Brave New Filmmaker

Jim Gilliam sits with his back board-stiff against the headrest of his bed, his legs dangling off the end. That's life when you're 6-foot-9. He has no hair, and he's about as white as they make white guys. He's not making a fashion statement, not trying to replace the lead singer of Midnight Oil. The breathing …

Bushwhacked

Driving north along Silverado Canyon Road, past the Silverado Cafe, the fire station and post office, you climb uphill to a stand of carob trees. On the left side of the road is Silverado Creek and, beyond the creek, Connie Nelson's home, a green and white clapboard cottage and horse corral wedged up against a steep …

Diary of a Mad County

Wednesday, May 17 Results of a 10-year study are released today showing that, pound for pound, women get drunk faster than men. The study, commissioned by the National Organization of Bros and Dudes (NOBD), will be published in the June edition of the group's scientific journal, Greatest News Ever. Thursday, May 18 The O.C. ends …

Lucky X III

When kids of all ages discuss comic books and superheroes, there is inevitably one question that comes up time and again: If that one guy and that other guy had a fight, who would win? Comics companies occasionally indulge these debates with special issues pitting Thing against Hulk, or Wolverine versus Spider-Man, but the results …

Trendzilla

The notion of a purse made from woven-together seat belts is such a natural idea that it really makes you want to hate Dana and Melanie Harvey for stumbling on the idea nine years ago while restoring their 1950 Buick, and for building it into a strapping (sorry) little concern in downtown Santa Ana. Except …

Sorrow Floats

W.H. Auden once dubbed the 20th century the Age of Anxiety, but it's beginning to look as if a lot of people may not be up anymore to the sustained psychological tension that's the hallmark of anxiety (you're anxious because you're afraid of something you can't quite name, but at least you're fighting it), and that …

Library Music

THE SCRUFFS, WANNA MEET THE SCRUFFS? (2002, REV-OLA) The Scruffs came up in Memphis after Big Star as part of a bubbling pond of little fishes who never really got theirs, and although this is sold back to us future people as Big Star #2—and although you can definitely tell they heard “Kizza Me” enough …

Special Screenings

Robert Mitchum stars as Harry Powell, a preacher whose down-home manners and lazy charm mask a perverse, truly malignant soul. When he comes to a small Southern town populated by yokels who all seem to have stumbled out of a Norman Rockwell canvas, he imagines there's no one to stop him from claiming the fortune …

America, Fuck Yeah!

A title like Fuck: A Fuckumentary should fill plenty of Edwards Island seats for its April 23 screening as part of the 2006 Newport Beach Film Festival. When enough people discover it's a film with such talking heads as Steven Bochco, Pat Boone, Ben Bradlee, Drew Carey, Chuck D., Billy Connolly, Sam Donaldson, Janeane Garofalo, …

Quentin Crisp

Pulp Fiction hit American pop culture like an A-bomb in 1994, and for about five years afterward just about every young director working wanted to be Quentin Tarantino. If you were going to indie movies with any regularity during this period, you saw a whole lot of crime thrillers about morally ambiguous but crazy-cool hoods …