Pop quiz! Which is the more apt metaphor for our country’s tumultuous week?

A) A carnival of nightmares rolls into Anytown, USA and seduces the locals with devilish trickery.

B) A self-destructive captain drags his crew on a mission to hunt down a white whale, even if it means tracking the beast “round perdition’s flames.”

C) A nuclear test in the arctic awakens a terrifying beast from a prehistoric slumber and sends him on a rampage to Manhattan.

D) Metaphor, schmetaphor. Get to the point!

Alright, already. Tonight and tomorrow night at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, the American Cinematheque is presenting three films with screenplays written by L.A.’s beloved author Ray Bradbury. Tonight at 7:30 p.m. is Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) starring Jonathan Pryce and Jason Robards. Tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. is a double bill of the John Huston-directed Moby Dick (1958) starring Gregory Peck, and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), featuring a stop-motion “rhedosaurus” by visual effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. Ray Bradbury himself will be on hand to introduce the films.

And if you need brushing up on the plot of Herman Melville’s masterpiece before seeing the movie, my favorite synopsis ever of Moby Dick can be found after the jump.

Photo: Film still from Moby Dick. Courtesy of the American Cinematheque.

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The Gary Scott blog reports that suburban LA resident Paul F Little, aka Max Hardcore in the world of porn has been sentenced in Tampa for production of sadistic porn. His films are reported to involve the ingesting of various body fluids.  Tampa Bay Online has the full story.

He was found guilty on 10 counts of distributing porn by mail and Internet in Federal Court.  As a participant in one of LA’s biggest industries (reportedly $12 Billion a year) his wares catered to the sadistic side of that business.  He argued the materials were meant for the more liberal European market.  He never explained why he accepted orders from Florida which didn’t allow the material.  What, he expects us to believe he doesn’t know that each state has its own ideas on what porn is legal for sale within their borders?

The judge argued that the female actor appeared to be humiliated and in pain which would have made the films illegal.  The LA guy argued it was just good acting.  (Has anyone ever seen good acting in porn?)  The actor was reported to be in the trial at the time and according to the defense attorney: ”The person that was involved in the conduct sat [in court] with a smile on her face and wrote your honor a letter saying, ‘Judge, this was a beautiful part of my life.’ ”  The judge obviously didn’t buy it.  (Oh sweet lawd how can anyone turn down that argument?)

Aside from what a person views in their own home and right to self censorship, is anyone else even a bit concerned about the money spent to take this through trial when there are bigger issues for our criminal justice system to devote their time too? 

Have fun with the comments (we don’t censor like the Tampa online did), am off to Mo Valley for a weekend of basketball tournaments.

(PS:9:15AM forgot to add Pasadena Star News has an article and note this man is not the former Pasadena Councilman with the same name)

Hmm. It’s fun to mess with the meaning of a headline by not capitalizing or punctuating properly.

• The Ninja tells some stories about Dodger’s Security

• CandyBlog.net informs us that See’s has limited edition Pumpkin Spice Lollypops that should be available until Thanksgiving. Yay!

• Kara and her friends go see a movie solely because their friend is in it.

J Keith’s van Straaten’s photo stolen from jkeithdotnet

What’s better than Vampires? Swedish Vampires. And what’s better than Swedish Vampires? Swedish Vampires for free of course. You know what I’m talking about. Yes you do. I know you do. Shut up.

Anyway.

Tonight at the The Landmark Theater on Westwood, Mahalo is hosting a free screening of “Let The Right One In” (aka Låt den rätte komma in) which is a warm, tender story about a bullied 12 year old who falls in love with a vampire. Yes it’s a classic theme you’ve seen a million times, but this one is from Sweden! So if you need a Vampire fix tonight, that’s your best bet. Grab a seat.

No, this is not a screen grab from The Sims: Conspiracy Trial.
Film still from Chicago 10 courtesy of American Cinematheque.

Can’t find a reason to peel yourself away from Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday nights?

Are you also flat broke?

The American Cinematheque and PBS’s Independent Television Service (ITVS) have you covered.

Well, at least for one Tuesday a month.

Starting tomorrow night (September 30), ITVS will begin screening one free documentary a month on select Tuesdays at either the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood or the Aero Theater in Santa Monica.

Tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. at the Egyptian it’s Chicago 10, a film that explores the infamous 1968 Chicago Conspiracy Trial of eight anti-war protesters. Partially animated, and featuring the voices of Hank Azaria (Abbie Hoffman), Mark Ruffalo (Jerry Rubin), and Jeffrey Wright (Bobby Seale), the film received a lot of buzz at Sundance in 2007 but failed to make a splash when it opened in limited release in February.

So here’s a wonderful opportunity to see it on the big screen. It was also recently announced that there will be two sequels to this film, so best catch up now or risk being labeled a “square” by your peers.

And in November, ITVS is screening I.O.U.S.A., a film about America’s impending debt crisis. This film also received a limited release, quietly sneaking into a few theaters back in August.

I can think of 700 billion reasons why the film’s producers may be printing more reels as we speak.

Red Hat Lady meets Yoda with the help of Obiwan

The Route 66 Parade and car show was Duarte’s big deal event.  The car show and park were a bust, barely two dozen cars and tent upon tent of bargain basement “crap show” merchandise stuffed into the park.  Sorry metblog readers, it hasn’t been like that the last few years and had I known the changes I would not have put this up as an event worth seeing.  I’m not a fan of the changes and won’t be going back.

However, the day was not a total loss as the Obi Wan art car was interesting.  Outside of CA most states won’t let you get away with gluing on tons of stuff onto your car and making it into an “art car”.  Something to do with not having an annual safety inspection is the likely culprit why people get to run amok with their art car projects.  This one drew a crowd.  My favorite was the Red Hat Lady and her interactions with the various star wars characters who ventured out from under their blue tent.

More pics after the jump. (more…)

The impressive lineup at AFI's Night at the Movies

If you were waiting til midnight tonight to try and get tickets to AFI’s Night at the Movies, you may be too late. While the official on sale date, promoted by both AFI and the Arclight, is September 17th, a special AFI member only link has been making the rounds, and is now on the Arclight’s homepage, allowing tickets to be purchased by anyone.

Alas, the screening of “The Jerk” introduced live by Steve Martin has already sold out. The rest of the evenings shows are likely to soon follow, including appearance by Sean Connery before “The Man Who Would Be King,” Jodie Foster ahead of “The Silence of the Lambs,” and Keanu Reeves giving a “whoa” in person before “The Matrix.”

After discovering that tickets were already on sale, and even already being scalped on CraigsList for $100 each, I contacted the Arclight, where a manager told me that AFI Members were able to buy tickets a day early, but insisted tickets wouldn’t be available to the general public until tomorrow. After I pointed him to the link on their site (under “AFI members”) where anyone, including the general public could purchase tickets, and that the “AFI members only link”  was being sent around the internet, he pointed out this was entirely an AFI event, and Arclight was merely the venue. (more…)

From the looks of last night’s sold out screening of Barbet Schroeder’s Maitresse at the Egyptian Theater, the first of its new monthly Fetish Film Nights inaugurated and hosted by Antebellum Gallery’s Rick Castro, one could draw the conclusion that BDSM’s time has come to enter the mainstream.

About three quarters of the audience remained to participate in a spirited conversation led by Castro (a longtime champion of fetish as a lifestyle) about the film, its depiction of BDSM and the viewers’ first hand experiences with the subject. There were the professional (dominatrices) and the curious, the hardcore and the dabblers; doms and subs; gay, straight and bisexual; young, middle-aged and older couples and singles, dressed for a night out at the movies, not the dungeon. The talk was, by turns, an unflinching, intelligent, cheery, serious and respectful exploration and celebration of what is becoming everyday BDSM culture.

After the discussion, 30 or so viewers followed Castro back to his gallery around the corner to continue talking. As is commonplace these days, the presidential race came up. One man opined that if McCain is elected, “all of this might become illegal,” gesturing to the erotic art on the gallery walls. I asked Castro if he felt like a canary in a coal mine.

Unflappably ebullient, he said, “I think of myself as a harbinger of things to come.”

Fetish Film Nights returns to the Egyptian on October 17th for a screening of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, The 120 Days of Sodom.

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

I was lucky enough to catch a private screening of Jessica Yu’s Ping Pong Playa a few weeks ago and I absolutely loved it.

The film follows the antics of Christopher C-Dub Wang, who thinks he could have been an NBA star if genetics hadn’t conspired against him. Instead, he’s got to defend his family’s ping pong legacy and see if he can rise to the challenge of being the ping pong star he never wanted to be.

It’s been reviewed a lot of different places already, including on 8Asians by Lily, so I’m not going to repeat anything that’s already been said.

But I wanted to give you a heads up that Ping Pong Playa is opening tonight in L.A. (see the Ping Pong Playa website, click Screenings for details) and that there is an afterparty you can attend for free with your ticket stub!

Los Angeles: Friday, September 5. 10pm
Central Hollywood
1710 Las Palmas Ave, Los Angeles
Free with movie ticket stubs before 11pm ($10 cover after)

Even if you don’t catch the party this weekend, I highly recommend check out Ping Pong Playa while you can on the big screen… it’s a fun, funny movie.

For those of you who understand Mandarin, I think they did a great job of inserting Mandarin conversations into the film. And I especially enjoyed Roger Fan’s “chinglish” conversations with his parents… sounds a lot like me when insert English into my conversations when I can’t think of the Chinese words.

When was the last time you went to a drive in movie?

I don’t know about you but as a kid I loved the drive in.  Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to go to the movies, drive ins were already a dying breed.  Before they tore down the drive in theater in my hometown I saw The Blues Brothers, Star Trek II (a.k.a. the best Star Trek movie)  and E.T there, but the movie I remember most was the last one I ever saw in a drive in, 1985’s god awful (and inaccurately named) Perfect starring John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis.  My family and I saw it just before the theater was shut down for good, when it had fallen into disrepair and they stopped enforcing the no alcohol policy.  We arrived early with a van full of people and beer and even that didn’t help the movie.  Unfortunately, by the time the credits mercifully rolled none of the adults could drive and I was only 11 so we saw Perfect twice that night.  It was a terrible way to say goodbye to the drive in.  In the years since the Perfect disaster I’ve wanted to have a better drive in experience, with a good movie or at least one that isn’t awful.  Of course, drive in’s are hard to come by in LA.

If you would like to experience the fun of the drive in right here in LA I’ve got good news.  Hollywood Mobile Movie has teamed up with The Steve Allen Theater to present classic drive in features for only 5 bucks every Friday night through Halloween.  You just show up. park your car, tune in your radio and watch the movie.  No hassle and no need to give my parents field sobriety tests.  The gates open at 8:30 on Friday nights with all screenings starting in the parking lot at 9 with (in case of overflow it will also be shown in the theater).

This Friday’s feature will be The Demon Seed from 1977 starring the always fantastic Julie Christie.  A full list of screenings can be found at the Mobile Movie site along with everything you’ll need to know to enjoy the movies.

The Steve Allen Theater is located at 4773 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood (two blocks west of Vermont).