the condemned

The Condemned is recommended to fans of bad reality television and professional wrestling. Hey, you've been warned.

anniversary

When I got married a year ago, several of our great writers at The Simon offered me wedding advice. It was a real surprise and a treat at the time ... and it still is today.

vacancy

Usually, describing a movie as a "creepy cockroach of a thriller" isn't high praise, but in the case of Vacancy, it's a glowing blurb.

what does jackie robinson day have to do with barry bonds?

A lot, says author Zev Chafets, and I have to agree with him.

Jackie Robinson Day is an exercise in racial public relations. Baseball desperately wants to repair its connection to the black community, whose younger generation seems to regard the national pastime as only slightly more relevant than curling.

Chafets argues that Barry Bonds could help repair that connection, but because sportswriters (and MLB commissioner Bud Selig) dislike him so much, they continue to turn away black fans, who get sick of seeing Bonds attacked for the same things white players like Babe Ruth were adored for doing back in the day.

I hate Bonds as much as the next guy, but the racial double standard in baseball is certainly noticeable.

disturbia

Rear Window for the teen set? Probably, but it's an effective thriller with a surprising amount of brains and heart.

grindhouse: bloody, long

Grindhouse tops the list of items in my latest installment of Consumables. Also, I show much love to Killer Sheep and The Host and !!!.

j. hoberman on killer of sheep

Charles Burnett's rarely-seen 1977 movie Killer of Sheep is finally getting a proper theatrical release. (It's playing at the Nuart through Thursday.) The Village Voice's J. Hoberman writes about the film's greatness -- there's no pointing pulling a quote because the whole piece is great and dead on the money.

fighting words

The world of spoken-word slam poetry is too interesting for filmmakers to resist, but thus far they've yet to do it justice. Fighting Words is but the latest example of this problem.

kurt cobain: still dead, still missed

This piece was written for The Black Table three years ago to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. I still agree with every word of it.

cinnamon

"My artwork and films are about responding to daily materials, conditions, tasks and/or gestures of people of African descent," experimental artist Kevin Jerome Everson says on his website. A collection of his films -- including the documentary-fiction hybrid Cinnamon, which will be having its Los Angeles premiere -- will be playing Monday, April 9 at REDCAT. My LA Weekly review appears here.

the tv set

Another satire on the banality of the entertainment industry? Yes, but writer-director Jake Kasdan's The TV Set has more depth than you might think.

let's go sailing

Her name is Shana Levy. She fronts a band called Let's Go Sailing. She lives in Los Angeles. Her new album, The Chaos in Order, is out now. It's darn good.

after the wedding

I loved Susanne Bier's last film, Brothers, but her latest -- After the Wedding, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year -- isn't quite as amazing.

do film critics matter? (part 653,363)

I tend not to care too much about articles debating the relevance of film critics -- if you read film criticism, they are relevant; if you don't, they aren't -- but Lewis Beale in The Reeler has a well-balanced perspective on the matter. The comments after the piece are the usual collection of insightful and barely literate.

peyton manning, comic genius

Yes, Peyton Manning, a football player, was hilarious on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. I sing his praises in Consumables ... and also say nice things about LCD Soundsystem, the Silos, and Low.

the hills have eyes 2

The sequel to last year's remake of the 1970s Wes Craven horror classic is a stunning artistic statement. OK, maybe not.

usc in the sweet sixteen

After impressive wins over Arkansas and Texas in the first two rounds of the NCAA college basketball tournament, the Trojans take on the North Carolina Tar Heels tonight. Here's all the info you'll need to get ready for tonight's game.

the prisoner or: how i planned to kill tony blair

It's hard to say when audiences' saturation point for Iraq War documentaries will come -- if it hasn't come already -- but The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair is one worth checking out. It opens in New York today before expanding to other parts of the country.

adam sandler gets serious for reign over me

I loved Adam Sandler's dramatic turn in Punch-Drunk Love and I adored writer-director Mike Binder's prickly, moving The Upside of Anger. So the comedy-drama Reign Over Me, Binder's new film that stars Sandler, should be a slam dunk. Sadly, the movie goes awry for me.

color me kubrick

Based on the true story of a Londoner's successful attempts during the 1990s to pose as famed film director Stanley Kubrick, Color Me Kubrick is a failed satire about our obsession with celebrity culture. Even though it was made by two people who worked closely with Kubrick, you can't help but wonder what the great master could have done with such potentially great material.