Can we be honest with each other for a moment? I’m not much of a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh sure I like the majority of songs, and the dance numbers aren’t half-bad and Meat Loaf makes anything awesome. Plus Tim Curry is a cinematic B-movie God and Riff Raff is a truly outstanding character. So yes, there is plenty to like about The Rocky Horror Picture Show even if I do think the whole thing is a bit overblown.

But lets be honest here. The movie loses serious steam by the third act as it desperately searches for a single decent joke or running gag to use with even minimal effectiveness. Plus Magenta creeps the hell out of me. But I think my biggest complaint about the film is that the fans, well, suck.

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I first was introduced to the work of Alex Karpovsky back in 2006 when The Hole Story was screened at the Minneapolis/St Paul International Film Festival. The Hole Story was an incredibly unique film that seamlessly melded fiction and non-fiction into a wonderfully funny and melancholy story about one man’s dream to try and make a pilot for his television show.

With Woodpecker Karpovsky once again uses his unique style of mixing fact and fiction, this time focusing on the fervor surrounding the sightings of the previously presumed extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the bayous of eastern Arkansas. Following one ardent bird watcher (Jon Hyrns) as he attempts to become the first person to definitively prove the elusive birds existence, Karpovsky also interviews many of the locals who are both thankful and frustrated by the birds sudden reappearance.

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Easy week for recommendations, as there is a plainly obvious one for both new theatrical releases and DVD releases, despite both actually offering up some decent content after several weeks of crapitude.

My DVD pick for next Tuesday is The Rape of Europa, a documentary on World War II that is quite unlike any other documentary on World War II. It focuses on the priceless artworks and artifacts that the Nazi’s stole during the course of WWII and how the Allied powers attempted to reclaim them. It also offers an interesting perspective on how the Allied forces attempted to fight battles in cities that were literally priceless works of art themselves. It is a fascinating documentary, and well worth watching even for those who hate “war films”.

My recommendation for theatrical releases today is also an easy pick, the Coen brothers newest comedic offering, Burn After Reading. I had the pleasure of seeing a screening of it last week and I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. It is a fairly dark comedy, and word of warning it has several moments of graphic violence, and it fits in perfectly well with the Coen’s other comedy films. It’s not quite The Big Lebowski, but it isn’t far off either.

As always trailers are after the break!

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Lots of interesting stuff to talk about today; The Dark Knight, my little sister’s upcoming wedding, a new addition to the Where the Long Tail Ends family and maybe even a review of Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil’s Son-In-Law. Now normally I would have a totally self indulgent opening to bump up the word count before I go into my review, but today I feel like changing things up a bit in honor of the unconventional Petey Wheatstraw. For a brief moment in time I even considered rhyming the review, but I’m quite certain that would have driven me, and possibly you, insane.

But like I said earlier, I have other matters to discuss before I tackle Petey Wheatstraw. First up is the incredibly thick cloud of hyperbole surrounding The Dark Knight. Now I liked the film, quite a bit actually, but for people to make this out like the second coming of The Godfather is more then enough to choke a donkey. Yes Heath Ledger is outstanding in possibly one of the first great performances of the year, but could we hold up on the Oscar talk until, I don’t know, the year is over with? (more…)

This weekend I traveled to my elder sister’s house for a pig roast. The reason for this event is that my younger sister will be getting married next month and the two soon to be joined families were getting together to celebrate. It was to be a day of food, family and binge drinking. Unfortunately, I had to close the day before the big gala, which meant I would get home after midnight only to get up seven hours later so I could drive five hours to southern Wisconsin. It wasn’t exactly one of my better ideas, but I didn’t have many options.

Now I’m sure you might be wondering why Anna doesn’t drive and it is a pretty simple answer, she doesn’t. You see we have this rule (Well, it’s her rule which means it is my rule) that she drives when we go visit her family, and I drive when we visit mine. This leads to some disparity in the hours logged behind the wheel for a few reasons. First, her family only lives two hours away in Brainerd, MN. None of my relatives are any closer then five hours away. Second, she doesn’t drive during inclement weather be it rain, sleet or the evening.

Perhaps you might have caught as to how these rules might limit the potential to fairly allocate our drive time. You would have caught this because I informed you about the issue beforehand. Basically, unless it is a sunny day while we are driving to Brainerd, Anna isn’t driving. It doesn’t matter if I only got a few hours of sleep or if I have had an appendage lopped off, the driving is all on me.

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I committed a bit of a faux pas recently, I bragged on an Internet message board at how punctual I have been with my reviews. While I’ve had a few complications in finding the movies I want to review, I’ve been pretty good at getting the film watched before the weekend ends, thus giving me a day or so to write my flowery prose. Then Netflix went and shipped me a copy of Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright, rather then Michele Soavi’s StageFright.

This, as you probably assume, this caused a bit of a dilemma. First off, what the hell do I do for a movie review? Do I pick something different? Or should I just review the film they sent me? But more importantly, how do I write an intro for this?

You see I wanted to write about how I dragged a small group of people to a beer tasting out in St. Louis Park that was taking place at a new specialty beer store that was opening called The Four Firkins. The store was devoted entirely to imported beers and domestic specialty brews. They were having their Grand Opening on Saturday, and to celebrate several local breweries were giving out free samples for people to try. And while Summit is probably the best known of the breweries that were present, I was going because Surly was giving out samples.

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