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April 30, 2006

He's so high

SHORTER TED BAEHR: Because United 93 doesn't conform to every single one of my ideological biases, it proves that the film-makers weren't objective enough.

Posted by LYT at 3:19 PM | Comments (1)

Haw haw! Them Canucks talks funny

Check out the Candian pronunciation of "phobia," as per the Calgary science museum.

Posted by LYT at 4:20 AM | Comments (1)

SCREENING OPPORTUNITY

Mission: Heterosexual III, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mr. Katie Holmes, directed by J.J. Abrams.

Tuesday night in Hollywood.

usual rules apply: first qualified responder gets it, I must know you, you must be able to make it, etc. Good for ONE person only.

Posted by LYT at 1:19 AM | Comments (5)

April 29, 2006

The vacation was a hit, man.

I know that my fellow fans of the sweet science of staged fighting are probably thinking to themselves, "What the fuck, bro? You went to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and not one mention of Calgary's favorite son?"

I was getting to it, of course.

Yes, this is the childhood home of Bret "the Hitman" Hart, Owen "the King of" Hart, and all their brothers, and the house famous patriarch Stu Hart lived in until his death. Prior to that, it was a hospital building.

The basement, accessible from the side seen below, is known worldwide as The Dungeon: training ground for the likes of the British Bulldogs, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Lance Storm, and virtually every other major wrestling star to come out of Canada.

If this were the U.S., you'd expect a regular flow of tourists and maybe a gift shop. But no-one was around when we showed up. Save the usual passers by you'd expect in an upscale residential neighborhood.

Think I'd be able to take a photo like this on the front porch of Hulk Hogan's childhood home?

There's no fence or anything. Hard to imagine what it must have been like back when Bret was world champion.

The house was sold when Stu died, and there was talk of demolishing...but all the cans of paint surrounding the house when we came by suggest it's being fixed up.

Very few locals seemed to know they had this landmark in their midst.

Posted by LYT at 8:33 PM | Comments (3)

April 28, 2006

Silent and Violent

Thanks to Sony's rather stupid marketing, I finally got to see SILENT HILL today, a full week after release. Had I sene it prior to release, I'd have gotten a long published piece, and I was even going to attempt to play and beat the game in order to properly compare the two. But no paper likes to bother much with late reviews.

This is a shame, because SILENT HILL is most definitely NOT deserving of the same treatment as WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, BENCHWARMERS, or PHAT GIRLZ (if I were director Christophe Gans, I'd be pissed). It far surpasses ALIEN VS. PREDATOR as my favorite non-screened-for-critics release. It's as close as cinema has come to a truly great movie based on a video game.

And it has also made otherwise intelligent reviewers look like idiots. Roger Ebert, one of maybe two major reviewers who saw the film early, went on and on about how he didn't understand the plot. Other ex-post-facto reviewers have followed suit. So let's get this straight: Critics who had no problem whatsoever with SYRIANA's seven different plot strands going on all at once are somehow flummoxed by a tale of demons in a small town, a tale that could likely be explained by any game-savvy kid?

My theory is that critics often aren't prepared to take genre films seriously, because they've built up a caricature in their heads. So when one comes along that's in any way challenging to keep up with, they assume that the fault couldn't possibly be their own when they don't understand a lowly videogame-based horror flick; nope, must be the film-maker's fault. How dare he not spell everything out while we're busy being scared?

This might normally be the point where I bother to spell out how relatively understandable the movie is, except that so much of the explanation comes at the end that it would be unfair to do so. For much of the running time, however, it's as simple as this:

Radha Mitchell has to find her daughter who has gone missing in a fucked-up haunted town where sometimes the sky goes all dark and fucked-up looking critters start chasing you.

Boy, that sounds hard to follow, eh? Don't be annoying and ask shit like "But WHY does that dude have a pyramid on his head?" It's because he's a fucked-up demon. Period.

I'm not much of a gamer nowadays, but I know enough to know that Japanese videogame monsters are creepy as hell, because they manage to be messed-up and evil looking in ways we haven't even thought of. Most monsters in the western tradition are exaggerated human or animal forms: Big wolves and bats, fanged dudes in capes, giant gorillas or dinosaurs. Japanese demons have limbs in the wrong places, missing facial features, internal organs on the outside...there may be a Hiroshima/Nagasaki backstory to some of it. Combine that with the look of a Tool music video, and that's how SILENT HILL looks. The soundtrack is mostly industrial stuff, some of it directly from the game. Plus one Johnny Cash song, just to flaunt coolness.

I have to admit I'm one of the few who wasn't a huge fan of Gans' BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, but I'd be willing to give it another try, because (1) at the screening I saw, the subtitles were out of focus though the picture was not, giving me a headache, and (2) my expectations had been set up to think it was a kick-ass martial arts movie, which it only was in three sequences, while the rest was mystery/drama.

Here, Gans' only misstep is one quite common to non-English-speaking people who direct movies in English -- the accents are all wrong. Sean Bean appears to be trying American, but at various times sounds Scottish, Canadian, New England-ish, and even Austrian. Radha Mitchell has long-since honed her generic American, but Kim "Battlefield Earth" Coates has trouble with a Southern drawl. Can't expect a French guy to catch all that, but someone should have.

SILENT HILL leaves a lot up to you to figure out, but gamers used to conventions like phasing in and out of alternate worlds should have no problem going along for the ride. Middle-aged critics are another story.

Memo to McFarlane/NECA/SOTA: I want an 18" Pyramid Head figure, like, yesterday.

Posted by LYT at 11:11 PM | Comments (10)

Ritchie rich

Just got back from seeing Kid Rock live in concert, which is always worthwhile and highly recommended in my book. Not many people try to blend rap and rock and country all at once, and if they did I doubt they'd do it as well.

The crowd for this show was notably older than the last time, with many people sporting a look one might dub "aging trailer-park." Also lots of women in push-up bras -- of ALL ages. I have some hope that a countrified crowd coming to see Kid Rock will take in his tributes to the likes of Freddie Mercury and Tupac alongside Hank Williams, and maybe challenge a prejudice or two.

The sponsoring radio station was KZLA, L.A.'s country station, as opposed to KROQ or Indie, which would at one time have been more logical choices. As Matt pointed out, Kid seems bitter about not getting much radio play these days -- one song pointedly dissed Clay Aiken, Radiohead, Madonna, and Britney Spears all at once.

Also, I figured out that his name is "Kid." Most of his songs have a line or three to that effect.

He'll go off on tangents sometimes, veering away from "Cowboy" to do the Dukes of Hazzard theme, for example. He can play every instrument in the stage. And his middle-aged black female drummer made a better duet partner on "Picture" than Sheryl Crow.

And he works the crowd well, with some audience participation moments that work. Filling up the pit at Universal with chairs may have been a bad move -- last time there was a mosh pit, and that amped the energy up. Strippers are still part of the show, but the intro was very lackluster, with the whole band slowly being intriduced over a groove that didn't actually turn into a song. Some good pyros.

The trick with mixing country and Southern rock into the rap-metal mix is that while it may gain some fans, it seems to have turned more of them off. There is a bias against anything redneck being thought of as edgy-cool (an example I always point to is the success of Jim Carrey versus Jim Varney, the primary difference being Southern-ness).

I'm down with Kid Rock, though. I never met a motherfucker quite like him.

Posted by LYT at 2:04 AM | Comments (13)

Word from Amsterdam

I don't think Lucky McKee will mind me quoting part of a message he sent recently:

"The response to THE WOODS was better than I could have ever imagined. They went nuts for it. After the long haul this movie has put me through it was a real treat to sit down with a good crowd of real actual living people and enjoy the work all of you did."

Let's hope Sony was listening to the fans over there...

Posted by LYT at 1:44 AM | Comments (1)

April 27, 2006

"oh mah gawd...HE CAME IN MY ASS!"

Some major updates to this site's film page have been done.

First, if you haven't already seen the Kevin Ford-directed features LOST IN THE BUSH and LOVINDAPOCALYPSE III, we've added links to free downloads of both. I'm in both, alongside the likes of Angela Bettis, Eddie Steeples, Chris Sivertson, Shelli Merrill, Justin Stone, Jaye Luckett, and many more.

But more importantly...THE ADVENTURES OF GAYMAN 2 has just been posted! Definitely not work-safe.

and if you haven't seen part one, maybe watch it first. My dating prospects are probably completely shot to all hell after this.

Posted by LYT at 12:16 AM | Comments (3)

April 26, 2006

What's offpat's alibi?

From TWNPnews.com:

"During a Raw brand house show in Cardiff, Wales yesterday, a fan jumped the railing and attempted to attack wrestlers during the main event match between John Cena & HBK vs. HHH & Edge. The man made it to the canvas before a member of security tackled the individual. The fan was escorted up the main isle where the wrestlers make their entrance."

Posted by LYT at 11:46 AM | Comments (1)

April 24, 2006

Just don't get sick, people.

It's the one-year anniversary of the worst weekend of my life

With it still very much fresh in my memory, I find it hard to imagine what it's like for friends with even worse conditions. But THIS may give you an idea.

Posted by LYT at 5:55 PM | Comments (6)

The best sandwich

I ate at a Canadian BBQ joint the other day and had a sandwich called the Gut-Buster that is one of the greatest things ever. Beef brisket, pulled pork, and half an andouille sausage in a hot dog bun covered in grilled onions, jalapenos, and cheese. Side order of hushpuppiesd with puire maple syrup for dipping. Yum.

It didn't even come back to haunt me in any way later.

Been watching a movie or two on Canadian TV. First was THE FACULTY, which in hindsight has one of the greatest casts ever put together -- Robert Rodriguez has skills that way. Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, Jon Stewart, Famke Janssen, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Clea DuVall, Usher, Danny Masterson...it is insane how many familiar faces pop up. But I have a question. When I saw this movie in North Carolina, I distinctly recall being pissed off that when the hot blonde finally takes all her clothes off at the end, her naughty bits were shrouded in shadow. However, on this Canadian TV version, I could see pretty much everything. How does this jibe with everyone else's memory?

And then last night I couldn't sleep, so I watched THE POSTMAN, which wasn't bad for the first two hours, but then kept going another hour, in which it becomes clear that it's a weird Libertarian utopia fantasy, with Will Patton as an evil flag-burning commie and Kevin Costner as the new Geogrge Washington, with a bit of Hulk Hogan mixed in. During the final fight, Patton owns Costner's ass, mainly because his character is a trained military guy and Costner has shown zero aptitude for action. But then he gets Costner in a chokehold, and says he's gonna lose because he doesn't fight for anything. This is the wrong move, as Costner goes "I fight...for the UNITED STATES...of AMERICA!" Then he hulks up and wins the fight.

Also Olivia Williams plays the hottest chick in post-apocalypese world, who's married but throws herself at Kevin anyway because she wants to have his baby. And Tom Petty shows up in hour 3 playing himself. I shit you not. Costner asks him if he was famous once, and Petty says he sort of was. But then when Petty learns that Costner is THE POSTMAN, he goes "I heard of you! YOU'RE famous!"

To which Costner responds: "Well, I guess I am." The movie ends with a bronze statue of Kevin Costner being unveiled.

Last festival review after the jump...

FILM GEEK

Written and directed by James Westby, this is the story of a video store clerk who is a geek to the max. Obsessively spouting off in a mildy effeminate monotone, he's the kind of guy who'll lecture unsuspecting customers on the difference between widescreen and full-frame, or tell sorority girls they need to watch Godard, or raise a ruckus when one of his fellow employees puts John Carpenter's THE THING in the horror section when it is to his mind very clearly sci-fi. Played by Melik Malkasian with absolute commitment, Scotty is like the nightmare version of many people I know -- and is perhaps a little close to home in many ways! He has a website nobody reads, full of essays like "Why Bunuel is AWESOME!", and he never eats out or cokks for himself, surviving solely on cereal. Also, we se ehim masturbate quite a bit, always over the sink so he can clean up quickly.

During the course of the movie, Scotty loses his job, hopelessly flirts with a callous neighbor (Michelle Garner) whose dark secret he eventually learns, and finds a girl who might actually be able to tolerate him (Tyler Gannon), especially if it annoys her ex to be seen with such a nerd.

Scotty is a bit like Napoleon Dynamite in the sense that he's totally unaware of how obnoxious he is. But Napoleon actually had hidden skills -- all Scotty has is encyclopedic knowledge of film. And Napoleon had friends. It's possibe to sympathize with Scotty (there's an inner Scotty in many of us, perhaps), but you wouldn't want to hang out with him either. He's not one of those nerds with a secretly cool and empathetic side.

That said, he is pretty damn funny to watch, and the very last shot of the movie is a real kick in the pants. For people who know their cinema, I recommend FILM GEEK not just as a comedy, but a cautionary tale. as well.

Posted by LYT at 11:59 AM | Comments (17)

April 23, 2006

Another reason I don't like sports

At San Francisco Indie Fest, we screened MAD COWGIRL opposite the Superbowl. Here in Calgary, they screened it opposite the hometown hockey team in the playoffs. Needless to say, we did not sell out. I think, and hope, that those who came did like it. But I didn't do a Q&A, as there was no-one left when the lights came up.

MVP of the night: my cousin Alex, who hitchhiked his way down from the mountains to come see the movie.

In other notes:

I thought "sashimi" always meant raw, so when I found a sushi place in Chinatown (yeah, yeah, I know, but there is no Japantown here, so it seems like all the local Asians set up digs there) that offered tako sashimi, I was psyched. Raw octopus!

I asked the waitress if it was alive or dead. Her response: "It come in six piece."

Fine, whatever. Either way would be new. But it turned out to be the same cooked stuff you get everywhere. My usual rule of sushi turned out to be correct -- if the ginger's dyed pink, the sucshi might stink.

Another sushi place kinda lied to me -- they had this picture menu in the window with all kinds of exotic stuff like cockles and various varieties of clam -- but inside, turns out they don't even carry uni because it isn't popular -- just the usual tuna, salmon, mackerel, yellowtail. On the plus side, what they did serve was quality stuff. And no pink dye in the ginger.

One of the most bass-ackwards things I've ever heard is that in Alberta, the rule about smoking in restaurants is that you must do it INSIDE -- it's banned on outdoor patios! Now, I'm no fan of smoking at all, but if you must have mixed-use, it seems to me it's far worse health-wise in an enclosed space. Word is Alberta is the last province to ban smoking in restauarants and bars altogether, and that the full ban's coming soon, though if they can't even smoke on patios it'll be tougher than California. MOntreal allowed smoking in restaurants when I was there, so they must've recently converted.

urban Canadian shopping malls -- Vancouver, Montreal, and here -- are all massive, spanning several city blocks, and have no stores of any interest to me whatsoever. No toy stores, no Hot Topic equivalent, no Suncoast, but lots and lots of drugstores. Within malls and on every block.

Booze is tough to find. Liquor stores are allowed to stay open until 2 a.m., but most of them don't choose to do that. And there aren't a whole lot of them, though the ones that you can find tend to have large selections, and even free samples sometimes.

A couple of quick-take film-fest reviews after the jump:

SAINT-MARTYRS-DES-DAMNES

A French-Canadian mindfuck horror flick in the tradition of IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and TWIN PEAKS, wherein an outsider comes to a strange small town lookign for a missing person, and finds that everything is all weird and creepy and stuff. In this case, our lead is Flavien (Francois Chenier), a reporter for a Weekly World News-type paper, sent by his boss to investigate their first lead in a long time that seems to actually have a basis in truth. After a few startling visions of ghosts, Flaviena nd his photgrapher make it to the town, which is named "St. Martyrs of the Damned" (who in their right mind would move to such a town?), and the photographer mysteriously disappears. The rest fo the movie concerns Flavien's search to find him, and uncover the meaning of the ghost and the town's terrible secret (two separate issues, as it turns out). But he also takes time out to fall in love.

For the first hour, I thought this was the best movie I'd seen all year. At the hour and a half mark, with Flavien seemingly forgetting his quest and frolicking with a pretty young woman, I was wondering if things would ever wrap up. And there's almost another half hour after that. Plus the fact that the ghost subplot is much less relevant than you think it's gonna be.

I'd like to take a shot at remaking this. Some tightening up and it could be great. Right now it's too long and too sprawling, with a payoff that doesn't seem like it really explains everythign the way it seems like it's supposed to. Confused by that sentence? So was I.

NIGHTMARE

The imdb listing for this film is maddeningly unclear, so I can't give you quite the detail on character and actor names as I'd like. But the mvoie overall is like SAINT-MARTYRS in that it has a great premise that it convolutes too much. Oh yeah, and it has one big fucking warning sign attached to it in that it's about film students. I know the rule is "write what you know"; the movie itself emphasizes that. But film students are seldom as fascinating as they think they are.

So anyway, an arrogant hotshot film student meets a totally hot and confrontational babe at a party, and they get it on. Love the sex scene, and the many nude scenes taht follow -- there's a real lack of inhibition to them that you wouldn't see in a studio film, and the female lead is a natural beauty. The two wake up the next day in a strange bed, with a video camera pointed at them. They play the tape that's in the camera, and it shows them committing murders. Yet there is no evidence of the crimes anywhere, and neither one of them rememebers it happening.

It's a good set up, and the fact that new tapes keep surfacing and our male lead keeps waking up in increasingly strange places ratchets up the tension. But what kills it is the postmodern touch -- our "hero," after the first night, immediately goes and pitches what actually happened as his next student film. So as he's undergoign these horro-movie circumstances, he is simultaneously making a movie about them -- with his paramour in the lead role, though she also took part in the real events. As the line between the fake film and what is actually happening blurs, things spiral out of control, nto just for the characters but for the movie itself -- it seems like director Dylan Bank is losing track of what is and isn't supposed to be the film's reality. He also utilizes a lot of handheld stuff that's so shaky it's almost impossible to tell what we're seeing. Even the intial tape isn't clear, until the characters actually say something like "Hey, we're shown murdering three people on that tape." The cinematography is more caffeinated than BLAIR WITCH.

The actors are all good, especially the female lead, and an intense character named Omar, but not having press notes or a decent imdb listing, I can't really tell you who they are.

One more review to go, for the movie FILM GEEK. Maybe tomorrow.

Posted by LYT at 11:01 AM | Comments (1)

April 21, 2006

CALGARY UNDERGROUND FEST: radio, stuff, and THE PUFFY CHAIR

I think the McKees and Hlubik ought to know that, according to at least one liquor store owner here, Wiser's won the award for best Canadian whiskey at some international competition in 2005. BUt that's the in-joke. ON to the radio interview.

When I showed up to the station it turned out that, as a last-minute thing, a guest that they had expected the following week was on the line right then and there, so they'd have to do half the show with him first. The problem was, since they weren't expecting him, neither host had seen his movie, a little-seen Canadian superhero spoof.

But wouldn't you know it, I had seen it. I reviewed it here on this very blog a while back. A movie called SIDEKICK. The writer-producer Michael Sparag had communicated with me prior to SF Indiefest, where both our movies played, but in different weeks so we never actually met.

And now, here in Calgary, I found myself interviewing him on college radio. Go figure. I'm probably the only L.A. critic who's even seen his film.

So for the first half-hour, Michael and I discussed SIDEKICK, which is doing a theatrical tour of Canada prior to being remade on a larger budget by Focus Features.

For teh second hour, DJ Rat Bastard and DJ Mo-Suga interviewed me. Mo-Suga was the one who had seen the film, and he clearly got it. The local alt-weekly, FFWD, wasn't so kind, but then they were kinda snooty about all the movies. They seemed more pissed about the Phil Hall review comparing MAD COWGIRL to 2001 than anything. I agree it's a comparison that's hyperbolic and doesn't necessarily help audience expectations, but it isn't anything to do with the movie itself, really. Anyway, the reviewer wasn't too much of an ass about it -- he allowed for the fact that it was simply a matter of taste, and that it wasn't his.

I had a great meal of mussels yesterday, at a restaurant that specialized in them. One bowl of mussels in tequila/jalapeno/lime sauce (a moules margarita, if you like), and one in Indian coconut curry sauce. Yum.

And then the movie I saw at the fest last night was called THE PUFFY CHAIR. It was great.

It's a digital-video feature about a dysfunctional couple who are only ever-so-slight exaggerations of male-female archetypes: He's kinda slow and practical, she's always getting mad that he doesn't want to talk about his feelings. Writer Mark Duplass stars as Josh; his borther Jay directed. Kathyrn Aselton, who has kind of an Evangeline LIlly look to her, is the girlfriend Emily.

Anyway, after a big fight, Josh and Emily try to reconcile on a road trip to Josh's parents' house. On the way, they have to pick up a La-Z-Boy chair that Josh bought on eBay for a birthday gift for dad. Also along the way, they (somewhat unwillingly) pick up Josh's hippie brother Rhett, whose spontaneous, irresponsible ways, threaten the fragile peace between Josh and Emily. MInor adventures include trying to sneak all three into a motel room while only paying for one person, and Rhett's affair with a local girl in the middle of nowhere.

I could easily imagine Kevin Ford making something like this, with him and Anglea in the leads and Lucky McKee as the hippie brother. It's a bit more tightly scripted than Kevin might go for, though, and consistently very funny, until the end where it suddenly gets all serious.

I understand it played at Suindance, so I'm surprised it doesn't seem to have been picked up yet. It really is worth seeing, and all three leads, especially Duplass, deserve bigger and birghter futures.

Posted by LYT at 9:09 AM | Comments (2)

April 20, 2006

CALGARY UNDERGROUND FEST: a/k/a TOMMY CHONG and THE DISTRICT! (NYOCKER!)

First things first: because of the way my email program is in an upgrade beta phase, it's really slow, and even more so on the computer here. So responding to emails is probably not going to happen.

The opening night of the fest was in a bar, rigged up into a makeshift movie theater, with the screen being projected simultaneously onto two separate walls as well as a screen at the front, so that wherever you were in the bar, you could look any direction and see the movie. Sound was surprisingly good, and patrons were asked not to smoke or talk during the film. Nothing was said about cell phones, but I didn't hear any go off. Obviously I'm not in California any more.

a/k/a/TOMMY CHONG is a straightforward documentary about Tommy Chong's recent arrest for selling "drug paraphernalia." I imagine anyone reading this site knows the whole story, but basically his family had a business selling, uh, "water-pipes" with Chong's likeness on them. This was fine, except there are like three states where you can't do that, one of which is Pennsylvania. So what happened is the Feds tried to entrap the company into shipping to Pennsylvania, and after being repeatedly told no, the decoy customer finally said he'd come to their warehouse and buy the stuff there, which they agreed to. The guy shows up, buys a ton of stuff, and then says "I can't take all this home. Just mail it to me." So they did, and that was what got them busted. A huge raid was staged, though it is pointed out taht no-one was hiding anything or trying to escape.

Chong got 9 months in jail. It was part of a larger sweep in the Ashcroft regime's "War on Drugs = War on Terror" campaign, but Chong was the only one who did time, which he agreed to do as part of a plea-bargain that would keep his wife and son from being charged. Chong seems convinced that the government is coming after all the icons of the counterculture, retroactively fighting Nixon's battles. When people ask him what jail was like, he responds, "You'll find out."

The movie's value varies according to how much of the story you already know. The parts that relayed stuff I'd heard already were boring, but any information that was new to me I found interesting.

THE DISTRICT! (NYOCKER!)

This is simply the most ground-breaking movie I've seen all year. An animated feature from Hungary, it combines rotoscoping, 3-D and 2-D enhancement, and cel-shading. Also it's a musical set to Eastern European gangsta-rap, and the plot could best be described as TRAINSPOTTING meets A SOUND OF THUNDER. Occasionally the plot flounders a bit, but the visual style and kinetic storytelling keep you with it.

Things kick off with a montage suggesting the criminal underworld life that goes on in an area of Budapest called The District, where cops are corrupt, whites and gypsies feud, and the kids are all wannabe gangsters. Hoping to get laid, one of the kids figures out that he needs money, and in a rather unique scheme, he recruits his science nerd friend to build a time machine, with which they travel back to the ice age, and using a nuclear bomb they got from Osama bin Laden (don't ask!), make a giant crater in the ground, and lure a stampede of mammoths to their death in it. By the time the kids get back to contemporary Budapest, those mammoths' remains have become oil.

But once you're a country with oil, the world powers take notice, and that segues into appearances from the Hungarian prime minister (whose face is always pixilated), Tony Blair (in a Darth Vader mask), Vladimir Putin, and of course Dubya, who opts to bomb the place.

Oh, and remember it's a gangsta rap musical. One of the numbers is about how tough it is to be a slut.

I'm not sure what copyright issues might be -- there's a kid who always wears a Britney Spears T-shirt, and at one point he hallucinates being with her; the Darth Vader helmet might also be an issue. But someone needs to pick this up for U.S. distribution quick. It's unique, and should find favor among the Nuart crowd.

My college radio interview is tonight.

[This entry is now closed to comments. Spammers love Tommy Chong too much.]

Posted by LYT at 12:03 PM | Comments (2)

April 19, 2006

Calgary Underground film fest

So, nto only am I the only MAD COWGIRL person showing up, I'm only one of three film-making types showing up at all.

The other two are Tommy Chong, and the director of Tommy Chong's movie. Needless to say, that Chong guy's hogging all the media.

Back in high school, rednecks used to call me Chong because I wore a red bandana. I'll tell him that if I get to meet him.

The gift bag for this film fest is a li'l different than the norm. At L.A. parties, you get stuff liek moisturizer, a high end girly tank top, breath mints, dog shampoo, and so on.

Here, I get:

A DVD of Mike Figgis' movie HOTEL, clearly purchased from the used bin at Blockbuster.

A rubber insect.

A keychain with a plush dinosaur head/coin purse.

One of those candy things that's a lollipop you dip in flavored powder.

A pack of chocolate cigarettes.

Best of all, though, is a packet of Worm Snax. These are actual dried worms with barbecue flavoring. You know I'm gonna eat them all, too. Cuz I'm the BOOGEYMAN AND I'M COMIN' TA GETCHA!

(p.S. I'm not making fun of this gift bag. I think it may be the best one I ever got.)

Posted by LYT at 1:53 PM | Comments (4)

LAX = pathetic again

The one neat thing about the Air Alaska terminal is the way they have a little outdoor enclosure for smokers right in the middle, where people can stare, like an aviary.

That's the only thing.

You know how airports have those TV screens that tell you waht flights are arriving and deaprting, anw at which gate? Air Allaska doesn't have those.

Which might be fine if Air Alaska didn't have a penchant for changing gates on you without notice. Oh, and the digital displays at teh gates didn't work either, so the flight number was literally written with marker on a sheet of white paper and taped up on the wall. We used to do that at the Sunset 5 for midnight movies, but those only drew small crowds.

I'll say this - if you must fly with a planeload of kids coming back from Disneyland, it's best to do it late at night, because most of them will sleep. On the other hand, if the little girl next to you doesn't take off her large plastic Mickey-ears before conking out, and shifts in her sleep, occasionally smacking tinto your soldier, and neither girl nor mom speak English, and mom's sleeping too...

slightly annoying. But at least I wasn't next to some of the larger travellers.

Posted by LYT at 1:46 PM | Comments (0)

Cold, not dead

I'm in Calgary, but as usual when I get away, any chance I get to log in is spent dealing with a centillion comment spams.

More later.

Posted by LYT at 9:42 AM | Comments (3)

April 17, 2006

"Canada, however, has a problem"

Contrary to what some might say, we did not plan this as a PR stunt to coincide with the Calgary Underground Fest.

Nonetheless, I am torry.

Posted by LYT at 5:58 PM | Comments (3)

April 16, 2006

The holy grails of toy likenesses

It seems that we are in an era where practically any character you could want depicted in toy form eventually gets made; however, there are a few significant holdouts still. What gives toy collectors hope is the fact that some of the previous holdouts did finally give in.

The most notable was Pinhead from the movie HELLRAISER. Consistently requested as an action figure for years, we were told that it couldn't happen because (a) back when HELLRAISER was made, no-one signed a deal for toys; and (b) The movie and its sequels had changed hands between various studios so many times that no-one could be clear on who owned the rights.

This story turned out not to be 100% true. Miramax owned the rights, and were willing to license Pinhead, but only on condition that he be part of a larger toyline involving other characters that they owned. Todd McFarlane, at the time the only toy mogul set up to make horror characters like Pinhead, said no -- Pinhead was all he wanted. Lo and behold, when a worthy company arose that could compete with McFarlane on their turf (NECA), their first big toyline was HELLRAISER.

The other grail was Hannibal Lecter from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. This, we were told, was not possible because Anthony Hopkins was personally averse to seeing Hannibal as a toy. Upset by the idea that such an evil character was so popular, he didn't want to be seen as cashing in on it. (Although he also once said he'd never do a sequel to SILENCE, and you saw how that went.)

It seems he was just holding out for more money. NECA is making the toy this year.

So what's left? There are still a few notable holdouts. Just because I have some free time on my hands, I decided to compile a list. These aren't necessarily my personal "grails" -- MAY, for instance, isn't on there -- but the ones that I think would sell the best if announced.

10. THE TONNIKA TWINS. Who? Two identical sexy females who appear very briefly at the Mos Eisley cantina in STAR WARS. It seems they're the only cast members of the entire saga who didn't sign away their likenesses to Lucasfilm, and have been impossible to track down since. As STAR WARS collectors are completionists, and the action figure line more comprehensive than any other, this omission frustrates the die-hards.

ODDS ON BEING MADE: Hasbro says slim and none.

9. INDIANA JONES. Done as toys in the '70s [correction: '80s], but only licensed since in the form of non-likeness Disney theme park collectibles and one high-end Japanese figure. Why are Lucasfilm and Paramount sitting on such a cash cow?

ODDS ON BEING MADE: Probably about the same as a fourth Indy film, i.e. long after most people have lost interest.

8. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER as CONAN and DUTCH SCHAEFER. The Schwarz has been a toy many a time, even in less popular movies like COMMANDO -- but for some reason has never okayed his face on a Conan or Predator toy. He seems to have weird issues -- he wouldn't let McFarlane use his likeness on a TERMINATOR 2 figure, but was fine with it for TERMINATOR 3. Figures of Arnold as governor are in the public domain.

ODDS ON BEING MADE: It'll happen. McFarlane's doing a 3-D movie poster from PREDATOR, which is the first step.

7. VINCENT and JULES from PULP FICTION. Sam Jackson has been made into a toy before, as SHAFT. John Travolta has been a toy before, as BATTLEFIELD: EARTH's Terl. So why on earth can't anybody get the rights to do the two characters everyone wants? NECA made lego-style figures to dodge likeness issues -- but there shouldn't BE likeness issues!

ODDS ON BEING MADE: Pretty good. Seems like everyone just needs to get on the same page to make it happen.

6. TOM CRUISE. Have you noticed that if a summer blockbuster movie stars Cruise, it almost never has a tie-in toyline? MINORITY REPORT and WAR OF THE WORLDS were rife with possibilities, but nope. The first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE spawned some generic Ethan Hunt figures, but Cruise refused to allow his likeness for them.

ODDS ON BEING MADE: Only if his star falls at the box offfice, which hasn't happened yet.

5. BRAD PITT. Action figure collectors are generally the sort of people who love SEVEN and FIGHT CLUB. Yet Brad Pitt remains one of the toughest likeness to get, though no formal reason has ever been offered. In Japan, where "generic" 12" figures that "accidentally" look like familiar actors get made all the time, there's a high-end "Detective" figure that looks a whole lot like David Mills in SEVEN. But no Tyler Durden.

ODDS ON BEING MADE: Maybe when his kids are old enough to demand them.

4. JACK TORRANCE / CARRIE / PENNYWISE THE CLOWN. Stephen King flat-out refuses to license his characters for toys, and since he makes more money than God, it's unlikely he can bribed. Of course, the Torrance figure everyone wants is Jack Nicholson, and that leads us to our next entry...

3. ALEX DE LARGE / PRIVATE PYLE / DAVE BOWMAN / DR. STRANGELOVE. The films of Stanley Kubrick are impeccable, and their merchandise is non-existent. It isn't clear whether this is by design or by accident -- the closest has been an overseas 2001 generic astronaut figure that probably wasn't officially licensed. There is an R. Lee Ermey drill instructor doll, but it's a figure of Ermey himself, as oppsoed to the specific drill instructor he played in FULL METAL JACKET. Alex from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is in high demand from collectors, but who wouldn't want Dr. Strangelove, or even an ape from 2001 wielding a bone in front of the black monolith? Heck, how about Kirk Douglas as Spartacus?

ODDS ON BEING MADE: No time soon.

2. ADAM WEST AS BATMAN and CHRISTOPHER REEVE AS SUPERMAN. For all the toys that have been made of the two most famous superheroes in popular culture, none has ever sported the likeness of the actor best known in the role. Both were heavily merchandised, but long before accurate likenesses were possible on figures. DC owns the characters, and the actors (or next of kin) presumably own their likenesses. The specific combinations of actor and role, however, require navigating a tangled web of producers.

ODDS ON BEING MADE: Seems inevitable eventually, as it's hard to imagine DC missing a merchandising angle.

1. CLINT EASTWOOD. Aside from a poorly made RAWHIDE doll, there hasn't been an action figure of Clint, which just seems so wrong. Companies who have pursued him say that likeness rights don't even exist. Second only to John Wayne as the iconic American cowboy, you know he'd sell like crazy. I'd root for a three-figure set of Clint, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef from THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, but Dirty Harry Callahan is a must as well, especially if it had a sound-chip that could spout his signature lines.

ODDS ON BEING MADE: You may have to wait until he's dead, and given that his mother is still alive, don't count on that happening any time soon. Best bet is to hope for a Japanese bootleg.

Posted by LYT at 4:04 PM | Comments (9)

April 15, 2006

Wanted: New DVD player

My PS2 is just starting to suck WAAAAY too much ass, with the skipping and such. have to clean it almost every other disc now.

Are there any good players I can get that'll play multi-region? And if not, what's the best player I can get that doesn't suck? Given all the screeners I watch, it's a legit business expense.

Posted by LYT at 2:10 AM | Comments (17)

April 14, 2006

The next city to get MAD COWGIRL will be...

Portland, OR. At the Portland Underground Film Fest, to be held at the Clinton St. theater. Actual date and time TBD.

sean (connery), Nancy R., and Susan Goldsmith -- I expect y'all there. Hell, maybe one of you can have the immense privilege of me sleeping on your couch.

Posted by LYT at 5:34 PM | Comments (4)

April 13, 2006

Mega-review week

Four full-lengthers in print, but expect Anthony Kaufman to get all bothered by 100 words or so about Herbie Hancock that appear in the Voice.

"It's the familiar Full Monty formula: Working-class Britain + quirkiness + mildly risque comic element = box office. Problem is, The Full Monty worked because it wasn't formulaic at the time. Kinky Boots, on the other hand, is going through the motions, and it feels like all the actors know it ... save Ejiofor, who obviously took on the role for the challenge — and he rises to it. It's difficult to tell if Lola is the only interesting character because he's written that way, or because the actor is so clearly in a class above the rest. Whatever the case, the movie loses its energy when it focuses on Charlie, who, like another recent cinematic Charlie who inherited a wondrous factory, is a passive protagonist who hardly does anything. Every decision made by Charlie is the result of someone badgering him into it; even after he supposedly figures out what he wants, it's because Lauren and Lola forced him to realize it and act accordingly."

full here

"Who better to understand, say, Othello, than a man who actually has strangled his wife? Prison also offers the authentically Shakespearean-era touch of forcing men to play women, and while the frail-looking bisexual actor Red initially protests being cast as Miranda (because he'd like the option of choosing), he does concede that he's probably the best one for the job, and doesn't object for too long."

more Shakespeare in jail here

"There's a certain exuberance, a "You go, girl!" spirit of defiance and self-reliance to the new Mo'Nique vehicle, Phat Girlz, that's undeniably appealing -- and likely to be especially so for its target audience of overweight women. (That is, assuming they see it, which the box-office numbers so far seem to indicate has not been the case; moviegoers tend to prefer fat black women when they're played by Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry.) As Mo'Nique movies go, it's a whole lot better than Hair Show. But beyond the star's obvious enthusiasm for the project, there isn't a lot going for Phat Girlz, which looks cheap and falls apart after the first act. "

Phatten up here

"Believe it or not, The Benchwarmers is so lame that it can't even lay claim to being the best Adam Sandler-produced movie not screened for critics in 2006; that dubious honor would go to Grandma's Boy, which was by no means good but at least featured a kung-fu chimp and naked breasts. Maybe you were hoping that the presence of Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder would amp up the game of the usual gang of Happy Madison idiots (Sandler pals Rob Schneider, David Spade, director Dennis Dugan, and screenwriters Allen Covert and Nick Swardson). You'd be wrong: Heder, who's a clean-living Mormon in real life, does claim to have softened some of the raunchier humor, but all that means is that sexual fluids aren't the subject of any jokes here. Every other bodily emission is fair game."

the rest here

short takes after the jump...

CHURCH BALL

Kurt Hale’s latest Mormon comedy would be completely forgettable if not for the fact that, this time around, he has managed to cast Fred Willard, Clint Howard, Gary Coleman, that crazy guy from the Holiday Inn commercials, and the gibberish-talking farmer from Napoleon Dynamite. Willard plays a bishop determined to have his church league basketball team win the championship in their final season. To achieve this, he asks his best athlete Dennis (Andrew Wilson, brother of Luke and Owen) to whip their group of misfits into shape, but their chances seem hopeless if they can’t persuade a long-since-ostracized star player (Stan Ellsworth) to return to the fold. Curiously for a religious movie, the film’s message seems to be that competitiveness makes people forget their manners, and that’s kind of okay. Hale’s directorial style relies way too much on the kind of cheesy music video montages that have long since been parodied to death, and the religious rock songs used are truly awful. Other than that, an innocuous movie overall.

HERBIE HANCOCK: POSSIBILITIES (DVD) (a shortened version of this ran in the Voice, as New York gets a theatrical engagement)

For a man in his mid-sixties, Herbie Hancock is looking damn good, and unlike many his age, is far from set in his ways, as his 2005 duets album Possibilities proved, teaming the veteran jazzman up with collaborators including Christina Aguilera, Annie Lennox, Trey Anastasio, Wayne Shorter, and Sting, to name a few. This movie tie-in is considerably less innovative than its subject -- for the most part, it feels like something you’d find on the special edition bonus disc of a deluxe package, with straightforward track-by-track recording session clips. Only when Hancock teams up with Brian Eno late in the film to we get a look back at some of his previous innovations like the ‘80s hit “Rockit” that integrated synth sounds in ways most jazz players might find disturbing. Then we get scenes of Hancock in Japan visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a peace festival -- it’s a bit out of left field, but we see him work with synth again. Primarily a film for fans of all involved. Extras are slim, but will probably be coveted by the faithful: Two bonus performances, edited like music videos: one of which features Hancock and Wayne Shorter in Japan; the other, Hancock and Trey Anastasio in Vermont.

Posted by LYT at 3:08 PM | Comments (9)

How's aboot some mad cowgirl, eh?

I'm going to Canada next week to support the movie.

Details to come...

Posted by LYT at 3:10 AM | Comments (5)

April 11, 2006

My Grandfather's BIRTHDAY!

83rd, if my count is correct.

The body's unsound, the memory sometimes shaky, but the mind stays sharp. Other than the whole deafness thing, I hope I age so well.

Posted by LYT at 12:47 PM | Comments (5)

April 10, 2006

My Grandfather's Column (2 for 1)

Forgiveness and Truth

The Revd Julie Nicholson. who resigned recently from her position as Priest -in-Charge of her Bristol parishes did so, it is reported, because she could not forgive the murder of her daughter in the London bombings on July 7th last year. She found it impossible to stand at the altar in church, speaking words of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness when in her own heart she found forgiveness impossible because of what had happened in her own experience.

Quite rightly, in my view, her Bishop praised her for her honesty. People need honesty and sincerity in their clergy almost more than anything. Alas the truth is that for the most part we are too afraid to tell it as it is in our own hearts because we fear that if we show the frailty of our own faith we shall weaken the faith we hope to build up in others.

We are told in the Gospel to forgive our enemies. Jesus was very much the author of this idea, which was deemed quite unacceptable in his day and is still unacceptable to most humans to-day. It’s important to note though that we were not asked to forgive murder but murderers. Murder can never be forgiven but since we are all potential murderers it is good that all evil-doers should be forgivable.

But can I, should I, must I forgive those who hurt or kill one whom I love? This was the problem faced by Julie Nicholson, who found she could not. If we are ever in her position it may help us to think about the reconciling work that has been done by Bishop Desmond Tutu. We need, together if possible, to find out the truth behind the evil deeds. Truth comes before forgiveness. It is good to picture any serious enemy as he or she was as a baby. Even Hitler and Stalin were babies once. We cannot know all the circumstances of their lives which turned them into monsters. They never ceased to be loved by God, who was and is always ready to forgive.

Finally, I think it’s wise to remember and ponder that rather frightening prayer we offer so often without thought: “Forgive us our sins (or trespasses) as we forgive those who sin (or trespass) against us.

[second column after the jump]

The White Tiger

The White Tiger is a wonderful short poem by R.S.Thomas. It puts in almost magical form the truth which J.B.Phillips wrote about in a book called Your God is too small. R.S.Thomas draws a picture of this gorgeous animal caged in a zoo. The tiger, as it moves up and down, up and down, looks unseeing into the poet's face. The tiger is vast and incredibly beautiful but there is no relationship between the onlooker and the splendid beast.

Now comes the surprise. The tiger is God. This god is great and beautiful. He looks at people but does not respond to them in any way. Though they may look at him and admire him or even worship him, he takes no notice of them at all. He is locked in his own misery, walking up and down, seeing nothing because his mind is elsewhere. If onlookers imagine he sees them, notices them or relates to them in any way they are mistaken. The tiger, though by nature a wild animal, has been captured and tamed by men. He is harmless.

The poem ends like this:

(It was....) breathing
as you can imagine that
God breathes within the confines
of our definitions of him, agonising
over immensities that will not return.

The ways in which we define God, think about God, dismiss God or even think we love God are nearly always far from reality because our ideas about the ultimate reality, the creator, the first cause of our existence are so hopelessly inadequate. In a word, our God is too small.

-Peter Graham

Posted by LYT at 11:43 AM | Comments (3)

April 9, 2006

Honey, I broke the dating site

Chemistry.com seems to have finally run out of people to try to match me up with. They promise to get you three meetings in three months, but I broke the mold.

In other news, Anthony Kaufman is not my paid publicist, though he seems to open his yap every time I run in the Voice. I haven't read what he said this time and don't plan on it - maybe my linking to him upped his website traffic last time or something.

The week and weekend have been busy, what with a Scott-style birthday party, all-u-can-eat oyster buffet, and playing catch-up on all the movies that didn't screen for press. A lot of reviewers/reporters are having fits about the record number of releases that simply aren't being press-screened, but I have to say I prefer it this way to the previous practice.

What drives me nuts is when a studio says, "Yeah, we'd LOVE to have you come to our screening! It's two days before opening day!" In other words, if you're a weekly, it might as well not be screened at all, because your deadline for the week has come and gone. This is particularly aggravating if they're inconsistent in different cities (i.e. it screens in time in Miami but not here), because if you write for a national chain as part of a team, it throws carefully allocated assignments out of whack.

It's more refreshingly honest to just hear, "Nope, not screening it for press." When they say that, you know they're being consistent nationwide as well.

I'm really surprised about Disney's THE WILD, though. In the time I've been a critic, I think it's the only Disney cartoon feature that hasn't been shown in advance. Apparently all the major toy companies passed on it as well.

Posted by LYT at 10:03 PM | Comments (4)

April 8, 2006

By the time we get to Arizona

MAD COWGIRL will be screening in Tucson as part of the Arizona Film Festival.

Saturday, April 29 at 8:00pm. THE SCREENING ROOM, 127 East Congress.

If you're anywhere near there, get to it!

Posted by LYT at 1:02 AM | Comments (2)

April 7, 2006

Photos from THE LOST's LA premiere week

LYT, Shay Astar, Shay's friend Jen (didn't catch the last name - but I'll add it if anyone knows!), Megan Henning, Chris Sivertson.

Megan and Chris

Shay and Jen

Ti West, Jesse Hlubik

Jesse is the master...

...or am I?

It's gettin' hairy! LYT and Eddie Steeples

Chris Sivertson has some nice cans

Lindsay Stone

Jaye Barnes Luckett, Eddie Steeples, Marc Senter, Brenden McVeigh

My autographed teaser poster, featuring Erin Brown.

Posted by LYT at 10:44 PM | Comments (4)

April 6, 2006

New review Thursday

"The merging of ballroom and hip-hop sensibilities, via musical mash-ups and an integration of styles, is likely to make Take the Lead more appealing to the entire family, making the obvious (but not always acknowledged) point that the specifics of popular culture may change, but the intent and inspiration are very similar. But given that the movie's main message is about the value of ballroom dancing, things get awfully muddled toward the end. As in Mad Hot Ballroom, the story builds toward a climactic dance competition, which would inherently be quite traditionalist. Yet they expect to win it by using You Got Served stylings?"

read the rest

(a capsule-version of the above piece is the second review of mine to run in the Village Voice)

Quick takes after the jump...

SLITHER (CityBeat)

As a writer, James Gunn has consistently, hilariously riffed on pre-existing pop culture without merely regurgitating it – though literal regurgitation has certainly been fair game, as when he took on Shakespeare in Tromeo and Juliet. So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that his directorial debut, involving a slimy living virus from outer space, references a vast number of cult horror movies: Basket Case, The Blob, The Toxic Avenger, Rosemary’s Baby, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and many more are name-checked. Those unfamiliar with the antecedent films may enjoy the movie greatly, but, for those of us who grew up on the same films Gunn did, a little less referencing and a slightly tighter edit would have done wonders.

Don’t get me wrong: I love movies about dumb-ass country folk being attacked by mutant slugs and merging together into giant blobs just as much as anyone, and I certainly appreciate Gunn’s casting of less-than-attractive actors for most of the locals, with leads Nathan Fillion (Serenity) and Elizabeth Banks (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) the only real beauties. But, honestly, while it may score you cool points with geeks to name the mayor after Kurt Russell’s character in The Thing, it doesn’t really serve the story at hand. Cutting out the script’s dead spots would. Still, Slither also gave me the most genuine laugh-out-loud moments of any movie so far this year; it is very funny, and intentionally so. As a director, Gunn is finding his footing; as a scribe, he’s still very much the guy who did The Specials.

LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR (combined review)

To paraphrase Larry’s colleague Jeff Foxworthy: If you’re wondering how a cable guy can also be a health inspector...yyyyyyou might not be a redneck. Originating as a comedic persona used to harass the hosts of radio call-in shows, Dan Whitney’s “Larry” persona has long since dropped the part of his shtick that involves actual cable, except inasmuch as his last couple of movies with Foxworthy and friends have debuted there (and of all those “Blue Collar Comedy” guys, Ron White deserves a movie the most).

As with Andrew Dice Clay in his heyday, it can be hard to tell exactly the degree to which Larry the Cable Guy is a mockery of his target audience or a wholehearted part of it, but it doesn’t matter much...rednecks have always loved to laugh at themselves, as the popularity of the late Jim Varney’s “Ernest” movies proved. Imagine those films with more sex jokes, along with a heaping helping of diarrhea humor and lots of farting, and you get Larry’s movie. The plot, such as it is, involves Larry working to uncover a conspiracy to rig a food contest, and there are cameos from Joe Pantoliano, Lisa Lampanelli, Kid Rock, and Back to the Future villain Thomas F. Wilson. It’s admittedly gross and poorly scripted, but amiable enough for those who enjoy dumb Southern-fried fun. Like Tyler Perry’s Madea movies, its niche is already predefined and probably won’t win new fans, but if Pabst is (unironically) your drink, this just might be your movie. It’s funnier than you might expect, but the curious should really wait for the inevitable Comedy Central airing.

STAY ALIVE (CityBeat)

When three teens are found murdered while playing a videogame, the first thing all their friends do … is attend the funeral. The second thing they do is immediately load up the game, an illegally obtained prototype called Stay Alive, which features revolutionary voice-recognition technology. After their first night of online play, however, the least successful participant (Adam Goldberg, sounding like he’s aping Paul Giamatti) is found murdered in exactly the same way his character died in the virtual world. It takes a few more deaths before anyone figures out there’s more than coincidence at work.

Yes, it’s The Ring with a computer game, down to the evil female spirit contained within, who in this case is the infamous Hungarian Countess Bathory (Maria Kalinina), inexplicably relocated to New Orleans for this storyline. The game within the film looks like a lot of fun – certainly more fun than the copycat killings. You’ll probably wish you were at home playing something similar instead. If any of these characters were halfway decent gamers (or even hackers), their problems would be solved, but none of these numbskulls even tries to simply beat the game. Note to parents: For a PG-13 movie, Stay Alive contains semi-shown kinky sex, lots of drug references, brief realistic gore, and lots of digital gore. Note to adolescents: It still isn’t as much fun as playing an actual game.

ATL (CityBeat)

With the “dirty South” finally being acknowledged as an important source of hip-hop music, it’s about time we got a black youth movie set in Atlanta, which, needless to say, has a whole different vibe from the traditional east and west coast schools of rap.

Director Chris Robinson (not the Black Crowes frontman, who’s also from Atlanta), captures the atmosphere of the urban South effectively with a story loosely based on the life experiences of producers Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Dallas Austin, and a script by Antwone Fisher, who already got his own autobiographical baggage out of his system. Initially, the movie throws way too many names and characters at us, most of them played by unfamiliar faces, but as you settle into the groove of the thing, the story of two orphaned brothers -- one a janitor (Tip “T.I.” Harris) and the other an aspiring drug dealer (Evan Ross) -- comes to the fore.

Adding some heft to the cast are Keith David as a successful businessman who disavows his own past, Mykelti Williamson as the orphan boys’ selfish uncle George, and Outkast rapper Big Boi as a wise-cracking local crimeboss. It’s fun to just soak in the vibe of the whole thing, but then Robinson seems to suddenly remember that urban youth movies need to get tragic/didactic at the end, and the movie, having solidly entertained for most of its running time, goes out in a blaze of cliché.

THE LADY IN QUESTION IS CHARLES BUSCH (Village Voice Media)

A documentary following the career of Busch, an actor and playwright primarily known for his performances in drag in such cult plays as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium. From a small cult following in the East Village to Off-Broadway, then a short stint as a more “serious” playwright before returning to what made him a star, the journey is all documented here -- though his first brush with Hollywood, making a movie of his Psycho Beach Party, is swiftly glossed over in a fake newsreel segment. His movie starring debut Die Mommy Die gets a little more time, but this movie doesn’t bother to ask why that movie didn’t do so well translating stage to screen, or even acknowledge that it wasn’t a huge hit. Nonetheless, this movie makes the case for the worthiness of Busch’s cult, and serves as an entertaining overview for neophytes. Shot on video, though, it isn’t very cinematic, and might be best enjoyed on TV at home.

Posted by LYT at 3:03 AM | Comments (3)

April 4, 2006

This must be my week for plugging friends' projects

Sarah "Mad Cowgirl" Lassez - published author!!!

(sson-to-be-published, actually, but you can pre-order now)

Posted by LYT at 6:42 PM | Comments (3)

Jesus or homosexuals -- pick your DVD of choice today!

Brokeback Mountain and The Chronicles of Narnia both go on sale today.

In honor of that, I am going to share with you my original, extra-snarky Narnia review that didn't make the papers (an abridged version did)

Read on...

The Lion in Winter
For holiday entertainment, Narnia’s divine feline is your personal savior.

If you’re a fan of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, all you need to know is this: Disney has done right by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It’s impossible to imagine it done much better. Read no further; just run to the theater now.

If you’re not a fan, perhaps you are one of those who has only heard of the book recently because of certain insane evangelicals going, “See, see! This is the real fantasy that Jesus approves of! He hates that Satanic Harry Potter, and He’s kind of okay with Lord of the Rings, but C.S. Lewis will bring viewers to Christ! Go spend money on Narnia stuff to show that you love the Lord!” It’s true that there are elements of biblical allegory in there; it is also true that this is a fantasy. If you’re going to tell the nutballs that they should get over their fear of J.K. Rowling because her stuff is just a story, then you owe it to yourself to give the same leeway to works of fiction from other authors, no? Or is it only your adversaries who are capable of subtle brainwashing through entertainment?

Frankly, it’s the story that matters; if you must categorize Narnia as a Christian movie, then let’s state right off the bat that it’s many times better than any explicitly Christian movie in recent memory. Faith-based films like Left Behind tend to pile on the sentimentality; this does not. It even adds an opening sequence that’s darker than anything in the book, in which our four lead children survive a bombing raid during the London Blitz. Relocated to a safer house in the country, the Pevensie children are left at loose ends most of the day, and it’s during a game of hide and seek that the youngest, Lucy (Georgie Henley) conceals herself inside a large wardrobe.

Backing into the stacks of fur coats, she discovers that the wardrobe has no back, and in fact leads into a wintry forest where a single lamp-post stands. Here, she encounters a man-goat hybrid named Mr. Tumnus (an outstanding James McAvoy), who tells her that this is the land of Narnia, where winter has reigned for a century, under the command of the evil White Witch (Tilda Swinton). But a prophecy has said that one day, four sons of Adam and daughters of Eve (uh-oh! Bible reference!) will bring an end to the tyranny.

It takes a few more trips back to the real world for the other Pevensies to believe Lucy, but eventually, all are in Narnia. However, unbeknownst to Lucy and her “sensible” older siblings Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell), their resentful brother Edmund (Skandar Keynes) has already met the White Witch, and been bribed with candy to betray his family. The only one who can save the day is Aslan, a giant magical lion with the voice of Liam Neeson (now that Charlton Heston is no longer able to be culturally designated Voice of God), who is said to be on the move, bringing spring with him.

Part of Aslan’s inevitable victory involves him giving up his innocent life as a sacrificial lamb for another, which is where the main religious metaphors come in. His death and subsequent resurrection quite clearly invokes Jesus, and the way the scene is shot by director Andrew Adamson (both Shrek movies) and cinematographer Donald McAlpine (Moulin Rouge) recalls The Passion of the Christ. Except that, since you can’t get much more Aryan than a White Witch, there’s no way to blame the Jews this time. (Also it’s set during World War II, in which anti-Semites are pretty clearly the bad guys.)

If Aslan is Narnia’s Christ, though, how is it that Narnians constantly talk about Christmas, complete with an appearance by Santa (James Cosmo)? Shouldn’t they call it Aslanmas? We might also ask why Aslan needs the four human kids to save Narnia. He seems to do all the work himself, so why has he waited 100 years to do so? Because a prophecy says so. Even in fiction, it seems, acts of God can be arbitrary.

Lewis warned against a live-action movie of Narnia, fearing that there was no way to give a talking lion the appropriate Godly gravitas. He needn’t have worried. Though the digital effects aren’t always at 100%, they’re good enough, and the talking animals are convincing, particularly a Ray Winstone-voiced beaver, and of course, Aslan. There are four credited screenwriters, and they’ve done an excellent job of keeping the Lewis dialogue that matters, adapting the rest to sound more like real conversation than fairy tale, and extending the action scenes to add more excitement and spectacle. What little of the book they haven’t managed to explicitly cover is at least hinted at (why is there a lioness at the end with glasses drawn on her face? Read the book.) Adamson’s Shrek movies relied to heavily on wink-wink in-jokes, but thankfully there are none here.

The score by Harry Gregson-Williams (Kingdom of Heaven), is as majestic as it oughta be, but one or two other musical notes seem a bit off, specifically an opening New Agey-trip-hop number by Imogen Heap, and a closing song by Alanis Morisette. They’re fine songs, but that isn’t the issue: They aren’t appropriate for a film set in the ‘40s. Watch the ‘80s fantasy Ladyhawke, if you can bear it, to see how contemporary soundtracks can date really badly in just a few years. The big-band number played during the hide and seek game is exactly what was called for the rest of the time.

Posted by LYT at 3:10 PM | Comments (7)

THE WOODS world premiere is coming!!!

I wasn't sure I'd ever get to write those words. And while I wish it were coming to L.A., it's making a more unique debut than that.

Lucky McKee's THE WOODS is going to screen theatrically at 8:15 p.m. at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival on April 24th.

If you live in Europe, get your ass there.

What this means for future release patterns and DVD isn't known at this point, but presumably a good response will help its future.

Lucky's "Masters of Horror" episode is also set to screen at the fest. And I'd say there's a good bet the man himself will try to show as well.

Posted by LYT at 2:26 PM | Comments (6)

Behind the scenes on the set of GAYMAN 2

All pictures taken by Justin Stone

Posted by LYT at 2:24 AM | Comments (6)

April 3, 2006

While I'm plugging other friends' projects...

My friend Broos Campbell (not The Chin) has just published his first novel, a seafaring adventure.

And as you probably know by now, Rian Johnson's movie BRICK has opened in New York and L.A. I suspect it may spark a trend or two, so be among the first to catch it! Be sure to note many familiar names in the end credits.

My favorite credit in BRICK, because it's so random and not part of the cast list, is the one that credits "Ben and Dave" as being "Ben Boyer and Dave Roche." No comment on what they actually did; just a credit for being themselves.

Really, don't we all deserve to give ourselves a credit like that?

Posted by LYT at 5:43 PM | Comments (1)

LOST in Los Angeles

Fresh from its triumphant run at SXSW, Chris Sivertson's THE LOST, a movie featuring the cameo of my hand -- plus Justin Stone, Jesse Hlubik, Erin Brown, Shelli Merrill, Mike McKee, Eddie Steeples and many more friends and colleagues -- is playing Los Angeles for TWO DAYS ONLY as part of an exclusive Fangoria promotion.

"Fango’s first 35mm screening of THE LOST will take place on Wednesday, April 5 at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills (8556 Wilshire Boulevard). The movie starts at 7:30 p.m.; street parking is available, as well as $2 validated parking at the southwest corner at Willaman Drive (the traffic signal between Robertson and La Cienega boulevards and one block west of the Fine Arts Theater).

Our second showing of THE LOST will unspool on Thursday, April 6 at 7 p.m. at Hollywood’s American Film Institute (2021 North Western Avenue). To RSVP for either screening, send an e-mail to thelostmovie@aol.com. Hurry! Seating is limited and you should arrive early. "

I intend to be there Wednesday. Douglas Dunning is likely to make an appearance Thursday. I'm guessing cast and crew will be present both days.

As a reminder, my original review of THE LOST can be read HERE

Posted by LYT at 4:27 PM | Comments (0)

What's Left of England

Proof that English people are commies...

Proof that English people are not commies...

Which looks more fun?

Posted by LYT at 4:18 AM | Comments (7)

"He killed younglings!"

Buzznet has a rule about a certain amount of picture uploading per month. So expect a few new Europe photos in the coming days.

If him...

and him...

If they fighted...

Whowouldwin? (answer after the jump)

BIG BROTHER WINS!!!

Posted by LYT at 4:00 AM | Comments (4)

The absolute best feedback on the "Lukey's World" piece...

...comes from Cathy Seipp's regular commenter "Mark," who writes:

"I don't know about LYT, but there's someone posting to his blog named Murk who sure is spot-on when it comes to sexuality and choice, certainly in light of things such as an interview of Gore Vidal in Sunday's LA Times."

Hmm. A post making fun of Cathy's regular commenters has a guy named Murk who sounds similar to Mark? I wonder how that happened?

Posted by LYT at 12:47 AM | Comments (5)

April 2, 2006

Ain't no foolin'

Just so everyone, knows, that April Fool post had been an idea of mine for quite some time. Another idea I'd had at one point was for me and David Scott to switch blogs for a day, but when I became a guest blogger on Pererro anyway that kinda killed the point.

A major reason I allowed html on comments again was in preparation - you can't spoof Cathy's comments if you can't italicize or link to pictures of penises.

Anyway, courtesy of a link from ED209, here are some more official press-type photos from the MAD COWGIRL premiere.

The next place the movie will be showing is Calgary, Alberta, Canada, later this month. I'm hoping I can manage to go.

And if I may name-drop like Cathy Seipp for a moment...it really hit me tonight that shit is starting to happen for the whole gang. Going to the Arclight to see Rian Johnson's BRICK (featuring Jaye Luckett's old van in a key "role"), the memory of our movie winning an award there Friday fresh in my mind, passing by a poster for AKEELAH AND THE BEE co-starring Eddie Steeples, and running into director Ti West, with whom I had a conversation about actor Marc Senter, star of THE LOST, which is screening here later this week...

It's a trip. And it's about time.

I think BRICK is gonna catch on in a big way, btw.

Posted by LYT at 2:58 AM | Comments (4)

April 1, 2006

Lukey's World

(note: the following entry was provided for us by an extra-special guest blogger, and many of the comments are by fans of same)

My new column for the Forum For Independent Thinkers Who All Agree With Me is now posted. Here's an excerpt:

My friend Rob Long is famous. He used to write for Cheers, and he still does TV stuff. Anyway, I was talking to him the other day, and he asked me, "Hey, you know our other famous friend, producer Lionel Chetwynd?"

"yes," I said.

"Well, he's pretty famous," said Rob. I agreed, though Rob sometimes has to try hard to convince me, because I'm an independent thinker. Except this time.

I told Rob that Lionel would probably agree with me that our other friend Andrew Breitbart doesn't get the credit he deserves, because Matt Drudge, who's very famous, takes it all. Rob agreed. It reminded me of the time I was on a TV show with Lawrence O'Donnell, a.k.a. LARRY O'SCARY (get it? Because "Larry" rhymes with "scary!") and he yelled at me. You might remember that from my last 500 blog entries. Anyhow, I'll bet Larry hates George Bush. Because he's a traitor.

It all reminds me of the time I was at Maia's school, and I went into the library, hoping to find a copy of MEIN KAMPF, since they were studying World War II. But when I asked the librarian about it, she snapped at me.

"We don't carry books by fascists!" she said. But I bet she was a lesbian.

You can read the rest by following the link, except that if you're reading this blog, you already read about five different versions of it already. Hey, that Independent Forum site was only paying me $100; what do they expect, original text? My time is far too valuable for that.

If you're not doing anything on Saturday, please come to the panel I'm putting on, on the subject of "Us Conservatives Are Always Being Picked On." I will be moderating; my guests will be Lionel Chetwynd, Andrew Breitbart, Rob Long, the conservative son of that guy who made the Willy Wonka movie, Andrew Breitbart, Haskell Wexler's Bush-voting kid, Rob Long, Lionel Chetwynd, and Rob Long. I'll be moderating, so don't ask any stupid questions or I'll yell at you.

The other night, I asked Luke Ford what he thought about the panel. He replied, "Chicks should all be barefoot and pregnant!"

So I told him to go fuck himself.

Posted by LYT at 3:16 AM | Comments (48)

Caught on camera

Here's me doing an interview to promote MAD COWGIRL

Posted by LYT at 3:06 AM | Comments (1)

SILVER LAKE FILM FESTIVAL 2006: WE WIN, MUTHAFUCKAS!

Best Feature - Experimental: MAD COWGIRL

Best Performance (5-way-tie): Sarah Lassez, MAD COWGIRL

Hellz Yeah!

(not an April Fool)

Posted by LYT at 2:28 AM | Comments (4)