CARRIE RICKEY: As for The Happening, [M. Knight Shayamalan‘s] throwback horror flick that plays like The Birds meets The Blob, it’s beyond good and evil. It’s dumbfounding. At the hollow center of this unapologetic B-movie is Mark Wahlberg, typically the low-key everyman, in overwrought-robot mode. He portrays Elliot Moore, a Philadelphia science teacher (at Masterman High, for you homeboys and girls), called out of class one sunny morning and warned of a random plague — an airborne chemical toxin? — sweeping Manhattan, triggering suicides. From Massachusetts to Maryland, Central Park to Rittenhouse Square, urban greens are particularly perilous. As a […]
BREAKING: Supremes Smackdown Gitmo Tribunals
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Supreme Court [NOT pictured, above] ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, ”The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” MORE […]
WORTH REPEATING: Let’s Impeach The President
BY JONATHAN VALANIA When Stephen Colbert hosted the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner — the annual D.C. puppet show where reporters play pattycake with the Prez — he rode the Trojan Horse of Truthiness right up to the President’s table and unleashed its hidden contents: a disinfecting dose of reality-based reality, thinly-coated with irony for easier digestion, though impossible to swallow for those weaned on Fox News comfort food. Speaking truth to power at point blank-range, Colbert’s barbs essentially added up to: The emperor has no clothes, and all of you, the Fourth Estate, have become nothing more than royal […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Coldplay Viva La Vida
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we really, really like you! BY ED KING ROCK SNOB As you might imagine, I’m a huge Coldplay fan. I first heard them playing over the sound system at a Restoration Hardware, and damn if I didn’t march right up to Customer Service until I got an answer on who was playing. As soon as I got home I downloaded as much Coldplay as I could find on iTunes, and I haven’t been able to get enough of them since then. Man, I don’t recall being hooked on something this right since wine […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Ron Hansen has created worlds of sin in novels like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Desperadoes. His unsavory bandits have appeared on the silver screen and earned him critical acclaim. But priest and nuns have replaced outlaws in Hansen’s most recent endeavors: The novelist was ordained a Catholic deacon in 2007, and his writing reflects an increased devotion to the Catholic faith. His latest book, Exiles, tells the story of the sea tragedy that killed five German nuns and inspired Victorian poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins to write the poem, […]
DAILY DOSE: The Complete Colbert Report
Enjoy. Last night’s Daily Show With Jon Stewart after the jump. RELATED: TVNewser reports that E.D. Hill, who hosts “America’s Pulse” — and who raised many eyebrows this week after calling Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist-pound a “terrorist fist jab” — has lost her show.
WHY THEY HATE US: 80,000 South Koreans Protest Imported U.S. Crazy-Meat Force-Feeding
ASSOCIATED PRESS: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president said Wednesday that his government will make a fresh start, hours after an estimated 80,000 people gathered in the South Korean capital in the largest demonstration yet against the planned resumption of U.S. beef imports. The government agreed in April to lift almost all restrictions that had been imposed on imports of U.S. beef over fears of mad cow disease. Opponents of the plan worry it does not do enough to protect citizens. Lee, a pro-American conservative, agreed in April just before a summit with President Bush to reopen the country’s […]
McCain In Town To Campaign For Third Bush Term
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] INQUIRER: Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP candidate, plans a town-hall meeting this morning at the National Constitution Center. [via Obama For America] McCain’s Gas Tax Holiday Would Cost Pennsylvania $330 million and 11,500 jobs. John McCain’s gas tax holiday would cost Virginia $330,462,939 in federal funding for local road and bridge projects and 11,493 highway related jobs. [American Road and Transportation Builders Association] State Highway and Transportation Officials: “McCain’s Gas Tax Holiday Would Devastate Highway and Transportation Programs;” Savings Would Be $28 For the Average Motorist. “Presidential contender Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has called for […]
ON THE DL: Santogold + Casablancas + Pharrell
DOWNLOAD: “My Drive-Thru” [MP3]
WORTH REPEATING: Why Rendell Will NOT Be Veep
[Photo by TED ADAMS] THE NEW REPUBLIC: A large, hairy bear of a man, Rendell would enliven Washington in a way that nobody has in years. He doesn’t double-talk when it comes to describing political reality. Like when he told me he would never consider being a U.S. senator: “It’s an incredibly easy job. They don’t do shit.” Like how he described his address to the Democratic National Convention in the 1980s: “Thirty seconds into my speech, it dawned on me that I could have been reading the best parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and it wouldn’t have mattered. … […]
CENSORSHIP: Comcast Won’t Run Ad Exposing Its Role In The Fascist Takeover Of The United States
SALON: Two weeks ago, the Blue America PAC submitted ads to numerous cable television stations, newspapers and radio stations criticizing Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.) for his support of a bill to expand dramatically the President’s warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize telecoms (such as Comcast) which broke the law in enabling the Bush administration to spy on their customers with no warrants. The ads also documented that several of the lawbreaking telecoms which would benefit most from the amnesty Carney advocates donated substantial sums to his campaign (with Comcast being the largest such contributor to Carney). The ads […]
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: 55th & Sickels
[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] BY JEFF DEENEY On the morning of February 15th neighbors found a Jane Doe laying riddled with stabwounds in broad daylight near 55th and Market Streets. The body was in a narrow, fenced in alleyway next to an abandoned building on the corner of tiny Sickels Street that runs from Market to Ludlow between 54th and 55th. Patrol cars and news vans swarmed the scene and helicopters hovered overhead. The police hung sheets from the fence to block the body from view but it was a Friday morning and school kids were already out and on their […]