Film Fridays Cinema’s 5 Most Criminally Underrated Villains (Male)

November 11, 2011 - 11:21 pm

5. Ike Clanton – Tombstone: The least ruthless of this top villains list, Stephen Lang’s portrayal of Clanton also remains the most criminally overlooked. A slobbering, raging drunk, Clanton was a lot of bark and no real bite. Despite him being a rather meek criminal at heart, he was still a bastard, and a killer, and Lang should really have been nominated for an Oscar on this one. He’s so good he even steals scenes from Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday. Go to 1:35 for Ike; he’s the beet-faced guy in blue.

Best Scene: “See? A little rap on the beak get you some respect around here.”

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Film Fridays Seth MacFarlane to Do Star Trek(?) The Crow Reboot Gets Canned; and Cillian Murphy Gets Bullied With Dark Knight Questions

October 14, 2011 - 8:18 pm

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has stated before that he’s a huge Star Trek fan, even hinting in a recent interview that he wants to somehow be a part of the franchise. Read the full story

Film 3 Directors That Let Me Down, Part 1*

August 26, 2011 - 7:50 am

3. Darren Aronofsky– The Wolverine: Darren, I love you. That said, go f*ck yourself. As you’ve made clear, you’re too GOOD for the Wolverine franchise and have no wish to dirty your hands with a comic book movie and turn it into something Nolan-worthy. Want to spend more time with the family? What kind of director are you? (And is that why you’ve just had four films in pre-production, you lying bastard?) What went wrong? Is it the script? It’s a piece of sh*t, isn’t it?

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Featured interview Music The Deftones’ Chino and Far’s Shaun Lopez Form CROSSES

August 8, 2011 - 5:23 pm

Crosses

For the past few months, if you tried to dig up any information on Crosses — Chino Moreno’s latest project with Far guitarist Shaun Lopez and a mysterious Clint Eastwood-type guitar-slinger named Chuck –  you’d find next to nothing. There might be a reason for that: Crosses isn’t Deftones-ish at all. And it ain’t really even remotely Far-esque. It’s an unorthodox but heady mix of trip-hop, jazz, and some touches of that Northern California brand of hard rock they helped pioneer.

But days ago Chino dropped five free downloads of the Crosses project onto his Facebook page. Here’s an interview we got with the guys last month, when the album was still being mixed in Red Bull Studios.

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Film Gallery The Electric Daisy Festival Film Sparks a Hollywood Riot (Sort of)

July 28, 2011 - 3:37 pm

The Electric Daisy Festival is quickly turning out to be the newest Coachella— a massive music extravaganza that has tapped the mainstream pulse of a nation’s youth, drawing in fans by more and more thousands each year.

But did you know it’s also likely to incite mass chaos and rioting in the streets – especially if those punk-ass raver kids ain’t happy?

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Gallery Music Social Distortion @ the Music Box : Prohibition-Era Punk Rock

April 26, 2011 - 10:22 am

There’s a lot of you out there (you know who you are) who long ago consigned yourself to the age-old credo “punk is dead.” You’d probably be hard-pressed to believe that even Social Distortion‘s recent Music Box performance could be the best argument in years to such a hastily-conceived notion. In addition to the debut of their newest and most raucous album in years, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, the boys really raised that punk bar a bit more: it wasn’t just a great concert with a tight band, it was a glorious punk rock/rockabilly/cinematic spectacle.

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Gallery Music Chicks Dig ‘Em: Uh Huh Her

April 4, 2011 - 12:30 pm

At first listen it doesn’t look or sound like Uh Huh Her is doing much new. Like countless others, they’re riding the 1982-87 New Wave for all it’s worth, packing their stage full of vintage synths, programmed drums, and guitars drenched in delay. Watching their spirited performance at the El Rey on Friday night, it was still hard not to think of Gozer from Ghostbusters and those slicked-down backup dancers from that Robert Palmer video.

But unlike so many others, UHH gets it right, capturing the post-punk spirit of what made bands like Joy Division and The Creatures so catchy. Songs like “I See Red” are infectious and ethereal, even dreamy; “Never the Same” (a preview from their upcoming album Nocturnes), is awash in an astral noise that’s somewhere on the spectrum between Enya and top 40 pop.

And judging by the rapturous applause, they stole hundreds of girls’ hearts tonight. As for the boys, who cares.

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Art/Design Gallery In Your Face Decadence At Pop Tart Gallery

March 29, 2011 - 9:28 am

Wedged in between two subdivisions and a huge church in the middle of Koreatown, Phyllis Navidad’s Pop Tart Gallery is perhaps the last thing you’d expect to find in any suburb, really. A collage of transvestite/transsexual/glammed-out portraits that would make Ratt and Poison look like a bunch of Steve McQueens, tonight’s Your Face Here, curated by Lenora Claire, featured work by celebrated photographer of all things glam-n-drag Austin Young: Huge pictures of Margaret Cho, Perez Hilton and other gender-defying celebs adorn the white walls of this tiny gallery with a great big heart — while a chick/dude in a Dangerous-era Michael Jackson outfit spins mutant strains of classic disco mixed with modern R&B. All as you grab free cocktails. Then Kilsonic, a 50-piece ensemble brass band emerges, just in case you weren’t paying attention.

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Event Gallery “Sexo Y Violencia” at Lucha VaVoom

February 17, 2011 - 8:21 am

If you’ve never heard of Lucha VaVoom, consider this an informal intro to Los Angeles’ seminal burlesque/wrestling show where every conceivable racial stereotype is huddled inside a wrestling ring to square off with one another in mortal combat. Round 1, for instance, is Lil Cholo, the ese from East L.A., vs. Chocolate Caliente, who would have been right at home running from whitey in a D.W. Griffith film.

As if all this wasn’t enough, there were the lovely legs of Legs Malone and Lucy Fur — the latter of whom pulled off some nifty acrobatic stunts with her stunning pair of gams, helping the show live up to its tagline of Sexo Y Violencia.

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Contributors The Best of 2010… according to Jeff Nau

December 24, 2010 - 11:23 am

Devin Townsend

The best of the new (Porcupine Tree, Devin Townsend), a bit of the old (Killing Joke, Faith No More)…2010 was more than anything a return to form for artists of yore. Here’s the top 10 groundbreaking artists of the past year (or so)… as seen by ChinaShop Contributor Jeff Nau.

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