The latest writing from all your favorite Screengrab refugees
King Sunny Adé – Best of the Classic Years (2003). A bunch of tracks recorded at unknown times in the early 1970s. King Sunny Adé is an extraordinary afrobeat guitarist who plays a form of Nigerian Juju music with considerable appeal for Western audiences. Unlike Fela Kuti, who also had a background in highlife music, Adé’s music is more focused on beat than rhythm. Adé’s guitarwork is amazing, too, with a nimbility and offbeat rhythmic sense that doesn’t really have a Western counterpart.
When Survivor debuted on CBS in the summer of 2000, few of the viewers who tuned in out of curiosity for what sounded like a weird hybrid of Gilligan’s Island and Battle of the Network Stars could have predicted that, a decade later, the granddaddy of the reality genre would be celebrating its twentieth season with an all-star matchup of Heroes vs. Villains. In recognition of this milestone, Nerve looks back at the ten moments most responsible for Survivor’s enduring popularity.
Kepler – various tracks (1999 – 2003). My buddy Mike Sheridan was Kepler’s drummer, and this is a comp he sent me in 2003 of various album tracks from their first two full-lengths as well as a few non-album tracks. Some excellent slowcore/alt-country stuff here, pitched somewhere between Low, the Red House Painters, and Mojave Three.
![[008.JPG]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WckQavBHSmw/S1-sKZDzf3I/AAAAAAAAC9k/shJmRgGDe0E/s1600/008.JPG)
by Paul Clark
I recently realized that, considering all I’ve written about the Muriels Awards in the past four years, I’ve written precious little about the inspiration for their name. For those of you who don’t know, the name for the Muriels came from that of my little guinea pig, who I’d bought a few months prior to getting these awards started. And while the Muriels name was originally intended as a placeholder until a better suggestion came along, I think it’s worked out pretty well, don’t you?
Oh, God…my wife just read in Entertainment Weekly that the Oscars are doing that horrible, boring thing again where five actors give long, boring tributes to ALL FIVE ACTORS in ALL FOUR ACTING CATEGORIES!
Which means, once again, the Independent Spirit Awards (on IFC, March 5th, hosted by Eddie Izzard) will almost certainly be the most entertaining awards show of the weekend, as some of the people below win trophies, curse like sailors, then disappear back into indie obscurity (and/or take the stage of the Kodak Theater) shortly thereafter.
2010 SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS
BEST FEATURE
(500) Days Of Summer - Producers: Mason Novick, Jessica Tuchinsky, Mark Waters, Steven J. Wolfe
Amreeka - Producers: Paul Barkin, Christina Piovesan
Precious – Producers: Lee Daniels, Gary Magness, Sarah Siegel-Magness
Sin Nombre – Producer: Amy Kaufman
The Last Station – Producers: Bonnie Arnold, Chris Curling, Jens Meuer
Propped up by its writers’ Sexy Beast pedigree and ability to enlist a couple of that superior film’s stars, 44 Inch Chest parades profanity, jumbled chronology, and limp psychodrama but proves woefully short on character development or narrative structure. With a “You poof!” here and a “You cunt!” there, Louis Mellis and David Scinto’s expletive-laden script mistakes vulgar tough-guy bluster as a be-all end-all as it details—through pretentious flashbacks and dream sequences typified by self-conscious framing and use of music—the efforts of thug Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone) to cope with the revelation that his beloved wife Liz (Joanne Whalley) is leaving him for a young, studly waiter.
Fans of earlier films by the thrice Oscar-nominated Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?) may be dismayed to find the director reduced to helming the latest Nicholas Sparks adaptation, but they shouldn’t be too surprised. Back in the glory days of the late, lamented Miramax, Hallström was the Weinsteins’ go-to guy for middlebrow arthouse romances like Chocolat and The Shipping News. He’s always had a sentimental streak a mile wide, so it was only a matter of time before tonier literary sources gave way to the insipid work of the master of schmaltz.
by Leonard Pierce
In his entry on art-rock enigmas The Residents in the Trouser Press Record Guide, Ira Robbins speculates that the reason they chose to remain anonymous was to prevent any gossip about their personal lives, leaving nothing to contemplate but the music. As The Residents enter their 40th year with a Feb. 2 date at Stubb’s, it’s clear that just the opposite is true: The music has won them plenty of devoted fans, but what’s garnered the most attention is their total unwillingness to play it straight about who or what they really are.
Filmmakers as dissimilar as Luis Buñuel and Kevin Smith have made careers out of blending the scatological with the sacred, but former Austinite Boaz Dror takes that volatile mixture to its most illogical extreme in his directorial debut, The Holy Deuce. Before the Austin-shot comedy about a freeloading roommate who births a turd bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Virgin Mary—and unwittingly sparks a religious cult—has its local première at the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar on Feb. 5, The A.V. Club shot the shit with Dror about how he shot the shit.
“When I lived in Las Vegas, I had plenty of luck. The trouble is, most of it was bad.” So John Alighieri (Steve Buscemi) introduces himself in voiceover at the beginning of Saint John of Las Vegas—and, yes, the film is in fact loosely “inspired” by Dante, complete with a guide named Virgil (Romany Malco). Writer/director Hue Rhodes’s debut doesn’t really do anything with the reference point besides hope some gravitas rubs off.
