinematic turds and classics alike. What Rifftrax misses from MST3K in its lack of skits and puppetry, it makes up for in its ability – freed from the legal wrangling that constrained MST3K – to riff on literally any movie Mike and his crew can stand to watch.
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by Fred Topel
“You could say this is a mainstream film if an alien’s saying it”
– Greg Mottola
Our favorite Simon Pegg and Nick Frost projects were directed by Edgar Wright. That’s Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the BBC series Spaced. While Wright made Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Pegg and Frost wrote a script for the comedy Paul, and Greg Mottola got to direct them.
In Paul, Frost and Pegg play aspiring sci-fi authors and fans who begin a road trip at San Diego Comic-Con. After a montage of Comic-Con adventures, they take to the road again to visit America’s alien sites. Soon they meet a real alien, Paul (Seth Rogen), and have to help him get home.
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by Keith Daniels
“What I’d like my daughter to do is to be a critical thinker.”
– Kari Byron
MythBusters, Discovery Channel’s hit show which attempts to test popular legends, misconceptions, and tropes, is coming back on April 6th for their eighth year of bringing science with a heavy dose of explosives to television.
Co-host Kari Byron started as an intern at fellow host Jamie Hyneman’s special-effects shop M5 Industries at practically the same moment the show first began filming. From her first appearance as a model for an experiment, her critical thinking, artistic sensibility, and on-screen charisma allowed her role on the show to grow until she became part of a trio of co-hosts with special-effects veterans Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci who now have their own shop, M7, and test myths for the show in parallel with the original core duo of Hyneman and Adam Savage.
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by Fred Topel
“I think there has to be a nonviolent democratic revolution”
– Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel has never made easy films. Basquiat was a biography of the street artist who became a protege of Andy Warhol. Before Night Falls portrayed exiled gay author Reinaldo Arenas. And The Diving Bell and the Butterfly told the story of author Jean-Dominique Bauby – all from the point of view of the one eye from which he could see after a paralyzing stroke.
Miral is a story set in the midst of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, told through the eyes of a Palestinian girl. Miral (Freida Pinto) grows up in a Palestinian orphanage, where her teacher, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), encourages her to stay out of politics. But young activists in the PLO like Hani (Omar Metwally) are powerful examples to Miral, and she wants to get involved.
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by Helen Jupiter
“All this meaningless, worthless input beamed into kids brains. Where is…”
– Todd Rutherford
Gram Rabbit is not your average band. They’re not writing the kind of boring, junk pop standards that you hear on the radio or see performed on the ubiquitous “Late Night” shows. Instead, the Joshua Tree-based band is constantly striving to push the boundaries of rock, pop, and electronic music.
Their first two albums, Music to Start a Cult to and Cultivation, were lyrically inspired and musically complex. Their third album, Radio Angel and the Robot Beat, plays like the soundtrack to a darkly-edged dance party, and offers the same adventurous variety of styles and sounds.
You can listen to some of the tracks on their website, then pick it up on CDBaby and throw your own “naked dance party.”
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by Erin Broadley
“We have chemistry that you spend your entire career trying to find.”
– James Michael, Sixx: AM
In Los Angeles, the music industry is more than just a business. For some it’s a game, a l’enfant terrible experiment of intoxicating proportions. For others, it’s an asylum. It’s a labyrinth of lunatics, all lost amongst themselves and all scrambling for something to protect them from the deafening roar of self-destruction. All too often drug addiction becomes the mute button. As Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx details in The Heroin Diaries, it’s an industry that is mysterious and beautiful, as well as shattering, and one whose battles get waged right here, in our hearts, and often at the expense of our own artists.
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