Welcome back to another edition of “Audio Files,” where blind eyes look into the vapid maw of Jennifer Lopez and see greatness. There’s lots happening this week, so let’s teleport to Elysium, where fields of asphodel await our rumpled back-parts. Chin up, fellow travelers.
“Here we believe in fate,” Tareq (Alexander Siddig) tells Juliette (Patricia Clarkson). In this film, what is fate, what is circumstance and what is choice is debatable, and is left to the audience to decide. This is a small and quiet film, but the two compelling lead actors kept me interested in the fate of the characters. [Read more →]
Before I hand out my weekly dose of celebrity advice, I’d like to thank the great people of New York for realizing that, as always, I was right and for choosing to view Manhattan over Serendipity at the Central Park Film Festival last week. I was worried but you pulled through for me. You’re a good bunch, NYC. Even you, Staten Island! Now, let’s talk about someone whom I am very proud to say is not a New Yorker: Paris Hilton. [Read more →]
A passing of note for me — and for all fans of anime, really. Satoshi Kon, a highly acclaimed Japanese anime director, died suddenly of cancer on Monday evening. He was 47.
Kon was not an early pioneer of the genre … nor was he its most prolific artist. But he had a special significance, a special impact, nonetheless. [Read more →]
Welcome back to the Internet’s premier den of rectitude, “Audio Files.” Last week’s column generated about $15,000 in Google Ad revenue, and this week I’m shooting for $20K. Parachute down the rabbit hole with me once again, won’t you?
I have mixed feelings about Todd Solondz. I loved Welcome to the Dollhouse, liked parts of Happiness and disliked other parts and Palindromes stayed with me, but in an uncomfortable way. As for Life During Wartime, some of the scenes are interesting and funny in a dark way. I like the parts, but the whole left me cold. But maybe that was Solondz’s goal. [Read more →]
By now, my faithful readership (all three of you) knows what this column is all about. Celebrities are crazy, and need good advice. I am awesome, and give good advice. Everybody wins. Today, though, I feel compelled to share my wisdom with a different type of celebrity: The people of New York City. Individually, we may not be much. Collectively, we possess the star power of Elvis in his heyday and Bono on any day combined. This week, we New Yorkers have the power to harness that brilliance and put it to good use. I am speaking, of course, about the biggest decision facing our city today, the importance of which is even greater than our inevitable future decision whether to re-elect King Bloomberg for a 15th term: The choice of whether to screen Woody Allen’s Manhattan or John Cusack’s Serendipity at the upcoming Viewer’s Choice Night of the Central Park Film Festival. New York, you need to choose Manhattan. [Read more →]
Our very own Fred Siegel will be performing at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His first show is September 3rd. Get ticket information and a full schedule here. Fred has started a blog to promote his Fringe Festival participation: Man of Mystery. Please check it out.
10. Instead of freakishly large floppy shoes, the funniest shoes the clowns can afford are size 15
9. The ‘fire eater’ is just some guy chomping on extra spicy chili peppers
8. Their ‘clown’ is a transvestite Lady Gaga impersonator
[Read more →]
Welcome back to another edition of “Audio Files,” the world’s most amorphous music column. Last week, we discussed groupies, white noise, and cosmonautical hoaxes. This week, the staff is amped ‘cuz our backstage passes to the Keith Urban show finally arrived. (Scott, fire up that sweet ride of yours; you, me, ‘n the boys are gonna freak out the squares all night long. Just like a Thin Lizzy song.)
Director/screenwriter Ryan Murphy (Glee) and screenwriter Jennifer Salt faced particular challenges in adapting Elizabeth Gilbert’s popular book. Eat Pray Love spent over 182 weeks on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list, and both critics and fans were quite taken with Gilbert’s chronicle of her year long journey. Expectations for the film were high, and because it is a true story, Murphy and Salt were limited in what they could change. The filmmakers did not take many liberties, although some fans of the book may quibble with details excluded and embellished. The film is not perfect, but this fan of the book admires the effort Murphy and Salt made in Eat Pray Love. The filmmakers also get a big assist from a terrific cast. [Read more →]
I recently spent a week at the beach with friends. We ate ice cream, we swam, and we drank a truly inestimable amount of red wine. Jealous? You should be. Anyway, my beach read of choice this year was the chick-lit phenom Eat, Pray, Love. Was it good? Not even a little. (I think my friend Kevin’s assessment of the plot says it best: “White people have so many problems!”) Did 300+ pages of pontification get my advice-giving juices flowing? Oh, yes. Those juices flowed like the fat off of a slice of Neapolitan pizza. Maybe, I started to think, the self-absorbed heroine of Expedite, Photograph, Lunge is on to something. Maybe, just maybe, another insanely rich woman out there could benefit from taking a sabbatical to find herself through gelato and yoga. That woman, dear readers, is Jennifer Aniston. [Read more →]
In this film, twelve is a potent mixture of heroin and cocaine. It is expensive and highly addictive. The film Twelve (screenplay by Jordan Melamed based on the novel by Nick McDonell) is a straight up tale of drug dealing and violence among over privileged New York teens. But some sharply drawn characters and original direction elevate this film above others in its genre. [Read more →]
A little update for you faithful readers: Last week, Bristol Palin called off her engagement redux with Levi Johnston, no doubt because she read my advice and realized that, as always, I was totally right. You’re welcome, Bristol. Now let’s see, on whom shall I direct my magic wand of miracle-working advice this week? Ah, yes: Laurence Fishburne, I choose you! [Read more →]
I don’t know why it would be shocking to anyone that Hugh Hefner thinks that women are sex objects, nor do I see what is controversial about what he is saying in this Showbiz Tonight video. But perhaps what is shocking is the show put on by the blonde anchor at Showbiz Tonight with her faux mild outrage that a woman’s appearance matters and that women want to be attractive to men. If she were ugly — no, if she were even average-looking or just mildly attractive — even if she had the strongest journalistic credentials to ever grace Showbiz Tonight’s illustrious newsroom, even were she the greatest investigative reporter they’d ever met — she wouldn’t be on television.
Welcome back to “Audio Files,” my new column here at When Falls the Coliseum. AF runs every Thursday at noon EST. In last week’s inaugural flight, we explored Bulgarian pop, Geddy Lee, and David Allan Coe’s thoughts on prison sex. There’s lots of important things to discuss this week, too, so let’s hunker down.
Via dlisted, there is an interview from Vanity Fair in which Lady GaGa confesses that she believes the seat of her creativity can be found in her wondrous loins.
Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy — “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”
Sex is a creative act in itself, if not procreative. It fans the creative spark; it does not deplete it. But how does a man take the creativity of a woman through her vagina? Copulation between a man and a woman involves penetrating the woman’s orifice with his penis. Does Ms. GaGa’s creativity travel into the hole in the tip of the penis, and up into his urethra, from there to his liver and eventually to his brain? [Read more →]
Dinner for Schmucks has two main problems. It is not very funny and not very interesting. This is a shame, because there is lots of comic talent languishing in this film. The initial idea has potential, but this film collapses under the weight of the poor screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman. Yes, it apparently takes two men to write a bad screenplay. [Read more →]
Birds flying high, you know how she feels. Sun in the sky, you know how she feels. Breeze driftin’ on by, you know how she feels. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life…and LiLo’s feeling good. That’s right, kids, Lindsay Lohan is a free woman. So now that she knows why the caged bird sings…what’s next? There’s been a lot of speculation on what LiLo’s first move should be, post-prison. Sit on Oprah’s couch? Embark on a spiritual retreat? Take a wild, girlish stab at acting? Nay! The question, dear friends, is not what Lindsay should do; it’s who Lindsay should become. [Read more →]
The Internet Movie Database ranking of the 250 films its users deem the greatest of all-time has always fascinated me, partly because I’ve spent a disturbing amount of my life creating lists for various publications and also because it reveals America’s self-proclaimed movie snobs to be deeply perceptive and total cretins all at once. The rankings inevitably feature a few artificially high recent releases (you may not have been aware of it, but Inception and Toy Story 3 are both among the ten finest films ever). Then in a few weeks things stabilize, resulting in relatively constant master list. Here’s what I love and loathe about the rankings:
Welcome to “Audio Files,” my new weekly column here at When Falls the Coliseum. AF is scheduled to run every Thursday at noon, God willing, and I’m fairly certain that it will.
I can’t promise the topics will be useful, relevant, or newsworthy, but I’ll make every effort to smother you with my relentless enthusiasm for all things aural. I should add that the topics won’t be limited to music; all dimensions of sound and noise will be explored.
Here we go…
Having absolutely nothing better to do, the President of the United States appeared on The View yesterday where he made what I consider to be a rather startling claim for an American to make:
President Obama charmed the ladies on “The View” yesterday and confidently showed off his command of the big challenges facing the nation today.
But the name Snooki didn’t ring a bell.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is,” the smiling but perplexed President said when asked about the big-haired “Jersey Shore” bombshell, according to several audience members interviewed after the show.
“We all liked that he didn’t know who she was,” said Nella Cerminara, 51, of Montreal.
That would be nice if the president didn’t know who “Snooki” was, I suppose.
Except he does know who Snooki is. He was lying. Check out this video from back in May: [Read more →]
A wonderful cast, an intelligent and funny screenplay and fine direction more than compensate for a few implausible plot twists in The Kids Are All Right. I found the characters compelling and parts of this film made me laugh harder than I expected. This film is not perfect, but it is very good. [Read more →]
Guess why the rock band Kings of Leon abandoned their gig in St. Louis after three songs. Bloody mosh pit? Misfiring dragon-shaped fireballs? Dragged off stage for lewd behavior involving honeybees and a flowering dogwood?
Nope. It was pigeons. Pooping pigeons.
The last Comic-Con I attended was way back in 2007, when I still had a comic book writing gig, a fairly big one, actually, and when I went to the bars and parties after hours I could say, “Hi, I’m Ricky and I write _____,” and people actually knew what I was talking about. I admit I felt like a big man. It was a fun time.
I mean, it was fun going to the bars and parties after Comic-Con had closed. Comic-Con itself had become the opposite of fun.
I like the idea behind Inception more than I like the film itself. Considering its box office success and positive word of mouth, perhaps I am in the minority. Inception maintained a high level of excitement throughout and the action sequences and effects are first rate. I enjoyed the film while I watched it, but found it eminently forgettable. Why all the fuss? [Read more →]
The recent financial reform bill that passed the House and Senate was so important that even the people who created it don’t know exactly what it will do. And we can debate all day what’s the most important part of the bill, but I’d like to suggest that it’s the ban on the despicable practice known as “Movie Futures Trading” (MFT) that will have the most positive affect on the country.
MFT is the process by which people bet on how much money a work of art — a film — will “earn” at the box office. Much as the stock market speculators nearly caused the collapse of our entire financial system, so to does this crass gambling enterprise threaten the very foundation of an industry that is vital to our economy and to our standing in the world. Interim MPAA president Bob Pisano put it best when he said:
“After proposals for these speculative gaming platforms came to light, our industry came together to oppose these plans with an unprecedented coalition that included entertainment industry workers, creators, independent producers and distributors, studios and theater owners. We are pleased with final passage of this important legislation. Congress has acted decisively to ban proposed trading in box office futures and to make important reforms in the country’s financial regulatory system. We applaud the work the bill’s authors have done, and of course, the many Senators and Members who supported the provisions to prevent movie futures trading.”
Essentially, it encourages people to “root against” certain films — films produced by studios that already have a hard time ensuring their products make money.
In the Twilight universe, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is better than New Moon, although not quite as much “fun” as the first Twilight. The change in director was a good one, and the focus of the film is back on the more interesting characters. The cast still has a certain charm, and although I am beginning to tire of author Stephenie Meyer’s heavy handed and simplistic abstinence agenda, I cannot blame the filmmakers. They did what they could with the sometimes cringe-worthy story. [Read more →]
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