2009 Watching “Ghost Month” kind of feels like it takes that long. The rather rote horror flick finds young Alyssa (Marina Resa) fleeing an abusive boyfriend and finding work as a housekeeper in the desert home of one Miss Wu (Shirley To), a Chinese woman who lives with her elderly aunt. Little time passes before […]
Rod Lott
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Eastbound & Down: The Complete First Season
2009 Seeing as how “The Foot Fist Way” was my least favorite film of last year, I approached the creative team’s HBO series “Eastbound & Down” with trepidation. Luckily, the show has things the movie doesn’t: depth, story, character development and, thus, genuinely earned laughs. Danny McBride (“Land of the Lost”) stars as Kenny Powers, […]
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The Best of 2000 AD: Hundreds of Classic Strips From the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic
If all you know of the Judge Dredd character is from some late-night cable airing of a particularly awful Sylvester Stallone flick of the mid-1990s, acquaint yourself correctly with The Best of 2000 AD: Hundreds of Classic Strips From the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic. This heavy hardcover contains nearly 400 pages’ worth of comics culled from […]
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Samurai Films — Roland Thorne
Kamera Books For most Americans, samurai cinema begins and ends with the films of the late Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, whose epics such as “Seven Samurai,” “The Hidden Fortress” and “Ran” made the Asian cinema staple jump stateside to wild critical acclaim. But for whatever reason —? xenophobia, ignorance, allergy to subtitles —? that still […]
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Born in Indian Territory, comic-book trailblazer Boody Rogers gets his due
ards of quality “¦ not to mention standards of unapologetic weirdness. The bulk of the book is devoted to Babe Boone, the blond Ozark goddess whose hillbilly family recalls “Li’l Abner” filtered through an acid-trip sensibility. Student Sparky Watts also gets some action, shrunk “Fantastic Voyage”-style on the head of a monkey; one of Sparky’s […]
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Manford Strecker earns first-place honors
There were wieners. There were losers. After crowds witnessed an initial 12 heats and three semifinal runs, Manford Strecker overtook audience favorite Rufus Sternlof in the final race to triumph as top dog in Oklahoma Gazette’s fifth annual Dachshund Dash, held May 9 at the Cox Convention Center Arena. Coming in third overall was Gracie […]
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Taken
2009 Parents, are your children not doing what they say? Show them “Taken.” Perhaps they’ll straighten right up. Teenaged Kim (Maggie Grace, late of TV’s “Lost”) ignores the initial wishes of her dad (Liam Neeson) by going on a trip to France with a friend. He thinks it’s dangerous for a girl her age; she […]
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Star Trek
In rebooting “Star Trek” entirely, director/producer J.J. Abrams (“Mission: Impossible III”) understands the franchise played too much to its own cult, at the exclusion of everyone else. His movie does not require one to have seen all the episodes or memorized decades of continuity and arcane references. Hell, he’s even told the purists to stay […]
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Transporter 3
2008 Without question, “Transporter 3” is the least enjoyable of the Luc Besson-masterminded trilogy, but don ‘t let that stop you from a purchase or a rental. Odds are, if you enjoyed “The Transporter” or “The Transporter 2,” you’ll get a kick —? or several —? out of this presumably final outing. Besides, I’ll take […]
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I Love You, Man
Whether extolling the virtues of Sex Panther cologne in “Anchorman,” playing a spirited round of You Know How I Know You’re Gay? in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” or just ranting about the inane nomenclature surrounding coffee in “Role Models,” Paul Rudd is cinematic comedy’s current king of smart smarm. He’s long been very, very funny, but […]