The Road
Dimension Films
(In theaters Nov. 25th)

The Road, the new film based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel,  played on November 4th at a Gala as part of AFI’s Tribute to Viggo Mortensen. The film was preceded by a Q&A session with the actor who has been a star in such films as A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and Lord of the Rings.
The Road follows the journey of a man and his son as they make their way across a stark wasteland after an unnamed global apocalypse as they …

Roya Butler: You’re an accomplished artist; what inspires your artwork?
Jeff Tremaine: The artwork I do is mainly paintings.  Inspiration… yeah, I don’t know how to answer that, it’s just something that I’ve always done…that’s a tough question.
RB: What ignited your passion for art?
JT:  Well, at an early age, I could always draw better than my peers, so it’s something that I always pursued.  I took classes, and it was just something that I was always interested in.  In my junior year of high school, I met up with a …

AFI Festival Update
Shorts Programs
I was really taken by the quality of the Lunchfilms set of shorts which did a pretty impressive job despite the constraint of the filmmakers having to use an extremely limited budget. Mike Plante is the mind behind Lunchfilm, a project based on the idea of buying filmmakers lunch and having them pay back the favor by making a movie. The catch is they have to do it for under the price of what it cost to buy their meal. Most were at the very least intriguing …

An Evening with Peaches
At what would otherwise be an age where most musical artists would consider winding down their raucous stage antics, going on hiatus, or perhaps foraying into the world of jazz, the now forty two year-old electro-clash queen Peaches is still on a seemingly never-ending quest to “Whip this party in to shape,” as the dictatorial party anthem “More” would imply. From her entrance to the end of her 2nd encore, Madame Peaches was hell bent on ensuring us that slowing down was indeed not even the last …

Where the Wild Things Are
Warner Brothers
5/10
A bunch of mopey monsters in suits, some daddy issues, and some brilliant on screen images- this is what’s to be expected from Spike Jonze’s latest flick. The adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are was highly anticipated, what with its huge childhood cult following, Maurice Sendak telling anyone who doesn’t like the movie to go to hell, and Karen O working on the soundtrack. This all sounds like the makings of a fantastic fun time for kids and adults alike, but such is not …

The story of Adam Marsland is the story of America.  From humble beginnings as a teenager playing gigs at county fairs, to a successful-yet-tumultuous career in the 1990s, he is Exhibit Number One of how artistry does not necessarily equal laboring in obscurity.  But success has not come without a price- and how staggering it is.  Dropped from two major record labels in the ‘90s and early 2000s, he has endured personal tragedy and professional setbacks on the road to becoming a Horatio Alger story of his own, including a …

The Get Up Kids
with Youth Group and Pretty and Nice
The Glasshouse, Pomona, CA
Free parking, ins and outs and a stern, yet fair security force have always kept the Glasshouse as one of my favorite places to see a show. Seeing The Get Up Kids there was all too enticing, especially seeing as how they are rolling out to promote the 10-year anniversary release of Something To Write Home About.
Strolling in to find Boston’s Pretty & Nice on stage, I found myself debating whether to start a brand new West Coast …

Sinner Sinners
Characters, Pomona, CA
September 26, 2009

Since when did the French know how to play punk like that?
The dark punk duo of Sam and Steve Thill really did justice to the underground during their US tour this summer, making a pit stop in P-Town on a Saturday night. They were accompanied by their touring band, which included non-French drummer, Marky from the Morlocks, a bassist who they just call Ed, and this super sexy guitarist named Mike Zebra.
I decided to take Spanish in high school instead of French, so I epically …

Zombieland
Columbia Pictures
9/10

In reviewing this year’s latest zombie flick, I find myself unable to find where to start, not because it was a bad flick, but simply because there were so many kick ass things about the movie. I am no connoisseur of zombie movies, but I have seen my fair share and can safely say that this is the best zombie movie I have ever seen. Zombieland is a careful collaboration of sarcasm, slapstick, artful direction, cool special effects, and even a minimal amount of sappiness. In short, something …

Gaslight Anthem
W/ Murder By Death, The Loved Ones and Frank Turner
Chain Reaction – Anaheim, CA

Holy fuck. This was the best show I’ve been to in forever. Everything was smooth as silk, except parking. Fuck you, Target. Why would you start towing cars at 11? Eat my ass. Not that I got towed, just that I find it annoying.
Frank Turner started off the night, with just him and a guitar captivating everyone in the crowd, except for us, we had shit to do. We had to find this lycan-looking motherfucker from …

Epitaph Records band, I Am Ghost, is a paradigm for up and coming rock bands. Despite their North American and European tour logs, the Long Beach based group still finds the need to play smaller, all-ages venues such as The Vault in Temecula. The venue was half empty but was still filled with the energy of an arena act. This is odd for a band that drew Goth kids from all corners of the Interstate-15 freeway.
At first I scoffed at the band’s entrance, which included dimmed lights, devilish …

Into the Presence
Self-Titled
Razor & Tie
4/10
It is really difficult for me to NOT like records. Artists and their teams put so much time and effort into the art of making an album that it is easy to fall in love with the music. As for Tim Alexander (Primus, A Perfect Circle) and Luis Carlos Maldonado’s new project, Into the Presence- their attempt did not grab me.
Alexander F. Remington at The Washington Post called their self-titled album, “superlative progressive rock and one of the best rock albums of the year.” “Progressive”- I …

Penny Flame’s Guide to Rough Sex
Vivid Ed
1/10

I am sooooo not cut out for rough sex. What I thought would be “how to bang faster for longer” was more “how to choke a bitch.” Not into it.
Penny Flame tries to lighten up the mood with her Blind Date-esque pop- up captions and hints, but I couldn’t keep a hard on if my partner was looking at me with her mascara running down her face. Unless she was a goth chick and the running makeup wasn’t caused by the tears she is …

I’m sitting here, pondering where to being detailing my weekend at the largest entertainment convention in the world, and I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. Forty years ago, Comic Con started out as a gathering of comic book fans (come on, the term “geek” is kind of passé now), and now it’s almost hard to pick the true diehards out. It’s a mass media advertising frenzy- books, movies, video games, and TV, and I wouldn’t really be surprised if music was on the horizon for this enormous …

Since 2004, Guerilla Union has thrown the Rock the Bells music festival every summer touring coast to coast, featuring artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang (with and without ODB), and Rage Against the Machine, and giving each festival go-er an experience that they’ll never forget.
This basic description would get any music lover to go, but why does this not excite me this year? I try to listen to the discography of every artist on the line up, Nas’ illmatic, Sage Francis’ spoken word, Damian Marley’s Halfway Tree, …

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they are forced to make a choice that reveals their true character, this time came to Racket during Comic-Con in the form of a decision to go see hot hot girls tearing each other’s clothes off or hang out with sweaty guys in a crowded convention hall, and the gang over at Racket did what any red blooded American would do… go to Comic-Con. So, I stepped up and fulfilled my duty by going to watch girls fight each other in skimpy …