LOS ANGELES TIMES: The monarch may have stammered terribly, but Oscar voters spoke loudly and clearly Sunday night, handing “The King’s Speech” four Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best original screenplay. The come-from-behind “King’s Speech” coup concluded a providential journey for the drama about Britain’s King George VI (played by Colin Firth, who won the lead actor Oscar) and his unconventional speech therapist, Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush). The film beat out “The Social Network,” which had been considered the likely choice for best picture for much of the fall and early winter, but ended up […]
MUST SEE TV: Exit Through The Stall Door
Enter Through the Stall Door – watch more funny videos Hilarious spoof of Banksy’s Academy Award-nominated Exit Through The Gift Shop by local filmmaker Joe Stakun, with assist from Phawker alum Tiffany Yoon. Enjoy.
SIDEWALKING: Stormy Weather
Broad & Callowhill 3:04 PM by JEFF FUSCO
Phawker Presents The Fifth Installment Of Blotto
BY LANCE DOILY I should have known how the day was going to turn out when Rex walked in with a carton of eggs tucked underneath his arm. As he’s proved time and time again, the dude couldn’t make eggs for shit, and we were all too hungover to eat anything besides a couple tugs off a Slim Jim and a fistful of Percocets anyway. Once again, we’d closed Murph’s the night before (truth be told, we actually got Dusty to come back to reopen at quarter after 2 and drank huddled next to a candle until about 5:30 this […]
CINEMA: Horny And Hornier
HALL PASS (2011, directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 98 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Could it be a bout of 1990s nostalgia that had me yearning to see a new film from the Farrelly Brothers? I’ll admit to having a blind spot when it comes to their early hit Dumb and Dumber, but 1996’s bowling opus Kingpin and 1998’s monster hit Something About Mary had a wonderfully unpredictable mix or shock and sweetness that seemed to mark the pair as a major force in film comedy. The illusion was fleeting though, with films like Shallow Hal and […]
WORTH REPEATING: Shock Doctrine In The USA
NEW YORK TIMES: Here’s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn’t Cairo after all. Maybe it’s Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence. As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular — in a bad way. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war, those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision. Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. […]
CINEMA: The Second Coming Of Cinefest
After a yearlong hiatus due to lack of funds and internal rifts, Philadelphia Cinefest is back, and promises more festival hoopla than ever before. From April 7th-14th, somewhere between 60-75 feature films will be screened at a number of Philadelphia venues, including the Ritz, the Trocadero, the Painted Bride, and the Piazza. Josh Goldbloom, (who also runs the Philadelphia Underground Film Festival) took over as art director for this year’s Cinefest. His goal: to structure a themed party around every single feature. Goldbloom said, “We’re really focused on getting a community together, based around film […] we could turn this […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See The Low Anthem
Perhaps best known for “Oh My God, Charlie Darwin”, their Simon & Garfunkel-esque affirmation of faith in the power of reason to deliver us from the evil of superstitious irrationality, the Low Anthem are back with a gorgeous new album — full of pristine harmonies, infinite reverb, luminous melodies and prayerful silences — called Smart Flesh. They fit somewhat neatly in the Americana box, but unlike say, the Avett Brothers, they don’t so much channel The Band as swim in the same still waters. And as the saying goes, those still waters run deep. River deep and, for that matter, […]
Phawker Presents The Fourth Installment Of BLOTTO
BY LANCE DOILY I had spent the last 20 or so hours in the Waterfront Pub’s basement sleeping off a bender and didn’t even know it was supposed to snow, let alone be declared a state of emergency. According to the cook who periodically came down to check me for vital signs, I was looking at around three and a half to four feet of snow, in addition to a county wide power outage. Pile that on top of the nearing sub-zero temperatures that all but guaranteed vehicular abandonment for anyone stuck on the road, and I call that a […]
REMEMBER: Hitler Abolished Unions In 1933
NEWS JUNKIE POST: On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union halls and labor leaders were arrested. Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was abolished. This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by the fascist regime which systematically wiped out all opposition groups, starting with unions, liberals, socialists, and communists using Himmler’s state police. MORE RELATED: Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight for worker’s rights in America. Following the ultra-conservative sweep of many state legislatures and governorships in the 2010 midterms, most Republicans […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
ROLLING STONE: Rogue American General Conducted Psy-Ops On U.S. Senators Visiting Afghanistan
ROLLING STONE: The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation. “My job in psy-ops is […]
Phawker Presents The Third Installment Of BLOTTO
BY LANCE DOILY It was only about quarter to nine in the morning but what the hell, it’s happy hour somewhere in the world, right? I am sitting on a stool in Murph’s, a barely standing dive bar on Union Blvd. where I spend most of my time when I’m not working, regardless of whether or not I’m supposed to be. The salesman back at the distributor I make deliveries for must have figured out my weakness for the place, as sometimes he’ll space it out so that I have to deliver here up to 4 times a week. If […]