REMINDER: Still playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because The Dude Abides. BY ED KING, ROCK EXPERT Hey, I remember reading about this band! This was Tom Petty‘s Gainesville, FL band before he was signed as a solo artist, putting Mudcrutch bandmates Mike Campbell (guitar) and Benmont Tench (keyboards) on the payroll. Last month saw the release of an honest-to-goodness Mudcrutch album, with guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh easing back into what must have been a 32-year interrupted dream. Meanwhile, the three who carried over to the Heartbreakers get a chance to cultivate their beards, get their garage band improv […]
CINEMA: The Evil That Men Do
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (2008, directed by Errol Morris, 118 minutes, U.S.)BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC He sure has come a long way since pondering why people bury their critters in pet cemeteries. Esteemed documentarian Errol Morris may have started out with whimsical examinations of the American psyche, but as his career has progressed his subject matter has gained gravitas, culminating in 2003’s Fog of War, a profile of Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara. Although the events covered in Fog of War were 40 years old Morris, was able to concentrate on the disturbing reality of executing a war in a […]
RIP: Sydney Pollack, Super-Mensch, Dead At 73
NEW YORK TIMES: Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73. The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family. Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking […]
CINEMA: Whip It Good
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008, directed by Steven Spielberg, 124 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICWhen Raiders of the Lost Ark arrived in 1981, it was a 180-degree turn from the epics that the other New Generation Hollywood directors were making; let them have their glowering Colonel Kurtzes and their wife-beating Jake LaMottas. Spielberg and Lucas would reinvent the movie serials of ’30s & ’40s, with their iconic heroes and all the thrills of 13 chapters stuffed into a two-hour feature. Spielberg’s gift with pure action transformed Raiders into something transcendent, and in the […]
CANNES: The Revolution Is Not Ready To Be Televisied
FIRST SHOWING: Ocean’s Thirteen director Steven Soderbergh’s latest project is a set of two films shot back-to-back about Che Guevara titled individually The Argentine and Guerrilla. Both are premiering at the Cannes Film Festival this month under the name Che as a 268 minute presentation. The Argentine: On November 26, 1956, Fidel Castro sails to Cuba with eighty rebels. One of those rebels is Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine doctor who shares a common goal with Fidel Castro — to overthrow the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Che proves indispensable as a fighter, and quickly grasps the art of guerrilla […]
MEOW MIX: Hugs, Uggs, Juggs & Greed
Droll, ironic question: Does this picture of Jennifer Aniston in Philly (we assume for the Middlebrow & M shoot) count as distasteful paparazzi dreck? No, for many reasons, but nobody’s about to waste your time waxing all smug-like on the deep, reasoned and ultimately, understandable only to myself thought process I used to decide…DEVELOPING… I will, however, acknowledge being unsurprised at the speed with which Aniston embraced the city’s native dress code of pajama bottoms and out-of-style footwear. (Dude. Those things look new. ) All she needs is a Kathy Van Zeeland handbag and no car insurance and bam! she’s […]
CINEMA: The High Lonesome
MISTER LONELY (2007, directed by Harmony Korine, 112 minutes, U.S.)SUPER HIGH ME (2007, directed by Michael Blieden, 89 minutes. U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICThe original plan was to pop in on a late Sunday night screening of Harmony Korine’s new film Mr. Lonely and do a quick overnight review. If only Korine’s latest oddball masterpiece allowed me to keep my senses. Nearly a decade since his last film, 1999’s disappointing Julien Donkey-Boy, Korine has returned, wielding his mix of naive tone poetry, stunning-yet-bizarro visual non-sequiturs and cruel flashes of raw sadism with a more assured hand than ever. While […]
All This Happened While You Were On The Internet
THE LIFE DRAMATIC: Owen Wilson shooting Marley & Me, Broad & Walnut, 1:45 PM * RELATED: Actress Kate Hudson has denied rumours she is engaged to Owen Wilson. Hudson, 29, was spotted sporting a diamond ring on her wedding finger on Thursday, fuelling speculation the on-off couple is taking their relationship to the next level. The pair met on the set of 2006 movie ‘You, Me & Dupree’ and were romantically linked later that year after Hudson split from her husband of six years, rocker Chris Robinson. The couple parted ways in June 2007, just two months before Wilson’s alleged […]
ARTSY: The Filth & The Fury
THE INDEPENDENT: John Currin is a shooting star of American figurative painting whose trajectory to fame and riches peaked gloriously five years ago with a retrospective at three major world museums. But he has some explaining to do. The 46-year-old has since controversially switched galleries, performed a curious vanishing trick and now… well, his latest flesh-on-canvas efforts would make Hugh Hefner blush. Indeed, he now acknowledges that several factors contributed to what was indeed a long dry period after the retrospective – a time when, he says, he was also depressed and experiencing a disconcerting “impotence with the brush.” Currin […]
HELTER SKELTER: Cops Dig Up Death Valley Ranch For More Bodies; Lohan Axed From Manson Flick
[“It’s Too Late To Fall In Love With Sharon Tate” By ALEX FINE] ASSOCIATED PRESS: INDEPENDENCE, Calif. — National Park Service officials say the Death Valley ranch where Charles Manson was arrested will be closed for a second time this year to search for possible human remains. A press release Thursday said that Barker Ranch will be closed for up to four days later this month. A team of forensic researchers found possible unmarked graves at the site in February that they believe could be the bodies of additional Manson victims. The park was briefly closed in April, but digging […]
CINEMA: It’s Mamet, Dammit
Redbelt (2008, directed by David Mamet, 99 min., U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICThe first thing that people usually mention about playwright/filmmaker David Mamet is the potty mouth, the rapid-fire profane dialogue that gives his scripts a steadily salty taste, like an open sore in your mouth. Obscured by all that musical cursing is the fact that Mamet is one of our premiere mystery writers, and Redbelt is the foul-mouthed Agatha Christie’s tenth feature as a director. Like any writer at this stage in his career, Mamet’s work is part inspiration and part compulsive habit. The director continues to find […]
Q&A: It’s Too Late To Fall In Love With Sharon Tate
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Meet Roza Frykowska, 26, a recent emigre from Lodz, Poland. She is a barista at Cafe Ole in Old City. She is also an up and coming photographer, and recently started shooting for Suicide Girls. All of that would make her interview-worthy in and of itself in our book, but wait, it gets better, or worse, actually. Roza’s grandfather, the filmmaker Wojtech Frykowski, came to America in the late ’60s to establish a career in Hollywood, at the behest of his dear friend, Roman Polanski. Wojtech and his then-girlfriend, Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, […]