For rockers Gooding, life as touring musicians isn’t just about the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. It’s also about financial literacy. Wait, what? “Isn’t it the least rock ’n’ roll thing in the world? Shouldn’t I be carrying around a guitar and a bottle of Jack?” said Gooding, guitarist/singer and unimonikered namesake of the […]
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Whitey power
Photo: Clay Abbott While many critics are quick to label Whitey Morgan as part of the new breed of “outlaw country,” a movement begun in the 1970s by the likes of Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, he is just as quick to put that dog down. “I don’t think there’s really any outlaw country these […]
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Lost Empires — Death and Evil Beasts
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal;mso-outline-level:1″> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal”> From the title alone of its new EP, Death and Evil Beasts, you get a feeling of where this six-song affair is going: This ain’t no Taylor Swift. Clocking in at around 20 minutes, the disc covers a lot of ground, musically. The old-school punk noise of […]
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Americano
Jetting to Los Angeles where she lived — and where he grew up for a few years until his father took him back to France, and where he hasn’t visited for five years — Martin plans on a quick trip to sign paperwork and put her condominium on the market. He doesn’t count on his […]
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Best of Bond … James Bond: 50 Years — 50 Tracks
With Skyfall landing in theaters Nov. 9, this season is no different … except that Capitol Records’ Best of Bond … James Bond has something else to celebrate: five full decades of the screen franchise. Therefore, this set throws in another disc’s worth of music that make it worth replacing the last disc you bought. […]
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Rites of Passage
It concerns a group of party-hearty students at the University in Santa Barbara — that’s right: in, not of, per the opening scrawl — taking a field trip to a burial ground of the Chumash Indians, a tribe evidently known for shape-shifting and downing toxic, hallucinatory flower tea. Along with much sexual activity and drug […]
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Gone in 60 Seconds: Car Crash King Edition
Making its Blu-ray debut in a combo pack — albeit one saddled with the silly subtitle of Car Crash King Edition — the film features writer/director/producer Halicki as its protagonist, too: an insurance investigator named Pace (get it?) who makes better money heading an illegal car-theft ring and chop shop that’s more or less wallpapered […]
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Macklemore & Ryan Lewis — The Heist
On The Heist, the duo’s chemistry is apparent as always, as they strike a perfect balance between fun and reality. Macklemore spits thought-provoking, honest lyrics about everything from thrift shopping and Cadillacs to sobriety and marriage equality. Throughout the project, the rapper exhibits great rhymes and outstanding flow, clearly showing his strong lyrical ability. Lewis […]
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Confessions of an Opium Eater / The Face of Fu Manchu / The Vengeance of Fu Manchu
Based on the novel by early 19th-century journalist Thomas De Quincy (whom Price plays), the film from notorious schlock director Albert Zugsmith (Sex Kittens Go to College) is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. Should you choose to embrace that nonsense, you’ll be greeted with lots of falling bodies (including a bird), Asian women as slaves, […]
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Chernobyl Diaries
From the mind of Paranormal Activity maestro Oren Peli and first-time director Bradley Parker, the film follows six 20-somethings (including former boy bander Jesse McCartney) taking an “extreme tour” of the town of Pripyat, abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster of 1986. They’re not supposed to be there, but it wouldn’t be extreme if […]