Tommy Chong discovered one important thing after serving nine months in the poky for selling marijuana paraphernalia over the Internet. “I learned never to put my face on a bong,” he says. Following his July 2004 release from jail on charges in which he wore “the badge of honor as…
Adam Roberts is schizo-rama. On the one hand, he’s the Dr. Jekyll of jazz, a serious-as-cancer student of the form who tosses around names like Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, and Bill Frisell. On the other — slightly hairier — hand, he’s Mr. Hyde, a mad beast…
If The Memory of a Killer were not mostly in Flemish, it would be easy to mistake for a Hollywood movie. The story of a hit man with a conscience and the cop who’s always a step or two behind him as they pursue the same villains, it’s full of…
Chicken Little is a groundbreaking movie in more ways than one. Not only is it Disney’s first in-house all-computer-generated feature, but on select screens, it will be presented in “Disney Digital 3-D,” a brand-new system created with the help of George Lucas’ special-effects company Industrial Light & Magic. It’s revolutionary!…
If Jarhead, director Sam Mendes and writer William Broyles Jr.’s adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s 2003 Gulf War memoir, seems at all familiar — like, say, a DJ’s mash-up of Full Metal Jacket and Three Kings — there’s good reason for it. Swofford, 20 years old during Operation Desert Storm in…
The more things change, the more they stay the same: Just when you thought local hip-hop/rock/reggae outfit Cousins of the Wize was in the ‘Nix’s history books, here they are celebrating their eighth anniversary, a major milestone for any local outfit. With DJ Needles holding down the turntables, Jah Sonora…
It’s probably bad form to mention CD artwork before the music, sort of like extolling the virtues of a blind date’s winning personality, but the dramatic Jason Oda graphics beg first-paragraph acknowledgement for totally syncing up to the emo-melancholia housed within this Gilbert band’s powerful debut. There’s a slacker goddess…
Broken Social Scene didn’t have much to prove in 2002, but the ragtag Toronto indie-rock collective’s messy, gorgeous You Forgot It in People changed all that. Buzz and anticipation might be foreign concepts now, but the band’s third proper full-length sure doesn’t sound aware of it. The same loose aesthetic…
Using the B-word when describing a new young band can be the kiss of death, but the sonic palette Happy Bullets use on The Vice and Virtue Ministry brings to mind a psychedelic-era Beatles album as produced by Ray Davies and recorded on an indie rock budget. Strong melodies, lush…
“Frances, Frances Bean . . . what are you doing up here, sweetie?” “I was just going through Daddy’s tapes, Mom. I wanna pick a song for the new album, too!” “Okay, honey, but we’ve only got room for three unreleased tracks, all right? The other 19 are coming from…
Everyone from Alec Baldwin and Eddie Vedder to film director Robert Altman threatened to leave the country if George W. Bush was elected, but only got as far as backpedaling. But Emily Haines and James Shaw of the neo-New Wave band Metric actually vamoosed to Canada on the eve of…
Here are a few interesting facts about San Francisco’s John Vanderslice: 1. He eats a vegetarian burrito every single day; he’s been doing so for more than eight years. 2. He once wrote a song called “Bill Gates Must Die,” then punk’d numerous national media outlets by crafting an amusing…
You know the feeling in the air when the barometer and temperature drop as a big storm blows in? It’s like that around Jean Grae these days. Not that she’s suddenly materialized like a cold front. Grae got her start in 1997 with Natural Resource, when she was 16. She…
In a second coming that rivals only Christ himself, the cantankerous punk band Dead Kennedys have rereleased Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables — Special 25th Anniversary Edition (Manifesto Records), and are touring, albeit minus former mouthpiece Jello Biafra. But are the resurrected Kennedys just a bunch of anachronistic sellouts, or…
“I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve always said I would give my left nut for heavy metal, and now I really am.” Patrick Flannery says this barely above a whisper, but follows the statement with a hearty laugh. Today, the 43-year-old singer, who’s been a veteran of the Valley’s…
I have a theory that excessive sobriety and serious relationships can easily hamper an artist’s potential. I know it’s true with me; the focus I’ll put into a relationship with a girl doesn’t often leave me with as much creative inspiration. My favorite records and books are inspired by loneliness,…
Christopher, who may be insane, believes that the oranges in the bowl in the psychiatric hospital are a bright, luminous blue. His doctor, Bruce Flaherty, believes that this is evidence that Christopher is still mentally ill and shouldn’t be sent home today, his intended day of release. Thus begins the…
The Bird’s nested in Phoenix long enough to know that this place has its share of shady, self-important, half-witted yokels. Even so, it’s still occasionally surprised by how Mayberry this backward burg can be. Take our fearful leaders’ recent response to a city council vote that will allow Donald Trump…
You would have thought cops were raiding the stronghold of Pablo Escobar. Early on a warm August morning, 38 Phoenix cops, many in black fatigues with automatic weapons, stormed the home of Daniel Watkins, looking for drugs. Instead, after three hours of dissecting the house in northeast Phoenix, all they…
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm Ltd.) The final installment of the Star Wars saga actually plays better at home: You can watch it, then pop in the original trilogy and chart the evolution of Anakin, and have it all actually make sense. Though it’s still a…
Pity the videogame zombie. He spends his short afterlife dodging self-righteous heroes hell-bent on peppering him with buckshot, setting him on fire, or blowing him to smithereens with a bazooka. Well, Stubbs is here to even the score. Set in the 1950s, Stubbs the Zombie casts players as the eponymous…
Regarding the fleeting nature of human achievement, I’m reminded of the words of that controversial icon of early cinema, director D.W. Griffith, who once stated, “Movies are written in sand: applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.” Some movies more than others, I reckon. Griffith’s sentiment also applies to great and not-so-great meals…
