Thighs Wide Shut

The Edge of Love
Couples Retreated
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

It’s WWII and London’s being bombarded by Germany. A beautiful young girl (Keira Knightley) takes refuge in an Underground Tube station, while she awaits desperately for the return of her true love, an average Joe solider, fighting on the front lines on mainland Europe. Sounds purty much like the borefest that was Atonement (and to some extent, A Very Long Engagement), dunnit?

With John Maybury‘s The Edge of Love (with a script by Knightley’s mum Sharman Macdonald… who also suffers from mosquito bites) that’s where the similarities with Atonement end, since her boy (the always creepy Cillian Murphy) comes home after the war, to Wales where she waits, and instead of an annoyingly jealous lil sister gumming up the works of our lovers, it’s her real life (yep, this is a truish story!) childhood poet pal Dylan Thomas (Brothers & Sisters‘ Matthew Rhys, a semi-doppelganger for James McAvoy) doing more damage than a close-up of Glenn Close. Thomas is married to casual Mondays-Fridays Sienna Miller, but his heart belongs to Knightley (she’s a bit conflicted herself, but ultimately stands by her man). The two couples live and booze it up before Murphy’s deployed (the ladies share a bath, but sadly it’s not a dirty one), and when he comes home shell shocked, their relationships and friendships strain more than 89 tons of spaghetti in the world’s largest strainer

The four lead performances are golden (even if we’re all suffering from K Knightley period piece fatigue), the production values are top notch, and the settings are simply gorgeous (book us on the first flight headed to Wales please!), but when the story hits its post-war patch, it lost much of the flavor it built up along the way. Yet we stuck with The Edge of Love to the very end (involving the lowest-keyed courtroom scene we’ve viddyed in ages), which cannot be said of Atonement (we kissed it goodbye after the first act). So is Love Knightley’s atonement to us all for Atonement? Without that irksome typewriter score, we’d have to say yes

They Shoots, He Scores!: the film’s luscious soundtrack was overseen by the brilliant Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent David Lynch collaborator. Some of the songs in the film were performed by the likes of Siouxsie Sioux, Suggs from Madness and even Knightley herself! Lisa Stansfield appears in the film, but does not lend her pipes

Verdictgo: it borders a lil bit on Meritville, but it also has badges so Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Tokyo!
Three Stories Low
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Michel Gondry slowly turns a girl into a chair for no reason, Leos Carax lets a bearded creature on the loose and then puts him on trial, while Joon-ho Bong makes a shut-in stack pizza boxes and then finally go outside. Yep, that’s the gist of the three pointless lil stories that are being spun in Tokyo!, a head scratching affair that shoulda been called Tokyo? What more is there to say? Nothing, cept you should Netflix Paris, Je T’Aime instead, where the shorts are shorter and the hit to miss ratio is even, not all misses

Verdictgo: Very Little Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Edge of Love opens in LA today, NY next week, and elsewhere elsewhen, while Tokyo! is currently playing in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

please add Peter Luger Steak House (and that yumtacular extra thick by the slice bacon) to the Places To Eat B4 U Die list

the Bluths strike back

David Lynch’s gettin married to Emily Stofle, the girl seen here in the middle, but the real story here is how much of a handful her sister Mary is

we want to goldfinger Goldfinger gal Dink [NSFW]

Mr. T3PO, Moshe Dayana Ross and many other DoubleTakes

The 10 Hottest Actresses in John Hughes Movies, although Thigh homegirl Lucy Deakins should be ranked 3rd

Bianca Jagger

The Heart Attack Grill, taste worth dying for

you may want your eyes to be wide shut when clicking here

The Bar Mitzvah and Other Tales of Living in Stereo

czech out these hot arsed DIRECTORS TEES: Werner Herzog as Danzig, Ingmar Bergman as Iron Maiden, Béla Tarr as Black Flag, Yasujiro Ozu as Ozzy Osbourne, Martin Scorsese as The Scorpions, Lars von Trier as Van Halen, Brian De Palma as Def Leppard, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Metallica. Genius.

is it September NSFW 2007 yet?

Malcolm McDowell, not scared of eye drops

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, not scared of rawkin out

Johnny 5 is alive & for sale [Spankoola]

Mario Lopez and Kelly Ripa work it out

whatta moran

muss have shirts: Football/Soccer & 80s icons [Witz/Hattan]

The Simpsons Couture and Ben & Jerry’s Duff & D’oh-Nuts Ice Cream

[Knuttz]

TMNT: The 1990 Magazine!

The Disappearing Car Door

condom fashion show

Baby On Board

&

Glazastik. The New Internet Hero

Donovan
Tribeca/ASCAP Music Lounge
Canal Room
May 2nd

In my humboldt opinion, there is no artist more underappreciated than 60s Scottish psychedelic folkster Donovan Leitch. He not only influenced a generation of groovy cats, but the mos grooviest of the litter, The Beatles. Without D-Love, the White Album coulda turned out to be any olde album. Not that I take stock in anything that has to do with The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but while many of his contemporaries have already been inducted, Donovan still waits for his number to be called. While the world turns a blind eye, I pray at the feet of this unrelievable Rock and Roll Souljer

Luckily I got the chance to do so the other day as Don played a tight 9 songed set at the Tribeca Film Fest’s lil eggsclusive music lounge-thangie. While most of the subdued crowd didn’t come to life until midway thru the set, when ‘Sunshine Superman‘ was jimmy jammed, I was hooked, lined and sinkered from song one, ‘Catch The Wind‘, til song end, ‘Mellow Yellow‘. In between, he threw in two new numbers on top of such classics as ‘Universal Soldier‘, ‘Season the Witch‘ (which he said was transcendental mediation buddy David Lynch‘s mos flavorite), ‘Lalena‘, and the one that gave me more chills than the ice bath Tim Robbins endured in Jacob’s Ladder, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man‘, aka one of the single greatestist songs of balls thyme. But 9 songs is not enuff for a ‘van-head like myself. How am I to die and never hear ‘Jennifer Juniper‘, ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven‘, or one of the mos banana songs I’ve ever heard, ‘Barabajagal‘ [d]. I dunno, but I don’t plan on worrying about it as I’ll see him for showzlle the next time he comes to town, singing his songs of love. For you jerk-a$$es who need their cosmic wheels aligned, show sum respek and buy his Definitive Collection

image from Factor D

Peter Bjorn & John
Fujiya & Miyagi
Webster Hall
May 1st

How does a band who has one of the finestest albums released in the US this year underwhelm in concert? I wish I didn’t have to ask such a question, but after Tuesday’s show, I’m more baffled than Borat in an aisle of packaged cheese! When they plowed thru the highlights of said album, they were good, but not great. Was it too large of a room to perform in? Were they too far from Stockholm to take stock in my adopted home? Did they fall victim to the nasty words of the Wrong Folks? I have no friggin idea, but they still rock, juss not as much as I thought they would in a live setting. Maybe I need to see em 6 times like Vegan. Or maybe they shouldn’t have Fujiya & Miyagi kick the friggin ballastics before they come out. Or maybe, they should literally get their ‘act’ together a wee bit mo cause they could be bigger than Radiohead. I’m not even joking. And I pray to jeebus that that happens cause I’m so sick of Radiohead and the new boring poop they keep a poopin’

image, more of dem and review over at Fresh Bread