Arthur M. Shepherd doesn’t spend much time at home, which for him is an RV parked behind South Station. most days, the middle-aged man drags his acoustic guitar and a plastic folding chair into Boston’s Dewey Square to serenade Occupiers and visitors with tunes like the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy me Love.” He’s become a fixture at least as permanent as the tarps blanketing the plaza since early October. “I don’t consider it performing,” says Shepherd. “I’m just playing songs.”
It’s funny how movies can color your perception of a placeyou’ve never been. after seeing the brutal Italian crime movie”Gomorrah,” my mental image of Naples was of a gray, dispiritingplace where corruption has a stranglehold on society at everylevel.
The world of fantasy sports has now invaded some non-sports. You've heard of fantasy football, fantasy baseball and even fantasy NASCAR but I bet you have not heard about these weird fantasy non-sports. The fantasy sports world is rubbing off on people who just so happen to not have any interest in sports at all. Instead, they are apply the same principals of fantasy sports into their own non-sport fantasy games.
With a love for all kinds of music — especially what they call”urban music”–and an entrepreneurial spirit, two Midlanders areoperating a recording studio in town to advance the work ofmusicians who want to express themselves, record, and start makinga name.
Whether one agrees with #OccupyWallStreet or not, the movement has helped to highlight the levels of greed that pervade America today. The focus is on corporate America, but many are starting to also highlight greed that hurts other institutions such as entertainment and government. with will Smith’s demands of $50 million to do the two sequels planned for the movie “Independence Day”, I can say in true #Occupy fashion that if he’s in the movies, I won’t see them.
“Footloose” Rated PG-13 at AMC Loews Boston Common, Regal Fenway Stadium and Suburban theaters: B
This remake of “Footloose” smells like 1980s teen spirit. Now that the success of “High School Musical” and “Glee” has made the world safe for youth-oriented musicals again, we have this modestly pleasing effort, sporting new versions of the original 1984 theme song, as well as “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” and “Holding Out for a Hero,” along with Quiet Riot’s “Bang your Head” and some country and hip-hop. Instead of a signature turn by an impossibly young Kevin Bacon, the film’s lead role is now played by Boston-born Gold School alumnus Kenny Wormald. Let’s hear it for the boy.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” returns with live interactive fun led by the Tickled Fancy Burlesque Company in a special presentation of this cult classic. The film is a notorious horror film parody, a fast-paced potpourri of camp, sci-fi and rock ‘n’ roll. Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” plays Friday and Saturday at 11:59 PM at the State Theatre.Opening downtown“Answer this!,” the hit film set in Ann Arbor and at the University of Michigan, continues with limited screenings next week at the Michigan Theater. it is a fun, well-made film you do not want to miss!“Margin call,” set in the high-stakes world of the financial industry, is a thriller that entangles the key players at an investment firm during one perilous 24-hour period in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. The biggest buzz film at Sundance this year, David Denby of the new Yorker says, “Margin call is one of the strongest American films of the year and easily the best Wall Street movie ever made.’” “Margin Call” opens Friday at the Michigan Theater.“Passione,” directed by John Turturro, is not like any documentary you’ve seen before. it tells the story of the musical past and present of Naples, Italy. From opera to hip-hop, the movie approaches the city’s musical history in an impressionistic style and shows the multitude of influences that make up the musical melting pot. Kevin Thomas of the LA Times says, “A beautifully structured and photographed film, John Turturro’s rapturous ‘Passione’ offers a vibrant exploration and celebration of Neapolitan music in all its grit and glory.” “Passione” opens Saturday, Oct. 29 at the Michigan Theater.Opening at the multiplexFrom the world of “Shrek” comes “Puss in Boots.” Christy Lemire of the associated Press says, “For quick, lively, family-friendly entertainment, ‘Puss in Boots’ works just fine, even in 3-D, which is integrated thoughtfully into the narrative and doesn’t just feel like a gimmick.” “Puss in Boots” opens Friday.
“The Rum Diary,” based on the debut novel by Hunter S. Thompson, follows Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) as he travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local newspaper, run by downtrodden editor Lotterman (Richard Jenkins). Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard), the wildly attractive Connecticut-born fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), who is working to build a capitalist paradise. as you might expect, complications and comedy ensue. “The Rum Diary” opens Friday.“In Time” stars Justin Timberlake as Will Salas, a man falsely accused of murder, who must figure out a way to bring down a system where time is money—literally—enabling the wealthy to live forever while the poor, like Will, have to beg, borrow, and steal enough minutes to make it through another day. “In Time” opens Friday.“Anonymous” is set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England and speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Sigmund Freud: who actually created the body of work credited to William Shakespeare? “Anonymous” poses one possible (but improbable) answer. Robert Koehler of Variety says, “A handsomely staged and decidedly straight-ahead costume drama under Roland Emmerich’s nearly CGI-free direction.” “Anonymous” opens Friday.Special screeningsThe Three Corpse Circus Independent Horror Film Festival returns to the Michigan Theater for its second year. Featuring films from Drew Daywalt (director of MTV’s “Death Valley”) and Academy Award-nominated director Ruairi Robinson, this year promises more thrills and chills! The festival takes place Friday, October 28 at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.threecorpsecircus.com. UMS and the Michigan Theater present the National Theatre of Great Britain’s production of “The Kitchen.” this tour-de-force spectacle is a funny and furious examination of life lived at breakneck speed, when work threatens to define who we are. “National Theatre Live: The Kitchen” plays Sunday, October 30 at 4 p.m.The Michigan Theater’s Stanley Kubrick series continues with “2001: A Space Odyssey.” A mind-bending sci-fi symphony, the landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology, evolution, and humanity. “2001: A Space Odyssey” plays Monday, Oct. 31 at 7 p.m.Legendary U-M film professor Frank Beaver will present a special program on “Some Films of Unusual Provocation” at the Ann Arbor City Club’s Dine and Discover series. To register, e-mail info@annarborcityclub.org.Russ Collins is executive director of the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. Tune in to the audio version of “Cinema Chat” on WEMU radio (89.1-FM) each Thursday at 7:40 a.m. and 5:40 p.m., or listen to it online at WEMU’s web site.
This year, Manga Entertainment — the company that brought anime classics like Akira and Ninja Scroll to international audiences — is celebrating their 20th anniversary, and in honor of that occasion, the appropriately named UK-based pop rapper Akira the Don has released a 16-track mixtape inspired by the company’s releases. Even though it’s not an official tie-in from Manga, the Don was invited to play at the company’s anniversary party, and the result is pretty amazing. in fact, we here at ComicsAlliance like it so much that we’re not only bringing a full streaming version of his anime mixtape to our readers, we’ve also gotten liner notes from the Don himself! Check out the whole album after the cut!For those of you who may not already know this about hip hop, it contains more than a little NSFW language:in addition to the audio version, Akira has also made a YouTube version complete with Anime Music Videos, because, and I quote, he is “on some next level sh*t.”The Don’s been a favorite here at ComicsAlliance for a while; his last album, the Life Equation, was at least partially inspired by the events of DC’s Final Crisis and featured rapping about Darkseid and the new Gods, so it’s pretty safe to say that it’s right up our collective alley. I might not be the anime fan that I once ways in my wayward youth, but I’m not going to lie, his use of beats from Ninja Scroll and Fist of the North Star took me right back to a time when I was making regrettable purchases of second-generation Galaxy Express 999 fansubs on VHS from the flea market. You kids today don’t know how good you have it.As to the music itself, the Manga Mixtape is something of a spiritual successor to Akira the Don’s Street Fighter tribute mixtape from last year, but taking on something else that shaped the Don’s youth. We reached out to him for some commentary on a few of his favorite tracks, and here’s what he had to say: 
The Album: I loved anime ever since I saw Akira when I was 10 or 11. I remember seeing the advert for it in the back of my Dad’s copy of Vox magazine and just being enthralled. I was at the time into Marvel comics, and had been since I was 6 or something, but there was something about the artwork on this advert that was just transcendental. after I was Akira I became somewhat obsessed, and then the weirdest thing happened: an anime distribution company and accompanying SHOP called Anime Projects opened up down the road from my school. Now this is weird, because I grew up around Bangor in North Wales, which is tiny, and didn’t even have a McDonalds or anything like that, and certainly nothing like a comic shop — there wasn’t one of those for over 100 miles — so that this anime shop just magically appeared like something in a Terry Pratchett book was insane. So me and my little group of friend used to go down there every day after school and annoy the owners, and occasional we’d buy video cassettes of Anime Projects and Manga Entertainment releases and take them to whichever of us had the most tolerant parents (not me) and freak out. like, woah! Robots! Gods! Aliens! T*ts! Swearing! AMAZING METAPHYSICAL AND EXISTENTIAL CONCEPTS WE CAN BARELY GRASP! It was an amazing education. Track 2: Fist of the North Star: FOTNS is definitely one of my favourites on the mixtape. It started out as a bootleg of that Heart of Madness music from the OG movie with Method Man’s PLO Style, in which he memorably rapped “I’m the true fist of the north staaaaaar!” However, when I sat down and listened to the thing, I was jealous of Method Man getting to rap on it, so I cut his verses off, made the beat 10 times harder, added some synths, and rapped the hell out of it. I spoke about quite a lot of stuff I’d never mentioned before on this tape for no good reason I can think of other than that the nostalgia created by the music made me think of times past… but either way, on this song I talked a little about leaving home the day before my 16th birthday and getting kicked out of my nan’s and selling drugs and stuff that for the first time felt right to mention. Fist of the North star itself is just pretty much the most badass movie ever. It’s the Chuck Norris meme on powdered Chuck Norris crack being snorted by GOD. Dude can make people EXPLODE just by POKING them. I was about 12 when me and my friends watched this, and the violence that ensued, and continued throughout the school year as a direct result was ridiculous. Basically if you heard anyone going”didididididid!” you had to RUN LIKE HELL… that bit where he creates a whirpool in the fat guy’s belly will stay with us all forever. Track 8: Ghost in the Shell: Pixel chose the Stand Alone Complex intro, and it’s one of those instances where to NOT sample it would have been a crime against humanity – the 8 bar loop that makes the basis of the song only occurs Once in the original composition, and it’s one of the best bits of music I’d heard. It is the job of rap music to take these tiny moments of bliss and turn them into whole songs for the world to enjoy. And here’s the thing – I hadn’t actually SEEN Stand Alone Complex at that point and had no idea what it was about so that finished the rapping about a PARADOX was a pretty awesome coincidence… not that there ARE any coincidences (intoned ominously in a series 6 Fox Moulder voice) Ghost in the Shell itself is obviously one of the greatest movies of all time. I saw it before the Matrix which ruined the Matrix a bit for me as it takes so much of it… it’s lucky I hadn’t read the Invisibles yet or it might have been entirely unwatchable. Anyway, Ghost in the Shell’s theme music is incredible haunting, weird stuff, and the stupidest thing you could do is try and out a chorus on it. I wasn’t even going to have any rapping on it, massive bass and 808s and scratching, but my DJ Jack Nimble was grabbed by extreme inspiration when he heard it when he came round to do the scratches, and wrote his awesome dystopian verse in about 10 minutes. Track 9: Akira: AKIRA is something I have always had as a sampled beat, and something I have always refrained from recording, because it was so special to me, and I didn’t think I deserved it yet. I had to get to a certain level of skill before I would allow myself to touch it in that way. Akira was a monumentally important thing in my development as a human. I watched when I was 10 or 11, and it basically confirmed everything I felt and thought about the way the world worked. As I say in the song, it elocuted things that I still can’t say. Now, Big Narstie told me a similar story, but what it did for him was sort of visualise the intense rage he felt inside as a little boy. He used to jump off roofs and punch people in the face and stuff when he was that age. So I got him on the song, and he acts as this sort of insane, physical roaring foil to my more contemplative, cerebral take on the thing. Track 10: Ninja Scroll: A lot of the songs were the results of me creating a shortlist of movies I wanted to sample, then getting my rap friends over, wherupon we would blaze a zoot, and choose a song. I would then chop up the song and make the beat on the spot, while whoever was round would write their verse. Big Narstie’s favourite anime is Ninja Scroll, and we went though the whole soundtrack before getting to the end credits, and as soon as that first piano hit dropped we looked at each other like, YES, that is THE ONE, and without even saying anything he started rapping and I looped it up and played some bass and drums and stuff. Track 12: Dominion Tank Police: in the same manner we did Dominion Tank police, which was Marvin the Martian’s choice, and I got to rap about stomping concrete blocks in a mecha suit with angels in hot pursuit. It was also a fortunate coincidence that “mecha suit” rhymes so well with “make a zoot”.
Think about how many new movies hit the big screen a weekend. Must be a lot of films in the works at once, right? Most certainly and this edition of the Movie News Cheat Sheet is a testament to that.
A Moroccan woman who only discovered her talent as a hip-hop performer when she came to study in London is now at the forefront of this musical genre. Master Mimz delivered her own commentary on the Arab Spring with her song, “Back Down Mubarak.”
A Memphis pimp in a mid-life crisis attempts to become a successful hip-hop emcee. Terrence Howard buys into it. And the acclaimed “Hustle & Flow” wins over audiences and gathers two Oscar nominations.
A God-fearing bluesman takes to a wild young woman who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, looks everywhere for love, never quite finding it. Samuel L. Jackson signs up for “Black Snake Moan.” So does Christina Ricci. And Justin Timberlake.
The New Orleans Film Festival is embracing music in a big way this year, not only with a series of music-related film screenings, but also pairing the movies with live performances by local and international artists.
Oct. 13, 2011 |(0) CommentsDUE OUT FRIDAY
GREEN LANTERN (Warner Bros.) A cocky test pilot is "chosen" to join an intergalactic fraternity of peacekeepers – the Green Lantern Corps – to stop a deadly foe bent on destroying Earth. Adaptation of DC comic with Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively. (PG-13; violence, action) ** 1/2
Behind our national obsession with the walking deadBy Colson Whitehead and Alex PappademasPOSTED OCTOBER 17, 2011
AMC
Not long ago, a TV network found out that there was a surprisingly large audience for a show about soulless, shambling, emaciated parodies of humanity who want to eat our brains. Congrats on that full-season order, Whitney! In unrelated news: People also like shows about zombies! The second season of AMC’s gory graphic-novel adaptation Walking Dead premiered last night, with a new creative team at the helm (writers Glen Mazarra and Robert Kirkman, who created the comic) and about 75 percent more tension-ratcheting child endangerment. Walking Dead was obviously just supposed to pair nicely with Sunday-afternoon reruns of movies based on Stephen King books and keep AMC’s Sunday-night quality-drama block warm until Matthew Weiner got around to making more mad Men. Instead, it’s become the network’s biggest hit, and the most visible sign yet that zombies, once a niche phenomenon beloved by effects-makeup nerds and dudes in Cannibal Corpse T-shirts, are America’s next Top Abomination. (Watch your throne, vampires!)
There’s simply no other way to put it: “Beats, Rhymes & Life: the Travels of a Tribe Called Quest” is not only one of the best music documentaries of the year, it’s one of the best movies of the year. an inspiring, touching, heartbreaking and in-depth look at the hip hop icons and pioneers, no other music documentary in recent memory has been this raw or this close to its subjects.
