The title refers to the booze-soaked, foul-mouthed, likely STD-infected clown (British stand-up comedian Ross Noble) who meets an early, accidental demise while performing at an only child’s 10th birthday party. Because that’s what happens when kids tie your shoelaces together, causing you to trip and fall face-first into the butcher knife left precariously pointing upward […]
review
Posted inArts & Culture
13 Eerie
At least not at first. Six forensic-science students are boated and then bussed into a body farm adjacent to the 13 Eerie Strait Penitentiary for a “Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team” exercise. It’s a field exam to test their wits and skills for FBI readiness, with corpses placed carefully around the island grounds. The plan […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Thief of Bagdad
The 1924 fantasy-adventure is considered widely as actor/writer/producer Douglas Fairbanks’ tour de force. Raoul Walsh (White Heat) may serve as director of the silent Arabian Nights adaptation, but the show is Fairbanks’ and the performer knows it, traipsing with abandon through the exquisite, no-expense-spared sets. (They come courtesy the mind and body of Oscar-winning production […]
Posted inMusic
The Hitt Boyz — AlphaCat
While it’s not exactly clear whether this Oklahoma City quartet is hopelessly self-aware or merely revels in modest drollery, what is clear is that AlphaCat sounds nothing like you’d expect — which is to say, it’s actually pretty damn good. Clocking in at just under 11 minutes, it consists of only three tracks: “Best Catt,” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tormented
Instead, I got what amounts to a feature-length commercial for said Shock Labyrinth. Also in 3-D (if you have the proper player), Tormented opens with 10-year-old Daigo (Takeru Shibuya, who acts primarily by blinking) putting a gravely injured rabbit out of its misery, much to the horror of his fellow classmates and his mute older […]
Posted inArts & Culture
How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life
That she should be honored to be subservient. That a 28-year-old blonde bombshell would have trouble landing a beau until some 51-year-old man came sliming along. I’m being harsh, but this Dean Martin/Stella Stevens pairing — now part of the burned-on-demand Sony Pictures Choice Collection — engages in all of these and more. I wasn’t […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Enlightened: The Complete First Season
This is not to denigrate her Oscar-nominated turn as 1991’s Rambling Rose or her work as muse to David Lynch, most notably in Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart — all solid and accomplished. It’s just that her role here as Amy Jellicoe is the most complex and multilayered character she’s been given. Amy represents […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Easy Money
Front and center in every sense is a fantastic Joel Kinnaman (The Darkest Hour, TV’s The Killing and our new RoboCop), commanding the screen with real star power as JW, a college student with a brilliant mind for business, but practically destitute himself. So desperately wanting to be part of the cocaine-and-cognac crowd, he spends […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Zero Dark Thirty
Some, including Republican Sen. John McCain, accused director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who last collaborated on The Hurt Locker, of falsely suggesting that intel gleaned through torture is what led the CIA to bin Laden. The ensuing controversy hit fever pitch. Is ZDT a nearly journalistic work? Is it morally repugnant propaganda? Mostly, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
K-11
Music producer Raymond Saxx (Goran Visnjic, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) has a drinking-and-drugging problem, which earns him an even bigger problem by Beverly Hills PD’s finest: a stay inside the titular ward of the L.A. County Jail. Dubbed by one of its residents as a “sanctuary for broken toys,” it’s the big cement […]