Utterly kaleidoscopic credits to a most swinging Les Baxter score give way to the story of Vegas belle Michelle (Welch). One sunny, carefree afternoon, she’s drinking tea and making shopping plans with pals Iris (soap actress Pat Delaney) and Nikki (Oklahoma-born Sandra Giles). Plans are broken when Alan (Luke Askew, Easy Rider), the jealous loser […]
review
Posted inArts & Culture
Death and Cremation
One of the outcasts is the lonely, miserable Stan (Brad Dourif, Halloween II), who runs a crematorium. The other is Jarod (Jeremy Sumpter, Soul Surfer), a high school “loser” who paints his nails black. When the latter approaches the former about a job, Stan reluctantly gives in, yet sees so much of himself in his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Swell Season
Musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová were not an item when they played the MFEO lovers of Once, but that relationship status changed after the movie’s release. By the time they deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Original Song the following year, they were sharing more than honors. Taking its name from Hansard and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Underworld: Awakening
This chapter finds a virus loosed on the public that turns them into vampires and lycans upon infection. With no cure in sight, martial law has been declared, with a “mass cleansing” immediately following. Amid this chaos, vampire super heroine Selene (Beckinsale, Contraband, Whiteout) is captured, only to awaken in and escape from a high-security […]
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Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
Of Adult Swim (Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) and Funny or Die Presents infamy, comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim play themselves. Having just squandered a billion dollars of the Schlaaang Corporation’s money on a feature film that somehow runs all of three minutes and stars a guy who isn’t really Johnny Depp, […]
Posted inMusic
Parker Millsap and Michael Rose — Palisade
Like velvet laid over gravel, Millsap’s voice plays gruff, jagged and unexpectedly smooth at the same time. He captures the essence of Tom Waits’ vocals better than a 19-year-old singer ever should; fans of Closing Time-era Waits will find lots to like here, albeit more countrified. The opening title track saunters with a saucy strut […]
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The Perfect Family
The joke of The Perfect Family, of course, is that no such thing exists. Yet in the film, just as in real life, some people put on airs that suggest otherwise. The situation at the heart of this dramedy — running Friday through Mother’s Day at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art — is timely, […]
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Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass
As the subtitle suggests, Greenberg offers a fly-on-the-wall account of celebrated director Werner Herzog shooting his 1976 feature, Heart of Glass. While hardly among the greatest entries on the German filmmaker’s résumé, it’s notable for being the one where he hypnotized most of the cast before shooting every scene. For Herzog, it was merely an […]
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Archie Meets KISS
But who should follow these beasts from another dimension? Why, Gene Simmons and his bandmates, who proclaim, “We’re gonna rock those monsters back where they came from!!” (Double exclamation points theirs.) Therefore, the excellent title of Archie Meets KISS is fulfilled — certainly the greatest team-up in comics history since 1994’s Archie Meets the Punisher. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Shock Labyrinth
This is surprising, given that the Japanese horror feature was directed by Takashi Shimizu, the guy who birthed The Grudge franchise. Not that he’s an infallible filmmaker by any stretch of the imagination, but Labyrinth finds him revisiting those reliable themes, with the added dimension — literally — of playing in 3-D. (Well Go USA’s […]