The latest writing from all your favorite Screengrab refugees
A rotten retread in the vein of Platinum Dunes’ Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th do-overs, A Nightmare on Elm Street regurgitates key visuals from Wes Craven’s iconic original but nonetheless fails to mimic or update with any competence. Helmed by Samuel Bayer (director of Nirvana’s classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video), the story once again focuses on a group of teens hunted in their dreams by Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earl Haley).
by Scott Von Doviak & Andrew Osborne
SCOTT: One, two, Freddy’s coming for you… or maybe not. This weekend looks like the calm before the storm, as the summer blockbuster season is set to kick off next Friday with the release of Iron Man 2. Until then, we’ve got the latest Wes Craven reboot to contend with, as the erstwhile master of horror continues to pad his retirement account by selling off what remains of his legacy. The recent remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left traded in the primal Manson-era skeeviness of the originals for slick, machine-tooled “thrills,” and while there’s probably no good reason to expect anything different from A Nightmare on Elm Street, I do see a couple of potential points of interest. As it happens, last Halloween I watched and reviewed every existing Elm Street movie, and one thing that struck me as a missed opportunity was the failure to explore Fred Krueger’s early career as a child-killer and his subsequent capture and torture by the good citizens of Springwood. Word has it that the new version does go a little more in-depth with the nightmare man’s pre-dreamworld life. Then there’s star Jackie Earle Haley, who was the best thing about the Watchmen movie as hard-boiled vigilante Rorschach and might be able to transform Freddy into something scarier than Henny Youngman with razor fingernails.
Body horror of a most repulsive kind, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) pushes at, and finally barrels straight through, the boundaries of modern cinematic shock-imagery. Tom Six’s exploitation film is designed to elicit not simply revulsion but urgent questions of “why?”, as his story – about two American tourists who fall victim to a German doctor’s lunatic experiment – delivers on its insane premise without ever quite intimating an underlying reason for staging such madness in the first place.
by Andrew Osborne
Filmgoers who recently saw trailers for The Karate Kid and A Nightmare on Elm Street would be forgiven for thinking they’d somehow traveled back to the 1980s in some kind of time-reversing Jacuzzi. But the 2010 bumper crop of remakes is just another example of Hollywood’s typical, cynical business motto: why cook up something new when you can reheat stale leftovers? Planet of the Apes, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland… the list of inferior remakes goes on and on, and we haven’t even cleared the Tim Burton aisle yet!
On the other hand, perhaps what seems like a depressing dearth of fresh ideas in the film industry is really just an admirable commitment to recycling. And, to be fair, repetition can sometimes be the stepmother of invention: thus, in the same way a talented chef can transform a pretty good loaf of day-old bread into a truly memorable New Orleans bread pudding, the following twice-told tales are Nerve’s favorite films that improved on their source material.
Linda Thompson – Dreams Fly Away: A History of Linda Thompson (released 1996, recorded early 70s-mid 80s), Fashionably Late (2002), and Versatile Heart (2007).
Linda Thompson Kenis was the greatest instrument for the music of Richard Thompson. The guy might be the greatest guitarist of his generation and he might have dozens of other instruments in his tool belt, but his music never sounded better than when his then-wife Linda breathed sweetness and light into his trademark darkness. Her nuance, her dramatic reading, her vulnerability in channeling his words and music: these create a listening experience that is nothing short of sublime.
Leonard Pierce and Nate Patrin join the panel to discuss the ways in which our parents are bitterly disappointed with us all. FUN! Then, ringtones and Leonard hitting on Olivia. Also, the return of the Word of the Week!
by Andrew Osborne & Scott Von Doviak
Our two critics pore over the new releases and argue over what to see. In a perpetually crowded field, we’ll help you narrow down your options.
ANDREW: So, full disclosure: I haven’t been following my own advice in this column. My Top One Movie last week was The Secret in Their Eyes… but I wound up spending my popcorn money on the so-so big-budget B-movie Kick-Ass instead. I mention this lapse in the interest of journalistic integrity, and will try to more accurately predict my own viewing habits in the future…starting with this column, where I’m going on record to admit that I may not see any of the week’s thin crop of releases.
by Andrew Osborne
There are shows that most of the cool kids watch (The Sopranos, The Wire, etc.) and guilty pleasure shows with passionate cult followings, where members of the cult keep telling non-believers, “No, really! It’s good!” (like Glee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, etc.)…
…and then there are the under-the-radar shows we don’t really proselytize for as much because we see the flaws but keep watching anyway. And because they’re unsung, we have a more quiet, private relationship, and maybe feel a little protective of them: the non-watercooler shows, the ones that feel like they belong just to us.
Liars – They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top (2001), Atheists Reconsider (split EP with Oneida, 2002), Fins To Make Us More Fish-Like (EP, 2002), Peel Sessions (EP, 2002), They Were Wrong So We Drowned (2004), Drum’s Not Dead (2006), and Liars (2007). The early Liars brought the disco-punk with a vengeance, although their damaged art tendencies made them far more interesting than the Raptures of the world. The split with Oneida seems like it would be extraordinary but neither band is at their best. Fins and the Peel Sessions are both pretty great, but they’re the last of the dance-punk sound. So We Drowned is a concept album about witches that has a muddy, murky, brilliant sound and Drum’s Not Dead brings that sound to fruition. The self-titled album is a return to more straight-ahead rock (parts of it even sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain). Fantastic band.
by Leonard Pierce
Call him the Pete Best of reality shows, or the Andrew Ridgeley of televised singing competitions—just don’t call him out on national television. That’s the lesson Ryan Seacrest learned on Wednesday night when he made a botched joke about Brian Dunkleman, who co-hosted American Idol in its first season before making one hell of a botched career move. Dunkleman, who’s since worked on Celebrity Fit Club, done some voice-over work, and gotten plenty of comedic mileage out of his woeful detour, spoke with TV.com about what he’s up to these days, and why Seacrest should leave the jokes to the professionals.
TV.com: You’ve mentioned that you don’t watch American Idol, but when Ryan Seacrest mentioned your name, you got a pretty warm response from the audience.
Brian Dunkleman: Yeah, that was very cool. People really came to my defense, which is a satisfying thing.
