TRACK REVIEW - "WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU" - POISON

Hair metal bands. (The term "metal" being used loosely) Hairspray bands. Glam rockers. They always come up in conversation amongst people who get excited every summer when the the local hair metal revival tour breezes through town. Or if you're at a bar with one of those Internet jukeboxes and a someone shoves a twenty in and plays nothing but hair metal for the next two hours. Then, you try to beat them at their own game by putting forty bucks and utilizing the "Your Song First" feature in an attempt to force good taste on the masses. It's a battle of good versus evil and the only ones who win are the people that own those infernal machines.(Note: the Internet jukebox may be the biggest double-edged sword in the pop culture world. It can do so much good, but can do SOOOOO much evil.)

Poison will be releasing an album of covers called Poison'd. (I wonder if this is due to the rise of guyliner) On this offering, they perform a cover of The Romantics' "What I Like About You" and have released a video of it. Lucky us. The concept of the video is a high school yearbook come to life in which all the pics tell each other what they like about each other. I wonder how long it took them to come up with that concept. The band is dressed in suits, but not quite 80s style. They just look like a hair metal wedding party. This video seems like it was a pretty good idea.....for when Poison was a popular band. Poison ruins the track which is surprisingly hard to do. The original has a bare bones, garage rock feel. It's not rocket science. Brett Michaels puts a little too much of glam, faux-soul swagger in his voice which doesn't work. The harmonica solo has been replaced by dueling harmonica-guitar solo, complete with simplistic noodling. You can totally see the sales guy from work having a few too many Bud Lights and playing air guitar to this at happy hour.

My guess is people who like Poison will like this no matter what I say. In fact, they'd probably like it Poison released a techno record, simply for the fact that it was Poison's techno record. As for me, this is the only poison I'll ever need.

MOVIE REVIEW - FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

The original Fantastic Four suffered from a weak script, lackluster direction, missed opportunities and unfortunately inevitable comparisons to the far superior release of The Incredibles.

Nevertheless, I put all that aside and saw the sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. And yet, despite advanced word and personal prejudice, I'm happy (and a bit embarrassed) to say I liked it. A lot.

Director Tim Story returns along with his ensemble of Ioan Gruffudd (Reed Richards), Jessica Alba (Sue Storm), Michael Chiklis (Ben Grimm), Chris Evans (Johnny Storm) and Julian McMahon (Victor Von Doom).


This film marks the arrival of creator Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's metaphorical Christ character, The Silver Surfer (played by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who has come to Earth as a herald for Galactus. Every planet that the Surfer has appeared on has been destroyed eight days later, and his arrival on Earth causes a series of phenomenons (including the resurrection of Dr. Doom). The United States military enlists the Fantastic Four's assistance, interrupting the nuptials of Reed and Sue, to capture the Surfer. Initially disappointed by the results of Reed's research, the military (led by Andre Braugher), turn to Doom for help, much to the chagrin of our heroes.

The major theme of The Fantastic Four has always been family and Story has constructed a film that focuses on just that; the relationships and connections between all of the characters is the very heart of this film. Gruffudd does a better job channeling Reed in this film, and both Chiklis and Evans do a phenomenal job. Only Alba, in a distracting blond wig and bright blue contact lenses, doesn't live up to the potential.

Nevertheless, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer probably isn't the best film that you'll see this summer, but it's harmless popcorn entertainment and an entertaining distraction that actually delivers. With rumors of a J. Michael Straczynski Silver Surfer spin-off already circulating, I'm hoping the next FF film focuses on some of their other colorful nemeses, such as the Mole Man, The Skrulls or the denizens of the Negative Zone.

'Nuff Said!

CD REVIEW: R. KELLY - "DOUBLE UP"

R. Kelly has put out nine albums. That's quite an output for someone who is marginally talented. But what do I know? I'm a silly blogger. And he's the King of R and B. He's managed to come back after getting thoroughly clowned by Dave Chappelle and...ahem...other issues. Double Up offers the world what you think it would: club songs, slow jams and melodrama.

The club tracks on Double Up serve as a hedonistic how-to guide of nightclub behavior, including bringing not one, but two ladies home ("Double Up" featuring Snoop Dogg,) stealing someone else's girl ("I'm A Flirt (Remix)" feat T.I. and T-Pain) and getting freaky in the club ("Freaky In The Club"). You have to appreciate an artist who gets right to the point with his song titles. The club songs all produced by Kelly, seem just average at best. You can see how people would dance to it, but it lacks the GNF (Go Nuts Factor.) He's got an ear for writing a catchy tune but nothing great.

Kelly's true strength is his ability to weave melodramatic storylines into pop songs as evidenced by his magnum opus "Trapped In The Closet." "Best Friend" features Keyshia Cole and Polow Da Don visiting Kelly's character in jail. It turns out Cole and Polow's character have begun dating while Kelly's character has been in jail. On "Same Girl," Usher and R. have a conversation where it turns out--surprise, surprise--they are both dating the same girl. "Real Talk" though may be where R. keeps it the realest, no pun intended. This song is annoying because Kelly punctuates every line by saying "Real Talk." But the nuts and bolts of the song are true. It is, in fact, "real talk." How do I know? Here's an example. Sometimes, you're in the mall and you're just quietly waiting for your smoothie from Smoothie Criminal or whatever your local smoothie proprietor is called. There's a dude on his cell phone behind you, arguing with his girlfriend about her hearing that he was out at the club, getting freaky on some other chick. But all you can hear is him defending himself. This is exactly how "Real Talk" plays out. He makes it so authentic by repeating a sentence three times in a row as if his cell phone is cutting out: "Did she say there were other guys there?/Did she say there were other guys there?/WERE THERE OTHER GUYS THERE??" And all you can hope for is that they hand you your smoothie, so you can get away from a cellular domestic dispute.

Kelly's weak points on this album are the same that he's had his entire career: he can't write lyrics to save his life. This fact is compounded by the guests who wield excellent command of the English language. "Sweet Tooth," a terrible allegory for a woman's body, contains the laugh-out-loud line "I'm all up in your middle/Ooh, you taste like Skittles." He seems to be setting himself up as an R and B Spinal Tap or Tenacious D. He may have reached a new plateau in musical comedy with "The Jungle" and "Sex Planet." "The Jungle" boasts the line "I got your soul wet, it's like a rainforest/Like Jurassic Park, except I'm your sexasaurus, baby," complete with monkey noises in the chorus. (Seriously, he says Sexasaurus) "Sex Planet" which sounds like a late night Cinemax movie, can be summed up with the atrocious line "Girl I promise this will be painless, painless/We'll take a trip to Planet Uranus, Uranus." He may want to start employing a ghostwriter, just so it doesn't seem like he's the world's worst songwriter.

Interestingly, it's not all about being ballerific and urban soap operas with Kelly. He makes a stab at appearing more human on tracks like "Havin' A Baby." Oddly enough, this is about having a baby. He pays musical tribute to the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings on "Rise Up" which sounds a lot like "I Believe I Can Fly." I don't know if this is a PR move to make us forget about his pending legal issues or if he's that compassionate. This could be what he meant by saying he was today's Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye.

Aside from the comedic benchmarks he has set, this is pretty crappy. Also, if you want comedy in your R and B, you can always check out Percy Miracles. The best move R. Kelly could make to achieve the Marley-Gaye status he has claimed, would be to hire a ghostwriter. Or he could just audition for "Saturday Night Live." I think he could top "D*ck In A Box" if he really applied himself.

Rating: 6/10

Bonus: R. Kelly - The Zoo

TRACK REVIEW: "AMUSEMENT PARK" - 50 CENT

That guy who got shot nine times is back. And he's a sexy roller-coaster, so to speak. "Amusement Park," the second single off his upcoming album Curtis, is another song extolling 50's virtues as a lover which I think we're all dying to know about. What does this song have to offer? More tepid crooning over a mellow-to-the-point-of-boring R&B beat. Let's not forget about dozens of double-entendres comparing his lovemaking ability to an amusement park, like "Some rides go fast, some rides go slow/You feel heights when I'm high, hell yeah, I go low." Wow, 50 brings the A game.

Hopefully, he goes back to talking about shooting haters. At the least, it would keep my attention.

MOVIE REVIEW - HOT FUZZ (2007)

Bring It!

Here comes the Fuzz! The creative team of Simon Pegg-Nick Frost-Edgar Wright return with their follow up to the Romantic-Zombie-Comedy Shaun of the Dead.

This time, the genre of choice are cop movies, in particular the buddy cop heroics found in most big budget blockbusters. At it's core (and like most buddy cop movies), it's a love story between two men, who bond after a requisite amount of friction before determining that they are both after the same objective.

Hot Fuzz focuses on Sergeant Nicholas Angel (Pegg), a British officer who focuses his entire life around his job, losing his girlfriend and the respect of the force (His arrest record is 400% better than the rest of the department making everyone look bad). After a mandatory reassignment to the small village of Sandford, Angel quickly becomes a novelty of the town as his attempts to enforce the law are rebuked by the leaders of the small community. Partnering with Frank Butterman (Frost) the eager and impressionable son of the Police Chief, Angel discovers that the many "accidents" in the village are all linked and are in fact, a series of murders.

What comes next is the smartest homage for movie geeks that I've ever seen, with references to Point Break, Leon, Bad Boys II, Matrix Revolutions, Lost Highway, Lethal Weapon, Requiem For A Dream, The Wicker Man, The Omen and their own Shaun of the Dead, among others.

With a colorful cast including Edward Woodward, Paddy Constantine, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Paul Freeman, Stuart Wilson, the brilliant Timothy Dalton and uncredited appearances by Steve Coogan, Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson, Hot Fuzz manages to find and utilize every other talented British thespian that isn't contracted to a Harry Potter film.

The creative team of Simon Pegg and co-writer/director Edgar Wright have accomplished what Grindhouse failed to do; make a love letter to the kinds of movies that they don't seem to make anymore, bordering the line between parody and dead seriousness and still make it entertaining and a damn good film to boot.

MOVIE REVIEW - GRINDHOUSE

Everyone’s going to chime in about Grindhouse, the new “double feature” from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, so I’ll make my comments short and sweet. Grindhouse is a masterpiece, as near to perfect filmmaking as I am likely to see. I’ve heard some comments that Tarantino’s entry, Death Proof, isn’t as good as Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, that it’s overly long, and boring before it suddenly gets down to the action and gets good. It’s trite to say that this is comparing apples to oranges, that the films are intentionally and appropriately different, and therefore subject to separate critiques, but Tarantino would have been making a big mistake trying to follow an action packed zombie thriller with more of the same slam-bang action. Death Proof follows a different but equally important pattern of grindhouse movies, and if you (like me) have seen enough of them, then you’ll see that in most ways Death Proof is the superior homage to the grindhouse “genre.” Tarantino’s characters speak openly about the films that inspired their piece, White Line Fever, Vanishing Point and my fave, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, but his film also hearkens back to those odd little T&A films in which the point seems to be following around attractive women for as long as possible, getting ample close-ups of their bodies along with inane yet strangely compelling chatter, then suddenly remembering that we need a plot to string it all together. In my long years searching out odd films in forgotten drive-ins, burned out movie palaces and out-of-business video stores, I’ve seen more films like this than films like Planet Terror. The fact that Tarantino can fill his film with examinations of character that raise his piece above the level of his inspirations makes his film a different kind of animal, just as Rodriguez used state of the art CGI to raise Planet Terror above the level of cheesy SFX so prevalent in the inspirations for his piece. Many people I’ve talked with have expressed an interest in seeing some of the films previewed turned into full-length features. With the possible exception of Machete, I’d cast my vote for avoiding this. Just as many of the previews for old grindhouse films are far superior to the films themselves, because they can have all the best parts showcased without any of the dreck, I’d expect these previews, filled to feature length status, would collapse under their own weight. Don’t would be a boring British thriller, Werewolf Women of the SS a nudie-bore, and Thanksgiving a shlock shocker (though, with the right script, who knows?)

2007 has been a banner year for genre films, with 300, The Host and Grindhouse leading the way. In any other year, if they were the only three films being released, we'd call this one of the best years in cinema history.

TELEVISION REVIEW - THIS AMERICAN LIFE

I recently had the opportunity to view the first four episodes of the new Showtime series, This American Life, based on the longtime NPR radio show hosted by Ira Glass. I've always enjoyed the show, which initially made me a bit hesitant toward the television series. Glass has a unique, slightly nasally and extremely soothing voice. Does this need to be translated into the television medium?

I'm happy to say, absolutely. This American Life is one of the most charming, interesting and unique shows that I've seen in some time. Glass still guides the show, occasionally through a dramatized or animated bumper and into a segment of varying length, but similar effect. Among the highlights of the episodes I screened:

• The best argument against cloning and an examination into the concept of a soul.
• How religious art can turn away an atheist in the most personal of ways.
• That passion can maintain youth.
• The art of video documentary can mend the most dysfunctional of families.
• Can a prank lift and destroy one's passion?

The show isn't for everyone. I'd imagine that many people would find it dull or pretentious. Nevertheless, I found the series to be fascinating and dare I say, heartwarming, watching normal people learn, grow, and be inspired. In a society where reality television has become the equivalent of watching a car crash or working the carnival circuit, This American Life takes place in a world in which I'm proud to be a part of.

THIS AMERICAN LIFE TRAILER

TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS-LIVING WITH THE LIVING

On their last album, Shake The Sheets, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists displayed a more stripped down sound after they whittled down to a power trio. For their fifth album, would they stay the course with more rock or would they branch out into the Celtic and dub reggae influences shown on earlier albums?

After the instrumental "The Fourth World War," the album kicks off with three politically-charged tunes, "Sons of Cain," "Army Bound" and "Who Do You Love?" "Army Bound" is a fantastic track examining the military induction as the only solution for disenfranchised youth to make their way in the world, illustrated by the opening lines: "Some modest dreams, they just don't pay out/Some modest means don't leave much way out/In every crade there's a grave now/In every owner there's a slave now." Lyrics like this make it clear why his songwriting has drawn comparison to Billy Bragg and Joe Strummer. The satirical stream-of-consciousness "Bomb Repeat Bomb" is a mixed bag. With its slightly grating stream of consciousness rantings for verses, it explores how some have become desensitized to all the Iraq war footage or more generally, war itself.

Leo isn't all politics though. "La Costa Brava" centers on how even the socially conscious need a break from the daily doses of bad news. "You know that waking up to the daily blues from waking up to the daily news, ain't nothing strange." The tin whistle solo on the nostalgic "A Bottle Of Buckie" is one the more overt Celtic influences on "Living With The Living." There are some misses like "The Lost Brigade" and "The World Stops Turning." These aren't bad songs per se, but they're just average, especially for Ted Leo.

What really stands out on Living With The Living, is Leo deciding to roll the dice and take some chances. Known for using dub reggae effects and an occasional Mighty Diamonds cover, Ted Leo's love of reggae is no secret. But "The Unwanted Things" finds Leo singing his first original reggae song, "The Unwanted Things." On this rootsy number, he channels his inner Junior Murvin and belts out the album's standout track in a sweet falsetto.

The second chance he takes his on "The Toro And The Toreador" which may be the first indie rock power ballad. (Yes, you read that correctly.) This could go one of two ways: sink or swim. Shockingly enough, it swims. It starts with an echoing guitar but segues into slow rock. (Think of The Beatles' "Something.") And what's a power ballad without a guitar solo? (Blasphemy is what it would be.) This song makes me wish I was in junior high now, so I could request it at school dances.

"Living With The Living" shows Ted Leo & The Pharmacists spreading their wings and taking chances. It leaves one wondering how they will top this.

Rating: 8/10

THE RICHES

The Riches is about a family of gypsies who, through a series of circumstances, find themselves adopting the identities of a rich couple that died in an auto accident. The idea is that this family of thieves and con artists must pretend to be rich, upper class snobs in order to, as the father says, “steal the American dream.” I am reminded of two other shows, both of which I liked quite a bit. Big Love, running currently on HBO, and Cover Me, a cool show on USA a few years ago, back when USA was trying to be FX, but with less success. Big Love stars Bill Paxton as a Mormon with three wives, trying to hide this fact in modern Utah where polygamy is outlawed. Cover Me was about a family of undercover agents working for the FBI. All three shows portray families that are forced by circumstance to hide what they are. All three deal with definitions of family that stretch the boundaries of what it means to be a family, and all three shows ultimately center around the primacy and importance of family.

Eddie Izzard plays Wayne Malloy and Minnie Driver plays his wife Dahlia. Such casting automatically makes this a show to watch. Izzard is electric as Wayne, and watching him in action, scheming, thinking and taking big risks, is a delight. The show hedges a bit in making Wayne a better person than the rest of the gypsies portrayed on the show. Izzard is no common thief; he’s a showman. He has such bravado and that we automatically want to see him succeed. His motives seem pure even if his actions aren’t. Minnie Driver has the more difficult part to play. At times I’m reminded of Jaime Pressly’s portrayal of Joy on My Name is Earl, especially the "white trash" accent and demeanor, but Driver doesn’t play the role solely for laughs. She’s a drug addict, for one, and in the second episode it’s revealed that she might even be insane. Dark stuff for a family drama, but the cast is well up to the task.

“To steal the American dream.” What does that mean? I think that’s the concept that The Riches is seeking to explore. Is it about a big house, a swimming pool, and lots of stuff? Or is it about having a safe and stable place to raise a family? If done right there’s every reason to believe that The Riches will seek interesting answers to these questions.

THE PIN-UP GIRLS OF BILL WARD

The Pin-Up Girls of Bill Ward is the most recent release from Fantagraphics editors Alex Chun and Jacob Covey in their popular Pin-Up Art and Glamour Girls series covers the art of talented and legendary Bill Ward, creator of the super-sexy “Torchy,” one of the major reasons for the introduction of the Comics Code Authority in the 1950’s. Like the earlier artists showcased in the series (Dan DeCarlo, Bill Wenzel and Don Flowers,) Bill Ward’s pin-up girls are fully realized sexual fantasies brought to exaggerated life in the way that only a cartoonist can realize them. Unlike the other artists though, and despite Alex Chun’s statement to the contrary in his excellent introduction, Bill Ward’s women are not innocent doe eyed young girls emerging into an exciting world of newfound sexuality, but fully realized man-eating vixens out for money and a good time. A Bill Ward girl knows how to best exploit her assets.

A Bill Ward girl is as likely to pick your pocket as melt your heart. His women are gold diggers, prostitutes and strippers; stunning, sexy, fantasy women who, like a black hole, draw you inexorably into their orbit, then destroy you. We could compare Ward’s attitude towards the women in his art with the women in his life, and contrast it with Dan DeCarlo’s relationships ad nauseum, but we would only glean some sad psychological insight, and that would detract from the allure of this book, which frankly is “stunning young woman boasting Barbie-like proportions- and then some…”

In one sense Bill Ward is an unusual choice for the series. The previous three artists are less known, (in the case of Dan DeCarlo less known for his pin-up work, not for his massive contributions to Archie comics and the invention of Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch and Josie and the Pussycats) and producing a book on them is long overdue. Bill Ward, on the other hand, has been covered in several books, most recently an incredible 342 page tome from Taschen. The reason I think he is an unusual choice for the Fantagraphics series is because he is so obvious a choice. I was hoping that editors Chun and Covey would give me a book full of cartoons from a lesser known but deserving artist in this field about which I will admit to knowing little, but am always pleased to learn more about.

TMNT MOVIE REVIEW

Just saw TMNT this morning at a 10:30 AM Saturday morning preview, an indication that Warner Bros. is marketing this movie directly at the tween crowd, eschewing the more lucrative teen and young adult male audience in the process. That's a shame, because the film could have found a wider audience among those fans of the original series, (who could presumably share their love of the turtles with their kids) if it had been a little smarter for the adults and less confusing for the kids.

If you know the original series at all, it won't be too confusing, it roughly follows the continuity of the other three movies and the animated series. The four ninja turtles, created by radiation, trained by a ninja rat, and named for famous renaissance painters (as we are soberly told by narrator Laurence Fishburne) team up with reporter turned adventuress April O'Neil and masked vigilante Casey Jones to stop (or help) a 3,000 year old warrior from collecting thirteen monsters and conquering the world. The thirteen monsters are there to sell more toys, as are the Gargoyle-like stone generals. The Foot Clan, the army of the long dead Shredder, a villain dispatched in the last Turtles film, is on hand, and are forced by circumstances to team up with the turtles. Actually, I guess the film is kind of confusing...

The leader of the foot clan is voiced by Ziyi Zhang and April is voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar. They are portrayed in the 3D animation as ultra hot Bratz dolls, which works, given the actresses involved. Patrick Stewart does the role that would have been Sean Connery's five years ago as the ancient warrior up to no good. The late great Mako does a wonderful job as Splinter, the rat who trained and became a father to the ninja turtles. Mako, no stranger to animation or to humor, is the voice of the demon Aku on Samurai Jack, and in his long life has contributed mightily to the kind of entertainment I love, portraying a string of memorable characters on the series Kung Fu, as well as tons of other movies. He will be missed. For some reason Kevin Smith does a turn as a diner cook.

The 3D animation is really good. It's no Pixar, but it revels in action and captures the frantic energy of the turtles perfectly. Ultimately it's a testament to how good it is when you lose yourself in the characters, and the characters are done well. Occasionally the shots get so fancy that we lose track of the action, but the fight in the rain between two characters (who I won't name, sorry, no spoilers) is great, emotional, and real. It's swords versus sais, and since sais were developed to break swords... suffice it to say that this is the best sequence in the film, and really captures the essence of the Ninja Turtles.

I read a review (probably the Boston Globe, but who can remember?) that called 300 "action porn." The reviewer meant it derisively but I found myself quite taken with the term. TMNT is action porn for the tween set, which sounds wrong, but I'll stand by it. It's great fun, talks about issues relevant to kids, and revels in the physicality of heroism in a positive way. If you were expecting more than that from a movie about radioactive turtles check out Gamera.

WILL MURRAY SPEAKS!

Will Murray spoke tonight as the keynote speaker at the opening of the Brown University weekend long celebration of the pulps, Pulp Uncovered: How Pulp Fiction Changed America. Providence has always had a special relationship with the pulps, as famous horror author HP Lovecraft made his reputation by being published in Weird Tales, the classic horror pulp of the 1930s. Murray kept his comments on Lovecraft to a minimum, apparently aware that the uncontested world’s greatest Lovecraftian scholar, ST Joshi, was in the audience, and would be addressing the topic the next day at noon.

Murray kept the talk general, and said little that fans of the pulps don’t already know. He talked about how modern audiences see the word pulp as somehow being related to being beaten to a bloody pulp, or see it as an homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, but Murray revealed (surprise!) that the word pulp comes from the kind of paper these stories were printed on. I doubt anyone in the audience didn’t know this already. Of course, it’s difficult to gauge an audience before hand, and Murray could only guess at how familiar the audience was with the material. Perhaps a more technical and less general discussion was called for.

Murray showed how one character, Nick Carter, made the transition from dime magazines to pulp magazines to paperbacks; in a way tracing the entire evolution of popular literature. He called Nick Carter an “American Sherlock Holmes” (odd, since Nick Carter started a year before Holmes) and one knowledgeable member of the audience (who shall remain nameless) muttered, “you mean Sexton Blake.” It’s a tough audience that knows the subject as well or better than the speaker.

Murray did drop one bombshell. As co-editor of the Shadow and Doc Savage reprints currently underway at Venture Graphics he recently decided to investigate how great an influence the Shadow was on the development of the Batman. In short order he discovered a story that was absolutely the basis for the first appearance of the Batman in Detective Comics #27, and will be reprinting the results later in the summer. It turns out that the Batman wasn’t so much influenced by as ripped off from the Shadow.

The death of the pulps is laid at the feet of competition from other mediums, the comics, the paperback, and especially television. It’s no accident that television in the 1950’s was wall to wall westerns, westerns were the most popular pulps at the time, and their transition to TV is a product of what Murray calls “all one continuum, all one popular culture” no matter the medium.

The art exhibit, at the John Nicholas Brown Center on 357 Benefit St was interesting, albiet small.

Pulp fiction, it seems, isn’t a genre, or a collection of genres, or simple melodrama, or even popular literature (or illiterature, as Murray quipped.) Pulp fiction is an attitude, a point of view. It’s entertainment at its most basic and distilled form. Pulp fiction is still here, in the movie 300, in the series Heroes, in Marvel’s Civil War and many other places. I’m glad the Brown University is doing this great retrospective.

BLOCKBUSTER TOTAL ACCESS REVIEW

For several years I managed two different independently owned video stores, both of which were forced to close after futilely competing against Blockbuster. Granted, these were the days before dvd. When I recently was given the opportunity to sample the Blockbuster Total Access program, the Big Blue's online/mail rental service, I was a bit hesitant. Now, please allow me to preface that I have been a happy subscriber to Netflix since June 2001. Nevertheless an opportunity to have more movies at home was too good an opportunity pass up.

Blockbuster's program has been for the most part, a positive experience. In my opinion, many of their discs are in better shape than Netflix's (sometimes newer is better) and the selection is pretty phenomenal (there have been several occasions where I have found a title on Blockbuster that hadn't appeared at Netflix yet). The program also offers several perks (none of which were of particular interest to me, but are, nevertheless a selling point).

1. You can virtually double your movies by returning your disc to a store. You can receive a new selection on the spot and the next title in your queue will ship out.
2. A monthly e-coupon allows you to receive a free game or dvd rental.
3. Recommendations are generated based on previous rentals and ratings.

All in all, despite my happiness with the program, I did run afoul with a situation that does deserve mention. A compute glitch in their system did not ship movies to me for almost three weeks. The customer service telephone number listed on the site was invalid at the time I called and my emails were sent back with a coupon attached and a promise that it would be rectified shortly.

At the three week mark, after calling a different customer service number I was informed that there was a problem on their server and that it wasn't an isolated incident. I was then informed that I shouldn't have any dvds in my queue that weren't available and that I was the cause of the delay because some of my titles weren't available immediately. Finally, the situation rectified itself and I've had no problems since.

The interface is fairly simple to use, though it appears to be much easier to use if you aren't on a Mac (which I am). The only disadvantage is that it doesn't allow you to easily adjust your queue and delete multiple titles at the same time. I also have found that titles are sometimes sent in a random order. Just this week I received a title that was behind a dozen other in stock titles from my queue.

All in all, despite my occasional frustrations and interruptions in service, I can't help but recommend the Total Access Program. If you watch dvd's frequently, it does have the edge over Netflix by giving you the opportunity to double your rentals by returning them to the store. If you love movies, Blockbuster Total Access is for you!