Katterfelto

Just when you thought we were safe from Big Brother...

2012-01-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

Just when you thought we were safe from SOPA and PIPA, along comes ACTA and H.R. 1981, which in some ways are even more sinister and nefarious than SOPA or PIPA. Another example of the tremendous stranglehold that a small handful of extremely powerful corporations have on our politics, our laws, and our public policies...

World's most over-the-top sci-fi action scene

2012-01-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

My nomination for most over-the-top action sequence in a sci-fi movie goes to this eye-popping sequence from a 2010 Indian film called Enthiran, which was sort of Bollywood's Terminator. Yes, it's ridiculous. But it's also very impressive...in an incredibly goofy sort of way...

Turkmeni filmmaker says Sony may carry nude zombie flick

2012-01-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

Turkmeni filmmaker Vilmos Pahlavi

Controversial Turkmenistan filmmaker Vilmos Pahlavi, whom we wrote about in a previous article, has announced that he is currently in talks with Sony Entertainment to distribute a Turkish horror film entitled Worms of the Naked Dead. The film, which Pahlavi produced but did not direct, is the third installment in Pahlavi's popular Naked Dead series, following on the heels of the previous Tombs of the Naked Dead (2009) and Lusts of the Naked Dead (2010).

Billed as the first nude zombie films, Pahlavi's Naked Dead franchise has inspired a devoted cult following in his home country, however the films remain largely unseen outside Turkmenistan due to alleged copyright issues relating to the films' reported use of unlicensed footage borrowed from popular American films.

However according to Gulya Polyakova, Pahlavi's representative in Balkanabat, Worms does not contain any unauthorized footage. In a recent e-mail, Polyakova wrote:

"'Worms of the Naked Dead' is Vilmos Pahlavi's most exciting and ambitious film to date, with state of the art special effects and high production values. Mr. Pahlavi has never used, nor would he have reason to use, unlicensed copyrighted material in his films. The films stand on their own merits.

"Our ongoing negotiations with Sony Entertainment are positive and productive, and we are confident that Sony will have no misgivings with regard to the quality, originality, or copyright status of of the film, and we are thrilled at the prospect of 'Worms of the Naked Dead' being the first major motion picture produced in Turkmenistan to receive wide international distribution."

Copyright issues notwithstanding, Pahlavi's Naked Dead films have raised concerns among critics and actors' rights groups over reports of abusive working conditions and controversial scenes in which actresses were allegedly forced to crawl naked through garbage and eat live insects. During the shooting of Worms, Pahlavi allegedly made production assistant Yelena Kindschi eat three pounds of trail mix because Kindschi inadvertently included raisins in the mix. Pahlavi detests raisins. In another incident, Pahlavi reportedly forced screenwriter Arsen Daquioag to eat ten pages of script at gunpoint because Pahlavi found the dialogue "ridiculous."

Polyakova dismissed the complaints as "the degenerate fantasies of communist agitators."

When reached for comment about the alleged negotiations between Pahlavi and Sony Entertainment, a Sony spokesperson replied:

"Sony Entertainment is not familiar with Mr. Pahlavi's work, nor are we involved in negotiations to distribute any of this films."

New hope: amazing new treatment uses ultrasound instead of surgery

2012-01-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

video platform video management video solutions video player

ABC News video: amazing new treatment for tremors and other disorders uses directed ultrasound instead of conventional surgery. There is minimal recovery time, and the effects are almost instantaneous. The treatment holds enormous promise for treating Parkinson’s disease and most any condition that would normally require invasive surgical techniques.

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms

2012-01-20T23:39:00.000-08:00

Infamous, previously hard-to-find 1940 documentary chronicles the bizarre medical experiments conducted at Moscow's Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy in which surgeons animated dissected organs, brought dead animals back to life, kept a severed dog's head alive in a tray, and grafted the head and legs of a puppy onto an adult dog. (For what possible reason aside from having watched too many "Frankenstein" movies one can only guess.) Made all the more disturbing by the clinical black and white photography and the droning, matter-of-fact narration by British biologist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, F.R.S. (Fellow of the Royal Society). The actual surgical procedures are thankfully never shown, however the after effects are plenty horrific. Images of a severed dog's head reacting unhappily to being poked and prodded aren't easily forgotten. There's not much in the way of actual gore, though sensitive viewers may find the material upsetting. Film is in the Public Domain. From the Prelinger Archives. http://www.prelinger.com

The Russian Sherlock Holmes

2012-01-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

Between 1979 and 1986, Russia's Lenfilm Studios produced a series of television films based on the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. As with the BBC's popular contemporary series "Sherlock," each episode combined elements from several of Conan Doyle's original stories, though care was taken to preserve the spirit of of the material. Though not strictly canonical, the series is a favorite among fans and is regarded as one of best and most interesting adaptations of Holmes's adventures, rendered all the more authentic by Lenfilm's meticulous recreation of Victorian England.

Lenfilm's "Sherlock Holmes" was the most popular series in the history of Soviet television, and starred Vasily Livanov as the legendary consulting detective and Vitaly Solomin as his redoubtable sidekick, Dr. Watson--a role for which Solomin has been universally praised as one of the most authentic and amusing of all Dr. Watsons.

Many consider Livanov's Holmes to be one of the finest interpretations of Conan Doyle's eccentric hero. Aficionados have noted that of all the actors to have played the part, it is Livanov who most closely resembles the famous Sydney Paget drawings that accompanied Conan Doyle's original stories in Strand magazine between 1891-1892.

Livanov's performance as Holmes was so highly regarded in England that on February 20, 2006, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Livanov an honorary Commandership in the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) "for service to the theatre and performing arts"--a rare honor for a non-British citizen...

Mother of Horrors: The Magnificent Grand Guignol

2012-01-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

Terrific mini-documentary about Paris's infamous theatre of the macabre, the Grand Guignol, which titillated and horrified patrons from 1897 to 1962. During the theatre's heyday, well-heeled patrons brave enough to venture down to the tiny converted chapel in the cul-de-sac a the end of impasse Chaptal in Paris's seedy Pigalle district were treated to full evening's worth of sex, gore and violence, live on stage. All simulated of course, but highly realistic, with gallons of spraying stage blood.

Everything we know about horror movies was learned and refined at the Grand Guignol. It was the mother of modern horror.

Author Mel Gordon (The Grand Guignol: Theatre of Fear and Terror) gives us a brief but entertaining overview of the notorious "theatre of blood" that fired the imaginations of jaded Parisians and actually claimed more than one life during it's gruesome run. The film is a part of The Midnight Archive, a web-based documentary series centered around The Observatory in Brooklyn.

Thanks to Morbid Anatomy for bringing this to our attention...

Cry Me a River

2012-01-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

The amazing Julie London sings the first--and best--version ever of Cry Me a River, written by her high school classmate Arthur Hamilton. From the 1956 movie The Girl Can't Help it. Tom Ewell plays the spastic booze-hound. The song was also prominently featured in the dystopian cult thriller, V for Vendetta.

Where there's a Man, there's a Marlboro

2012-01-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

Hilariously cool Marlboro commercial with the great Julie London. Almost makes you want to light up, if you haven't already...

Ask your dentist about Viceroy

2012-01-10T02:23:00.000-08:00

ACTUAL PRINT AD FOR VICEROY CIGARETTES

"3 1/2 Women" Comedy Show (postcard 2)

2012-01-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

Another postcard for 3 1/2 women.

"3 1/2 Women" - Live Comedy show February 18th

2012-01-09T22:44:00.000-08:00

Much as I admired the irreplaceable Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) for his razor wit and literary brilliance, his notorious Vanity Fair article Why Women Aren't Funny proved that he was wrong about at least one thing.

Evidence of this, if needed, will be on vivid display next month when LA comediennes Jacqi Bowe, Charli Haynes and Corrine Petteys take the stage February 18th at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank for an evening of live comedy entitled 3 1/2 Women. ("Live on stage - in blinding color!")

Admission: $12. Ages 18 & up. 2-item minimum. FREE PARKING available nearby at Sears or Ashley Furniture. Curtain: 7:30 PM

Check it out!

The Truth about 2012 and the Mayan Calendar

2012-01-09T18:40:00.000-08:00

Noted astronomer Dr. Edwin C. Krupp clears up the myth and misinformation regarding the so-called "end" of the Mayan calendar and the rumored global apocalypse of 2012. (Video is presented in 5 segments; simply click in the box that appears in the lower right-hand corner at the end of each segment to continue to the next section.)

This lecture originally was presented on Nov. 4, 2009 as part of the Distinctive Voices at the Beckman Center lecture series, and was co-sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the Orange County, California chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America. The original raw video may be viewed in its entirety at http://media.voicesatbeckman.org/dv/110409/index.html.

Dr. Krupp is a noted author and one of the world's foremost authorities in the highly specialized field of archaeoastronomy. A renowned expert on ancient, prehistoric, and traditional astronomy, he has led expeditions to nearly 2,000 astronomy-related archaeological sites around the globe. He was host of the PBS series Project Universe, and is currently the director of the magnificent Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, a position he has held with distinction since 1974.

CREDITS & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The Griffith Observatory

http://www.griffithobs.org/

National Academy of Sciences - Distinctive Voices:

http://www.nasonline.org/programs/distinctive-voices/

Caroline Maddock, President and Lecture Chair, Archaeological Institute of America, Orange County chapter

http://aia-oc.org/index1.html

"Mars, the Bringer of War"

Gustav Holst's "The Planets" Op. 32, movement 1.

Performed by the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band. Recording in the Public Domain. Available from MUSOPEN, the Internet's largest archive of free classical music. http://musopen.org/

"Brazil"

Words and Music by Ary Barroso.

Performed by Davore Milovich and his Rascals

Digital pyrotechnics by Detonation Films

http://www.detonationfilms.com/

"American Look"

Incidental theme from Chevrolet promotional film circa 1958.

From the Prelinger Archive

http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

"Criswell Predicts"

From Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Plan 9 From Outer Space

Space images courtesy of

NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/

BOOKS BY DR. EDWIN C. KRUPP:

Echoes of Ancient Skies: The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations

In Search of Ancient Astronomies

Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings: Astronomy and the Archaeology of Power

The Big Dipper and You

The Comet and You

The Rainbow and You

Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars and Planets

The Moon and You

Archaeoastronomy and the Roots of Science

Your Name Here!

2012-01-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

You may not be familiar with the name The Calvin Company, however they were one of the most commercially successful movie companies of all time. From the 1930s through the late 50s, they were the undisputed master of the industrial film genre, producing hundreds of high-quality training and promotional films for such clients as DuPont, Westinghouse, General Mills, the Department of Agriculture, and even the U.S. Navy and Air Force.

Industrial films tend to be rather dull affairs, funny only in retrospect on account of their unintentional campiness and humorless self-importance. However, nobody was more aware of this than the Calvin Company, who slyly lampooned their own industry with a dead-on parody called Your Name Here, a hilarious 1960 spoof of the ultimate generic marketing film in which typically bland, nonsensical hyperbole is accentuated by patriotic imagery of farms, highways, historical figures, unidentified manufacturing operations, super-scientific laboratories, and every other visual cliché known to man. The frequent in-jokes (such as "Use Robert E. Lee Here if Desired") are made all the funnier by the stentorian presenter, who deserves some sort of award for his brilliantly deadpan performance.

Another rare gem of mid-century popular culture from The Prelinger Archives.

The Pink Slime - It's What's for Dinner

2011-08-15T00:16:00.000-07:00

While watching Robert Kenner's eye-opening documentary Food, Inc. on PBS, I was shocked to learn about a hamburger additive jokingly known as "pink slime." After doing a little research on this mysterious substance, what I learned was so horrifying that I vowed never to eat another fast food hamburger.

Heres the scoop on "pink slime":

In 2001, a company called Beef Products, Inc. developed a cheap beef byproduct they euphemistically named "lean finely textured beef." The name is technically correct in that it comes from a cow, and it even sounds appealing, however the truth is far less appetizing. BPI's "lean finely textured beef" is actually made from the normally inedible scraps that end up on the slaughterhouse floor during butchering. As you may know, slaughterhouse floors are notoriously filthy places, awash with a nauseating swill of feces, urine, rancid blood and partially digested food.

Cow (photo: USDA)

Prior to 2001, this disease-ridden offal was thrown away or hauled off to a rendering plant where it was processed into commercial pet or livestock feed. The ground up scraps were also treated with harsh chemicals to kill the salmonella, hemorrhagic E. coli and other virulent pathogens present in the meat as a result of contamination with fecal matter and other biological waste.

Beef Products Incorporated, however, thought this biohazard stew would make a tasty, economical addition to the American diet. After all, what's good for the cat is good for the kids, right? So they cranked their grinders up a notch to make the stuff even more unidentifiable and started selling the pureed cow leavings to fast food chains, supermarkets, and school lunchrooms as an inexpensive hamburger additive, though they didn't call it that.

Because the meat slurry came from pureed cow parts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) ruled that it could legally be called "beef"; the fact that it was ultra-cheap made it an ideal meat extender. It was a godsend for restaurants, supermarkets and institutions. Beef industry-approved USDA rules allowed them to dilute their hamburger with up to 15% of the odious effluvia while still proclaiming--with a perfectly straight face--that they use "no fillers." All of which proves that you can literally sell shit if you have the right regulatory agencies on your side. (If you don't believe me, just ask the SEC about Bernie Madoff or credit default swaps.)

Cow patty (Photo: US Dept. of Health)

If the beef industry believes the old adage "You are what you eat," they clearly have a low opinion of the American consumer.

To make the pink slime, BPI uses industrial grinders and centrifuges to render the sewage-marinated cow scraps into a kind of meat paste. They then dump ammonium hydroxide (that's household cleaning ammonia) into the hopper in order to "wash" (i.e., sterilize) the noxious sludge. Because ammonia is a powerful disinfectant, the resultant goo allegedly exceeds USDA guidelines for acceptable levels of contaminants. If you've ever heard McDonalds bragging about how the cleanliness of their meat exceeds Federal guidelines, now you know why.

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The pink slime is now used in most American supermarkets and fast food restaurants including McDonald's and Burger King. According to chef and food critic Jamie Oliver, 70% of all hamburgers eaten in America contain the sterilized poo-and-beef paste. And it's all perfectly legal.

Seal of the USDA

If you're wondering how our food supply was allowed to become contaminated with such a vile product, it has to do with money, political power, and yet another government agency that has betrayed the public trust--in this case the USDA, which was established to protect U.S. consumers, but seems to spend much of its time running interference for the beef industry.

According to a Frontline article entitled The Politics of Meat, the beef lobby wields enormous legislative and regulatory influence, one result of which is the USDA's nonsensical guidelines with regard to the purity and labeling of meat products. In a rational world, any industrial chemical such as ammonium hydroxide that's added to a food product would be considered an additive. This is true for virtually every food producer except the beef industry, for which the USDA made an exception by declaring the addition of ammonia to be a process, not an additive.

"100% pure USDA inspected beef" (photo: USDA)

According to current USDA guidelines, fast food franchises and supermarkets are allowed to adulterate their ground beef with up to 15% of the "pink slime" without forfeiting the treasured "100% pure USDA inspected beef" label. Which raises an interesting question: If BPI's notorious meat sludge is truly 100% pure USDA inspected beef, why is there a maximum allowable percentage of only 15%? If the stuff is that wholesome, why not 100%?

Actually, it's not wholesome and it's not real beef. It's garbage that you wouldn't feed a barnyard hog, let alone your family pet. Yet they're feeding it to our kids in fast food restaurants and school lunchrooms all across America because the government and the beef industry say it's okay. Considering the government's incestuous relationship with big business--i.e. big pharma, big agra, the banking and auto industry bailouts--do you really trust our regulatory agencies to do the right thing?

Really?

Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The truth is, a 15% mixture of pink slime in commercially-produced hamburger is the most they can get away with without the customers catching on. Any more than that and you'd be able to smell and taste the ammonia. The pink slime is so potent, in fact, that it will allegedly disinfect the real hamburger that it's mixed with. That may be a comfort to germ-o-phobes (the technical term is mysophobia), however if something is so infected and disease-ridden that we have to soak it in ammonia in order to eat it without dying, we shouldn't be eating it anyway.

(Image: Wikipedia)

One of the many ironies of all this is that a few years ago a national grocery chain called Food Lion was nearly bankrupted by public disgust over revelations they were doing the exact same thing to their meat products. The only difference is that they were using diluted bleach instead of ammonia.

Why does the USDA condone this sort of chicanery? Because the beef lobby, and companies like McDonalds--the nation's largest buyer of beef--don't want their customers to know what they're really eating, otherwise they're liable to stop eating it.

McDonalds claims in their literature that they use "only 100% pure USDA inspected beef, no fillers or additives," which sounds perfectly proper until you realize that under the USDA's somewhat imaginative guidelines, BPI's so-called "lean finely textured beef" (aka, the "pink slime") qualifies as "100% pure USDA inspected beef." Never mind that it consists entirely of garbage filler made from slaughterhouse offal, or that it actually does contain an additive, namely ammonium hydroxide: in the Orwellian world of the USDA, nothing is quite what it seems.

Adding insult to injury, the USDA stopped inspecting the meat altogether. In an article in the New York Times, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Michael Moss wrote:

"Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s (BPI's) ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli 'to an undetectable level.' They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef products." (My italics)

All that propaganda about "100% pure USDA inspected beef" was not only a lie, it was a whopper. Furthermore, because BPI's cow-carcass puree was believed to be pathogen free, the chemically-treated ooze was excluded from recalls, "even when it was an ingredient in hamburgers found to be contaminated." (my italics)

You read that correctly. The USDA stopped inspecting the pink slime--and even exempted it from recalls--because they believed BPI was "doing the right thing."

Just out of curiosity, when was the last time a government agency trusted you to do the right thing? When it was time to renew your registration did the state say, "We know you're a safe driver, don't worry about it!" At tax time, has the IRS ever said "We know you'll send us the money if you owe it, so don't worry about the paperwork!"

Head spinning yet?

Escherichia coli (photo: US Dept of Health and Human Services)

The federal school lunch program uses nearly 6 million pounds of processed beef annually, approximately 15% of which consists of BPI's industrial meat sludge as a filler. The beef industry and the USDA say that it's not a filler, it's an extender, which is like trying to make a distinction between horseshit and bullshit. We all know what it is, and there's about 900,000 pounds of it in our kids' lunches.

But the pink slime was supposed to be safe, right? So safe, in fact, that the USDA decided to stop inspecting it. After all, it's got enough ammonia in it to kill everything except the kid that eats it. Right?

Wrong again.

According to Michael Moss, state health inspectors found dozens of cases of E. coli and salmonella contamination in the pink slime. The problem was so bad that in 2009, school officials in Kansas temporarily banned the use of BPI's meat paste for the third time in as many years. Yet the USDA continued to put their official stamp of approval on the rancid goo.

When the New York Times shared this information, the USDA responded by saying that it would be revoking BPI's exemption from routine inspections while they conducted a "review" of the company's procedures.

"More cow poo, Ma?" (photo: USDA)

It seems that even after washing in ammonia, the pink slime still isn't safe for human consumption. So why is it still in our hamburgers?

The food service business is extremely competitive. According to a study by Ohio State University, as many as 6 out of 10 restaurants will fail. Profit is not a four-letter word; the purpose of a business is to make money. The beef industry and the USDA would argue that companies like McDonalds and Burger King aren't trying to be bad corporate citizens, they're simply trying to remain profitable while still giving us what we want, which is tasty food, bigger portions, and cheaper prices. The only way to do that, they would argue, is to cut corners and add meat extenders such as BPI's pink slime.

Which, of course, would be a giant steaming buttload of finely textured beef product.

Worldwide, McDonalds sells 75 hamburgers per second, which works out to 4,500 per minute, or 270,000 per hour. That's a little over 6 million hamburgers in one 24-hour period, or over 2 billion per year. In order to keep up with the seemingly insatiable demand, McDonalds buys 1 billion pounds of beef a year at a cost of approximately $1.3 billion. Using BPI's pink slime as a meat extender enables McDonalds and its franchisees to save about 12 cents off the cost of every pound of hamburger they sell, which works out to a companywide savings of approximately $120 million.

That's $120 million that McDonalds wouldn't have had if the USDA had done the right thing instead of declaring that BPI's "pink slime" was not only not a filler, but that it met the criteria for “100% pure USDA inspected beef.”

Photo: Wikipedia (Sammetsfan)

Armchair bean counters who worry that McDonalds' survival may hinge on its ability to save 12 cents on a pound of hamburger will be comforted by the fact that the company is hardly hurting. On the contrary, McDonalds is one of the few large corporations that actually seems to have done well during the recession. According to McDonalds' most recent financial reports, 2010 marked the 7th consecutive year of positive sales, with $24 billion in revenue and a $5.1 billion return to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. A 27% return for investors earned the company the #3 spot on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. By this time next year McDonalds will have opened 750 new stores worldwide and revamped 2,200 existing outlets.

The $120 million McDonalds saved by using BPI's pink slime is a drop in the bucket compared with what the company spends on advertising. According to a report issued by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, the burger giant has an annual advertising budget of over $650 million. Which may explain why hospitality industry consultant Chuck Hamburg is quoted in the same article as saying “They say when a baby is born, after his mother and father, the third most recognized thing is the Golden Arches.”

McDonalds deserves to make a profit. But as consumers, we deserve quality food more than McDonalds deserves the $120 million they save by feeding us pink slime. The same goes for Burger King, supermarkets, and the Federal school lunch program.

How about a nice, hot slice of WTF?

The food industry is understandably sensitive about these kinds of criticisms. In 1996, When whistleblowing cattle rancher Howard Lyman appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and revealed that American cattle were being fed diseased, ground-up cows, Oprah responded by saying that Lyman's revelations had “stopped her cold from eating another burger.” She was promptly sued by a cabal of wealthy cattle ranchers under an obscure Texas law known as the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act of 1995. A Texas jury exonerated Winfrey, however the two-year legal battle cost her a cool $1 million.

According to Howard Lyman's website, thirteen states including Texas have passed laws designed to “silence and intimidate those who expose unsafe and unhealthy factory farm and slaughterhouse practices; these so-called 'food disparagement' laws make it a crime to criticize food and how it is produced.”

Astounding as it seems, the beef industry is so powerful that it has been able to subvert our Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech under the First Amendment. Colorado's “food sedition” laws now make it a felony to publicly write or say anything “disparaging” about a food product, which means that I could be arrested and put in jail for merely writing this article.

So, how did the system get so insane? Because we allowed it to. As consumers, we were willing to sacrifice quality for convenience, value for cheapness. And as with the financial crisis, we appointed regulators who were drawn from the very industries they were supposed to be regulating. As Hugo Weaving's character observed in the Film V for Vendetta, if we're looking for the guilty, we need only look into a mirror.

The good news, as Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner points out, is that we--all of us--have have the ability to change the system. It's entirely up to us...

REFERENCES:

Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned, Michael Moss, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.htm

Repeal Colorado's Food Sedition Law, Thomas B. Kelley and Michael Collins, Coalition for Free Speech, http://www.cspinet.org/foodspeak/oped/food_sedition.html

Oprah Free Speech Rocks, CNN, http://articles.cnn.com/1998-02-26/us/9802_26_oprah.verdict_1_mad-cow-disease-bovine-spongiform-encephalopathy-human-version?_s=PM:US

Restaurant Failure Rate Much Lower Than Commonly Assumed, Study Finds, Jeff Grabmeier, Ohio State University Research News, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/restfail.htm

Big Beef Buyers, Joe Roybal, Beef Magazine

http://beefmagazine.com/mag/beef_big_beef_buyers/

Potential Effects of the Next 100 Billion Hamburgers sold by McDonalds, Elsa H. Spencer, PhD; Erica Frank, MD, MPH; Nichole F. McIntosh, MD, MPH, American Journal of Preventive Medicine

http://scq.ubc.ca/papers/1202hamburger.pdf

Subway Runs Past McDonalds Chain, Julie Jargon, The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703386704576186432177464052.html?mod=e2tw

Analysts: McDonald’s prospects look Big N’ Tasty in 2011, Marissa Oberlander, Medill Reports, Chicago, Northwestern University http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=178963

Texas Cattlemen vs Howard Lyman & Oprah Winfrey, Howard Lyman, madcowboy.com
http://www.madcowboy.com/01_BookOP.000.html

Food Libel Laws, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/details.asp

McDonalds 2010 Annual Report, http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/etc/medialib/aboutMcDonalds/investor_relations3.Par.56096.File.dat/2010%20Annual%20Report%20%28print%29.pdf

USDA Agricultural Research Service, http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/search.htm?btnG=Go%21&ie=&as_q=image+number&output=xml_no_dtd&client=is_frontend&http_referrer=http%253A%252F%252Fwww%252Ears%252Eusda%252Egov%252Fis%252Fgraphics%252Fphotos%252Fsearch%252Ehtm&as_sitesearch=www.ars.usda.gov%2Fis%2Fgraphics%2Fphotos&q=USDA+beef&btnG=Search+Now

Living Hell: "An American Crime"

2011-08-11T03:37:00.000-07:00

After the protracted torments of An American Crime, I'm looking forward to seeing a more empowered Ellen Page (Juno) back to her droll, sprightly self in the upcoming film, Super. Crime is a hard movie to watch. As true-life suburban torture victim Sylvia Likens, Page's natural sweetness and incandescence makes her character's ordeal that much more surreal and unbearable. A searing movie that deserves to be seen, but I won't be watching it twice.

My only serious quarrel with Tommy O'Haver's film is that he makes the unutterably vile Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener) far more sympathetic than her character deserved. There ought to be a special level of hell reserved for such people: to attempt to "humanize" a wretch the likes of Baniszewski is to do a disservice to the memory of her horrifically abused victim.

Thing from hell: Baniszewski

(photo: Wikipedia)

Mummification Classes Available this Sunday

2011-08-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

MUMMIFICATION TIP #1: MAKE SURE THE SUBJECT IS ACTUALLY DEAD FIRST

Bored with scrapbooking and baking artisanal breads? Looking for something a little more aboriginal and outré? If you're in New York this weekend and have ever wanted to make your own mummy--and frankly, who hasn't?--you'll have a chance to do that on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 7, at Observatory in Brooklyn. The eclectic arts venue at 543 Union Street will be hosting a class in the authentic art of Egyptian mummification. Classes will last from 1-4 PM.

According to Morbid Anatomy, the funerary techniques will be taught by a "Sorceress Cagliastra" in accordance with ancient weird religious rites outlined in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. An embalmer and medical examiner by trade, Cagliastra (presumably not her real name) will "guide students in the use of the traditional materials such as natron salts, canopic jars, oils and herbs, dried flowers and linen or gauze wraps."

Traditional mummification rituals such as the "opening of the mouth"--whatever the Christ that is (shudder)--will be demonstrated as "part of the creation of an authentic and perfectly respected animal mummy; each student will leave class with an animal mummy of their own making."

From Morbid Anatomy:

"Please note: No animals are harmed or killed for this class; the

materials are found already deceased, obtained either from a food

service such as a meat market that serves a clientele seeking intact

animals, or from a pet feeder supply."

Admission is $60. Eight slots are still available, however due to high demand, interested parties are requested to RSVP at morbidanatomy@gmail.com.

Observatory is located at 543 Union Street (at Nevins), and is accessed through Proteus Gowanus Gallery's entrance. (see map below)

View Larger Map

Blowing the Goat

2011-08-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

Humans have always had a strange, almost paganistic relationship with dead animals. This is especially true of pets, the sad thing about which is that they usually die before we do. When this happens, the emotional bonds are so strong that grieving owners sometimes have their animals stuffed, as singing cowboy Roy Rogers did with his beloved horse, Trigger--a phenomenon I find peculiarly creepy, and have never quite been able to wrap my mind around. Much as we love Rush Limbaugh (not), I doubt they'll have him stuffed and mounted with his golf clubs in the Florida room.

A similar postmortem practice is observed among hunters who shoot inedible animals not for food, but for the purpose of mounting the carcasses in menacing action poses. It's not much different from all those wild Indians who wore buffalo heads in cowboy movies. Nevertheless, taxidermy--the art of stuffing and articulating dead animals--has become so popular in recent years that Animal Planet is now producing a reality show on the subject, entitled Stuffed.

Odd as the whole thing is, there are some things even more bizarre, such as turning an animal into a musical instrument, as the bearded rustic in some Borat-like part of the world demonstrates in the above video. In this case he has turned a dead goat into a set of bagpipes that sound exactly the same as bagpipes that aren't made from dead goats, which makes one wonder why he went to all the trouble, apart from the shortage of Macedonian elephant scrotums.

The idea of goat bagpipes suggests a host of potential uses for other kinds of animals. A boa constrictor might make a nice basson. And what about those little pet shop turtles that always die? Why not a kazoo! The possibilities are endless. And it needn't be a musical instrument. There is an enormous, teat-dragging walrus of a cat in this house that would make a fine helium balloon if we could keep its intestines clear long enough to inflate it.

I don't know whether the goat in the video was a pet or a farm animal, however it doesn't really matter. It's all somewhat disturbing, like seeing one of those fox stoles with the little heads and feet still attached. (Did anyone really think those were attractive, as opposed to, say, nightmarish?)

Don't misunderstand, I'm not one of those people who thinks chipmunks are little people in chipmunk suits, neither do I believe that humans are anything more than animals. We just have bigger brains. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and if we're going to turn a dead goat into a set of bagpipes, why not extend the same courtesy to people? Rush Limbaugh, for example. He's already something of a windbag.

Garvin and Byron - World's First Female Comedy Team

2011-07-31T16:55:00.000-07:00

ANITA GARVIN

Anita Garvin and Marion Byron may not be household names, however decades before Lucy and Ethel, Laverne and Shirley, and French and Saunders, Garvin and Byron broke comedy's glass ceiling by becoming the world's first female comedy team, an almost unheard-of concept in the largely male-dominated world of slapstick entertainment.

Back in the 1920s, visionary director/producer Hal Roach got the crazy idea of creating a female version of his highly successful Laurel and Hardy franchise. His first attempt at this unusual experiment resulted in the pairing of leggy beauty Anita Garvin--who was nearly 6' tall--with big-eyed cutie Marion Byron, who was only 5' tall. The humorous visual contrast between the statuesque Garvin and the diminutive Byron was accentuated by the girls' gifts for physical comedy. In their 1929 film, A Pair of Tights--considered by many to be one of the best screwball comedies of the silent era--audiences reportedly roared at Byron's uncanny ability to repeatedly catch a scoop of ice cream that keeps getting knocked out of her ice cream cone. (The "pair of tights" in the title referred to the girls' tightwad boyfriends.)

MARION BYRON

Garvin and Byron only made three films together before splitting up to work on other projects, however the trio of Hal Roach comedies they did together were popular enough to prove that movie audiences would embrace a female comedy team. Roach's instincts had been correct. Realizing he had a hit formula, Roach went on to produce a raft of successful comedies starring female comedic actors, most notably the popular films of Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts, (pronounced "Zay-soo").

Unlike so many Hollywood stories, Garvin and Byron's had a happy ending. Garvin went on to do a whole slew of popular comedies with the likes of Charlie Chase, Laurel and Hardy, and The Three Stooges. She was one of Laurel and Hardy's favorite foils, and in later years was a frequent and much-beloved guest of Stan and Ollie's official fan club, The Sons of the Desert. In 1930 she fell in love with and married band leader and trombonist Clifford Stanley, though she continued to appear in supporting roles until 1940, when she finally retired from the movie business to raise a family. She died on July 7, 1994 at the age of 87, at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

After the Hal Roach films, Marion Byron continued to act, in silent films and then talkies, usually appearing in musicals and light comedies. She married prolific screenwriter and director Lou Breslow in 1932 and continued to appear in supporting roles until 1938, when she left the movie business due to the impending birth of her first son, Larry. She died on July 5, 1985 in Santa Monica, CA. She was 74.

Hats off to Anita Garvin and Marion Byron! Beautiful, funny girls...

'Hobo with a Shotgun' bloody, batty, berserk

2011-06-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Magnet Releasing

Nobody, and I mean nobody, does crazy better than Rutger Hauer. I knew this the first time I saw him in the 1981 thriller Nighthawks, which would otherwise have been just another by-the-numbers Sylvester Stallone action vehicle were it not for Hauer's chilling performance as psychopathic terrorist Heymar Reinhardt, aka Wulfgar. There is a moment in that film when Hauer appears to be getting something other than a platonic thrill from one of his carefully orchestrated explosions.

A sort of populist Klaus Kinski, Hauer's innate weirdness has always been less suited to conventional leading roles than the sorts of murderous, mad-as-a-baboon lunatics he has played in such films such as Blade Runner (1982) and The Hitcher (1986). Much as I like Anthony Hopkins, I think Hauer would've made a scarier Hannibal Lecter.

Hauer has been playing smaller supporting roles in recent years, however Jason Eisener's Hobo with a Shotgun puts the crazy Dutchman front and center as the shotgun-weilding lead in an ultraviolent tongue-in-cheek thriller about a homeless man who sets out to deliver justice, as the tagline says, "one shell at a time."

It all started with a movie trailer for a film that didn't exist.

GRINDHOUSE

Dimension Films

A few years ago, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino decided to create the first authentic, intentional B-movie double feature of the post-drive-in era. It was called Grindhouse (2007), and consisted of two original films, Death Proof and Planet Terror, which were intended as an homage to the schlocky, violent, over-the-top sorts of movies that tended to play at shabby downtown "grindhouses" and rural drive-in theaters in the 60s and 70s. Movies such as The Women of Cellblock 9; Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS; Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry; Two Thousand Maniacs; Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!; and Night of the Bloody Apes--the sort of transgressive fare that teenage boys live for.

Troublemaker

Quentin came up with the idea of shooting fake movie trailers to be shown between features, which would serve the dual purpose of providing an intermission while lending even more authenticity to the grindhouse/drive-in experience. When friends the likes of Eli Roth (Hostel) and Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses) heard about it, they wanted in on the fun. Roth ended up contributing a trailer for a Valentine's Day-style thriller called Thanksgiving, while Zombie did the over-the-top Nazi/sci-fi/horror opus, Werewolf Women of the SS. Edgar Wright did a Hammer Films-style trailer called Don't, and Rodriguez himself contributed the trailer to a then-nonexistent action thriller called Machete, which has since been made into a feature.

But Rodriguez had another brilliant idea. In order to generate even more interest in the project, he decided to sponsor a Grindhouse movie trailer contest in conjunction with the 2007 South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, TX. Contestants would have three weeks to deliver a faux "Grindhouse"-style movie trailer. There would be no prizes for the winner, only potential boatloads of kudos and recognition from the modern masters of exploitation.

Eisener

When Nova Scotian filmmakers Jason Eisener and Rob Cotterill heard about the contest in Ain't It Cool News, they grabbed a shotgun (a real one) and some friends--among them, a guy named David Brunt--and began shooting a fake trailer about a homeless man who goes Death Wish on a gang of creeps and corrupt cops. With a budget of only $150--spent mostly on cigarettes, pizza and beer--Eisener and Cotterill spent the next six days shooting the gritty, gruesome, over-the-top trailer for a nonexistent action movie called Hobo with a Shotgun:
(article continued below)

(WARNING: TRAILER CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE)

Jason Eisener/Magnet Releasing

Eisener and Cotterill managed to pack more pure, undiluted entertainment value into their 2-minute shoot-em-up than is contained in some entire films. With its pitiless narration, flashes of gore, 70s soundtrack and gonzo dialogue ("We're taking a car ride to hell and you're riding shotgun!"), Hobo with a Shotgun seemed to be channeling every blood-and-guts splatterfest from Straw Dogs to I Spit On Your Grave.

Eisener and Cotterill's faux trailer handily won Rodriguez's Grindhouse contest, and became an instant fan favorite. The Hobo trailer was so shamelessly entertaining--and so perfectly in keeping with the spirit of Grindhouse--that Dimension films included it with the rest of the faux trailers with the Canadian theatrical release of Tarantino and Rodriguez's double feature. (Why they didn't include it with the US release is something of a mystery.)

Jason Eisener/Magnet Releasing

Of the fake movie trailers, the two most consistently popular were Rodriguez's Machete and Eisener's Hobo with a Shotgun; as with Machete, it wouldn't be long before Hobo got the feature film treatment.

For the film version, the original hobo, David Brunt, was replaced with cult fan favorite Rutger Hauer, who bore a passing resemblance to Brunt, and who would also bring a certain star power to the film that would be helpful from a marketing standpoint.

Brunt still appears in the film, not as a hobo, but as a cop with one of the most memorably funny lines from the original trailer: "We're all dirty cops!"

ONE SHELL AT A TIME

Hobo with a Shotgun opens with the titular homeless guy (Hauer) riding a boxcar. The sequence is immediately endearing because of the music, which is one of the great things about Jason Eisener's films. Not even Tarantino has Eisener's ear for nailing the kind of twee, inappropriately maudlin title themes with which European exploiteers are so fond of prefacing their appallingly violent films. Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust and Michael Armstrong's Mark of the Devil are two obvious examples; anyone who's seen those films will know exactly what Eisener is up to. (He did something similarly hilarious with his holiday gorefest, Treevenge, about a bunch of Christmas trees that come to life and turn on their human owners.)

Magnet Releasing

Eventually, our hero--known only as "Hobo"--disembarks on the outskirts of the grimy, impoverished, crime-ridden city of Hope Town, every exposed inch of which appears to be covered with garbage or graffiti. On a sign at the edge of town, "Hope Town" has been spray painted to read "Scum Town."

Brian Downey is "The Drake" (Magnet Releasing)

Shortly after arriving, our homeless guy is accosted by a sleazebag with a video camera who offers him $10 to be in a "bum fight." The Hobo scowls and turns away, only to be confronted by an even more gruesome spectacle when the town mobster, known as "The Drake" (Brian Downey)--
presumably because of his weird resemblance to a demented Daffy Duck--and his two neo-greaser sons, Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman), decapitate Drake's own brother with a barbed wire noose tied to the bumper of a car. The scene is clearly a nod to Bo Arne Vibenius's exploitation classic, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, in which one of the villains is beheaded by means of a rope tied to a horse.


Magnet Releasing

Gruesome as the scene is, the gore and the characters are so over-the-top that the scene isn't nearly as horrifying as it might have been were Eisener's tongue not planted firmly in-cheek.

Drifting into town with a shopping cart, the Hobo eyes a lawn mower for sale in a pawn shop window. It's only a mower, but for him it could be the ticket to a better life--if only he could afford it. The price is a princely $49.99, but it might as well be thousands: his total cash reserves consist of a sockful of coins. If he wants to raise that kind of lettuce, he'll have to go begging for it. Rummaging in a dumpster for some cardboard and a marker, he makes a hand-lettered sign that reads "I AM TIRED - NEED $ FOR LAWN MOWER."

Magnet Releasing

That night, the Hobo sits on the sidewalk with his cup and his sign, collecting spare change from sympathetic passersby, but business is slow. Everybody's poor--except for The Drake, of course, whose entertainment arcade across the street seems to be bustling.

Inside, the arcade contains a variety of amusements with a lethal, whack-a-hobo twist. There are bumper cars that smash hobos, and even one of those carnival games where a mallet is used to strike a treadle that rings a bell, except that a hobo's foot is used instead of a treadle. It seems the homeless of Hope Town are such a plentiful commodity that they have become a cheap source of disposable entertainment.

Lest anyone take any of this too seriously, Eisener removes all doubt with a bit of sanguinary absurdity: his hobos don't simply get smashed, they explode in camera-washing showers of gore.

Magnet Releasing

Our hero simply wants to be left alone, of course, however since the movie is called Hobo with a Shotgun we know that's not going to happen, so Eisener moves the action forward by having our hero go snooping around The Drake's place out of idle curiosity. Naturally, it isn't long before he runs afoul of Drake's boy, Slick (Gregory Smith), who is attempting to take liberties with an attractive young woman.

"Let the girl go, punk," the Hobo growls. "I'm making a citizen's arrest."

"And who the fuck are you?", Slick asks, flashing a switchblade.

"Put the knife away, kid," the Hobo replies, his voice lowering to a menacing whisper. "Or I'll use it to cut welfare checks from your rotten skin."

In the brouhaha that follows, the Hobo bashes Slick on the head and hauls him down to the local police station, where he soon learns--surprise, surprise--that the cops are just as corrupt as Drake and his boys. Instead of arresting Slick, the police chief watches, laughing, as Drake and Ivan (Nick Bateman) use the switchblade to carve the word "SCUM" into the Hobo's chest.

The Hobo survives, but just barely. Grateful to be alive, he focuses with steamroller-like purpose on earning enough money to buy the longed-for lawn mower. To this end, he seeks out the "bum fight" videographer, who offers him a wad of cold, hard cash if he will eat a fistful of broken glass on camera.

Magnet Releasing

A short time later, spitting blood and broken glass, the Hobo makes his way to the pawn shop, having accumulated just enough cash to buy the lawn mower. Before he can make the leap, however, a gang of hoodlums storms into the shop, terrorizing the customers with guns and machetes. They don't notice the Hobo in the corner, but he notices something: a 12-gauge pump shotgun that is coincidentally the same price as the lawn mower.

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what happens next.

In spite of the welter of carnage that follows--and there's a boatload of it--anybody familiar with Eisener's work will know better than to expect the brooding, intensely disturbing violence of Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver or Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. Those guys take themselves very seriously, Eisener does not. Unlike so many contemporary young filmmakers who wallow in gore while telling us how horrible it all is, Eisener brazenly demystifies the genre by making subversive sport of it. It's what horror director Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs) calls "splatstick"--i.e., violence done as a kind of tasteless slapstick--and nobody does it any better than Jason Eisener.

One of the movie's nice surprises is Rutger Hauer, who turns in an effective and surprisingly nuanced performance, given the film's primary-color emotional palette. It's a wonder that he can keep a straight face, considering some of the outrageous dialogue he is required to utter ("I'm going to sleep in your bloody carcasses--tonight!"). By bringing his otherworldly brand of mischief, ferocity and pathos to the role of the Hobo, Hauer truly elevates the material. The movie would likely have succeeded at its own level without him--it is what it is--however with Hauer, it becomes something more, something a little more special in its own weird way.

I saw a blurb somewhere--can't recall where (email me if you find the source)--that described Hobo with a Shotgun as an exploitation flick for people who've never seen an exploitation flick before, and that's a fairly accurate description. Hobo isn't so much an exploitation flick as it is an affectionate homage. Unlike some hardcore exploitation films such as The Last House on the Left, Eisener's film doesn't lead us to a darker contemplation of the frailties of life, or make us want to take a shower afterward. He's having way too much fun to spoil it with that kind of existential nonsense.

Magnet Releasing

The unwary should be forewarned that the film does contain explicit language and violence. Of those who might be offended I would simply ask, what do you honestly expect from a movie called Hobo with a Shotgun? Seriously.

Hobo with a Shotgun is rated R for language and violence.

_____________________________________________________________________

(WARNING: TRAILER CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE)

(TRAILER CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE)

'Incendies' will sear your soul

2011-05-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

(Image: Sony Pictures Classics)

The American writer and misanthrope Ambrose Bierce would have appreciated the savage genius of Wajdi Mouawad, the Lebanese-born author whose play, Scorched, has been adapted into a profoundly horrifying film by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Set against the backdrop of a nameless sectarian conflict, Incendies is a harrowing descent into an antechamber of hell that could only exist amid the chaos and brutality of civil war.

The excruciating ironies of brother against brother, father against son, seem to be among the inevitable consequences of such catastrophes. In Bierce's Civil War short story, A Horseman in the Sky, a Confederate soldier shoots a Union officer, only to realize that he has killed his own father. An equally devastating irony lies at the heart of Villeneuve's film: Incendies will sear your soul.

The film opens in a fictional Middle Eastern country, at the height of an armed conflict patterned after the idiot swarm of butcheries euphemistically known as the Lebanese Civil War. In a bare stone house, a group of dirty, ragged boys--prisoners or refugees, judging from the cuts and scrapes--are having their heads shaved by a group of armed militants. The boys are being inducted into the militia, like it or not. Radiohead's dreamily haunting You and Whose Army swells on the soundtrack as the boys' shorn locks drop to the floor.

One stoic young boy bears an unusual set of marks on the heel of his right foot: three faded black dots. Innocuous as they are, the cryptic marks will eventually be the key to unlocking a shattered family's unimaginable secret--a mystery as dark and disturbing as anything by Sophocles. Or Bierce.

LES JUMEAUX

Incendies is divided into chapters, each heralded by the emblazoning of a title in stark, blood-red letters. The first chapter, "Les Jumeaux" (i.e., "The Twins") opens with an attractive but strained young couple assembled in the offices of French Canadian civil notary Jean Lebel (Remy Girard). They are brother and sister Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) Marwan, here for the reading of their mother's will.

"Testament of Dr. Nawal Marwan," Lebel states, and begins reading the will. As Jeanne and Simon grimly listen, Lebel announces that the property, money and furniture will all be left to them, to dispose of as they see fit. Everything seems normal until Lebel comes to the burial instructions:

"Bury me without a coffin, naked and without prayers, face turned toward the ground, face first against the world...No stone will be placed on my grave, and my name engraved nowhere. No epitaph for those who do not keep their promises....A child is a knife in the Throat. We do not remove it easily."

Jeanne and Simon are shocked by the cryptic injunctions, and are further stunned by a posthumous revelation: that their presumably dead father--whom they have never met--is still alive. What's more, they have a brother they never knew existed.

Lebel gives them two envelopes: One is to be delivered by Jeanne to their father; the other is to be given by Simon to the unknown brother. The only thing known about the two men is that they live in the Middle East.

"We have a large family now," Simon acidly remarks later on. "Did she also mention a dog? In large families, there's also a dog. Will we also have to find the dog?"

Embarking for the Middle East to find their mysterious father and sibling, Jeanne and Simon must first reconstruct the missing years of their mother's life. For Jeanne, who is finishing her postgraduate studies in mathematics--a field that her professor describes as "the land of loneliness"--the riddle appeals to her intellect as well as her heart, and she sets out to solve the mystery with the curiosity and determination of a Gallic Nancy Drew.

"Now you enter an entirely different adventure," Jeanne's professor had said to one of her classes. "The subject will be intractable problems that will always lead to other problems just as intractable. People around you will repeatedly tell you that your struggles are in vain. You'll have no argument to defend yourself, for the work will be exhausting and complex."

The words are strangely prescient, foreshadowing the difficult truths that Jeanne and Simon will discover as they gradually unearth the details of their mother's astonishing past, from having had an illegitimate child with a Palestinian refugee--a social anathema, since her family was Lebanese Christian--to having committed a political assassination.

For Jeanne, the first sign that something is terribly wrong occurs when she finds her mother's village. Bright-eyed and hopeful, she hardly expects trouble from the welcoming women of the village who smile and offer her tea. When Jeanne tells them who she is, their faces turn dark. Angry words are exchanged:"If you're the daughter of Nawal Marwan, you're not welcome here."

As Incendies unspools its terrible mysteries, the revelations seismically alter Jeanne and Simon's sense of self, while leaving the audience reeling. The final incomprehensible twist, when it comes, is not so much O.Henry as Oldboy, the 2003 Korean film which Roger Ebert described as "powerful...not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare."

In an article in Now magazine, director Villeneuve insists that in spite of the film's brutalities--a ferocious assault on a busload of civilians, for example--the film is really about peace. "Mouawad (the playwright) wants to talk about anger without creating anger," explains Villeneuve.

Whatever the intent, the effect is deeply unsettling.The jaw-dropping climax of Incendies--as haunting as the still-chilling climax of Polanski's Chinatown--leaves us feeling a little like the pathetic, oblivious toddler in Ambrose Bierce's short story Chicamauga, who, while wandering amongst the post-battle carnage, stumbles, uncomprehending, onto the disembrained body of his own mother:

The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries--something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey--a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute. Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

'The Actor Enforcer' another gem from 'Funny or Die'

2011-05-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the reasons why the comedy website Funny or Die is so damned funny. In a faux commercial called The Actor Enforcer, My Name is Earl's Ethan Suplee plays a tough guy named Frank Fardel, who beats up temperamental actors for a living.

The sketch was written by comedians Curtis Rainsberry and Michael Busch of LA's famed imrov comedy troupe, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and features a slew of Busch and Rainsberry's colleagues appearing in cameos as famous movie stars. James Adomian does a very funny Philip Seymour Hoffman (check out the little cherry-red lips), and watch for the scene in which Ethan Suplee punches out a guy who's supposed to be Ethan Suplee. Funniest of all, though, is Heather Anne Campbell as Jodie Foster. She not only gets the hair right (hilarious!), she also does that trilling Jodie Foster whimper better than Jodie Foster does.

The Actor Enforcer with Ethan Suplee - watch more funny videos

NBC's "Wonder Woman" DOA

2011-05-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

I was disappointed to hear that NBC recently decided not to buy David E. Kelley's pilot for Wonder Woman, starring Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights), however if they hadn't redesigned the costume, the show might've had a chance: with legs like Palicki's, it was criminal to cover them up. (see costume)

I was looking forward to Wonder Woman because it seemed so terribly cheesy in that 70's Charlie's Angels/Incredible Hulk sort of way. And there's something irresistably lunatic about a chick with big boobs running around in a Mexican swimsuit, solving crimes with a lasso and magic bracelets. But let's face it, nobody watched the original Wonder Woman because of the clever plotlines and scintillating dialogue. We watched it because we love to see a hot chick kicking ass. (High kudos, Linda Carter.)

It would be interesting to see somebody try do a "serious" remake of Wonder Woman. It would be an impossibly difficult trick to pull off, however if they can turn Marvel's silliest comic book hero, Thor, into a successful and entertaining movie, what the hell?

That David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman pilot was turned down by the same chuckleheaded network that green-lighted the painfully dumbassed remake of the painfully dumbassed Knight Rider is an indication of how bad the show must've been. So in a way, it was probably a good thing for Palicki that NBC didn't green-light the show, otherwise her career might never have recovered.

Bloody Cool Joker Mug

2011-05-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

Our friends at Pendulum House have just sent me one of their cool new coffee mugs, designed to "express your inner nihilist." Cast in durable clown-white ceramic, the mug is emblazoned with an evil, Joker-like grin beneath a smeary, blood-red "SMILE." Original design by PendulumHouse. Also available: a mousepad and a 3.5-inch "Evil Smile Button."

The "Smile" items are only the first of a variety of novelties scheduled for release in the coming months, however early adopters can now order these items for a limited time
through CafePress. Check it out! And let's put a smile on that face!

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIIN

2011-05-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

'Way back in 1973, when pop artist and experimental filmmaker Andy Warhol decided to make a film that somebody might actually be willing to sit through (as opposed to his previous Em pire, for example, a mind-bending 8-hour film consisting of a single static shot of the Empire State Building), he decided to do a horror film. Not just any horror film, mind you, but a black-comedy version of Frankenstein, in glorious 3D.

Looking for investors, Warhol approached the famous Italian producer Carlo Ponti, who liked the idea but wanted to know how much the film would cost. When Warhol quoted a paltry $300,000, Ponti suggested that Warhol spend $600,000 and make two films. "If you're gonna do Frankenstein," Ponti argued, "you've got to do Dracula!"

Thus was born one of the most infamous double-features in cinema history, Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, two of the goriest, most twisted horror films ever made. But only the Frankenstein film was shot in 3D, the dimensional effects of which were ideally suited to the film's perverse sexuality and visceral, in-your-face carnage.

The films were both written and directed by veteran avant garde filmmaker Paul Morrissey, whose previous films, such as Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), Women in Revolt (1971), and Heat (1972), had won critical acclaim for their frank sexuality and subversive humor--qualities that would be evident in the lunatic dialogue and transgressive sexual politics of Morrissey's horror films.

The gothic look of Dracula and Frankenstein was a dramatic departure from Morrissey's previous films. Through the careful use of lighting and location, Morrissey was able to give the films a lush, expensive look despite their relatively modest budgets.

Morrissey had originally titled the films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein (a nod to his 1968 film Flesh, which also featured Joe Dallesandro), however the films were released theatrically--and later on videotape--as Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, presumably to capitalize on Warhol's fame as pop culture icon. Though the films were "presented by" Andy Warhol, Warhol himself had little to do with the actual productions. When a visiting reporter asked Warhol what his function was, he famously replied, "I go to the parties."

Dracula and Frankenstein were shot in Italy virtually back-to-back, using many of the same cast including German actor Udo Kier, whose previous credits included the kinky softcore classic, The Story of O. Kier originally was slated only to play Baron Frankenstein, however when the actor who had been cast as Dracula (Srdjan Zelenovic, who played the baron's male zombie) turned out to be "not very good," Morrissey persuaded Kier to play the lead in the second film as well. One of those happy accidents, as it turned out, because it was Kier's over-the-top performances in these films that helped make them the campy cult classics they are today.

Joe Dallesandro and Udo Kier

Also appearing in both films was Joe Dallesan dro, a former nude model and male prostitute whose thick Brooklyn accent and lack of any detectable acting skills seemed jarringly out of place among the largely European cast, but that simply added to the surreal charm of these bizarre and oddly melancholy films.

That Morrissey wasn't taking any of it too seriously is apparent from the crackpot dialogue, much of which he confesses to have written in a cab on the way to the set each day.

In Frankenstein there is a moment when, after engaging in perhaps the only act of simulated necrophilia that I have ever seen successfuly played for laughs, the baron (Kier) turns to his demented assistant, Otto (Arno Jeurging), and says, "To know life, Otto, you have to fuck death in the gall bladder!"

Morrissey had just seen Bertolucci's notorious Last Tango in Paris and dismissed the film as pretentious nonsense. The gall bladder quip was a direct lampoon of Marlon Brando's line about "crawling up the ass of death."

Udo Kier and Arno Jeurging doing a little needlework in Flesh for Frankenstein

Audiences expecting the same old horrors were in for a shock. Gone was the usual inarticulate patchwork monster, replaced instead by the real horror of the show, the depraved, sexually insane Baron Frankenstein, who hacks, saws, and sutures his victims--and sometimes has sex with their internal organs--in a tiled operating theater that more closely resembles the bathhouse of a grand hotel rather than the dungeon-like laboratories we're used to.

From a practical standpoint, tile is much easier to keep clean. That's especially important in this Frankenstein, because here the usual cascading sparks have been replaced with gouts and geysers of gore. Bats, blood, and even innards are all flung into the faces of the audience in eye-popping stereoscopic 3D. During the film's American premiere at New York's Trans-Lux Theater, some members of the audience reportedly became physically ill, though it's unclear whether this had to to with the gore or the queasy effects of the 3D glasses.

I was fortunate enough to have seen an authentic 3D print of this film in a theater several years ago, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything quite like it. Flesh for Frankenstein was, and still is, one of the strangest and most outrageous horror films of all time.

A good cast is worth repeating: Arno Jeurging as "Otto"

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