Posted inArts + Music

Jennifer’s Body talk

A lightning storm of flashes goes off two feet from Megan Fox’s face. Caught up in the assault is the rest of the creative team behind Jennifer’s Body: producer Jason Reitman, screenwriter Diablo Cody, actors Adam Brody, Amanda Seyfried and Johnny Simmons, and director Karyn Kusama. “Red hat, Megan!” a photographer shouts. “I can’t see […]

Posted inArts + Music

Jennifer’s Body goes for gutsy

Oscar winner Diablo Cody goes for the gutsy with a ’80s-style horror romp. Megan Fox, right in her tiny wheelhouse, is the titular Jennifer, who’s sacrificed to Satan by emo band Low Shoulder (fronted by Adam “Seth Cohen” Brody!) so the band can hit it big. She becomes a half-demon instead, feeding on boys to […]

Posted inArts + Music

Thriller Whiteout freezes

Even though Whiteout is set in one of those locales that begets the tagline “In … no one can hear you scream,” the film can’t even pass muster as a pulse-pounding whodunit, nor resemble Antarctica as anything more than inconveniently blowy and cold. Kate Beckinsale plays South Pole-based g-woman Carrie Stetko, who is investigating a […]

Posted inArts + Music

9

What on Earth happened in 9, an animated post-apocalyptic adventure featuring a voice cast of Christopher Plummer, Elijah Wood and John C. Reilly? 9 (voiced by Wood), who looks like a burlap rag doll, wakes up in a world terrorized by machines out of the Terminator films’ Skynet nightmare, finds his goggle-eyed, potato-sacked brethren (Reilly […]

Posted inArts + Music

Adam a thoughtful love story

A voice-over by Rose Byrne’s Beth comparing Hugh Dancy’s Adam—a man with Asperger’s—to The Little Prince inspires dread that this is a saccharine 100-minute cliche about what mentally challenged folks can teach us, a la I am Sam and The House of D. However, Adam quickly recovers once the narrative unfolds and Beth and Adam […]

Posted inArts + Music

All about Steve (and Sandra)

Sandra Bullock is Mary, an obnoxiously juvenile crossword creator, hot for golden-boy cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper), obsessively stalking him across America. It’s remarkable enough that All About Steve is centered on a character so profoundly unwatchable—Mary’s know-it-all nattering borders on being sadistically anti-social, as if it’s a dare for the other characters to punch her […]

Posted inArts + Music

Judge’s Extract a great leveller

Mike Judge’s cinematic legacy is secure with his searing satire Office Space. Remarkable for uncovering the backwards cult of personalities within confined work spaces, begetting a rabid cult following and pre-dating Ricky Gervais’ The Office by a couple of years, Judge is now a vaunted chronicler of those poor souls who must co-exist amongst the […]

Posted inArts + Music

York Redoubt

If York Redoubt’s main vision was to make noise, they’ve succeeded. But there’s more than just noise here: heavy distortion and feedback play into a math-rock, post-punk aesthetic. Recorded partly in an abandoned schoolhouse, warping floorboards and haunted basements seem completely in line with the music. Arty, weighty but still accessible, the different elements of […]

Posted inArts + Music

BLK JKS

Out of Johannesburg, South Africa, arrives a quartet likely to scare you. Rock does register with Africans. At times, it seems the speakers or your head might explode from the layers of rhythm, noise and the unknown. The title and album images suggest an aftermath of some trouble when humanity has no toys to filter […]

Posted inArts + Music

Snoop on film

Snoop does what he does best: play Snoop. Here’s one of two cameo appearances on Entourage. Really though, even when he changes names and characters (Murderess on Monk, Slim Daddy on The L Word), he’s Snoop. And that’s what we want. Riding high on Soul Plane: “I’m the captain of the motherfucking ship!” Snoop reinvents […]

Gift this article