May 2008

The first teaser for Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno hit the web late last night. It features stars Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks ad libbing their way through porn auditions. Smith says it’s just a teaser, not a trailer, because none of the footage actually appears in the movie, but it does give you a feel for the movie’s tone.

Zack and Miri hit theaters October 31st.

As a bonus, you can now order the sweet Monroeville Zombies hockey jersey from the film (pictured above). For those of you who aren’t big George Romero fans, the joke is that Dawn of the Dead was filmed in the Monroeville (PA) mall, and Zack and Miri also filmed there.

Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are cops.  Cops who have seen a lot.  Cops who may or may not play by the rules.  Suddenly bad guys start ending up dead.  They need to figure out who’s killing them.  Is it some sort of righteous vigilante?  Or a cop with a score to settle?  September 12th we’ll find out.  That’s when Righteous Kill comes out.  Here’s the second trailer for the film.

I was already interested after the first trailer.  But this one raised the bar.  Who can resist two of the world’s greatest actors in a crime drama?

Sunday Music Spotlight alum José González is known for his covers. He has a way of taking someone else’s song and making it distinctively his own. His cover of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” (which some of you may know as the theme song for House is a perfect example. It retains enough of the original to be recognizable, but González puts his own spartan stamp on it.

Another good example is this cover of Kylie Minogue’s “Hand on Your Heart”. He manages to take a syrupy pop song and make it heartfelt and genuine.

On a slightly different note, José has just announced his upcoming tour schedule. If he’s coming anywhere near you don’t hesitate to go see him.

Tour Dates:
June 2008
13 – Bonnaroo Music Festival – Manchester, TN
14 – Headliners – Louisville, KY
15 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
16 – The Stone Pony – Asbury Park, NJ
17 – Iron Horse – Northampton, MA
18 – Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, MA
20 – Teatro Estudio Cavaret – Guadalajara, Mexico
21 – Lunario – Mexico City, Mexico
23 – Stone Church – Newmarket, NH
24 – Higher Ground – Burlington, VT
25 – 400 Annniversary Festival (Le Grande Scene) – Quebec City, QC (Canada)
26 – St. Matthew’s Church – Halifax, NS (Canada)
28 – Sled Island Festival (Canada Olympic Plaza) – Calgary, AB (Canada)
30 – The Broadway Theatre – Saskatoon, SK (Canada)

July 2008
02 – The Park Theatre – Winnipeg, MB (Canada)
03 – Ottawa Bluesfest – Ottawa, ON (Canada)

September 2008
27 – Austin City Limits – Austin, TX

There’s a new red band trailer out for the summer comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell as two stunted adults who suddenly become step brothers. Despite Ferrell and Reilly, and the fact that it’s directed by Adam McKay, who did Anchorman and Talladega Nights, I was luke warm on this after the first trailer. But this one definitely made me laugh. Of course at heart I’m still 12, so collapsing bunk beds will always make me laugh…Just rememeber, “This house is a prison. On planet Bullshit. In the galaxy of This Sucks Camel Dick.” Awesome.

Step Brothers hits theaters July 25th.

Film director, producer, and actor Sydney Pollack died Monday at age 73. He directed Hollywood classics such as Tootsie, Out of Africa, and Three Days of the Condor, and acted dozens of films, including Michael Clayton and The Firm. NY Times has a full obituary.

I had no idea what to expect going into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I had seen the trailers and a couple of production photos, but I had avoided all of the early reviews. Typically I don’t mind know a lot going into a movie, but Indy is such an iconic character and a deep part of my childhood that I wanted to be surprised. So, after a 19 year layoff can Indy still deliver adrenaline and one-liners with equal skill? Will Spielberg and Lucas find a good way to restart the franchise? And will the adult version of me be as swept away as the kid was by the first three movies?
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Mark Lavon Helm, aka Levon Helm, best known as the drummer/singer for The Band, is celebrating his 68th birthday. So join me in wishing him a Happy Birthday!
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The saying goes that you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you came from. Musically speaking The Black Hollies know exactly where their sound comes from. It’s deeply rooted in the 60’s, in bands like The Animals, The Yardbirds, and The Who. It’s rooted there, but like a much like those bands were rooted in Delta Blues and managed to put their own mark on it, The Black Hollies start with their influences and build, creating something that is at once familiar and new.
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For those about to pretend to rock, we salute you! As someone who’s been hopelessly addicted to Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, and Rock Band I’ve been anxiously awaiting information on the upcoming fourth installment of the Guitar Hero franchise. Activision has finally given us the full skinny.

The official title is Guitar Hero: World Tour and it’s due out October 27th. From the feature list it looks like they’ve taken everything from Rock Band and improved on it, plus added some stuff. Kick ass!

Watch the preview, then we’ll discuss:

More video, pictures, and a full feature list after the jump.
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Weezer has a new album coming out June 3rd, but the first video is already out. It’s for the song “Pork and Beans”, and it features many stars of YouTube, along with other fads from teh internets. It’s kicks a wee bit o’ ass:

via BoingBoing

British newspaper The Telegraph has a story today about Otto Rahn, the German archaeologist who served as the inspiration for Indiana Jones. He was obsessed with finding the Holy Grail, was at one point a gay Nazi, and may have been Jewish. Yep, the inspiration for Indiana Jones was a gay Jewish Nazi. After his homosexuality was found out by the Nazi party he committed suicide at the young age of 34.

Indiana Jones is great and all, but this seems like a hell of a movie all by itself, without the giant boulders or angry natives. Hey Lucas and Spielberg, can we get this guy’s life story?

From Josh’s blog at Huffington Post comes the video for “Real Long Distance”. It’s not the typical music video. The band shot it themselves after hours at their storage facility. There’s a definite Scooby Doo vibe to it. But that’s what makes it cool. Check it out below:

No kooky covers this week.  Just a great musician’s take on a great song.  Here’s Eric Clapton covering Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”:

NBC has released another promo for the upcoming third season of Heroes. We get a glimpse of Hiro’s new nemesis, Speedster, and we get to see some behind-the-scenes stuff. Nothing too drastic though. Check it out:

via Super Hero Hype

Scotland is known for many things: haggis, kilts, thick accents, and whiskey being the chief among them. Musically the Scots run the gamut from The Bay City Rollers to The Vaselines. Somewhere lodged comfortably in the middle is Selkirk’s Frightened Rabbit.
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Steve Carell hosted Saturday Night Live last night, and unsurprisingly The Office was up for parody. What’s surprising is that it was actually funny. They got Ricky Gervais involved, and showed original inspiration for his British version of The Office, a show from Japan. Check it out below:

What happens when everyone’s favorite movie anchorman interviews a real anchorman? Hilarity.

There’s really not much to say about this. It’s another badass looking poster/banner of Heath Ledger as The Joker from The Dark Knight. Click to see the full thing.

via SlashFilm

When the first trailer for Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder came out I thought it looked pretty good. The concept is promising: a group of mismatched actors goes into the jungle to film a war movie and doesn’t realize that they’re in a real war. The cast is great, with Jack Black, Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte, and Robert Downey Jr (as an Australian who gets a medical procedure so he can play an African-American) joining Ben Stiller.

Now there’s a second trailer out, and it’s gloriously red band. And it looks AWESOME. But don’t take my word for it, click on the picture below to watch it for yourself.

Suddenly August 15th can’t come fast enough…

The Raconteurs stopped by Jools Holland’s show to play an acoustic version of “Many Shades of Black”, one of the standout tracks from their recent album Consolers of the Lonely. Good stuff.

For those of you going through withdrawal from 24 there’s good news:  you won’t have to wait until next January to catch up with Jack Bauer.  On November 23rd Fox is going to air a two-hour special in November that will show you what Jack and CTU have been up to between seasons 6 and 7.

The special was shot on location in South Africa and follows Jack as he (wait for it) saves the work from an international crisis.  It should help bridge the gap between LA, which has served as home base for all six previous seasons, and Washington, DC, which will be the setting for season 7.

The real question is whether people are actually clamoring for 24s return.  It’s been a year since the show was last on the air, and even then it was wrapping up what was generally regarded as a weak season.  With the long layoff and the major changes to the show’s setting and cast, are viewers going to come back?  Are you?

Coming Soon has all the details

Everyone’s heard the legends about rock bands’ riders:  the contracts they send to venues that lay out their demands requests.  The requests are often outrageous, from Van Halen requiring a bowl of M&M’s with all the brown ones removed to the Rolling Stones needing a toilet on wheels.  The Smoking Gun has a huge collection of riders, but none of them can touch the fighters of foo.

Foo Fighters’ Tour Manager Gus Brandt is the brainchild behind rock music’s greatest rider.  In it he requests vegetarian soups (because meat soups make roadies fart), extols the virtues of bacon (”If it could be breathed, I would”), and threatens a catering jihad if the band doesn’t get SOLO drinking cups.  It even includes a recipe for ice!  Do yourselves a favor and go read it.

Via The Smoking Gun and Idolator

Looks like the latest attempt to cash in on 80s nostalgia is the beloved Jim Henson creation Fraggle Rock.  The Weinstein Company announced plans to make a live-action musical version of the show for the big screen.  The movie will reportedly take the main Fraggle characters outside of Fraggle Rock, where they’ll interact with humans.  No word yet on when we can expect this shameless attempt to part nostalgic twenty and thirtysomethings from their disposible income.

SlashFilm has all the details

It’s been a little while since we featured a cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic”, so here’s one by bluegrass virtuosos Nickel Creek.  They have a lot of fun with the performance, and the song itself is actually pretty good.  Once again I’ll say that in the hands of decent musicians this is actually a good song.

Who doesn’t love complicated women? I know I do. Which is why I was instantly drawn to singer/songwriter Lourdes Hernández. She’s from Madrid, Spain, yet goes by the name Russian Red. She natively speaks Spanish, yet sins in English. And at only 22 she’s already developed a sophisticated sense of melody and lyric. Not bad.
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Happy Mothers Day everyone. To celebrate, eMusic has chatted up a bunch of our favorite indie groups’ moms to see what they think of their kids’ music. Included on the list are Sunday Music Spotlight alums Bishop Allen, Bon Iver, Bowerbirds, and Rock Plaza Central, plus a ton of other great bands. Head on over and check it out.

Just like Ron Burgandy in Anchorman, Charles Barkley will read anything you put on a teleprompter.  His co-host knows this, and hilarity ensues:

That’s tuuurrible.

I put up a bootleg of this a couple of weeks ago, but here’s the legitimate trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Still looks kind of meh.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars hits theaters August 16th.

NBC posted a promo today for the third installment of Heroes. The season is titled “Villians”, and from the looks of it we’ll have a hard time telling the “good guys” from the “bad guys”. Check it out:

In other Heroes news, actress Brea Grant will be joining the cast as Hiro’s nemesis, Daphne (aka Speedster). She’ll steal something from Hiro, and he’ll spend a lot of time trying to deal with her. Or, to put it another way:

“Her character is supposed to be Hiro’s Joker,” said Masi Oka, who plays Hiro. “Batman has The Joker. Hiro has Daphne. This is the season where Hiro finally finds his arch nemesis, and it happens to be this Speedster. I kind of equate it more to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, except Daphne says more than ‘meep-meep.’”

Read all about it here

Yahoo Movies has the first seven minutes of Speed Racer up. Go ahead and watch, then we’ll discuss.

I have to say, this it’s truly unique. The Wachowski Brothers have done a fantastic job creating a live-action cartoon, but will that be enough to engage an audience for over two hours? What do you think?

SweetAfton23 (aka Molly), PCWEI’s patron saint of ukulele players, is back.  This time she got a chance to perform with Johnathon Coulton and Paul & Storm at one of their shows in Seattle.  Check her out as she helps out JoCo and the gang with a couple of tunes:

“Tom Cruise Crazy”

“Baby Got Back”

Check out the rest of the videos, including her original song, “Road Trip”, which I highly recommend.

Up to this point there’s been a lot of focus on Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight, and not a lot of information on Aaron Eckhardt as Two-Face. Well that all changed this week when the first picture of Two-Face hit the net. The picture is after the jump.
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Sunday Music Spotlight alums Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings have a new video out for their song “Tell Me”. It’s a retro-looking video for a retro-sounding band. Check it out below:

I’m a little behind on this, but here’s the second trailer for the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It really seems like it keeps the same nostalgic feel as the first three movies.

The latest chapter of the Indiana Jones tale hits theaters May 22nd. Can’t wait!

Iron Man is just about everything a comic book movie should be. It’s funny, it’s exhilarating, and it’s got great characters. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is perfect. Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts is a perfect foil for Downey’s cocksure playboy. The Dude is very good as the menacing bad guy. And director Jon Favreau is so money baby, and he doesn’t even know it. If Iron Man is any indication of what we can expect from this year’s crop of comic book adaptations we’re in for a treat.

Rating:

Do you like The Decemberists?  Then you’ll probably dig The Builders and the Butchers. Like their fellow Portlandites The Builders and the Butchers write songs about eclectic topics, using lush and unusual instrumentation.  The tunes range from epic to intimate.  And their live show is famous for its energy.
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Prince, the enigmatic Minnesotan, covers Radiohead, the enigmatic Brits.  His take on “Creep” is slightly different from the original, but no less effective.