Using the CIA’s real-life Project MKUltra as a jumping-off point, freshman writer/director Blair Erickson explores the fates and legacy of those who volunteered for the controversial mind-control experiments, which ran in secret for about 20 years beginning in the 1950s and often involved LSD. After a friend disappears from downing a 150-mg dose, an […]
review
Posted inArts & Culture
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The funniest movie of last year, Bad Grandpa is also the funniest movie of this year (thus far), thanks to its unrated cut on Blu-ray. It’s not that the extra 11 minutes prove essential (they don’t) but that the gags from the theatrical release hold up, even without the benefit of playing to a packed […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon
Therefore, no one blames Hark for wanting to mine Dee for franchise potential. Unfortunately, the result is the kind of unfocused, overindulgent mess that saw the shine wear off his reputation in the first place. With Mark Chao taking over the part, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon is a prequel concerning the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Scorned
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; here, it’s just one of many atrocities suffered by his rich-guy character when his girlfriend, Sadie (AnnaLynne McCord, TV’s rebooted 90210), discovers he has been cheating on her — and with her own BFF (Viva Bianca, TV’s Spartacus), no less! Over one rainy night and long off her […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Conjuring / Insidious: Chapter 2
This summer, the smash of The Conjuring crowned him king. Based on a “true” case file of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (if you believe bunk to be true), the film begins with perhaps the most frightening doll in cinema history — or at least since Poltergeist — and things just grow creepier from […]
Posted inMusic
Graham Colton — Lonely Ones
Lonely Ones doesn’t feel like a manufactured change, though, and Colton’s wise choice in marrying his intrinsic tendency toward soaring, ear-friendly melodies with some quirkier sonic sensibilities — owed to a push from friend Wayne Coyne — is nothing if not natural. This sounds like where Graham was meant to be all along. The opening […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Traffic pattern
Photo: Shannon Cornman For those winging their way into the Wiley Post Airport, there’s a little diner called Annie Okie’s Runway Cafe, 5915 Phillip J. Rhoads Ave. If you’ve landed for a brief refueling on your way to the next little airport, it’s an easy place to stop and grab a bite before your next […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Eat, sample, love
The xocolatl (Spanish, from Nahuatl Aztec xocolatl, meaning “bitter water”) was first reserved for priests, nobility and warriors before the popularity spread to the Spaniards and beyond. The world’s infatuation with chocolate continues in Norman at the annual Firehouse Art Center’s Chocolate Festival 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Feb. 1 at the National Center for Employee Development, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Carrie / Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D
His split-screen treatment of the senior-prom carnage becomes her condensed Final Destination sequel; his shock ending becomes her anti-bullying message. Pay no mind that the entire story is already that, with outcast Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz, Kick-Ass 2) becoming even more of a social punching bag after she mistakes her first menstruation as bleeding […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Black Water Vampire
You aren’t likely to read a review of The Black Water Vampire that doesn’t reference The Blair Witch Project, and there’s good reason: That 1999 smash’s fingerprints are all over this found-footage effort, to the point that I could show you select stills from both and you wouldn’t be able to tell which belongs to […]