And we’re back for a new week with trailers and tunes and posters and all kinds of good stuff! Also some strange and upsetting stuff, because that’s life, now more than ever now. Can’t have the happiness without the horror. I’m kind of over living in interesting times, to be honest. I’m really over it. May you live in boring times. That is my daily benediction.
Here are some things I’ve been thinking about over the last couple days.
JOHN CARPENTER!
This is “old news,” but it never gets old, plus this is extended video of the ceremony where friends and colleagues and admirers gathered to see John Carpenter get his star. I am tempted to leave this column here and go watch a John Carpenter movie, but let’s try to keep going for the moment. THE THING can wait. THE THING is always waiting.
SWAMP DOGG!
Swamp Dogg is incredible. And his pool… if you’ve heard his album Love, Loss, and Autotune, or more specifically, if you’ve seen the cover, you’ve met his pool already. You can while away a good half an hour just by looking through Swamp Dogg’s decades of album covers and by reading their titles, but don’t forget to listen to the music. And now he’s got an entire movie! This is a documentary looking at an amazing and amazingly underrrated figure in American music, in his twilight years and living with a couple musician buddies out in Southern California’s beautiful San Fernando Valley. It played to raves at SXSW. Magnolia Pictures is releasing it on May 2nd.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!
If you’re a Springsteen fan, you know about Tracks, the box set from 1998 including rarities, B-sides, and alternate versions of already-released tunes. That was four albums’ worth of music at 66 songs. Tracks II is going to be 83 songs. These are full records that have gone unreleased until now. Well, June 27th.
Here’s the trailer:
Here’s a song off Tracks II called “Rain In The River:”
It was humbling and sobering to realize that Bruce, who has been out in the public eye for all my life, is only a couple years younger than my parents. Time is luck, and nobody lasts forever. It’s great to know Bruce is still out there playing rock music. It will be good to have new (old) stuff to listen to. DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE, a movie about the making of the album Nebraska (maybe my favorite of them all), will be out this year.
Last year was for Dylan. This year is for Springsteen. No biopic will ever be better than listening to the music, but it’s a victory lap.
THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME!
New Wes Anderson movie! You know the deal. This one stars Benicio Del Toro, who in terms of Wes Anderson movies, was last seen in THE FRENCH DISPATCH. I enjoy seeing how this repertory company of huge-name actors just keeps rolling, like that ball of Critters in CRITTERS 2. This new one has so many actors that half of them aren’t even listed in this trailer. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m never as excited to see a Wes Anderson movie as I am when I’m actually watching one. Beforehand, I’m always thinking, “Maybe that’s a little bit too much of the Wes Anderson thing for me…” but then I get there and I’m happy. 2023’s ASTEROID CITY was one of my favorites of that year.
THE DARK MONEY GAME…
This is a two-night two-movie documentary from Alex Gibney (GOING CLEAR), looking at the poisonous influence of money in politics. It continues the work done by Jane Mayer in her essential book Dark Money, a must-read for all Americans. This should be a democracy; that was the idea. Right-wing billionaires have been pouring money in for years. That’s not partisan opinion. That’s measurable fact, proven by the research of Jane Mayer and journalists like her. The election in Wisconsin, with that dork waving around million-dollar checks, was the right saying the quiet part out loud. The outcome was a rare victory. It does not usually go that way.
Anyway, here’s the trailer. I’ll be right back after punching a wall.
SOUTH PARK!
Season 27 is coming on July 9th. I haven’t been a regular viewer of South Park in a long time, but I’m always interested to poke my head in and see what’s going on there. I wish I could have seen this trailer without knowing ahead of time what it was promoting. It would have been so funny to hear the slow dramatic echoes of “Blame Canada” before putting it all together. Whatever! It’s funny anyway!
THE DIRE WOLF IS BACK!
I feel like I’ve seen about six hundred movies to suggest that this kind of thing is a bad idea, but scientists have brought back an extinct species called the dire wolf. The adorable pups here are named Romulus and Remus, and they are adorable, but just try not to think about how the myth of Romulus and Remus ends. I guess the most optimistic reading is that it ends with the creation of Rome, but Rome fell. This piece from ABC News ends with almost an afterthought: Some say bringing back extinct species could upset “fragile ecosystems.” Is the human body a fragile ecosystem? Life finds a way… until life is going for your throat and causing you death. But the pups are adorable, and that’s the point.
Colossal Biosciences is the name of the company that is either making miracles happen or messing with forces man was never meant to tamper with. Depending on your outlook.
PRIMITIVE WAR!
Perfectly timed to come after that last thing, here’s a trailer for PRIMITIVE WAR, which “ain’t no walk in the park.” Took me a minute to realize this is a period piece. It’s about soldiers in Vietnam who are hunted by… well, you recognize what that skull represents. Also featured for a few second in this trailer: What appears to be Jeremy Piven’s worst performance!
RIDLEY SCOTT AND YAPHET KOTTO TALK ABOUT ‘ALIEN!’
This just popped up on my YouTube feed. Usually I only see garbage when I look through that, but this is so not garbage.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR!
The movie is out on July 25th so the promotion is starting to really accelerate, with new posters popping up and new trailers inevitably approaching.
I like the faux-‘60s feel of this one in particular.
Also, Marvel Legends teased this image late last week, which confirms that the action figures are on the way too. I’ve got a few Things already, but I think I can make room for one more.
ICE-T MEETS
PIMPBOT 5000!
Again, this just popped up on my YouTube. Haven’t seen this since it originally aired. Sometimes the algorithm does me right.
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Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Bruce Springsteen, Columns, daily grindhouse, David Kearney, Dinosaurs, Guitar Shorty, ice-t, Jenny Lewis, Jerry Williams, john carpenter, Johnny Knoxville, Jon Abrams, Larry Clemons, Magnolia Pictures, Moogstar, Ridley Scott, Superheroes, Swamp Dogg, Trailers, Wes Anderson, Yaphet Kotto
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