Past Stories
THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES
Art, in any form, is meant to inspire an emotional response, and film is a medium that has the most tools at its disposal to achieve that. Between music, images and the natural tendency to be empathetic to the emotional…
SURFWISE
There is a tendency to want to swallow documentaries whole as “truth” just as we read non-fiction books that way, or watch news reports on TV. But the real “truth” is that all of those things are merely ...
NIM’S ISLAND
It’s really nice to know that Hollywood studios haven’t entirely abandoned the 10-year-old girl as a target audience. After all, they’ve clearly put the big bucks behind Nim’s Island, a sweetly refreshin...
DOOMSDAY
Paying homage to your influences is a time-honored tradition in art, but Doomsday, from writer/director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent), although surely intended as homage, reads more like a montage cribbing the best ...
21
21 makes winning at blackjack in Vegas seem absurdly easy. By using “Basic Strategy” (a system of play that reduces a dealer’s advantage to 1%) and a “simple,” method of card counting (as explained...
THE BANK JOB
The Bank Job is “based on a true story”—the most freeing words in a filmmaker’s repertoire, right alongside “inspired by true events.” Both phrases give a project an air of authenticity while...
THE X-FILES: REVELATIONS
Make no bones about it, The X-Files: Revelations is a shameless marketing tool. The new two-disc set contains eight episodes (spanning six seasons of the TV series) deemed “essential” by creator Chris Carter and lon...
DRILLBIT TAYLOR
Based on the Russian-nesting-doll progression of Seth Rogen in Knocked Up, Jonah Hill in Superbad and Troy Gentile in Drillbit Taylor, it wouldn’t seem out of left field to expect the next entry in Apatowmania to be Look ...
DEFINITELY, MAYBE
Lately romantic comedies have had a distressing lack of believability or chemistry between the lead actors, and in that genre nothing could be worse. Did anyone really believe that Katherine Heigl and what’s-his-face were...
The Small Screen
Charles Mingus once said, “making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” And that’s exactly what Romanian writer-director Cristian Mun...
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
When Sandy Powell does the costumes for a movie, you know you’re always in for a treat. More than any other costume designer, Powell—an Oscar winner for The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love—manages to design wa...
SEMI-PRO
Sometimes in basketball the ball bounces off the rim and seems to hang there, undecided. Enough English on it and it’ll probably go in, but there’s an equal chance it will fall the other way and result in nothing. S...
CASSANDRA’S DREAM
When it all comes down to it, Cassandra’s Dream (written and directed by Woody Allen) is all about priorities, and how one person’s priorities can shift another person’s priorities, etc. Brothers Ian (Ewan McG...
STRANGE WILDERNESS
It is impossible to know if the filmmakers behind Strange Wilderness were, in fact, stoned while they made it, but one suspects as much. From Happy Madison Productions (Adam Sandler’s company) the film follows Peter Gaulk...
INDIANA JONES: THE ADVENTURE COLLECTION
Just in time for the release of the long-awaited Indy 4, this collection of the three prior Indiana Jones films serves to rev-up casual fans for the new installment but doesn’t add a whole lot for those who bought the&hel...
I’M NOT THERE
What’s great about I’m Not There is what’s great about any Todd Haynes film: He really doesn’t give a shit if people don’t “get” what he’s doing, he’s making his movies for ...
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
It’s hard not to place the failure of The Golden Compass as a movie squarely on the shoulders of Chris Weitz (About a Boy) as he not only directed it, but also adapted it from Philip Pullman’s acclaimed young adult&...
CLOVERFIELD
Amazingly, what J.J. Abrams and company have managed to do in Cloverfield is to make something kind of hard look deceptively simple. The movie can be easily summed up as a monster movie á la Godzilla shown through the ey...
JUNO
It’s not really a surprise that “celebrity screenwriter” Diablo Cody receives the star treatment on the DVD version of Juno—last year’s little pregnant-teen comedy that could—although it&rsqu...
The Small Screen
If Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) ever chooses to make a horror film, we can expect that it would be truly terrifying, since he’s managed to make a historical epic of the American oil industry (based on an...
DETHKLOK
Wielding an inordinate amount of social power—and being the self-proclaimed 12th largest economy on Earth—Dethklok may be the most brutally dominating metal band ever. On TV. But the riff-slinging metal heads may be...
HOBO JAZZ CD RELEASE PARTIES
Buy ‘em by the sack: hot, tasty nuggets of sonic goodness you need to crank up/link to/check out/gawk at, in the IE and beyond . . .
HOBO JAZZ CD RELEASE PARTIES
The finest band in all the IE?…
THE UNFORGIVEN LIVE FOREVER
THE UNFORGIVEN LIVE FOREVER
Memorial for the great ‘80s IE band that should’ve been mega, even though with those poodle haircuts, it’s kinda hard to imagine 20 years later. Still, this is the most compre...
INLAND EMPIRE MUSIC AWARD WINNERS
INLAND EMPIRE MUSIC AWARD WINNERS
All the cool people won, including our personal faves like the Casket Salesmen and Conspiracy of Thought. The rest? We’re sure you’re deserving of our precious ink, but we can...
UP TO 11
ALLISON SATTINGER, WEDNESDAY AT THE PERFORMANCE LOFT
Sweet-voiced, piano-plinking chanteuse reminds you of a more lofty, soulful Patty Griffin, with the songs to match. If you miss her, she’ll also be at Back to the...
upto11
THE IRON MAIDENS AT TREMORS, SATURDAY
Everyone’s favorite all-female Iron Maiden tribute band—are there any others? Because these days, only a woman could hit the impossibly high notes in the chorus of “...
