Here we go with another ridiculous Films From The Cable Afterlife. As usual, we scour the cable movie listings and turn up some diamonds, and lots of the rough. For best results, watch both. Your life may improve! 8. Mystery Of Monster Island (1981) Fox Movie Channel, Wednesday, February 3, 4am Unbelievable pile of crap by Juan Piquer Simon, one of the worst directors of the 20th century (he's also responsible for X-rated chainsaw slasher Pieces, MST3K fodder Pod People and K-Tel Films release The Supersonic Man). How a major studio found their way around distributing this one is anybody's guess (a series of blowjobs, perhaps), but you will never see Terence Stamp look more embarrassed. Watch if you dare.
7. DOUBLE FEATURE ALERT Pumpkin Karver (2006) The Movie Channel, Saturday, January 31, 12am Pumpkinhead (1988) IFC, Saturday, January 31, 1:35am The stars have aligned: two pumpkin-related horror movies back-to-back on the same night. Different networks, but still, work with me here. Friday Night Lights' Minka Kelly stars in the serial killer/Juggalo-style horror dumper Pumpkin Karver, while Lance Henriksen conjures up a demon to kill bikers in Stan Winston's minor classic Pumpkinhead. It's "Pumpkininny!"
6. Booty Call (1997) Cinemax (@MAX), Sunday, February 1, 8:05pm; Cinemax (WMAX), Monday, February 2, 6:50pm; Cinemax, Tuesday, February 3, 8:30pm Boisterous, offensive and couthless, Booty Call is actually one of the funnier comedies of the late '90s, and deserves another look. Jamie Foxx and Vivica A. Fox (playing characters named Bunz and Lysterine, respectively), join Tommy Davidson, a fake Indian guy, a dog that barks "Nigga Please!" in subtitles (and one Gedde Watanabe, willing to take any role no matter the stereotype, saying "Nigga Preese" in a Chinese restaurant), some hilarious orange pants, an incident with Saran Wrap as dental dam and some dude named Ug Lee. There's no one who won't be upset in its 79 minute runtime, but I don't think it'd work any other way. Watch it and pick your jaw up off the floor.
5. Ladies And Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains (1981) Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, January 31, 2am I hope that now this one has finally made it onto DVD, and not from some bootleg version that's been duped a thousand times from a Betamax that caught it on Showtime in the '80s, that we can see this legendary unreleased film for what it is: kind of a stinker. Still, there's never been anything like it before or since, and it's a fun time with a message. Teenagers Diane Lane and Laura Dern start a makeshift punk band that lands an opening spot for the fake real punk band The Looters, featuring Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, The Clash's Paul Simonon and fronted by actor Ray Winstone. They create a media circus and have it all collapse on them within days, but it's a good enough time, also starring Fee Waybill from The Tubes and a special (awesome) appearance from Black Randy and the Metrosquad. Join the professionals!
Welcome to NCDSUV's splenetic, embittered new weekly feature, Overdressed & Underclassed, which with each installment will dissect a different aspect of celebrity fashion with the enthusiasm and exactitude of a taxidermist suffering from the second clinical phase of rabies (caution: We have reached the contagious stage).
Perhaps it's the prospect of facing the rest of a remarkably long, brutally cold winter and yet another tacktastic awards season; alternatively, a totally unexpected wave of good vibes is washing over me from the political changes in the air. Either way, instead of the nip of bitter grog I generally crave to counteract the effects celebrity fashion has on my parietal lobe, I'm in the mood for something more nourishing, gratifying and sustaining to get me through the inevitable nip slips, butt cleavage and exhausting razzle dazzle the Oscars and the Grammys will inevitably lay at my feet.
So in celebration of celebrities who could (and can) dress themselves, here's a round-up of the vampiest, sassiest, stylishist femme icons who have ever scaled the screen.
8. Mary Tyler Moore The style she brought to the role of working girl Mary Richards in the '70s, both on and offstage, helped make every career gal feel a little bit freer to balance her limitless ambition with her still-potent urge to primp. She made it okay, even sexy, to want to beat down the door to the boy's club at work with a polite smile without breaking a sweat in her sassy separates, vintage hats and quirky peacoats. No other female worker bee, no matter how beloved (not even Carrie Bradshaw or Peggy Olson) will ever give me the same kind of post-feminist, unconflicted case of warm fuzzies. That's right folks. She can turn the world on with her smile... take a nothin' day and make it all worthwhile! Sorry.
7. Katherine Hepburn Like most trailblazers, Kate The Great's singular road created quite a diversion for outraged onlookers from the roaring '20s onward. In a time when most women did a two-step simper, Katherine stridently strolled. When most women squeezed into oxygen-depriving undergarments under too-tight tailored dresses, she luxuriated in baggy, but impeccably tailored men's style pants, flowing shirts and combat-style boots. Even in her dotage, she tooled around on a bike, sat with her feet up and her legs splayed, wore little make-up and unpressed, drably colored clothes that lack any sort of definite shape... and still looked every inch the elegant, sexy, exquisite feminine beauty. She was the original Urbane Tomboy.
6. Brigitte Bardot Brigitte is that rare creature who can balance oooozing Hustler sex appeal with a degree of pre-Raphaelite restraint that renders it sensual, not slutty, even if she is crawling around on the floor in her undies or dancing on top of a bar in a dress that would make Paris Hilton blush. She single-handedly popularized the bikini, the beehive 'do, the bee-stung pout and general '60s-era sexy naif gear of all stripes. Unfortunately, her joie de vivre and stylishness is now less notable than her right-of-Rush Limbaugh political views.
5. Joan Crawford Unlike Katherine, Joan represented the pinnacle of idealized feminine fashion in the '20s and '30's, with wasp-waisted tailoring, exaggerated shoulder pads and breakneck-speed martini-fueled diamond-studded satin, vampy, gauzy glamour. A perpetual engine of reinvention, she sailed through 45 years onscreen portraying whatever America wanted to see in her: rebellious but innocent flapper; working girl/society girl with a heart of gold; psycho bitch; camp queen. Joan's innate ability to seamlessly morph personas paved the way for the tough, ever-changing broads we all have a soft spot who came after. But Joan never appeared to be as calculating or cynical about her image changaroos as, say, Madonna or Britney Spears do.
As even the least loyal NCDSUV content-craver is aware, we love us some daily features. And one of the more popular (at least amongst, well, us and the people who it commemorates) is the Awesome Celebrity Birthday Of The Day,
which acknowledges another turn of the calendar for a member of
Hollywood land, even if it's a celebrity who often goes overlooked by
the rest of the blogosphere, and regardless of whether we have a huge
affinity for their body of work.
And in this historic month of January 2009, the candles have been smothered with saliva for everyone from Danny Pintauro to R. Kelly.
But even the continual erosion of their mortality isn't as awesome as
the annual birthday bashes warranted for these five folks. And of course, a happy cumpleanos feliz in advance for all the b-day boys and girls this coming February.
5. David Johansen Age: 59 Why She's Sort Of Awesome: Not only did
Johansen swagger his way into the punk rock lexicon by fronting sleazy
proto-glam alley-dwellers New York Dolls, but he managed to evade the
heroin heartbreak of bandmate Johnny Thunders and reinvent himself as
postmodern cabaret-lounge performeer Buster Poindexter, and segue that
notoriety into memorable film roles, like his portrayal of the
posthumous cabbie in the Bill Murray vehicle, Scrooged. Oh, and
he even managed to grow his hair back out and hit the studio and tour
circuit with a revamped Dolls in the mid-2000s, rivaling Iggy Pop's
Stooges on the senior punk circuit. Most Likely Celebrity Status 20 Birthdays From Now:
The decade-marking interval between 59 and 79 would seem to fit
Johansen most appropriately. But by the time he's almost hit that 80
mark, one has to imagine the only pace this wildman could handle would
be the slowed-down cool-cat stylings of his once-again-resusciated
Poindexter alter ego. All Apologies To: Joan Baez, Jimmy Page, Dave Matthews, Howie Long, Sergio Garcia
4. Richard Dean Anderson Age: 59 Why He's Sort Of Awesome: Well, for one, the titular character he portrayed during several seasons of MacGyver has become accepted as a cultural verb. But we also gather that, a la recent Awesome Birthday honoree Carl Weathers, Dean Anderson (and don't call him Dick) would have a sense of self-depreciation and, like us, giggle at the fact that in one decade he'll be 69. Most Likely Celebrity Status 20 Birthdays From Now: 79 isn't as innately humorous an age, but that won't stop Dean Anderson from tickling our funny bones by breaking his, in a one-man show about the perils of aging called Fibromyass. All Apologies To: Tiffani Thiessen, Robin Zander, Anita Baker, Rutger Hauer, Anita Pointer
While this release week may bring more anticipated and notable efforts like the Dan Deacon /Adventure split 12" and The Whore Moans' Hello From The Radio Wasteland!, we here at NCDSUV prefer to analyze more futile musical recordings.
Welcome back to Unnecessary Album Releases, a feature in which we highlight the week's most egregiously bizarre, dull and often unpleasant albums from the music industry's "left"er side of the dial. Behold the obscure, the most fantastically superfluous musical curiosas for the week of January 27, 2009.
6. The Guggenheim Grotto, Happy The Man If you prefer your music with a message and featured on poorly scripted family dramas about unwanted teen pregnancies and kids who can't live up to their parent's expectations (think One Tree Hill and Brothers And Sisters), then this second release by Dublin darlings, The Guggenheim Grotto, which teems with the mawkish smell of freshly disposed Kleenex, is sure to make even the unhappiest man happy, man.
5. The Toy Killers, The Unlistenable Years Every so often (let's call it chance), an album title comes along and practically guarantees an excruciating listening experience. Featuring an hour-long, monotonous cacophony of unbridled noise, unheard studio and live material from 1980-'84, The Unlistenable Years is, unbearably, just that.
In spite of overplayed, holiday-themed claims to the contrary, there is nothing wonderful about the wintertime. The weather outside is frightful and the snow is anything but fucking delightful. It just flat-out sucks. And now that Christmas and New Year's are well behind us, there is no silver lining left to get us through this long, bleak period . As we head into the icy heart of the season, we can turn to the movies for some solace and to indulge in a little heartwarming schadenfreude. Old Man Winter may be opening up a can of whoop-ass on you at the moment, but he drops an entire barrelful on the characters in the following snowbound nightmares. So use those frostbitten fingers and count your blessings.
9. Fargo Between the shitty climate and the shittier accents, if hell were to actually freeze over, it would probably look a lot like Brainerd, Minnesota. With nothing to do but work, eat at Arby's and scrape ice off their windshields, it's no wonder the folks in this inert burg are so prone to lethal violence. If you lived here, you'd be making a beeline for that wood chipper, too.
8. Misery Wintertime driving is brutal. From frozen engine blocks, to black ice, to the inevitable blizzard-induced, life-altering accidents, it's a treacherous endeavor regardless of how prepared you think you are. But who needs AAA when you've got the Annie Wilkes Roadside Assistance Program? She'll take you in, feed you, tend to your wounds... and give you new ones when you don't do exactly as she says. Heed those severe storm warnings and stay off the road, or you might end up taking a sledgehammer to the ankles like Sonny Corleone.
7. The Day After Tomorrow How much worse would your walk to work be if you had to deal with wind chill factors of 150 degrees below zero or worry about being chased by timber wolves? When the Ice Age hits New York City (and without a single celebrity voiced mastodon or saber-toothed tiger in sight), Dennis Quaid and a pre-Gyllenspoon Jake Gyllenhaal find out what it would feel like. If the idea of a greenhouse-induced, never-ending winter doesn't scare you into buying reusable bags and getting a Prius, then nothing will.
6. The Sopranos: "Pine Barrens" Although it was technically televised, each episode of The Sopranos always seemed more like a feature film (remember, "It's not TV, it's HBO"). "Pine Barrens" is one of the strongest and most cinematic installments, as Christopher Moltisanti and Paulie Walnuts battle the elements, a Russian assassin and each other while lost in the middle of the woods. Being stranded in frigid temperatures has a way of rendering everything else in the world meaningless. So in spite of their hit turning into a total disaster, they are cruelly reminded that getting out of the cold is more important than anything: money, duty, respect, even Tony's approval.
5. Snow Day Imagine for a moment that you're a balding, middle-aged, barely employed snow plow operator with bad teeth and a crow as your only friend. And on the rare, snowy occasion that you actually have a lot of work to do, your truck gets jacked and you're attacked by a horde of schoolchildren led by an odd little girl who communicates with action figures, a flatulent fat kid and a boy who makes snowballs out of jelly and urine. Sounds like a horror story, right? Well, for Chris Elliott, it is.
More Cable Afterlife, because you demanded it. You beat down my door. You followed me home. You took my seat on the subway. You cut in front of me in line. You better watch ... these movies. On cable, this Friday through next Thursday, like always. (All times in EST.) 8. Shanghai Surprise (1986) Encore Love, Monday, January 26, 10:30am As Sean Penn gears up to possibly win an Oscar for one of his best performances (as the titular Harvey Milk), it's high time to see him in one of his worst, and I'm not talking about I Am Sam. No, this is the spectacular flop he made with Madonna while the two were married. I dare you to finish it. P.S. It's heavily steam. I've said too much. Or have I?
7. Bullet (1995) IFC, Tuesday, January 27th, 12am As for said Oscars, Mickey Rourke's on the ascent with his role in The Wrestler. Check him out as he was careening to the bottom, out-acted by Tupac Shakur in this ruff-n-tuff action thriller, directed by Julien Temple
.
6. Luv (1967) Turner Classic Movies, Thursday, January 29th, 8:15am Jack Lemmon's about to jump off a bridge when he meets old friend Peter Falk, who pawns off his wife (Elaine May) on him so that he can be with his girlfriend. You can't pass on that cast, nor will you want to miss this rarely-screened Clive Donner effort from the peace-n-love era. Expect awkwardness, and a cameo by a young Harrison Ford as a longhair.
5. Funny Games (2008) Cinemax, Saturday, January 24th, 10pm It hasn't yet been determined if Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his own cinematic paradigm---the movie so brutal and heartless, it dares you not to watch and in effect judges you for how far along you've endured it---fulfilled whatever sort of Hollywood traction he may have been going for... because nobody's seen it, really. Here's your chance to.
Welcome to NCDSUV's splenetic, embittered new weekly feature, Overdressed & Underclassed, which with each installment will dissect a different aspect of celebrity fashion with the enthusiasm and exactitude of a taxidermist suffering from the second clinical phase of rabies (caution: We have reached the contagious stage).
Beltway insiders seem to approach getting dressed as a way to: A. avoid indecency charges and B. To protect themselves from the elements. A "quirky" D.C. gal may be seen traipsing through Capitol Hill clad in a purple pinstripe suit from Anthropologie with some swingin' sky-high Prada pumps, instead of the de rigueur gray pinstripe suit from Ann Taylor Loft paired with Easy Spirit flats, much to the consternation, stifled envy and shock on the parts of the less stalwart.
But change is coming to Washington, along with (we hope) a new epoch for fashion forwardness. President Barack Hussein Obama's inauguration seemed to signal, among other weightier things, a much easier era for the eyes. Here's the eight fashion highlights from Tuesday's ceremonies.
8. Laura Bush The former First Lady's outfit epitomized what we all hope we'll be saying "farewell" to: frumpy grey pantsuits and boring heels; drab grey political horizons and boring heels (of the human variety).
7. Jill Biden After so recently thrusting her well-shod foot into her mouth on Oprah (Biden claimed that Obama had offered her husband a choice of jobs as either Veep or Secretary oO State, forcing his staff to go into spin mode), I expected Biden to slip on something decidedly understated. In stark contrast to everyone else's relatively muted swearing-in duds, she opted for a fiery orange-red jacket paired and a pair of hot-stepping black leather boots. It looks like we will be able to expect all manner of exciting fireworks from Biden. And just think: It was her husband everyone was worried about. Go, Jill, go: This administration has to give Saturday Night Live something to work with.
6. Aretha Franklin The Queen of Soul's rendition of "My Country 'Tis Of Thee" was almost as thrilling as the farcically bad, but oh so delectably good, massive, yodeling, rhinestone-studded bow plopped on top of a chirping church mouse of little grey hat. Sing it, lady!
5. Senator Ted Kennedy The senator, who has managed to continue his duties in recent months despite his bout with brain cancer, collapsed at the Capitol after suffering a seizure on the day of the inauguration. He's reportedly on the mend, and we hope as optimistic, jubilant and celebratory as he appeared to be at the inauguration in his jaunty fedora and dapper sky-blue silk scarf.
As we reported yesterday, Britney Spears was being rushed back into the emergency room. But this time it was her music studio and not a psychiatric ward, to do some last-minute surgery on her new single, "If You Seek Amy." Apparently, the title was subversively intended to sound like something a good deal naughtier when pronounced phonetically, sparking commercial radio's refusal to air the track, and thus its impending resurrection as the nonsensical "If You See Amy."
Of course, Mrs. Spears is just the latest in a long line of illustriously censored songs. This differs, of course, from a mere lyric being bleeped out, which would canvas nearly every hip-hop single of the last two decades; cover art being airbrushed, a la the Black Crowes' Amorica; or a song's complete and controversial removal from all pressings, as in the case of Body Count's "Cop Killer."
But the guiding forces are generally the same, and at their minimum incorporate the following: conservative media, righteous protest groups and puritanical retail chains. All of the above have upheld the time-honored tradition of illogically inciting teen-baiting scandal and sensationalism around something that would otherwise pass through the bowels of our cultural intake like a harmless blast of fiber.
So while there are no doubt several more worthy of inclusion, here are five risque, and subsequently retitled, songs that either awkwardly sapped the song of its original appeal, or in some cases just made us laugh at the stick up censor-happy advocates' asses.
5. Akon featuring Snoop Dogg, "I Wanna Fuck You" Re-Titled As: "I Wanna Love You" Degree Of Silliness: Absurd, But Understandable Granted, if you're going to release a single that graphically refers to copulation, you're probably well-prepared to acquiesce and record a modified version. But "I Wanna Love You" presents a dual-edged dilemma: 1. Particularly when paired with the video, and for anyone familiar with either man's careers, it rings transparently disingenuous as a romantic offering. 2. It presents "love" in this instance as an action verb, and it ultimately winds up feeling as if its missing a double modifier, like perhaps a "make" before "love" and a "to" prior to "you" for clarification. Because to suggest "love" in its most sentimental form is both in blatant contrast to where Akon places emphasis on the lyrics and awkwardly juxtaposed against the content of the verses.
4. Crass, "Reality Asylum" Re-Titled As: "The Sound Of Free Speech" Degree Of Silliness: Silly In An Ominous Big Brother Kind Of Way In 1978, punk upsetters Crass were releasing their Feeding Of The 5000 EP. Only problem was the pressing plant was offended by its Jesus-eviscerating lyrical content and refused to finish the job. So in a truly anarchist spirit that would be total anathema to most mainstream cowtowers, the boys simply filled the space with white noise, rechristening it (pun very much intended it) "The Sound Of Free Speech," an ironic fuck you to the bullying of opposing points of view that still resonates influentially today.
While this release week may bring anticipated and more notable efforts like the triumphant Airing Of Grievances by Titus Andronicus or Andrew Bird's Noble Beast, we here at NCDSUV prefer to analyze more futile musical recordings.
Welcome back to Unnecessary Album Releases, a feature in which we highlight the week's most egregiously bizarre, dull and often unpleasant albums from the music industry's "left"er side of the dial.
Behold the obscure, the most fantastically superfluous musical curiosas for the week of January 20, 2009.
6. Combichrist, Today We Are All Demons While they assume a glut of dubiously, dizzying, dark descriptors like "Hellektro," Terror EBM" or "Harsh EBM," the electro/industrial rock by Norwegian sextet Combichrist, would have justifiably leave genre pioneers like Ministry with a wry discontent.
5. The Harvest Floor, Castle Decapitation This jarring juggernaut of relentlessly grinding blast beats features the ferociously horrifying vocals of Travis Ryan, who concocts something akin to Gollum from Lord Of The Rings and a demonic death rattle all hoped up on steroids. Enjoy.
When we heard why Milk scene-stealer James Franco, who won our hearts years ago as bad-boy Daniel from Freaks & Geeks, was missing at the Golden Globes last week, we were agog. It seems Franco was busy studying poetry at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, where he is enrolled in the school's MFA For Writers. The image of Franco eschewing fancy Hollywood award ceremonies to brood over his coffee-stained notebook of post-confessional free-verse, or linger over a glass of sweet tea, clutching a dog-eared copy of Mark Doty's My Alexandria... um, it kinda made us swoon. But it also got us wondering: What other charmed boldfacers would we love to see insert themselves into the raging creative class?
7. Sarah Palin Remember the lady with the glasses who ran for that political office that one time? She seemed to have some trouble, er, collecting her thoughts, on occasion. "We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C." Palin once told a crowd at a fundraiser many moons ago. "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation." She's like the next Edward Albee, no?
6. Christopher Walken It's quite possible C-Walk would be even less popular describing his process in a workshop than the Palinator. Can you... imagine... listening... to... him... discussing... his... character's... inner... monologue... and... psychosis... this... slowly? And what if he wrote exactly like he speaks?
5. Sean Penn Somewhere, right now, Penn is seething with jealousy over Franco's secret taste for the literary arts. They can't both do it! Penn, of course, got his byline on the cover of The Nation last month for his oh-so-astute international reportage. So why not attempt to best his younger, immensely attractive co-star and tackle a creative writing MFA while he's at it? We'd adore listening to his justification for turns of phrase like, "He was God's pessimist."
