Admittedly, I’ll watch nearly anything Zappa related, from live footage to bootlegs to documentaries. Much has been written about Zappa and the Mothers, they have been very well chronicled. From how many times Zappa stretched his legs while writing The Dog Breath Variations to how many cigarettes he smoked in the studio while recording Magdalena, to dense intellectual interpretations of his work and ponderous forays into his political activities. There comes a point when, like with the beatles, everything that needs to be written about certain portions of their lives just may have been covered in excruciating detail by this point.

When I sat down to watch the doc Franks Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in the 60’s I was interested, yet skeptical. It starts off slow, with various Zappologists shedding light on the mans early years and musical influences using pretty much the exact same words as every other verbose Zappologist. Perhaps these people only have one book to base all of their learned opinions on. There are some cool interviews with Jimmy Carl Black, Bunk Gardner, Don Preston and Kim Fowley, but very little live footage of the band in action. You can actually find a million times more ‘rare’ footage looking on youtube.

If you happen to be new to Zappa and the Mothers, you just might dig it. If you know anything about them, this is rehashed, watery gravy. It’s safe to say that the turning point for me was having to suffer through the most irritating accent I’ve ever heard by an aged, self important hippy intellectual wearing a giant scarf with skulls on it while blathering inane facts he likely gleaned from the back cover of Freak Out! I’m sure if I wasn’t subjected to this pompous poof for over two hours, I might have enjoyed it more.

If you think I’m exaggerating:

Although it’s hard for me to dislike anything Zappa related, in my humble opinion: save your money, buy any Mother album or official Zappa dvd, and enjoy your life without fear of sitting on your deathbed lamenting the two hours you wasted one hapless evening.

“You know, the beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit…….I can have one” ?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Be sure to watch the final clip in the series, where the interviewer asks one too many dopey questions (approx 6:30).

Click here to view the embedded video.

To watch the complete series go to the Music World page @ VBS.TV

We went to Norway to interview Gaahl, lead singer of the band Gorgoroth. Gaahl really believes in this whole ideology behind what he’s doing—he’s not just some rockstar fronting a band. The thing with Black Metal is, in Norway, everybody is exactly the same. There’s nothing to rebel against, because everybody’s really well off. It’s one of the richest countries in Europe. There is no lower class, it’s like middle-class white kids everywhere—no one has anything to complain about. And he’s this sort of eccentric figure amidst this sea of contentment and sameness. The way I see it is, in America you have guys like 50 Cent who are supposed to be the “villain.” Kids like him cause they’re parents hate him, and that’s basically what Gaahl is. He’s their musical villain so to speak. But there’s a lot of different sides to the scene.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, here’s a youtube playlist containing the entire documentary:

But, if you’re a completest like me, you’re gonna need the hard copy.

DVD Blurb:

Show biz wasn’t enough. Andy Kaufman’s true dream was to be a wrestler: a star, a pro wrestler. However, he had his obstacles. He was too small, too weak, and had no talent at the sport. To make up for these inadequacies Kaufman decided the only way he could be a champion in the ring was to start wrestling women. One night, in the midst of a heated battle, the great champion Jerry “The King” Lawler stepped into the ring to defend a woman’s honor when it seemed that Kaufman might go too far. This incident began an obsessive, yearlong vendetta against the mighty Lawler, leaving Kaufman’s friends to wonder, “Has Andy truly lost his mind?”

Finally, a sequel to Diary of the Dead. A sequel nobody wanted… A film so full or horror nobody watched it. What? Oh sorry, so full of horrible. I’m being a dick, Romero invented the genre. Dawn of the Dead still stands as one of the formative film experiences of my life. Hell, I even liked the remake.

Diary had a good story, some great lines, and a lot of really good gory action. My beef with was with the suspension of belief factor, the one you need to really enjoy a movie like this, felt like it had been brutally raped…and the acting stunk. Usually those are the two things I really enjoy while watching a horror movie! It probably all boils down to unreasonably high expectations on my part. Whaddyagonnado?

Mornings… and mirrors. I despise them. Mornings and mirrors only serve to terrify old men.

Romero’s new movie doesn’t have a title yet, but it does have a concept. “It’s about tribalism,” says Romero about the story that unfolds on a small island a couple of weeks after the original outbreak in 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. “There are two factions. It’s the idea that even when faced with a crisis, tribal concerns about power control people’s motives.”

One side wants to kill off zombified loved ones before cannibalistic urges strike. The other would rather wait to see if there is a cure for such cravings. “They want to leave Grandma in the rocking chair for a while longer,” he says. “It’s not a good idea.”

How can you go wrong?

This movie was inspired by true events, as opposed to being based on true events. What this means in Hollywood lingo, inspired by allows the directors imagination run rampant while implying everything portrayed is true, whereas based on is supposedly based on fact, albeit with a few embellishments (and usually a love interest). When interviewed about The Strangers, director Bryan Bertino said his main inspiration for the story was Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders.

Others seem to think the story is a lot closer to the storyline of the movie Them (a.k.a. Ils).
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Them is based on true events in much the same way The Strangers was inspired by true events. Regardless, its a scary movie. In this story a couple moves from France to isolation in rural Romania. They’re awakened by strange noises one night and witness their car being stolen. Shortly afterwords, phone and power lines to the house are cut and the thieves return to terrorize and murder the couple. This is apparently based on the story of an Austrian who were murdered in their vacation home in the The Czech Republic by three teenagers. Its a savage story, but seemingly impossible to verify. It could be an urban legend, or completely fabricated to lend credibility to the film. In the end, who knows. All I can say is Them is the better movie.

So I wrote earlier that The Strangers was based on the true story of the Keddie Cabin Murders. Well, there are some fallacies that should be cleared up. There were unsolved murders at Keddie Cabin, this much is true. Its also true that the murders are still unsolved.

But thats about where the ‘true story’ angle ends. Truth is stranger, and more disturbing, than ‘based on truth.’ There were four murders in cabin 28 that night. Glenna Sharp, her 15 year old son John and 17 year old family friend Dana Wingate were found beaten and stabbed the next morning by Glenna’s 14 year old daughter Sheila, who luckily spent the night with a friend. Thirteen year old Tina Sharp was missing from the cabin, and her decapitated remains were discovered three years later, buried 95 miles away. Her other two sons and another friend, all toddlers, were spared and found hiding in a separate room.

Nobody knows exactly what happened, or what the motives were, although there’s no shortage of theories. If this movie is based on a true story, then so is Wild Zero.

Here is a summary of the actual events from A&E’s Cold Case Site:

Sometime between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. that day, 15-year-old John Sharp and his buddy, 17-year-old Dana Wingate, were seen hitchhiking from Quincy to Keddie Cabin #28. John had been living there for months with his 36-year-old mother, Glenna Sharp — and once the two boys walked through the door, police say, the horror began.

Over the next decade or so, it rotted into a refuge for squatters and hobos, and the county condemned most of the buildings. But in the past few years longtime owner Gary Mollath has gone on a furious restoration campaign that has the old resort looking pretty much as it did in 1981 — sans people.

Nothing fills people with dread more than the words ‘based on a true story.’
It was this claim that instilled absolute terror at the mere mention of Amityville. Even the director of the live action Scooby Doo movie scored a huge horror hit with his remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was based on the original TCM movie instead of the story of Edward Gein. As far from the truth as that movie was, it still served to scare the hell out of a lot of people. I’ll admit the original still freaks me out. But that’s horror.

The trailer for the new thriller The Strangers is pretty intense and it looks scary as hell. I love the use of a creaking rusty swingset and a skipping record to jump though quick cuts of this poor couple terrorized by anonymous, masked, psychopathic strangers. Its very effective, and different than the LOUD BOOM! FLASH! SAME VOICEOVER FOR EVERY SINGLE MOVIE! trend which has become the predictable thriller trailer trick.

The Strangers really is based on a true story. There were three murders that night. Two bodies were found bludgeoned and stabbed to death in a resort cabin, and three years later 95 miles away, the remains of their 13 year old daughter were unearthed. The case is still unsolved, and there were never any suspects. The killings were totally random and not premeditated. That’s scary, and it’s what makes even the idea of this film unnerving. Its definitely on the must see list.

If nothing else, this film should help out frugal vacationers by knocking down the price of cottage rentals at Keddie Resort in Plumas County, California.

When I saw the trailer for his new film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, my first thought was, ‘Damn, this guy is hardcore!’ I’m sure the politico’s will crap on this film for his lighthearted approach to the subject, but if there’s one thing Spurlock can do well, its to get his point across to the masses. Even if he doesn’t and the film flops, you’ll have to admit this guy has balls, and I’m going to stand in line and pay to see them.