by Ryan Stewart

This week will see the release of Revolver, the latest cinematic neckbreaker from 39-year-old British helmer Guy Ritchie. His previous gangster films, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and its follow-up, Snatch, were hailed as major events on both sides of the pond upon their release, and today are seen as cornerstones of a new film genre – the heightened-reality, super-kinetic gangster film, in which the most gruesome toughs and unlikely hoods imaginable all conspire in a near-comical, circle-jerk fashion to outdo each other and rack up the most impressive body count.

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by Ryan Stewart

Over the next few months, Hollywood’s hottest writer, Diablo Cody, will see her second and third scripts rushed into development. One of those, Girly Style, is a girl’s version of Superbad. The other is a horror film called Jennifer’s Body, starring Transformers’ Megan Fox, and it’s about – wait for it – a cheerleader that eats boys. Literally. If you want to know what kind of mind could come up with such a thing, a good place to start is with Cody’s 2005 memoir Candy Girl, which chronicles her unlikely journey from teenage miscreant in a punk band called Yak Spackle to achingly ordinary office drone to topless dancer (she went by Roxanne and other names) to popular blogger to aspiring screenwriter in her late twenties.

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by Keith Daniels

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.

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by Erin Broadley

“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, Monday’s 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.

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by Erin Broadley

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.

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by Keith Daniels

Michael Moorcock is among the greatest of all writers alive today – irrespective of genre. Alan Moore wrote, in his introduction to Moorcock’s Into the Media Web, “Look up the word ‘author’ in a dictionary and you’ll find a photograph of Michael Moorcock.”

At an age when most are barely learning to drive, Moorcock wrote and edited for magazines. He first attained fame (and notoriety) during his legendary tenure as the editor of the science-fiction magazine New Worlds from 1964 to 1971, and was the center of what many called the “New Wave” of science-fiction writers.

The material New Worlds published was often politically radical and wildly experimental, more William S. Burroughs than Robert Heinlein (who, in fact, called it a “‘sick literature’ of ‘neurotics’ and ‘sex maniacs”).

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by Alex Dueben

Cameron Stewart is a familiar name to comics fans. He has been working in the industry for years, but it was 2004’s Seaguy, a Vertigo miniseries from writer Grant Morrison, that put him on the map. Since then there have been several more of high profile projects including a sequel to Seaguy entitled Seven Soldiers: Guardian, a story arc on Batman and Robin (also written by Grant Morrison), and the Vietnam War miniseries, The Other Side (with Weapon X writer Jason Aaron).

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