Artifacts of the Old World: I Need That Record

For some people, music is just another thing. A distraction. But, for others (like myself), music means a hell of a lot more. At some point, there was that one song, that one band that transformed everything. The one that made them want to be part of it in some way. Music for them is [...]

Global Warming Totally Sucks – Birdemic: Shock & Terror

After seeing Tommy Wiseau’s The Room in Cleveland a few months ago, I was sure it reached a new benchmark in bad film-making. Not only is it steeped in horrendous acting, baffling dialogue, fleeting plot points and characters, awkward sex scenes, a grossly unappealing leading man, and suspiciously plentiful assertions of heterosexuality, but, adding to [...]

Last Laughs: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Graffiti has come along way since the 70s. Once an art form (or vandalism and public nuisance to some) typified by exotic tags on a canvas of urban decay, experimentalists and pioneers have broken boundaries in both content and medium. Freeform gave way to stencils. Stencils to prints. Prints to three-dimensional forms. And so forth. [...]

Break On Through: The Runaways

For those of you too young to remember (or never heard about at all), The Runaways were an all-girl teenage rock band that formed in California in 1975. At a time when rock n’ roll was shifting towards faster tempos and amateurish ease, boys in leather jackets and dirty jeans were learning how easy it was to form a band. Meanwhile, their eager counterparts were encouraged to stay put in a hypocritical paradigm. Like Joan Jett’s guitar teacher (Damone!) explained so bluntly in the movie: “Girls don’t play electric guitar.” The hell they don’t.

Ethereal Contraband: ‘Better Than Sex’ and ‘In Bed’

*Updated 01/03/10 The titles. The promotional posters. They elicit expectation, hinting promise of the pleasures of the pure mechanics of sex, if only at a grade below pornography; something just erotic enough to avoid wandering behind the symbolic “black curtain”. Things are, somewhat, still left to the imagination, in these films which essentially boil down [...]

Masters of Disasters

While Angel the Pig today reports of the possible Gore Virbinski remake of the 1988 cult comedy, Clue, due out in 2011, there are also reports of a Frank Marshall rehash of The Never Ending Story, due for 2012.

With a Hall Pass in Hand: American Teen

American Teen was immediately criticized as it began generating attention at Sundance in 2008. The original promotional material featured the five teenagers at the heart of Nanette Burstein’s documentary in poses and costume nearly identical to those in the Breakfast Club. The previews even pre-defined their roles: The Geek, The Princess, The Jock, The Hearthrob [...]

Rock n’ Roll in the Rising Sun: Tokyo Pop

Tokyo Pop is probably an unrecognized film title to all but a handful of people, most of whom are likely rabid 80s film fans. And without the transition to the more readily accessible DVD, it remains not a great film (pacing tends to be a problem), but still an overlooked, low-budget gem in the grand [...]

Imagine That! Rumors of a Mighty Boosh Movie

Okay dear anglophiles… yes, the Muvika! blog is reserved for posts about movies. But, rumors of The Mighty Boosh finally making it to the big screen in the next two years, gives license to discuss the television show here… even if the status of the movie at this point is unclear to the point of [...]

Cigarettes, Dirty Laundry, and Mangled Manifestos: Reality Bites

There seems to be a puzzling trend lately of non-fiction authors in their 40s publishing defenses of “The Greatest Generation.” But, contrary to the presumption that this title refers to those of the World War II era, as it commonly has before, the new (self-)decried honor instead refers to Gen Xers, although these authors frequently [...]

Titty Power: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

“We need to make being poor cool again.” – John Waters, This Filthy World (2006) The 1980s was really the last decade of true grime cinema. The unusual and corrupted sadly disappeared in the tide of national gentrification. And, reluctantly or not in film, dilapidated city life was traded for Rob Reiner-esque Americana. The vanguard [...]

Emotional Rescue: Fearless

In 1990, an Emory graduate and DC-metro native named Chris McCandless donated his entire savings to OXFAM, gave away his belongings, burned in car in a field out West, and eventually fell out of contact with his family. In that time, he had traveled up and down the Western United States sometimes by foot, by [...]