Sundance Channel

Here’s what the Oscars can learn from NYC nightlife pageants!

Michael Musto — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:58:50 +0000

This year's Oscar telecast (set for February 26) has been on a hopeful track ever since they announced that an actual comic was going to be the host. But even Billy Crystal can only do so much. All the stuff around him needs to be spruced up pronto to ensure that the whole Oscar machine doesn’t become as obsolete as silent movies (except for THE ARTIST, of course). And I know the answer. For a lifeline, the producers need to venture into New York's wildest nightclubs and learn some valuable lessons about how to put on a show.

Hey, Oscar! Don’t forget these performances!

Michael Musto — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:56:08 +0000

The illustrious Oscar nominations will be announced on January 24, which gives the choosers ample time to read my urgent plea for them to not leave out some of my favorite people! After all, I care about the Oscars more than life itself, so ignoring my longings would be as sadistically ill-advised as some of the performances that are already locks. So now that I have the nominators’ attention, I’ll step up and scream the following:

January is the movie dumping ground – but not this time!

Michael Musto — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:00:07 +0000

Traditionally, January is the time when studios dump their loser movies into the recycling bin of the public’s consciousness, tossing ill-fated action flicks with monosyllabic actors or woebegone romantic comedies with badly matched C-listers into theaters because people are too cold to leave the house anyway. By January, the Oscar rush has come and gone, and it’s the time to cut one’s losses and release some of those less golden efforts in hopes that they might find an audience despite it all, even if it’s just angry people who get off on yelling epithets at the screen to impress their passive-aggressive dates.

ADDICTION INCORPORATED is sssssmokin’

Michael Musto — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:03:32 +0000

When I was a pale young thing growing up in Brooklyn, cigarettes were extremely alluring. Movie stars glamorously smoked them on the big screen, people elegantly puffed away on them in airplanes, and classy New York restaurants saw chain smoking as the height of sophistication. Taking my cue from all the hype, I once snuck into the cellar as a kid and took two hits off a Parliament I’d gotten my hands on, then filled the room with Wizard to make sure there was no trace left of my incredibly intoxicating indiscretion. All while coughing and choking my guts out. Jump ahead a whole bunch of decades and it’s lucky I never had an addictive personality because I haven’t touched a cigarette since then, and by now that kind of thing would be considered the devil’s work! It’s unhealthy, uncouth, and all around unpopular.

SHAME is not the first promiscuity epic

Michael Musto — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:29:49 +0000

In Steve McQueen’s much buzzed about SHAME, Michael Fassbender is a New York professional who’s focused on scoring more than on sharing, and who will hook up with almost any dame he sees, as long as he doesn’t get to know her first. But this is hardly the first screen treatise on the hollowness of sexual anonymity...

The TWILIGHT curse on actors

Michael Musto — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:00:32 +0000

Be thankful you’re not in a wildly popular film franchise. It can be career suicide! Yes, you get to be incredibly famous and make tons of money—as long as you stay safely within that franchise and keep delivering the same role to a young audience hungry for the repetition. Just as younger LORD OF THE RINGS cast members have had a hard time striking gold outside that series of lucrative adventures, so have the TWILIGHT gang been finding that not only do vampires suck, but out-of-the-box career ops can too. With THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN Part 1 poised to make trillions starting November 18, it has to be bittersweet for the cast, who’ve struggled to break the dawn for themselves by scoring with non-Twilight projects (and they’re gonna need some really soon).

Elmo’s at the cineplex and I’m tickled!

Michael Musto — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:13:38 +0000

Watch out, Margaret Thatcher. Move over, J. Edgar. Scoot over to the nearest subway grating, Marilyn Monroe. Elmo is back to claim his box office throne, as you recently heard from our very own cuddly Annie J. Howell. It’s all thanks to Kevin Clash, the Baltimore-born man with a knack for sticking his hand up cloth creatures and making them sing, laugh, cry, and annoy in the most adorable ways. Most specifically, he’s known for doing Elmo the red monster from Sesame Street, and now they’re both stars of a film guaranteed a nomination for Furriest Documentary...

Almodovar’s new film nods to a chilling classic

Michael Musto — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:00:26 +0000

Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In—based on Thierry Jonquet’s novel, Tarantula--is officially described as being about a brilliant plastic surgeon who’s “haunted by past tragedies” involving his daughter and “creates a kind of synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage” to deal with that old horror. Well, you certainly can’t say that’s been done! But hold on to your foreheads...

The five best so-bad-they’re-good movies

Michael Musto — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:31:56 +0000

There’s nothing worse than a bad movie that’s not even entertaining about it. But a bomb that manages to perversely delight you with its awfulness is just the kind of train wreck you want to usher into your living room. For your kind (if somewhat sadistic) consideration, here are the top five good-bad flicks of the modern age. But bear in mind, I haven’t seen ABDUCTION yet.

How to improve documentaries – here’s the truth

Michael Musto — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:40:22 +0000

Audiences have become obsessed with filmed tellings of the truth, even if they’re not always all that truthful, but there are some familiar traps documentaries fall into that remove luster from the genre and threaten to make them more like schlockumentaries. To avoid these pitfalls in the future, I propose the following doc-ing guidelines:

Bring on the Oscar movies! And the Oscar fatigue!

Michael Musto — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:47:06 +0000

The season of grossout comedies and screechy animated romps is spewing to an end as we brace ourselves for the period when actual quality films might come out of the darkness. And these films know they’re quality. In fact, the releases from now till December 31 have been aggressively devised to win Oscars and will be prestigiously rammed down our throats until someone votes for them! The top choices: * Ages ago, George Clooney went from TV star to Oscar bait, and his new one will hardly stop his pedigree parade from marching on. It’s The Ides of March, directed by Clooney (who costars with Ryan Gosling), and seeing as it examines dirty politics from the inside, it couldn’t be any more tawdrily topical. Opens October 7 * Leonardo DiCaprio gets a star role—and hopefully some nice gowns—as FBI head J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar. It doesn’t take an investigator to smell Oscar potential here. October 21

A Surge In Serge Gainsbourg’s legend

Michael Musto — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:11:37 +0000

Except for the time Meryl Streep played a rabbi, the coolest man with an accent on screen, as of next week, will be Serge Gainsbourg. The French composer of hypnotic jazz-pop in the 1960s is the subject of GAINSBOURG: A HEROIC LIFE, in which Eric Elmosnino plays the guy complete with all his quirks and multitalents.

Rachel Weisz puts her lips together and blows

Michael Musto — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:30:34 +0000

Just like she did in her 2005 Oscar grabber The Constant Gardener, Rachel Weisz is bravely battling corruption again. In the just-opened The Whistleblower, Rachel’s an ex Nebraska cop who winds up a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia, where it turns out that organization is trying to cover up a gigantic sex trafficking scandal. If you think she shuts up about it, you don’t know Rachel Weisz. After a special screening in New York the other night, Weisz (the new Mrs. Daniel Craig, by the way) kept blabbing, this time about her diverse career choices. Here are her most memorable comments.

Zach Braff Scrubs off a new script

Michael Musto — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:41:32 +0000

When he wrote, directed, and starred in the quirkily engaging 2004 film GARDEN STATE, Zach Braff established himself as a triple threat clearly bent on helping hyphens make a big comeback. But apparently what the Scrubs guy really wanted to do was write a play—just write it—and he’s done just that with "All New People," his new comedy opening at New York’s Second Stage Theatre.

Hair is growing back on Broadway

Michael Musto — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:04:07 +0000

The classic anti-war hippie musical of the 1960s, Hair, won’t stop growing! After a Central Park revival scored three years ago, it moved to Broadway and won a Tony award, and now it’s back there again in the same production, but with some new cast members and fresh energy. I just called the show’s legendary cowriter, James Rado, to untangle exactly what’s going on here and throw some conditioner on it. Me: Hi, James. Is the show’s anti-war message still relevant? Rado: Very intensely. People want to think about other things in our mutli-faceted culture that offers so many distractions, but this thing of war still hangs over us. It plays to that part of our consciousness.

How to make indie films less cliched

Michael Musto — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:59:58 +0000

We adore independent films here—duh—but surely there are ways to guarantee that they don’t fall into various traps that could make them become the very kind of clichéd fare they’re supposed to be a reaction against. Before that even has a chance of happening, here are my ultra sane suggestions for keeping the indie spirit alive rather than letting it become as hackneyed as some of the see-it-coming-a-mile-away stuff Hollywood spits out on a regular basis.

Fran Drescher’s gay ex-husband has a show!

Michael Musto — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:48:23 +0000

Happily Divorced couldn’t ask for a better lead-in. It premieres on TV Land on June 15 directly after Hot in Cleveland, the biggest phenomenon to hit the upper part of the cable box since Half-Ton Teen. It also has a pretty hot premise: Fran Drescher plays a florist whose 18-year marriage ends when her husband (John Michael Higgins) announces, “Yep, I’m gay”—and for various reasons, they continue living together anyway! What’s more, the show is loosely based on Drescher’s own experience. In fact, Drescher co-writes it with Peter Marc Jacobson, who happens to be her real-life gay ex-husband. There are just two problems with the show, based on my viewing of the pilot: (A) Betty White isn’t in it. (B) It’s not that funny.

James McAvoy is a First Class X-Man

Michael Musto — Tue, 31 May 2011 20:03:59 +0000

James McAvoy is a favorite of Sundance’s own guiding light Robert Redford, who cast him in the Civil War drama The Conspirator. Redford clearly has great taste in actors (and bloggers, too, lol). At a TimesTalk the other evening in Times Square, McAvoy charmed the audience with his thick Scottish accent and self-effacing personality, proving why he’s become one of today’s go-to actors most worth going to. Asked if he watches American Idol, McAvoy said, “It’s like cocaine to me. I don’t know how to kick the habit.” Pause. “Actually, I don’t know who the people are! I’m sure they’re very good.” The audience already wanted to eat the guy up. And they loved him even more when he gave a spiel about how important American culture is, then laughed and said, “That sounded so fake!” But his takes on his diverse filmography were very real. Here are the highlights:

SPINAL TAP Star turns Michael Moore-style muckraker!

Michael Musto — Tue, 17 May 2011 18:08:13 +0000

A serious documentary about the New Orleans 2005 flooding disaster, directed by Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap and the voice of Flanders, Smithers, and Mr. Burns on The Simpsons? You can’t make this stuff up, and that’s what I love about show biz. Yes, “New Orleanian” Harry Shearer has brought us The Big Uneasy, an eye-opening look at the time when the President and the press were calling the Katrina situation “a natural disaster,” and it wasn’t! As Shearer learned, it was the result of man-made design and construction flaws. I just talked with Shearer to open some floodgates of information. Me: Hi, Harry. Were you always such a muckracker? Shearer: When I was helping edit the school newspaper in college, I ran a series on wasted space in the student union. That was the last time!

Night of 1000 Stevies Hits NYC!

Michael Musto — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:30:12 +0000

Once a year in New York, Steve Nicks is wearing a fringed shawl and twirling, ever twirling, as she sings (or more likely lipsynchs) “just like the white winged dove” and other familiar lyrics to a packed house of fervent admirers. Well, not Stevie herself, if you want to get technical. It’s actually scads of Stevie impersonators and worshipers, who convene at the “Night of 1000 Stevies” event to pay tribute to the Fleetwood Mac waif who went on to ethereal solo stardom complete with all kinds of witchy/hippie/gypsy paraphernalia and a pronounced catch in her throat.

Ventriloquy gets a hand in new doc

Michael Musto — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:09:35 +0000

Mel Gibson in The Beaver isn’t the only dysfunctional person with his hand up a puppet these days. The new documentary Dumbstruck has five of them—and they’re all rather likable despite the way they tend to mess up their human relations in favor of bonding with the playthings that have become their lifeline and livelihood. The ventriloquists are extremely varied—from entry level to hugely successful—but they all seem to follow a certain pattern: they have all had loneliness issues. They find comfort in their puppets, even if they have constant one-upmanship debates with them. And they usually have to deal with disapproval from relatives who’d way prefer that they settle down with actual humans.

The Nudie Artist: Burlesque Revived

Michael Musto — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:00:26 +0000

Situated on a very sexy Manhattan corner on Fifth Avenue in the 20s, the Museum of Sex is a handy one-stop-shopping place for libidinal learning, as I found out last year when I was able to pose there in front of a giant slide of bears copulating, as opening night guests were graciously allowed to do. (I still have the photo! I’m gonna make it my screensaver!) This is my kind of museum—one where eroticism, art, and commerce collide to make for some of the city’s most entertaining and informative displays. And the other night, it was a whole new opening with all new poses available. The exhibit “The Nudie Artist: Burlesque Revived” premiered to a glittery group of multigender ambisexuals, all dolled up in their finery to look at other people taking theirs off.

ACE VENTURA director sees the light!

Michael Musto — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 21:30:17 +0000

Tom Shadyac is the guy who directed Jim Carrey to talk with his butt and Eddie Murphy to wear a fat suit, to name just two of his enjoyable cinematic achievements, but today, Shadyac is focused on less guffaw-inducing issues. After having a cycling accident in 2007, Shadyac realized certain things I never seem to realize in all my own biking mishaps: That the world is based on too much gratuitous spending, violence, and other negative actions. And that love and compassion are in our DNA and we need to exercise them more while achieving a deeper fulfillment. His new documentary, I Am, is an exploration of what’s wrong with the world and how each of us can make a step towards solving that. To get more personal instructions on the matter, I talked to Shadyac on the phone about it.

Gay self-hating re-examined in new film

Michael Musto — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:57:31 +0000

Mart Crowley’s landmark play The Boys in the Band was first produced in 1968, a year before the Stonewall rebellion changed the face of modern gay movement with defiance and pride. In its bitchy and witty portrayal of a group of friends sharing dangerous New York party games that often verge on the sadistic and self-loathing, it represents a darker moment in gay identity—one the LGBT community has long wanted to turn its back on in shame. But enough time has passed that people are more willing to embrace the play (and the 1970 film version, directed by Wiliam Friedkin) as an important step forward in gay representation and catharsis. In fact, Boys has engendered so much new lovin’ that it’s the subject of a documentary, Crayton Robey‘s Making The Boys, coming out this month in an attempt to put the work in its proper historical place. As one of the talking heads in the film—along with Crowley, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, and many more—I’m qualified to make several defenses of the original play.

WASTE LAND turns garbage into gold

Michael Musto — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:58:13 +0000

Lucy Walker’s Oscar nominated Waste Land is just another documentary about a Brazilian-American artist who travels to his birthland to create portraits of garbage pickers out of recyclable materials. But it’s much more than that. Waste Land is about hope, collaboration, the environment, finding dignity through poverty, and the redeeming qualities of trash. (All those human spirit-y things I never like much under less felicitous circumstances—though I do like trash.)

ORGASM INC will raise a stink

Michael Musto — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 20:27:36 +0000

I probably know less about female orgasms than anyone on the planet---even former boy band members--but Liz Canner knows a lot about them, even more than pharmaceutical companies do. In fact, when she took on a job editing erotic videos for such a company’s drug trials in their attempt to market a female Viagra, Canner’s intellectual G spot was awakened and she realized the bizarre situation she’d landed in needed to be a documentary. The strongly executed result, Orgasm Inc, is an alarming look at the way big business tries to manipulate the public by creating diseases, then marketing the supposed cure. On the eve of the film’s February 11 opening in New York and Chicago (before it goes to L.A. and DVD), I spoke with Canner about her orgasmic achievement.

The Oscars are coming! Here’s some advice!

Michael Musto — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:01:40 +0000

On February 27, the annual Academy Awards telecast will attempt to make millions of people interested in movies they didn’t care enough to see in the first place. They’ll do so with glitz, celebrity drop-ins, gushy tributes, high fashion, and the wonderful sight of four people being devastated in each category. As an inveterate Oscar watcher despite it all, I have some handy ideas for pepping up the show and grabbing way higher ratings than they ever imagined. Here goes, for free: *Serve booze. The Golden Globes are always more fun than the Oscars because the guests are flat-out drunk and not that self-conscious about the evening’s high-pressure antics. The Oscars should serve tray upon tray of ratings-making cocktails. It’s a recipe for absolute hilarity!

Ferocious Battle of the Bands in Downtown NYC

Michael Musto — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:30:52 +0000

For nine years, M.E.A.N.Y. Fest has lured me to judge their intense rock band competition finals by promising free chicken wings, some Diet Cokes, and a chance to make life-changing decisions about something I know almost nothing about—music! It’s kind of intoxicating to sit there, all greasy faced, caffeinated, and devoid of any real credentials, and get to pick which of four bands deserves to win recording and performance time, not to mention a free guitar and probably some chicken wings and soda too, for all I know.

New Year’s hopes and dreams for 2011

Michael Musto — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:46:07 +0000

1) Let’s not have any more hoax-umentaries! You know, those incredible, shocking docs that turn out to be wink-wink p.r. stunts once the whistle’s blown. The one about Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here, was tantalizingly enjoyable, as the former acting heavyweight cavorted with coke, hookers, and generally self-destructive behavior, until we learned that it was all a fake designed to actually build up his career. And there were serious doubts about the veracity of the Facebook saga Catfish, not to mention the complete truthfulness of the street-art epic Exit Through The Gift Shop. (When one of a film’s central talking heads has to have his face and voice blocked, you can’t be sure of anything). In 2011, let’s leave the murky journalism and put-ons to reality shows, OK?

How to be a TV talking head

Michael Musto — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:39:21 +0000

I’ve spent half my adult life appearing as a talking head on various TV channels, so by now I have the art of on-camera gabbing down to a T and know just what to do, what to avoid, and whether to watch the clip afterwards with one eye covered. Live appearances on cable news are way different than pre-taped ones (like “101 Celebrity Meltdowns” or “The Fab Times of Lindsay”), so I’ll separate them in offering my unsolicited but extremely useful advice to anyone brazen enough to want to join the unpaid talking head population. For live shows: *Have your first answer ready. The worst thing imaginable on live TV is dead air, so you want to avoid ever pausing to think or stammering stuff like “Um, uh…” If your first answer doesn’t match the first question, then say it anyway—and make it match the question. *Speak in four or five sentences at a time, trailing off when you’ve sensed that you’ve had your say on that particular subject and it’s time for someone—anyone--else to speak. Don’t be a monosyllabic caveman, but don’t monopolize the whole show either. Find a happy medium.

Here comes the most depressing batch of holiday films in history!

Michael Musto — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:23:01 +0000

Looking to Hollywood to brighten your Christmas season with laughs and good cheer? You’d have a better time renting old Hammer horror flicks. The last month of the year has become less of a venue to trot out cinematic smiles and eggnog than to appeal to the dark side of the audience while also groveling for awards and recognition. It’s a bleak time in the movie cycle, and I have no problem with that—in fact, I detest cheap sentiment—but I sometimes find myself dreading the December depressathons, even if they’re admittedly better for you than feelgood rom-coms and cutesy cartoons.

Pee-wee Herman charms the cognoscenti

Michael Musto — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:30:12 +0000

Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones may be pulling serious theatergoers in to Driving Miss Daisy, but the glory of Broadway is that just a couple of blocks away, you can catch Pee-wee Herman chatting with some flowers, arguing with a chair, and instructing the audience to scream every time they hear the word “fun.” For a heady top ticket price of $227, The Pee-wee Herman Show basically recreates Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Paul Reubens’ legendary 1980s program for very advanced children, starring a bratty but lovable arrested child in a bowtie and a smirk.

The A-List does a spelling bee

Michael Musto — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:13:08 +0000

Way back in my storied school days, spelling bees were awful experiences that invariably left me traumatized and speechless. It’s not that I can’t spell. I’m actually amazing at it, and when the other kids got their turns at the podium, I always knew all the words they were being asked, down to the very last syllable. Alas, whenever it was my chance to go up and get asked a word of my own, I totally blanked. I completely freaked. And somehow it was always a word I wasn’t quite sure how to spell all of a sudden. So out of a combination of shaky nerves and rotten luck, I would lose every t-i-m-e. Starting two years ago, the horror came back in an avalanche of misplaced vowels and wrong consonants when splashy spelling bees started being thrown at Diane von Furstenberg’s boutique, filled with literary lions battling it out for a paying audience to benefit clmp (the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses). And they asked me to join in! Here was my chance to disgrace myself all over again, in front of all sorts of big names, and I seized it with the will of an arrested child playing with the very same mental blocks.

Quentin Tarantino doesn’t know what he’s in for

Michael Musto — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:21:32 +0000

On December 1, Quentin Tarantino will get roasted by a bunch of inglourious so-and-sos at New York’s Hilton hotel, and I’m betting big bucks he’ll be a totally broken man, ready for the human trash heap, by the end of it. After all, Friars roasts are those splashy affairs where costars, comics, and “friends” take the podium to decimate you with personally attained humor and hilarious potshots gleefully derived at your superstar expense.

LET ME IN director lets us in

Michael Musto — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:00:06 +0000

A horror film slash coming-of-age story, Let Me In is the Matt Reeves–directed remake of Let The Right One In, the 2008 Swedish film which was based on the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel about a bullied boy who finds a soulmate in a female vampire. This version, transplanted to 1980s’ New Mexico, is a beautiful piece of work, filled with angst, soul, atmosphere, and blood stains. I phoned Reeves (who did the 2008 hit Cloverfield) and asked him to let me into his process. Me: Hi, Matt. You obviously love the story of the outcast triumphing. Everyone does. Reeves: That’s only one aspect of the story. It’s the outcast finding someone who understands him, but there’s a dark edge to the story. He has vivid fantasies of revenge and when they’re played out, it’s not all victory. There’s something chilling about it and there are consequences. I was haunted by the ambiguity. It makes it a powerful horror story. I wanted to make sure that even the bully would be humanized. It’s not black and white. There’s a potential for evil in all of us.

Fincher, Eastwood Headline The New York Film Festival

Michael Musto — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:17:25 +0000

The 48^th annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center opens with a bang this Friday with David Fincher’s The Social Network, so make sure to Facebook all your friends about it, lol. The auteur-heavy fest also offers creative visions by Julie Taymor, Mike Leigh, Jean-Luc Godard, and some people even I’ve never heard of. (Certified Copy is “a French production with a European cast speaking in a mixture of English, French, and Italian.” By an Iranian director!) Then the festival goes back to the big names and aptly closes with Hereafter, Clint Eastwood’s foray into the afterlife, with Matt Damon forging yet another chapter in his illustrious career. Before picking from this refined plate of high–toned cinema, I tracked down freelance critic Dennis Lim, who’s on the selection committee, for some insight into the process:

The HOWL! Festival brings back the Beatniks

Michael Musto — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:54:05 +0000

Annually arriving between the Fringe festival of bizarre off-Broadway theater and the New York Film Festival for well-heeled cineastes, the HOWL! Festival is a three-day arts extravaganza in the East Village’s Tompkins Square Park, dedicated to the memory of beat poet Allen Ginsberg and presented for nouveaux bohemians who get in free. But it’s more than just a palate cleanser between fests. HOWL! is a simultaneous throwback and flash-forward that tosses cultural elements together into a giant, jivey be-in for high-def artsy-crafty appreciation. And it starts, aptly enough, with some longtime New York poets (like John Giorno and Anne Waldman) reading Ginsberg’s hallucinatory and historic “Howl” this Friday, September 10, when a whole new audience can decide for themselves if the poem is good-obscene, bad-obscene, or not obscene at all.

The archaeology of Sally Kirkland

Michael Musto — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:05:18 +0000

Irrepressible, New York born Sally Kirkland has amassed a startling career, leaping from theater to Hollywood films to indies, while always going to extremes with the intent of “not doing things halfway.” Kirkland’s latest venture has her filming Sharon Greytak’s Archaeology of a Woman, in which she’s going for broke as a mystery lady shrouded in crime, lust, and madness—a role that could be her most intriguing since 1987’s Anna got her an Oscar nomination as a Czech actress who mentors an attractive immigrant. Kirkland called me from the Archaeology set for an expectedly intense chat: Me: Hi, Sally! This movie sounds fascinating. Kirkland: It’s a really juicy role for me—a modern day Lady Macbeth with a little Trip to Bountiful. I definitely have a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? type anger in it. My character, Margaret, was involved in a crime years ago and she’s angry at her daughter (played by Tony winner Victoria Clark). Margaret is ferocious. I have some amazing emotional scenes. I’m tearing the scenery apart! And there’s a three-page single-spaced monologue. I’m releasing all kind of demons. I have a nude scene too.

ALL ABOUT EVIL Brings Back the Midnight Movie

Michael Musto — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:00:43 +0000

“This is a midnight movie before it’s released,” ALL ABOUT EVIL star Natasha Lyonne chuckled to me at the film’s premiere at downtown’s Landmark Sunshine Cinema, commenting on how quickly things happen nowadays. See, once upon a time in the ‘70s, many films found themselves showing up at midnight only after the 9 PM crowds proved to be a little stymied by their in-your-face extremism. But ALL ABOUT EVIL—San Francisco auteur Josh Grannell’s blood-soaked grindhouse tribute—has come out of the gate touring the country at the stroke of 12, complete with a pre-show that references and gently mocks the movie before you even it. This movie knows its place!

The Five Worst Celebrity Interviews

Michael Musto — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:02:59 +0000

Interviewing movie stars is an Olympic-caliber game whereby you gently toss questions at them and they volley back by delivering succinct, crisp sayings that are informative, funny, and make great copy too. Alas, that doesn’t always happen and you sometimes feel like you’re engaged in a battle of wits with a half armed opponent. Not me, mind you. My interviews have always been sheer perfection, cough cough. But a friend of mine who’s a longtime reporter has had some awkward star encounters that left his tape recorder metaphorically burning, and he anonymously agreed to share them with me. His five worst have been:

Is Bowling Finally Not Uncool?

Michael Musto — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:10:30 +0000

“Let’s go bowling,” a friend actually blurted at a get-together recently as the entire room fell into a stunned hush. We didn’t go bowling, as it turned out, but still, the realization that such a cornball thing could even be an option suggested that bowling might finally be slithering back into a spot on the collective radar, as the cognoscenti cringe.

Eight Sequels We Never Want To See

Michael Musto — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:20:34 +0000

It’s been the most sequely, prequely, shmequely summer since the last one, proving that the studios really need to start drawing the line before any more grating spinoffs spin into our psyches and wallets. Here are the sequels that should be forbidden by law from ever getting the green light into harsh reality. 1) Precious 2 (based on the novel by blah blah blah).Our girl Precious is full of newfound confidence, having become extremely literate, well rounded, and popular. Even her meds are kicking in big time. Zzzz. 2) Shrek 5. Remember Shrek 4, where the title ogre got his wish to basically go back to Shrek 1 so he could—without any contrivance at all—meet all the other characters all over again? Well, this time, he’ll want to go back to Shrek 2!

Why Screenwriters Deserve Your Pity

Michael Musto — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:02:14 +0000

The more I learn about the richly textured lives of big-time Hollywood screenwriters, the more I want to stay a trashy little gossip wretch in Murray Hill. Even if you get your screenplay green-lit, the studio will surely change it from a quirky romantic comedy to a superhero prequel in 3D, though the star will inevitably take charge at the last minute and instead make it a futuristic rock musical set in an oil spill. They’ll fire you, hire you back,then kick you out of the premiere party. If they call you for another meeting after it bombs, it’ll only be to pick your brain so they can rip off your ideas and give them to a more “commercial” writer who’ll make that one bomb too. And even if you still manage to make a hit of yourself, like multi-million man Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout), you’ll have to go into hiding for years to avoid the hideous backlash and nagging self doubts that accompanied your whopping paycheck.

Come to “Big Top”: New York’s Hottest New Party

Michael Musto — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:05:07 +0000

Photo credit: Wilsonmodels

With the extravagantly colorful crowd it attracts, “Amanda’s Big Top” doesn’t even need a carnival décor. It’s already a three-ring extravaganza, with club kids, muscle bears, wandering tourists, and a guy with masking tape on his mouth all convening every Wednesday to put the carnal back in carnival. But even if it seems a bit redundant, the physical setting is YouTube-perfect, making this the de rigueur event of the week for those on the edge and not afraid to dangle there. Held on the “Carnival” level of Bowlmor on University Place, the bash (promoted by Kenny Kenny and Joey Israel) is set under a pseudo tent in a post-modern amusement arcade lined with Coney Island-style games to work out your aggressions on. Throw a ping pong ball in a goldfish bowl or knock down a clown doll with a softball and you win an assortment of aptly esoteric prizes like paisley dolphin dolls and neon anal beads.

Behind Troll 2: The Best Worst Movie Ever Made!

Michael Musto — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:16:30 +0000

Furry Vengeance might be giving it a run for its money loss, but the 1990 critter epic Troll 2 is still deemed the most amusing bad movie of all time by many aficionados of enjoyable stinkers. For one thing, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Troll 1. Even more astoundingly, it’s inexperienced actors—including a small-town dentist named George Hardy—flounder around Utah in a ludicrous story about a family trip ruined by man-eating goblins in burlap sacks.

The Horrible Truth About Celebrity Tweeting

Michael Musto — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:20:51 +0000

As someone who follows celebrities for a living, I’ve found that they’re fascinating creatures who radiate excitement and sex appeal in everything they do—except tweeting! I know this because the second I joined Twitter a few months ago, I started “following” any celebrity I could track down there, anxious to eavesdrop on whatever stellar utterances were available to me thanks to this trendy form of techno-networking. But just as quickly, I was bored into submission by the fact that in this context, bold-face luminaries are every bit as trivial and fatuous as you and me!

Behind Burlesque With Leslie Zemeckis’s Fleshy New Film

Michael Musto — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:42:59 +0000

Behind the Burly Q, a look back at the glory days of burlesque from writer/director/producer Leslie Zemeckis, fascinatingly strips away at the myths surrounding the most popular American entertainment form of the first half of the 20^th century. On the eve of the documentary opening in New York on April 23 en route to other cities, I phoned Leslie (whose husband, Robert Zemeckis of Forrest Gump fame, executive produced the doc) for some burly talk. MM: Hi, Leslie. How was Behind the Burly Q born? LZ: I’m an actress and did a show that had elements of burlesque in it. I started to research it and realized no one had done a comprehensive documentary about burlesque, told by the performers. I thought, ‘I’ve got to record this for posterity.’ MM: When you interviewed the former strippers—many of them now in their 80s--did some of them start re-enacting their old competitive patterns? LZ: Not really. But some wanted to strip again! I thought, ‘I’m not sure where you’re gonna find a job, but God bless you.’ For a lot of them, it was the high time of their life and they wanted to recreate that.

The 10 Most Annoying Types of Customers at the Cineplex

Michael Musto — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:00:20 +0000

1) The ones that climb over you to go to the bathroom. Eight times!! Wear diapers! 2) The ones that loudly narrate the whole film, either because they're unable to differentiate it from a TV show or because they're trying to make sense of the plot by talking themselves through it. When it's something as simple as THE TOOTH FAIRY, this can get a little annoying. 3) Similarly: People who ask obvious questions all through the film, blaring out their ignorance with every query. “Who’s that?...Why is she looking at him like that?....Where’s he going?...” I’m still emotionally scarred from the time decades ago when my brain-dead companion seriously screeched, “So what IS Sophie’s choice, anyway?”

Gay “Bears” Continue Their Jamboree

Michael Musto — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:23:59 +0000

One of the best things about being gay is that if you find yourself getting all fat and hairy, you can just call yourself a “bear” and become part of a highly desirable subculture of the subculture. It’s actually a step up from being just an average gay! And if you haven’t gotten fat but still want to be a bear, that’s OK too. The term “bear” doesn’t necessarily connote someone with extra poundage, as long as the pounds you’ve got aren’t shaved, and as long as you carry whatever figure you have with the requisite “masculine” demeanor—or at least the appearance of such as you swagger, slug down a beer, chomp on a cigar, and defy anyone to call you names (except “bear”).

The Six Worst Moments From Last Night’s Oscars

Michael Musto — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:55:46 +0000

1) Starting the show with the 10 lead acting nominees having to take the stage and smile for the cameras. Doesn’t the rest of the evening torture them enough? 2) The clips for the 10, count ‘em 10, Best Picture nominees. Add them up and they were longer than some of the films themselves! Besides, way back in 1939, the 10 nominees were instant classics like Gone With The Wind, Stagecoach, and The Wizard of Oz. But this year? The Blind Side and District 9! Let’s go back to just five. No, make it three! 3) The way the cameras kept zooming in on the front runners right after they lost. When THE HURT LOCKER won Best Original Screenplay, they closed in on a shaken Quentin Tarantino. After PRECIOUS bagged Best Adapted Screenplay, they cut to a sweaty Jason Reitman. Even when AVATAR lost some sound award, they cut to Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington. This practice totally appealed to the sadist in me, but for the sake of others with some heart, let’s only watch people squirm before they lose from now on.