Roger Avary Arrested on Manslaughter, DUI

What is it with Hollywood types who insist on driving drunk?--Gibson, Sutherland, Lohan--it's a bloody epidemic and I'm sometimes glad my career has failed enough so that I don't start my day with a commute along Mulholland. Look, I'm not one who takes pleasure in bashing celebrities--not everyone in show business is vain and pampered and awarded money for nothing, and from my experience toiling in the trenches I figure that most people who achieve a degree of success in the cut-throat business of Hollywood worked hard to get there. But this drunk-driving bullsh*t?--no excuses.

So sad--no, make that maddening--news comes today that the otherwise talented Roger Avary, the Oscar-winning co-author of Pulp Fiction and the current CG-epic Beowulf, has been arrested for drunk driving accident that seriously injured his wife and killed a passenger. The fool is currently out on $50,000 bail.

This, while others in the Writers Guild Of America are on strike for a few measly extra bucks for DVD and download royalties, which presumably they wouldn't spend on booze.

Here's the story, courtesy of Cinematical.

So Much For The "Home Office" In Lower Economy...

Politicians aren't exactly renowned for their wit, and most attempts to appear "hip"come off as downright embarrassing (remember Stockwell Day in that wetsuit? Or John Kerry's claim that he "identified" with Eminem's rage?). Up here, it's usually the token Rick Mercer appearance and that's it. So props must be given to Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald, who made a spirited and clever attempt to woo David Letterman to his loverly province when the Late Show icon expressed an interesting in visiting during his interview with actress/Maritimer Ellen Page.

Dave apparently turned down the invite--at least for the time being--but you can still write Letterman's producers at this email address and maybe he'll come around. In the meantime, check out Macdonald's highly entertaining video pitch here.

Here's the Top 10 List--the results of a CBC radio listener contest, which is pretty damned funny:

Premier Rodney MacDonald's Top 10 list of reasons why late-night talk-show host David Letterman should visit Nova Scotia:

10. Nowhere near Thunder Bay, Ont., so you won't be harassed by locals constantly requesting, "Tell Paul I said, 'Hi.' "
9. Halifax Robert L. Stanfield International Airport No. 1 in passenger satisfaction. Customs staff give famed 10-finger pat-downs.
8. Chance to establish a new home office in Balls Creek.
7. Triple-bypass surgeries are free for everyone.
6. No matter where you are in Nova Scotia, you're within 30 minutes of the sea. Thirty-five if it's rush hour.
5. You can make a blueberry grunt.
4. Mug for the camera at the roadside sign for Shag Harbour.
3. You haven't lived until you've camped on the world-famous Cabot Trail and been chased by a love-struck moose.
2. Two words - Lockeport grease pole.
1. Nova Scotia's political leader plays the fiddle - top that, Mike Huckabee.

Remembering TIFF Founder Dusty Cohl

Long-time TIFF supporters like yours truly are mourning the passing of Dusty (Murray) Cohl, who died earlier today at Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital. Cohl was one of the founding fathers of the original Toronto "Festival Of Festivals", which began modestly in 1976 and eventually grew to become the Toronto International Film Festival, now acknowledged to be the most important cinematic spectacle in the world outside of Cannes. In addition to a successful career as a lawyer and concert promoter with his cousin Michael, in 2003, Cohl was given the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honor.

Roger Ebert, one of the festival's initial big-time enthusiasts and a fixture of Cohl's annual Floating Film Festival, has penned a fitting obit which you can read here.

King's "Duma Key" Trailer

Can books have "trailers"--like movies? Guess so--in fact, one of my earliest professional illustration jobs was creating a storyboard for a commercial to announce John Irving's then-upcoming A Prayer For Owen Meany (for which I had to draw an anatomically-correct armadillo from memory...).

Stephen King's new novel Duma Key is due in just two weeks and his official site has a snazzy grabber of a trailer that should give you some idea of what you're in for should you choose to indulge, and really...why wouldn't you?

Check it out here.

RIP "Vampira"

One of horror and "b" cinema's true icons has passed away at the age of 86: "Vampira", aka Maila Nurmi, is best known to legions of film buffs as the 50s TV horror hostess who inspired Elvira, Morticia Adams, and that goth chick in your class--but even more so as the cool ghoul (with a 17 inch waist!) who stole the show from Tor Johnson and Dudley Manlove in Ed Wood Jr.'s immortal inept classic Plan 9 From Outer Space (she was portrayed by Tim Burton's ex-girlfriend and one-time Mapplethorpe model Lisa Marie in the excellent biopic Ed Wood).

Check out Tim Lucas' typically-insightful obit here at VideoWatchblog, or better yet, track down last year's documentary "Vampira: The Movie" for more on her amazing life.

Now That Phil Spector's In Jail, You Can Ruin "The Beatles"!

For reasons I can't imagine, someone who goes by the handle "beatlepuzzle" has isolated vocal and music tracks from The Beatles' 1967 classic album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and has uploaded them so those of you so inclined can feel what it's like to be George Martin--minus the talent, acclaim, and millions.

I'm sure the eventual results won't be any worse than the 1978 film "adaptation" of the album featuring The Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, and George Burns as "Mr. Kite" (wonder if Eddie Izzard studied his performance for his own turn in Across The Universe?...).

Read all about it here, courtesy of Cory Doctorow at boingboing.

(and to clarify, I do prefer Spector's controversial take on "Let It Be" to the supposedly "improved" McCartney-supervised version of a few years back...)

Chimps Use Spears To Kill Prey--Look Out World Economic Forum!

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, arguably the most prophetic film since either Blade Runner or Flesh Gordon Vs. The Cosmic Cheerleaders, presumed that Caesar and his simian bruthas and sistahs would take over the world in 1991 (just after New York City became a maximum security prison and a good decade before the moon left earth's orbit due to nuclear sabotage).

So what's a few years? Remember--sci-fi movies missed the Internet completely...

Last December, I posted an article from Canoe that told of a test concocted by Japanese scientists in which chimps beat a group of American co-ed idiots in a simple numeric exercise.

Now, it seems that scientists are amazed by the discovery that chimps in Senegal are fashioning spears out of sticks and branches to kill small mammals for food!

Read the article from Current Biology (!!!) here (via Wired), which should help you prepare for the inevitable day where you will be forced to bow before your simian master.

And for fun, here's some great John Severin art from Cracked Magazine's parody of the short-lived Planet Of The Apes TV series.

Happy New Year!!!

"Trailers From Hell": Sheer Heaven!

Bored with YouTube's endless parade of other people's kids, pets, and painfully unfunny "ambush" videos? Wouldn't it be more fun to listen to "Shawn Of The Dead" director Edgar Wright defend the British cannibal flick "Raw Meat"? Well, for that, you've got to go to Trailers From Hell, the brainchild of Joe Dante's multi-media companyMetaluna Productions, in collaboration with The Nickels Group and Elizabeth Stanley Pictures.

Other notable "gurus" include directors like John Landis, Alison Anders, Allan Arkush, Larry Cohen, Mick Garris, and Jack Hill, and screenwriter Sam Hamm.

The best part of it all is that in most cases, the trailers are better than the films they're ballyhoo'ing. Case in point: this month's trailer is "I Was A Teenage Werewolf", hosted by none other than makeup maestro Rick Baker!

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

iTunes Makes Canadians Pay For Stuff They Won't Even Watch For Free...

Television shows can finally be downloaded in Canada via iTunes, but the most of what's available is CanCon-approved fare only. Hoo-ray.

"Corner Gas", "Little Mosque On The Prairie", "The Rick Mercer Report," "Dragons' Den" "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and "Robson Arms" are some of the initial titles. Although CTV fare like "The Hills", "South Park", and "The Sarah Silverman show" come from south-of-the-border.

If iTunes really wants to get me excited about downloading Canadian content, they'll add "SCTV", "The Forest Rangers", "The Starlost", "Strange Paradise", and of course, "Rocket Robin Hood" to the library.

I assume that the selection will eventually expand to films. Just think--Michael Snow's "Wavelength"! Available in your shirt pocket! Whenever you need some perspective during a long streetcar ride!

Check out the story here at Canoe.

Chimp Beats Humans At Test, Shares In Loincloths Skyrocket...

Japanese researchers (who else?) recently devised a short-term memory competition between young chimpanzees and college students and, overall, the apes won. Goodbye Statue Of Liberty...It's only a matter of time before our closest genetic relatives take over civilization with meat cleavers, as documented in J. Lee Thompson's Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes.

Yep, a five-year old year chimp has a better memory than a human--at least compared to these these co-ed clods--in a test that involved recalling the order of Arabic numbers. If General Urko organizes his gorilla army before next year's 2008 elections, perhaps Dubya can save face and send 'em to Iraq...

The beginning of the end can be read here at Canoe.

Batman And "Razumihin"?

Thanks to DC's "Elseworlds" one-shots, we've had Batman in Victorian England ("Gotham By Gaslight"), Batman in the Civil War ("The Blue, The Grey, And The Bat"), "Batman: Dark Knight Of The Round Table" (guess), Batman in the ghetto (Stan Lee's unfortunate "urban" reinterpretation, which was basically Boyz N' The Hood with "Manbat"), Batman in Cold War Russia ("Superman: Red Son"), plus Batman vs. the Phantom Of The Opera, Nosferatu, OSS agents, Edgar Allen Poe, the French Revolution, Al Capone, The Templar Knights--so what's left?

How about The Dark Knight starring in classics of literature? Back in 2000, Drawn And Quarterly proposed Dostoyevsky Comics, the first (and presumably, only) issue devoted to Fyodor D's Crime and Punishment--an appropriate subject for The Caped Crusader. It's definitely the most unique take since the Josef von Sternberg film version which starred Peter Lorre and compressed and updated the tale to The Great Depression.

Hilarious stuff by R. Sikoryak.--check it out here.

Cool "Batman" Animated Short

Here's a nifty homemade short film that depicts The Dark Knight in a new (monochromatic) light: the talented Isaak Fernandez Rodriguez, a professional animator based in Barcelona, spent three years making this first chapter in what I hope will be an ongoing series. Check out this utterly unique take on the Caped Crusader here at Animwatch (thanks Lidia!).

Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da (Web) Gunk?

Can this be for real? Spider-Man: The Musical--yes, a real live stage musical--is apparently well into preproduction with no less a talent than Julie Taymor calling the shots! With music by Bono and The Edge (need I mention they're from a little band called U2?)! How the hell did this happen? I blame Legally Blonde-The Musical--then again, I blame it for most things that are wrong in this world...

The ever-reliable Cinematical's got the story here.

Taymor, of course, earned her rep as something of a stage visionary (The Lion King is perhaps her best known achievement) before turning to film with Frida and her wild adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. She's so into it she'd like to cast the two leads from her current Beatles movie musical Across The Universe: ersatz McCartney Jim Sturges as Peter Parker (he'll have to work on the New Yawk accent) and Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane (but to me, she looks more like Gwen Stacey).

According to an interview in The Daily Mail, Taymor promises her take will be more "faithful" to the comics, and plans to include "trapeze artists, giant puppets, and incredible costumes into the show." Perhaps Wood's boyfriend Marilyn Manson can be convinced to play Morbius, The Living Vampire?

No word on what Stan Lee thinks of all this, but come curtain time on its premiere night, you can be he'll be on the red carpet taking credit for it all. And I'm sure that Steve Ditko's private box will be waiting, but my guess is that it'll remain vacant while he remains immersed in some new edition of The Fountainhead.

Tread softly, talented people--this won't be the first time a superhero icon has taken flight on the American stage: justly forgotten is 1966's Broadway flop It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman, which told the story of a certain blue and red clad Kryptonian through song, verse, and and a little soft-shoe (interesting that the book was written by Robert Benton and David Newmon, who would later cowrite the excellent "Superman: The Movie").

BTW, betcha didn't that "Batman" nearly made it to the musical stage during the height of the character's 90s movie/TV popularity, with Jim Steinman having completed and recording some songs before the plug was pulled (you can check out "The Joker's Song" here).

Here's a little clip from the Supes musical, etc. to serve as a warning of what could happen if it all goes down in a flaming wreck when Spider-Man: The Musical debuts either in London's West End or on Broadway next year.

Julie, don't "let it be"...

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

TIFF 2007 Review: "Redacted"

Brian DePalma's controversial Iraq drama Redacted is now in limited release, and ruffling feathers on the right and the left wherever it goes. In case you missed it, here's my review from this past year's Toronto International Film Festival.

Hate Toronto? Have I Got A Game For You!

The talented students of the Game Design program at Toronto's George Brown College have created a promising new videogame which pits you--as "George Freeman"--against the extraterrestrial menace "The Combine" on the mean streets of The Big Smoke! Yes, the environments you'll navigate in this Half Life 2 mod are based upon actual downtown Toronto locations, so you'll be fighting for your (virtual) life by Massey Hall, The Eaton Centre, on the Dundas TTC platform, in the remains of St. Michael's hospital, uptown to Mel Lastman Square, and if you complete all the levels, you'll unlock the underground PATH system. Too much fun! Check out some sample screenshots here.

My kudos go to the game's primary designers Ezra Arellano, Adrian Rosca, Troy Manalo, Roozbeh Madanipour and Kyle Cislak--talented youngsters who I hope can sell this baby to Hollywood for a huge chunk of change (there's little chance Canada would ever produce a film like this, so why not aim big?). I just hope Uwe Boll keeps his dirty mitts off of it!

"City 7: Toronto Conflict" is available as a free download here, with more levels promised to follow.

Celebrating Animation Great Bob Clampett

Today Lidia and I attended a special afternoon tribute to animation legend Bob Clampett, who along with Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, Virgil Ross, Frank Tashlin, and Friz Freleng, created the timeless adventures of Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Sylvester, Tweety, Speedy and the rest of the Looney Tunes universe. He also created the beloved animated TV series "Beanie And Cecil".

Clampett's daughter Ruth (centre) presented a visual biography of her father's fascinating (and enviable!) life (he passed away in 1984), and presented some new collectible pieces from the Clampett Studios Collection. Ruth manages the Warner Bros. Gallery Of Animation Art, which in addition to Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies art includes DC Comics, Hanna-Barbera, and Harry Potter.

The pieces are now on display at The Animation Connection at Yonge/Eglinton and are well worth checking out. An entire disc of the new Looney Tunes DVD collection (vol. 5) has been devoted to Clampett's works, which includes the first-ever appearance of Tweety (which Clampett based on his own baby photo!).

A "Second" Earth? Cripes--We're Not Done Ruining The First One Yet!

Here's proof that the romance of the Space Age is officially over--the public and media indifference that greeted the discovery of another planet in another solar system!

The planet is approx. 45 times the mass of Earth and has an orbital cycle of 260 days. It joins the four others orbiting the star "55 Cancri", in the "Cancer" constellation.

The best news is that it occupies what is called a star's "Goldilocks' or "habitable" zone--not too hot, not too cold--where liquid water and mild temperatures could exist. But scientists are more interested in its moon, which could be more habitable to Earth-like life.

But don't go firing up the jet pack just yet--it's 41 light years away, or (scribbling calculations on my chalkboard...) 240,906,832,298,136 miles, and the scientists at San Francisco State U figure its conditions are probably more like those of Saturn, which, as we all know, is where the giant worms live, as documented in the film "Beetlejuice".

Read all the detail here courtesy of Canoe.

King On Clapton

Having been the critical community's favorite whipping boy for most of his career, Stephen King is intimately familiar with the art of reviewing, as fans of his non-fiction chronicles "Danse Macabre" on "On Writing" know well. Taking a break from his column for Entertainment Weekly, King has written a review of Eric Clapton's autobiography for the New York Times. Check it out here.

TAD 2007: "The Tripper" Reviewed

My review of David Arquette's directorial debut "The Tripper" is up at Movieforum. One of the big tickets at this year's Toronto After Dark Film Festival, it's the heartwarming tale of hippies vs. a psycho in a Ronald Reagan mask that aspires to transcend the "slasher" genre and for the most part, succeeds. Read all about it here.