COMICBOOK RESOURCES: After the short prologue in last month’s “Superman” #700, the J. Michael Straczynski-penned “Grounded” begins this week with Superman beginning his walk across America by stopping in Philadelphia. The idea of “Grounded” has divided a lot of fans between those that want Superman to have big, exciting adventures and those that prefer the quieter, more introspective stories. While I fall in the latter camp, it’s hard not to find parts of “Superman” #701 laughable in its cheesiness, right down to a premise that brings to mind “Forrest Gump,” complete with Superman’s lack of explanation, stating that he’s walking […]
REM’s Fables Of The Reconstruction 25 Years Later
POP MATTERS: Recording outside of the American South for the first time, R.E.M. imbued Fables of the Reconstruction with the spirit of its place of origin. What largely set early alt-rock bands like R.E.M. apart from the punk and post-punk movements with which they coexisted was how they rebelled against the present by signifying sounds and iconography from the pre-punk past, albeit in a recontexualized, postmodern fashion. In R.E.M.’s case, this tendency had been manifested in its early work by Peter Buck’s Byrdsian guitar jangle and in the band’s vague rural mystique, one that was provincial without being cliché. Fables […]
CINEMA: Through The Glass Darkly
AMER (2009, directed by Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 90 minutes, Belgium) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC A beautiful woman alone in a spooky estate. A straight razor. The creaking sounds of black leather. All the elements of a giallo, the violent Italian crime thrillers of the seventies, are present in Amer,a homage to the form made by Belgian directors Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani. But it is merely the elements that are present because this experimental film leaves much of the form missing. Originally, directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento popularized the genre by featuring these foreboding elements […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: With AP Ticker
AP says ‘good riddance’ to the Ducks, the Gulf spill and Mel G. Plus, the auspicious debut of our new sportscaster, Hot Carl!
THE HARSHEST MELLOW: New Jersey’s Medical Marijuana Law Will Be The Strictest In The Land — Assuming It Ever Actually Goes Into Effect
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY Of all the shitty ways to die, ALS is arguably the shittiest. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and in short it is slow death brought on by the steady and methodical withering of the nerves that control your muscles. First, you can’t button your shirt. Then, you can’t walk and eventually, you can’t breathe. The cruelest irony is that the disease does not affect higher brain function, and so even at the very end, you are a fully present mind trapped in […]
CINEMA: Saints And Sinners
GONE WITH THE POPE (2010, directed by Duke Mitchell, 83 minutes, U.S.) THE TEMPTATION OF ST. TONY (2009, directed by Veiko Õunpuu, 110 minutes, Estonia) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Monday night’s screening of Gone With The Pope lived up to all its perverse promise. Where does one begin? The film was shot in 1976 but never assembled into a final cut by its director Duke Mitchell. Duke’s infamy began when he was the Dean Martin part of a pair of Martin and Lewis imitators known as “Mitchell and Petrillo” (their astonishing act can be seen in the 1952 film […]
BREAKING: George Steinbrenner Is Dead
NEW YORK TIMES: George Steinbrenner, who bought a declining Yankees team in 1973, promised to stay out of its daily affairs and then, in an often tumultuous reign, placed his formidable stamp on 7 World Series championship teams, 11 pennant winners and a sporting world powerhouse valued at perhaps $1.6 billion, died Tuesday morning. He was 80 and lived in Tampa, Fla. The Yankees announced the death without giving a cause. Mr. Steinbrenner’s death came eight months after the Yankees won their first World Series title since 2000, clinching their six-game victory over the Philadelphia Phillies at his new Yankee […]
THE END IS NEAR: Wall Street Hedges The Apocalypse
DAILY FINANCE: The patron saint of the Wall Street apocalypse society may be Barton Biggs. The leader of Traxis Partners, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, Biggs has gained a reputation for his dire predictions, particularly those of his much-quoted 2008 analysis of World War II, Wealth, War and Wisdom. At the end of the book, Biggs offers his conclusions from his brief study of history, suggesting the likelihood of a future era in which “People with wealth” will face “another time of cholera when the Four Horsemen will ride again and the barbarians unexpectedly will be at their gate.” Biggs offers […]
RIP: Harvey Pekar, Professional Everyman, Dead At 70
NEW YORK TIMES: Harvey Pekar, the irascible writer who spun the mundane details of his own life and the quotidian existences of his fellow Cleveland residents into comic-book narratives, and who showed that the comic-book panel could include everyday feelings of anxiety and disappointment as easily as it does the adventures of costumed heroes, has died, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reported. He was 70. Mr. Pekar was best known for his on-again, off-again comics series “American Splendor,” whose title deliberately contrasted with the everyday people it documented (often the author himself). A wide range of illustrators contributed to its […]
GREATEST HITS: Q&A With Author Rick Moody
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] EDITOR’S NOTE: Rick Moody will be speaking at the Free Library on July 29th. The following interview ran back in 2007, upon the release of Right Livelihoods. BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Rick Moody tackles the hallucinatory pathologies of American paranoia in Right Livelihoods, a collection of three thematically-connected novellas. Each story centers on a paranoid protagonist who serves as unreliable narrator and as a result, the reader spends an awful lot of time wondering just what the hell is going on — which only adds to the ultra-vivid realism and disconcerting familiarity of it all. […]
DUCKBOAT DOWN: Plot Thickens As Details Emerge
FOXPHILADELPHIA: The NTSB says in its interviews, the Duck Boat captain said he made radio calls to the Caribbean Sea, the tug pulling the barge, without a response from the tug boat. Other people on nearby vessels also heard the distress calls from the Duck Boat. The NTSB says the mate of the tug took the fifth amendment and would not speak with investigators. There were four other crew members on the tug. On deckhand was sleeping at the time of the accident, while the three other crew members, including the ship’s master, spoke with investigators. The Caribbean Sea’s GPS […]
SIDEWALKING: The Eagle Has Landed
American Bald Eagle, Elmwood Park Zoo, Norristown 9:39 AM by JEFF FUSCO ***
BOOKS: To Kill A Mockingbird Turns 50
TOM BROKAW: It was one of those memorable pieces of literary fiction that came along at an impressionable time in my life, and also in the country’s life. Dr. King had already started the movement at that point, we were paying attention on national television every night on the network news to what was going on in the South, and this book spoke to us. I knew people like that, who were willing to stand up in these kinds of communities against the conventional wisdom of the time. Racism didn’t stop at the Mason-Dixon Line. A lot of those same […]