The MovieIn February of 1968, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi welcomed The Beatles to his retreat in Rishikesh, northern India, in order to study Transcendental Meditation, a practice virtually unknown to most westerners at the time. A few weeks later Donovan visited the ashram with Mike Love of the Beach Boys and actress Mia Farrow, and while they left under suspicious circumstances there's no denying the importance of the trip. The Beatles left with a barrel of songs; George Harrison in particular became the Fab Four's spiritual icon. Donovan and Mike Love also incorporated these new ideas into their music, and they also became passionate advocates for Transcendental Meditation, or TM.

You don't have to trek to the Ganges in order to learn the benefits of TM, and that's why Donovan agreed to play a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. The di...Read the entire review

The MovieFour years before Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful another Italian (actually French and Italian) production recounted the horrific situation European Jews faced when the Nazi's marched in. Both films deal with the trauma war had inflicted on the children - too young to know what was going on, but equally punished - but Look to the Sky, or Jona Che Visse Nella Balena(Jona Who Lived in the Whale), focuses on not just telling the story through the eyes of a child but the voice as well, because the film is narrated by Jonah, a young boy from Amsterdam whose family is rounded up and sent to the Belson concentration camp. Written by Hugh Fleetwood, Fillippo Ottoni, and Roberto Faenza, who also directed it, but the script was based on the pages of Jona Oberski's autobiography, Childhood . The film was originally released in 1993, and has been remastered and re...Read the entire review

The Movie

I may have been more into watching the live-action Batman re-runs after school, but I will admit I spent plenty a half-hour watching the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon. I'll also admit that my friend Mike and I would grab his little brother's Mattel toys out of his hands and set-up "death-matches" between the figures. Hey, we were watching a lot of WWF. And aside from thinking Orco was the most annoying sounding sidekick in cartoon history, we loved Castle Grayskull, and Skelator was an undeniable badass. Like all things retro, nowadays, Mattel redesigned the toys and a new animated series was launched to help sell them. Mike Young Productions (the people that brought you Bratz) handled the animation and Cartoon Network aired it.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 2002 (as you can see it isn't so new) wasn't given the...Read the entire review

The Movie

The Bubble or Ha-Buah (Buah-Ha)is an interesting name, not just because it represents social life in the pop-cultural-dome that is Tel Aviv, but also because it reminds us how blissful yet fragile peace can be for the entire region. When you're living the hedonistic Mediterranean lifestyle, it's easy to inflate a carefree sense of calm, but the feeling could just as easily be popped, literally, at any moment. The latest from Israel's most famous director, Eytan Fox (Walk on Water and Yossi & Jagger, The Bubble was co-written by Gal Uchovsky and also deals with the gay struggle, only here it's added by and paralleled with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Noam (Ohad Knoller, who played Yossi and was also in Munich) is an army reservist who works in the city's hippest record store, The Third Ear (it's a real place). He isn't crazy about ...Read the entire review

The Movie
The best baseball movie ever? Some think it's got to be historical and respectful like The Pride of the Yankees, others feel the humor and blue-collar naturalism of Bull Durham best captures the spirit of the game. Is it Field of Dreams, The Babe Ruth Story, Bang The Drum Slowly (which version?), or Angels in the Outfield (again, which version?)? How many folks know how great Anthony Perkins was in Fear Strikes Out, but a great performance does not a great "baseball movie" make. And what about Safe At Home, which was filmed in the middle of the Maris and Mantle homerun race of 1961? Real ball players, the American kids who worship them, and Fred Mertz! But no discussion of baseball movies would be complete without the consideration of John Sayles' Eight Men Out, maybe not the best baseball movie ever, but undoubtedly on...Read the entire review

The Movie
Never Back Down never gives up in its barrage of teen action/melodrama movie cliché's, and its plot points weren't written as much as they were scanned directly from Sid Fields "Screenplay," but it's the ridiculous rip-offs that make the otherwise lousy movie almost bearable. One part Laguna Beach(or The O.C.), one part Rocky, one part Fight Club and two parts The Karate Kid, the film assumes that the younger generation doesn't know anything about Sylvester Stallone or Ralph Macchio, and for the most part they would be right as the material seemed fresh to pimply crowd who seemed eager to get into a movie that is neither about boxing or Karate, but the more novel sport of MMA (mixed martial arts), as practiced by the UFC.

Jake Tyler (Sean Faris, a ringer for All The Right Moves-era Tom Cruise) is a troubled kid dealing with a b...Read the entire review

The Concert:
With a pair of successful albums under his belt, Bruce Dickinson was now comfortable with his role in Iron Maiden, and it couldn't have come at a better time. While Paul Di'Anno's edgy voice and punky attitude was perfect for when the New Wave of British Metal was still underground, by the time their latest release, Powerslave, came out, Iron Maiden's had already grown accustomed to selling out arenas, and the swashbuckling Bruce Dickinson was the ideal frontman. It was the Long Beach Arena, over four nights in March, where most of this show was recorded, near the end of their "World Slavery Tour." The tour was massive and worldwide (even going behind the Iron Curtain, as we'll see in the bonus material), it included a triumphant week-long residency at New York's Radio City Music Hall, and by the time they hit the West Coast they logged-in seven months of practice.

...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Smurfground or Backsmurf
Whether you were a child or not, 1981 was a magical year where you could get your medieval groove on in the movies, on TV, with your friends playing D&D, or even on your headphones (listening to Kiss' version of Round Table lore called, Music From The Elder). On the big screen there was Excalibur and Time Bandits but on Saturday mornings, kids could get lost in a fairytale world inhabited by cuddly blue creatures known as The Smurfs. The voices and animators at Hanna Barbera brought this Disney-like village to life (Bambi's idyllic forest - pre hunters and fires, of course - is immediately evoked), where characters like Brainy, Dreamy, Nosey, Grouchy, Clumsy, Hefty, and Greedy would become archetypes as lovable and sellable as Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, etc.

For the first time on DVD, Hanna...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE
Their motto is "Going forward in every possible direction," but this release has The Ex, captured in the space and time of NYC, 2004, where they played a gig at the Knitting Factory - a venue that's not only a stones throw from Ground Zero, but also represents the epicenter of the city's Avant-garde scene. Their first single was called "Stupid Americans" back in 1979, and twenty-five years later it looks like The Ex is trying to remind us of that message. It's not that this Dutch group are anti-American (it's clear that they were heavily influenced by bands like Minor Threat/Fugazi, Circle Jerks, and other North American acts), but like many voices of protest coming out of Europe, they need us to know how our decisions, from an election to going into war, affects the rest of the world. And their visit to the States couldn't have come at a more appropriate time, as they were around ...Read the entire review

The MovieCan a movie be so bad that it's good? Sure. But movies that are set up to be good-bad are often terrible. Sometimes they're so terrible they actually become good again. This, unfortunately for director Tom Brady (The Hot Chick and the upcoming Welcome Back Kotter ), isn't one of them, though there's some scattered lines here and there that may get the better of your sense of humor. A spoof of sports movies as well as spoofs of sports movies (like Dodgeball), makers of the The Comebacks have studied the video tape but for the most part failed in executing the funny plays. .

David Koechner is "Lambaeu 'Coach' Fields," The Forrest Gump of losing-coaches (he was the cause of Bill Buckner's World Series losing error), resigned to live a pathetic and defeated existence that resembles the family life of Al Bundy. When his old friend and assistant, "Freddie Wiserm...Read the entire review

The Movie:
The French have a history of belittling while borrowing and bastardizing Americana. Just when you think they're making a mean joke out of us, you find out that it's really because they love it more than they know how to process. Examples: Blue Jeans (our 49er gear becomes Très chic), Elvis (Johnny Hallyday and "French Rock"), jazz and gangster movies (the French New Wave), P-Funk ("French House" and Daft Punk can't stay away), Hip-Hop (Daft Punk again, but how about MC Solaar, or the endless exploitation of b-boy culture in their own consumer culture?), Detroit techno (Uh, Daft Punk, but also people like Laurent Garnier who is also obsessed with . . .), John Carpenter (he's gaining Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen status over there), and most recently - Quentin Tarantino. Now Francois Merlin's Witching Hour takes all of that, but also throws in some belated hostility toward Euro...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Sacrament Films, the division of the Salvation Group that specializes in Japanese pink cinema (soft-core), has reissued The Slit-Mouthed Woman (or Kannô byôtô: Nureta Akai Kuchibiru), a little J-horror tale from 2005. Even if it was called Kuchisake in Japan, don't get this title confused with a more recent Slit-Mouthed with the name, Kuchisake-onna or Carved, which came out earlier this year; understand that both films are based on the same urban legend that has even been borrowed and referenced in Japanese and Korean animation since the early 80s. Directed by Takauaki Hashiguchi (Dollhouse, Woman Prisoner Torture), the eerie, yet low budget make-up effects were the work of Takashi Oda.

While pitching a story to her editor at Kira Magazine, Asagiri Yuoko (Mayu Asada) is placed on another more pressing story: "Urban Legend ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Directly from the Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, or the DEFA, comes, I Was Nineteen (Ich War Neunzehn). If Ian Fleming could draw upon his experiences for his famous double-0, than director Konrad Wolf could certainly make an effective account of what if felt like to be a king for a day in almost-postwar Germany; a recollection that doesn't wait for the fog-of war to lift before attempting to analyze the madness.

Originally released in 1968, I Was Nineteen begins on a dank 16th of April, 1945, but from the car troubles and tired looks we can see the story was already in progress for these Russian soldiers. They've made it into Berneu, Germany, just northeast of Berlin, and it's their job to be a traveling welcoming committee - let the Krauts know that the war is over (even though it wasn't, exactly), and that its best to come out in peace. Gregor Hecker (Jaecki...Read the entire review

The Movie
With an almost Tootsie-like news-clip build-up, we're ready to embrace Bianca Beauchamp (model for Maxim, Bizarre, Playboy, Marquis, Skin Two) as the loveable fetish-personality and protagonist of this little video diary at Montréal's, Fetish Weekend. With a "Car Wash" rip-off for a theme song, the odyssey begins on an up-beat, if not passé note, but we're quickly thrust into Beauchamp's world of drinking, putting on make-up, drinking, getting her hair done, drinking, fitting in a skin-tight latex outfit, drinking, going to a fetish event, drinking, eating, drinking, etc. We're not saying that this girl is a drunk, but it seems this adventure has just as much to do with her quest for booze, as it is her desire to make an impact on the scene. Directed and edited by Martin Perrealult (who also appears on camera), the template should promote the model of mention while havin...Read the entire review

The Movie
Queen. Were they glam rock? Were they cabaret? Were they heavy metal? Were they prog rock, or classical rock? The only fitting answer is yes. However, by the time they played this concert (actually two, recorded at the Montreal Forum on November 24 and November 25 of 1981) they'd already added composing for soundtracks and combined funk and the new wave for some chart topping success ("Another One Bites the Dust," from 1980's, The Game, the only Queen album to go #1 in both the UK and the States.) The 80s also saw the rockabilly revival as part of the new wave trend, it was something those behemoth British bands were starting to incorporate almost as a more mature answer to punks, who were gobbing over anything that even resembled royalty, but neither Led Zeppelin (whose Mojo was cut short), nor the Stones could come up with a catchy ditty like, "Crazy Little Thing C...Read the entire review

The Movie:
He was your "Little Runaway," and he's been wanted and not so wanted dead or alive, but Jon Bon Jovi still ends up finding away to stick around by coming up with success in the Eighties, Nineties, and several times in this decade so far. For this A&E recorded event, the band play their latest album, Lost Highway (and a few encores) in theatre maxed with their most dedicated. The show is more of a listening-party, if you will, only instead of gathering around to listen to a CD; Bon Jovi talks and sings you through the tracks, one by one.

Opening up with the title-track, the band sound relaxed and confident. Jon let's the crowd know what they're in for, and they go into "Summertime," A song that could have been written for a tampons selling, Meridith Brooks. The band sound completely polished, Ritchie Sambora's fretwork is clean, but more obvious is the addition of a ho...Read the entire review

Just in time for the holiday season, when we gorge ourselves with Henry VIII size drumsticks, and get toasty 'round the fire listening to fairy tales of winter's past, comes Beowulf, a yarn almost as old as Anglo-Saxony itself. The IMAX 3-D presentation makes the most convincing argument for not waiting for the DVD, as getting too stoned on tryptophan may deprive you of the, literally, much larger than life action that producer/director Robert Zemeckis packs in this pic.

This is no Jaws 3-D laugh fest - though it's got more teeth and tear - and you won't feel like you're watching a remake of 13 Ghosts (Bobby already tried that), but instead you will be so very tempted to reach out and see if you can grab a hold of that dragon and go for the ride of your life.

THE MOVIE
Set in sixth-century Denmark, King Hrothgar's (Anthony Hopkins) court seems dru...Read the entire review

He didn't have the shiny suit or the slick choreography that some of his Motown counterparts boasted, but there's one thing that Otis Redding brought to Memphis' Stax/Volt that went much deeper then fancy threads or quick spins - it's called soul. He wasn't called "Soul Brother Number One," but Redding's legend is second to none; his voice alone practically defined the genre, and his powerful but stinted career still provides inspiration to singers of all ages and styles. Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding is not just a testament to the man's impact, but it's also a heartwarming celebration of the man himself. The DVD (put out by Reelin' In The Years Productions and Stax Records, a division of Concord Music Group), that commemorates the 40th anniversary of Redding's death, as well as honors the 50th anniversary of Stax, was screened as part of a coda to the American Cinematheque's...Read the entire review

Only in Hollywood can a Q&A with indie filmmakers from Colorado turn a schmooze-fest/pitch meeting straight outta Entourage. Producer/director, Haylar Garcia, came to the Arclight theatre - where the Dome hosted this year's Hollywood Film Festival- to present Do It For Johnny, a documentary as much about chasing those Hollywood dreams (almost literally), as it is about the way Hollywood can squash them. No, the film does not contain Matt Dillon's famous line from The Outsiders, but it does focus on another screen heartthrob, Johnny Depp, and the filmmakers attempt at getting him to read their screenplay and star in the movie.

The script titled, Narcophonic, is a biopic revolving around the life of Scott Baxendale, a custom guitar builder whose troubled a...Read the entire review

The Movie:
We meet Sherry (Ellen Page, Hard Candy, X-Men 3) wandering the streets of Berlin. A head-strong, yet confused and impressionable runaway, she seems lost and sad, but something in her ignites when she meets a nomadic crew of anarchists/activists/outcasts calling themselves, SPARK (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge). At first it's their cute barker, Tiger (August Diehl), that piques her interest, but it will be their hunky and charismatic leader, Harry (Eric Thal), that inspires her to join their world. It becomes obvious when she calls her mom from a pay phone that Sherry's troubled home life and need to belong are the real motivating factors, however.

The pacing from the outset is manic, and before we know it we're riding in their Mercedes bus to a wild rave and getting fucked-up on booze, drugs, and smoke. Like many street-punks, this gang offer up a dichoti...Read the entire review

The Movie:
When we think about the adult entertainment industry we usually associate it with everything that goes on in Porn Valley (aka the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles), we seldom realize how vast and wide the business of selling moaning and groaning reaches. You probably wouldn't figure on a thriving sex scene in Montreal (except for all those people who fly there for those crazy bachelor parties) but Webdreams puts a C-light on the whole thang, with this reality show that's sort of a Real Sex meets American Chopper. It's not seven strangers picked to live in a house, for season two of Webdreams it's seven main characters trying to achieve success in the online sex-world.

Violet is a Suicide Girls-esque model who is trying to launch and advertise her own website; Diesel J. is a hunky male model who's trying to expand his business by ba...Read the entire review

The Movie:
It's almost a played-out proposition, but technology and smut have gone hand-in-hand since cavemen learned to draw pictures of naked cavewomen on the walls. Suffice it to say, the means may have evolved, but the ends remains the same; "Unga-bunga! Captured woman! Captured image!" By the time WW-Deuce came along Bell + Howell had come out with a portable 35-millemeter camera perfect for shooting big battles, but as you'll see in The Sexploiters , even better for shooting big boobs.

Now this isn't a masterpiece of exploitation cinema, in fact, one would be hard-pressed to call it good any-cinema, but sometimes context can provide a value that transcends those frivolous boundaries of "bad" and "good," if you know what I'm saying? Hopefully you will. The "Sexploiters" are hookers but they're also housewives in this "expose" style nudie directed by Al C. Ruban back in 196...Read the entire review

In this environment of quick clips on YouTube and automated playlists on the radio (both free and satellite) Tom Petty is more than just a champion for the last DJ, he is truly one of the last rock stars. A man who still puts a hundred percent into making the Long Play certainly deserves a documentary much more exhaustive and satisfying than the tabloid-faire of VH1's Behind the Music . Director Peter Bogdanovich may not exactly be the poor man's Scorsese to Petty's poor man's Dylan, but the other legendary director's masterpiece (No Direction Home: ) must have had an immediate impact on this four-hour chronicle. Telling the story of a rock and roll refugee and his band of Heartbreakers, some may think that it's two-and-a-half hours too much on the scruffy, Mary Jane puffing troubadour, and maybe that would be true if you didn't account for the fact that he's had both success an...Read the entire review

The Movie:
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries kicked off the back-to-school TV season of 1977 with a pre-Halloween party, guest starring Lorne Greene as Dracula, no less. Glen A. Larson uses his future Battlestar Galactica patriarch to spook the Hardy brothers, Frank and Joe (played by Sixteen Magazine "heart-throbs" Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy), and the two-part opener of Season Two also features Paul Williams as a post-Phantom of the Paradise rock star (he sings a tune from the flick's soundtrack), and Elton John's better half, Bernie Taupin, the leader of band opening the televised rock-show at "Dracula's Castle."

The Hardy's play out like live-action Scooby Doo Movies meets-Columbo, and they even run into Casey "Shaggy" Kasem playing a Peter Falk impressionist in The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom; another two-parter that has Nan...Read the entire review

The Movie:
"We all came out to Montreux/On the Lake Geneva shoreline," sang a young and carefree Ian Gillan back in 1971 when his band Deep Purple recorded, "Smoke On The Water." The story behind the song is infamous, but here's the recap if you're not an old geezer or a music nerd: In the cold days of December of that year, Deep Purple planned to record their Machine Head album at the Montreux Casino, which overlooked the picturesque Lake Geneva. The place was casino, hotel, nightclub, bar, and theatre all on one property, and with the Rolling Stones Mobile Unit parked outside it was a perfect venue to record some rock, right?

Claude Nobs, the casino's head-honcho and organizer of the jazz festival of the same name, invited the group down to check out Frank Zappa's (" . . . and the Mothers!") set, their own equipment not even unloaded from the trucks. And if you listen to the so...Read the entire review

The Movie
First Phillip K. Dick asked us if androids could dream of electric sheep, then Daft Punk upped the ante by giving you visions of robots doing it doggie-style to George Clinton's, "Atomic Punk," but now the French house duo's first live-action feature will leave you wondering if our Cylons are in desperate need of Lexapro.

The film opens up with two robots driving through the California desert in an 80's black Ferrari 412, and even though the characters, "Robot Hero #1" and "Robot Hero #2" are played by actors Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich, we immediately identify the gold and silver headed robots as Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. They've got a cute vanity plate that reads, "Human," and as they drive you start to wonder if they're robot Cannon...Read the entire review

The Movie:
It opens like those old black and white RKO pictures, only here the HPLHS logo is proudly displayed over the revolving globe. Those initials, for the uninitiated, stand for the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, a group of devotees to the live-action role-playing game, Cthulhu Lives. Now if a movie based on a game based on a fetish with the gothic-horror author of the same name already scared you away, then good, because this one is only for the hardcore. But what you should know is that these guys have so much passion for this writer they have their own film festival, thus making Lovecraft-films a subgenre of its own. Based on the writer's infamous 1926 short story, The Call of Cthulhu, this film adaptation realizes what many Lovecraft fans had deemed "unfilmable" by independent filmmakers lacking big Hollywood money. Lovecraft genre veterans, Andrew Leman and Sean Branney, crea...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Maybe they're not quite ready for prime time, or on par with the t-girls at Lucky Cheng's, but the Paper Dolls have qualities that make them even more interesting and more endearing than your average pre-op. In Tomer Heymann's multiple award-winning (the Los Angeles Film Festival's, Audience Award, for one) documentary, we follow the Filipino Cabaret act, not in New York, or even Bangkok, but in Tel Aviv, a city that welcomed immigrant workers to compensate for the loss of the barred Palestinian workforce (due to the Intifada). We follow Giorgio, Cheska, Jan, Sally, and their leader, Chiqui, as they lead their daily lives (at the beauty salon, or the very unglamorous jobs of taking care of the elderly) until sunset when they become the Paper Dolls. When their somewhat clumsy act is onstage, they each exude a fabulous confidence and a sense of belonging, whether they dance in time...Read the entire review

The Movie: "No, Valerie! Don't!" Cries a lousy Andy Warhol impressionist via this salacious, almost shameless voiceover intro. This Documentary, directed by Jean-Michel Vecchiet originally aired on French television Channel 3 in 2005. With another doc, Paul Morrissey: Autumn in Montauk (2002), already behind him, it seems Vecchiet is very familiar with the Warhol universe, and just because there are several other Warhol DVD's in your queue it doesn't mean you get away with leaving this one out; assuming you're a "Warhol freak," like so many claim to be.

Andrew Warhola was the sickly child of Slovak immigrants who came to the poor section of Pittsburg looking for a better life. From all accounts (from his brothers James and Paul Warhola to apprentice/"Whip Dancer" Gerard Malanga) Andy didn't fit in with the other boys too well, and he naturally gravitated to the arts and the gla...Read the entire review

The Movie:
The Acid Eaters If Ed Wood made movies that were so bad they were good, then Byron Mabe must have directed the Casablanca of crap. From the title alone, you'd think that the Acid Eaters
would be a tawdry treat of freak-out cinema from the heady set, ala East Rider or The Trip. We weren't expecting the method acting or the Hollywood royalty in this even cheaper production, but those at least offered views that were coming from the scenes they were depicting, rather than embarrassing impressions by out of touch old folks.

This David F Friedman production starts out with an exciting montage: It's 9-5 hell, clocking in and out, eating, crapping, and watching the clock. It gets to the point where the white toilet bowl and the white clock look the same; same shit different day, right? But when the Acid Eaters get off wor...Read the entire review