In a followup to his very funny video The Landlord Will Ferrell plays a man accused of murder. When he refuses to confess, the cops bring in their most dangerous weapon…
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Here’s the first picture from uber-quirky director Spike Jonze’s big-screen adaptation of Maurice Sendek’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are:
The movie’s due out October 3rd in the US.
Via MTVMovieBlog
I have to admit that I’ve always been a much bigger fan of the idea of Ryan Adams than his music. Sure, there have been songs here and there that I’ve dug, but in general I appreciate his music more than I actually enjoy it. That seems to have changed with the release of his latest album, Easy Tiger. I picked it up on Tuesday and have already listened to it several times. I think I’m hooked. So here’s a performance of one of the tracks from the album, “These Girls”, though a considerably different version than the one on the album.
Wanna feel old? Here’s the baby from the cover of Nirvana’s classic album Nevermind:
Yep, the album came out 16 years ago. Ugh.
Meh. Would have been more exciting about 10 years ago. Though Spider Pig made me chuckle…
I have no idea what he’s like in the rest of his life, but musically Andrew Bird is a strange dude. This former auxiliary member of Squirrel Nut Zippers is a classically trained violinist and world-class whistler. He’s also a looper, using delay effects to overdub multiple layers of music in a live performance. But what sets him apart from other musicians is the elegant eccentricity he uses to put all of his talents together.
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If you’ve seen the trailer for Evan Almighty then you know the basic gist: Evan Baxter (the ass clown newscaster from Bruce Almighty becomes a congressman, moves to Virginia, talks to God, and builds an ark. Baxter, played by The Office and 40 Year Old Virgin’s Steve Carell, becomes a modern-day Noah, gathering two of every animal in preparation for a flood. Along the way he must overcome the skepticism of his family and colleagues.
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Mythbusters is one of the coolest shows on TV today. If you’re not familiar with it, the basic concept is that a team of very smart people put urban legends and other myths to the test and label them Confirmed, Plausible, or Busted. Mythbusters Results is a site dedicated to tracking the results of each myth they’ve tested. It makes for a pretty cool repository of knowledge.
The general public will finally get to see Quentin Tarantino’s epic masterpiece Kill Bill as it was originally conceived: as one long asskicking movie. Amazon is now listing Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, a 247 minute DVD coming out November 6. w00t!
Via Cinematical
As much as I think they should have just left the series off at Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade I have to admit seeing this picture gets me excited for the fourth installment. Damn you Spielberg!
via If It’s Movies
The true American hero behind the Bob Evans restaurant and a very tasty breakfast sausage died today. Don’t worry, it was from complications from pneumonia, not heart disease. So don’t go blaming his super delicious pork product. Back off vegetarians. Let the man rest in peace.
via Houston Chronicle and Fark (with a great headline: “Bob Evans now permanently down on the farm. Abe Froman unavailable for comment”)
Just think of the rock vengeance you could dish out with this bad boy. AND IT’S FOR SALE ON eBay!!!! With bids at only $4,500 who wouldn’t jump at the chance to strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy good music?
The guitar was made by ESP’s Craft House for Takamizawa, guitar player of Japanese band Alfee. I know nothing about their music, but I like their taste in guitars.
Click on the pics for bigger views:
via Gizmodo
What’s good enough for Tony is good enough for Bob. This is what would have happened if the producers of The Price is Right wanted to fuck with their viewers like David Chase did.
Finally, it all makes sense…
Can’t…talk…laughing…too…hard…
Walking a line between indie rock and alt-country, Orange County’s Limbeck follows in the footsteps of bands like Wilco, Whiskeytown, and The Old 97’s. They’ve built a solid following by relentlessly touring in a van paid for by licensing their song “Stop Internet Romance” to Apple for an iMac commercial.
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A highly-motivated Lost fan edited together most of the footage of the Oceanic Flight 815 crash that we’ve seen into one cohesive scene. It shows what was going on inside the plane, Desmond not pressing the button, and what The Others were doing. Pretty interesting.
It’s rare to see a movie that makes you laugh until you cry AND has moments of genuine tenderness, without falling into melodrama. But that’s exactly what you get with Knocked Up. It’s raunchy fun mixed with complex characters and relationships. There’s not a lot to be said about it except that if you want to laugh your ass off, go see it.
Rating: 
Bob Harris has put together a thorough breakdown of what he believes the final outcome of The Sopranos was. Seems plausible to me. David Chase can still go fuck himself.
Television science teacher Don Herbert, more commonly known by the name Mr. Wizard, died this morning at the age of 89. I remember watching his show Mr Wizard’s World in middle school science class and being amazed that he never actually blew up a little kid. Mr. Wizard taught me about topics such as Newton’s Laws of Motion, how RADAR works, and the one-sided wonder that is a Möbius strip. Looking back I think my actual science teachers were just too lazy to teach me themselves. I remain indebted to Mr. Wizard however for sparking my lifelong fascination with science. So thanks Don!
Mr. Wizard’s obituary at LATimes.com
And here’s an old-school Nickelodeon commercial for Mr. Wizard’s World.
From the upcoming album The Shepherd’s Dog, out September 25th on SubPop. Go ahead and hit play, then you can read me ramble on about it…
(link removed by request from SubPop Records) But here’s a streaming version:
Gotta say I’m a big fan. It’s reminiscent of the songs on In the Reins, Iron & Wine’s collaboration with Calexico. Unlike many of the tracks on The Creek Drank the Cradle or Our Endless Numbered Days there’s a lot going on here. The song has boatload of layers. I count a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, electric guitar, slide guitar, bass, handclaps, percussion, lead vocals, and backing vocals. And I’m not sure I got them all. While I love the sparse sounds on the previous albums I think it’s exciting to see Sam stretch out a little. This officially makes The Shepherd’s Dog my most anticipated release of 2007.
For more info on the single and the album head on over at My Old Kentucky Blog (boy, Dodge is on a roll today…). Or you can check out Iron & Wine’s official site.
As you may know, The White Stripes’ new album Icky Thump comes out next Tuesday (June 19th). What you may not know is not only can you enjoy it on CD and vinyl, but you can also have your very own Jack or Meg White USB drive with the album on it. The band had 3,333 of each made, and they’re available on their website. These slightly creepy techno-nerd contraptions will only set you back $99 for the pair. Hmm. Let’s see. I could buy the CD for $9.99 at Amazon and rip it into a lossless format, or I could spend $99 for the same thing on a piece of gadgetry that will likely give me nightmares. I’ll stick with the CD, thanks. Not a bad concept though. Get the price in line and I may be interested.
Previous Icky Thump coverage:
Video for “Icky Thump”
First Song from The White Stripes’ New Album
Via My Old Kentucky Blog and BoingBoing
This in one of the more interesting covers I’ve seen recently. It’s Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” with all of the melody parts played on Theremins. Kooky. And surprisingly not terrible.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SOPRANOS FINALE, STOP READING.
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Erin McKeown is an impossible woman to nail down. She’s a multi-talented instrumentalist, able to rock on guitar, mandolin, banjo, and piano. Her voice can go from silky smooth to a howl in the blink of an eye. These traits give her the ability to effortlessly move between folk, rock, blues, and jazz.
Though a Virginia native, she got her start in college at Brown University, playing all over New England and releasing her debut album Monday Morning Cold. After touring with the likes of Ani DiFranco, Dan Bern, and Dar Williams she released her second album Distillation.
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Holy shit this guy has fast fingers…
I know this has been floating around for a while, but I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head for two days, so here you go. Jack seems to play the title character, with Meg as a hooker with a bad eye. Because that makes sense…
By the way, the album Icky Thump doesn’t come out for a couple of weeks, but a little birdie delivered it to me early, and I can say it officially kicks ass. More coverage as the release comes closer.
Let’s turn back the clock to December of 2001. I left work in Baltimore, drove four hours to Pittsburgh, and arrived in a surly mood. But I agreed to go to a movie anyway (being the wonderful boyfriend I was). So it was another 25 minute drive to a movie theater. Then a 10:30 showing of a movie I really had no interest in. A remake of a heist movie I’d never seen, nor had any interest in seeing. Two hours later I left the theater convinced I had just discovered a new favorite movie. I can’t remember another time a movie so completely flipped my mood. The surliness was gone, replaced by the adrenaline of a successful heist, and the feeling that I was hip to a new Rat Pack style cool.
Fast forward six years. After an enjoyable but unremarkable sequel, Ocean’s Thirteen arrives to my most eager anticipation. It may be unfair to judge a highly-anticipated sequel against the original when there were no expectations for the original. It’s impossible for the sequel to live up. Or so I thought.
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Plinko-master Bob Barker taped his final episode of The Price is Right (daytime tv’s most awesomest gameshow) on Wednesday, finishing a 50-year television career. A lot of things have happened since Bob started in 1957:
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Suck on this Michael Bay. This homemade stop-action movie was made using actual Transformers toys. There’s not much in the way of plot, but something tells me there won’t be much in Bay’s upcoming summer blockbuster either. And the effects in this one look like Transformers, not some sort of strange-overdone-too-complicated-ridiculous-robot thing. Strike another blow for the little guy!
According to Variety the ad geniuses in Hollywood are working on a movie adaptation of the classic 80s cartoon Thundercats. Warner Brothers has purchased the rights to a script by Paul Sopocy, and plan on having him direct a CGI animated feature. This will be his first feature film. Oh goody.
Does this seem like a shameless attempt to cash in on my generations epic sense of nostalgia? Or is it just me…
I gotta say “Yellow Ledbetter” is my favoritist Pearl Jam song, but darn if the lyrics aren’t completely unintelligible. Luckily MisheardLyricsGuy has solved the mystery, cracked the code, and figured out the lyrics.
Thanks for clearing it all up MisheardLyricsGuy!
A group of people with way too much time on their hands has staged Spike Lee’s classic Do the Right Thing with those wicked cool 1970’s Sesame Street Fisher Price toys. I had a set of those toys as a kid. Why didn’t I think to reenact a racially charged, highly adult movie with them? I guess I’m just not very creative…
They had me at “Fuck you Mr. Hooper”…
via BoingBoing
The first thing you notice about The National is the voice: it’s deep. Real deep. And a little rough around the edges. But somehow lead singer Matt Berninger makes it work. He uses his voice to pull the listener into the emotional surroundings the band sets up in their songs.
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Warning: If you haven’t seen this week’s episode of The Sopranos you should probably stop reading now…
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This is a hysterical satire of an anti-pornography film from the 1960s. It artfully presents the absurdity of the uptight puritanical factions of the US.
What’s that you say? This isn’t satire? It’s serious? Oh. Well then. Then it’s basically just offensive. Throughout the film the narrator alleges that viewing pornographic images will turn the viewers into “perverts”. What the hell does that mean? And I’d love to know where they got the figure that 75-90% of pornography ends up in the hands of children. The only thing this video convinced me is that I hope that the sort of people who made it give up fucking and their backward-ass attitudes towards sex disappear.
Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman had the greatest tantrum in the history of baseball today. He was able to get in several tried and true tantrum tricks (like kicking dirt on home plate, getting in the umpire’s face, and taking bases) AND work in a couple of new moves (I won’t spoil it too much for you, but let’s just say if this whole baseball thing doesn’t work out he can be an extra in war movies…)
Check out the full tantrum with commentary at ESPN or without commentary at YouTube.
UPDATE: Here’s the YouTube version
This 70’s news promo is trippy, to say the least. Make me mellow.
It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
Meaning it was really 60 years ago today, since today is the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. How influential has the album been? Check out this opinion piece by Daniel Levitan in today’s Washington Post. Or coverage over at I Guess I’m Floating. Or this nostalgic look back at AZCentral.com. Or John Weiner’s take at AlterNet. My point is that everyone and his brother has something to add about this.
All I have to say is that I can’t possibly hope to be as fresh and kick as much ass at 40 as Sgt. Pepper does. Thanks John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
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