Grindhouse
Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, USA, 2007
Rating: 2.9

Former audio/visual club geeks everywhere rejoiced when Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez announced their plans for Grindhouse, a double-feature homage to exploitation flicks complete with missing reels and cheesy fake movie trailers. Now, on the surface, this seems like a really refreshing idea with quite a bit of potential. In reality, it, or more accurately, half of it, just misses the boat all together.  (more…)

Damn — and we were so sure that Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband Frederic Prinz von Anhalt was Dannielynn’s father! But it turns out that Gabor’s creepy sixty-something caretaker is not the baby-daddy, despite his claim to a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith. That honor goes to Larry Birkhead, to the disappointment of Smith’s lawyer Howard K. Stern.

But aren’t we all Dannielynn’s daddy? We’ve all spent an inordinate amount of time clucking over the paternity of the late model’s infant child. (more…)

What with being out of town over the Easter weekend and squeezing yesterday’s posts in while tending to my real job, I haven’t yet had a chance to mention the news, released last Friday, that Jason Isbell has parted ways with the Drive-By Truckers. A terse initial posting on his MySpace blog on Friday read only “I am not in the Drive By Truckers anymore. Go figure. I wish them luck. I will not answer questions about it.”  (more…)

I’m not a fan of Don Imus. I was always a Howard Stern guy, back when I lived in a city that carried Stern’s terrestrial radio show, and being a Stern fan pretty much made being an Imus guy impossible. I’ve had occasion to catch bits and pieces of Imus’ show as it’s simulcast on MSNBC, and have seen nothing to make me change my opinion. (To be fair, watching radio on TV just doesn’t work — it certainly didn’t do Stern any favors.)

That said, Imus absolutely, positively should not resign his post, as the Rev. Al Sharpton demands. Is Imus a good guy, as he says? Probably so. Is he sincere in his contrition? Again, probably so. Was what he did — calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy-headed hos” — stupid, racist, insensitive, horrible, even unconscionable? Absolutely. Should he bow to pressure from Sharpton and quit? No way, José. (more…)

 Johnny Hart, the cartoonist behind the incredibly long-running strip B.C., died Saturday. Shaking Through has long adhered to an unofficial policy of not speaking ill of the departed, so I won’t bash Hart here for the religious proselytizing that drove me from the strip years ago. (The steady decline in quality certainly helped — to be sure, the strip seemed funnier, and not coincidentally less offensive, decades ago.)  (more…)

From Billboard: Former KISS guitarist Mark St. John died Thursday of an apparent brain hemorrhage. He was 51.

St. John (born Mark Norton) appeared on one album, 1984’s underrated Animalize. Granted, the whole non-makeup era was a bad one for KISS, but Animalize was their strongest effort from that period and during his all-too-brief tenure, St. John was a breath of fresh air. When he took over for Vinnie Vincent (who lent a lot of muscle to 1983’s solid but numbing Lick It Up), I was hopeful that good things were in the works for my all-time favorite band.  (more…)

Okay, I know it was Easter weekend, a time when many Americans are thinking about the resurrection of Christ, and so they’re probably busy taking their kids to Easter egg hunts and planning big family dinners. Gritty homages to exploitation films aren’t high on the list. I get that. But how in the world does Grindhouse open at a miserable fourth place?  (more…)

No doubt about it, 2006 was a good year for comics, as this look back at the year that was proves. Whether you’re into hard-hitting superhero action, thought-provoking political commentary, imaginative science fiction or compelling looks at unlikeable but intriguing real-life folks, there’s something here that’s bound to resonate. If something here strikes your fancy, do yourself a favor: Go buy it — and read it.

1. Pride of Baghdad (Vertigo/DC) 
Brian K. Vaughan uses the notion of wild animals loose in the streets of a bomb-ravaged city to explore concepts of freedom, perception and the cruelty of war without falling into sermonizing.  (more…)

So The Sopranos returns for its final run of episodes this weekend, and, well, I’m just not feeling it. The reviews seem positive for this Sunday’s episode, but last summer’s shows were so flat I can’t muster up any excitement. Between the waiting years between seasons and the steadily diminishing returns, I’m over it. The season opener of The Shield the other night was more gripping than The Sopranos has been since that “Pine Barrens” episode. Okay, maybe not that far back, but certainly since Joey Pants or Adrianna shuffled off the coil.  I hope the reviewers are right, and it goes out with a bang (no pun intended), but really, right now it feels like too little, too late. Are you with me?

I was out of pocket the last couple of days, so I wasn’t able to comment yesterday on the NME interview in which Keith Richards claimed he once snorted some of his dad’s ashes with some cocaine. It’s already old news, and the spin control has already started, with Kurt Loder of MTV News dismissing the whole thing as “totally untrue.” Kurt’s ironclad source? Richards’ manager, Jane Rose, who says the comment was made “in jest” and she “can’t believe anyone took [it] seriously.”

Oh, well, then — if Keith Richards’ longtime manager says it’s not true, that’s good enough for me!  (more…)