2/12 UPDATE post with more video here– Phoenix on Letterman, rap performance

OK, I don’t know if the little amount of text I’m actually going to write for this blog justifies its own entry, but this is just too bizarre.

You read the headline correctly. Casey Affleck is directing a documentary that follows Joaquin Phoenix’s self-imposed retirement from acting to pursue a career as a rapper. Today in Las Vegas, Phoenix is making his debut performance as a rap singer. Affleck’s cameras sart rolling today. Sean “Diddy” Combs will reportedly produce the documentary.

What I can’t tell is if this is a joke or not. It could be the most elaborate put-on in the short history of the mockumentary genre. If Phoenix played a rapper like Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat, everybody would recognize him and know it’s a joke. But if the actor plays himself pretending to want to be a rapper, everyone is forced to believe it and the illusion can then be successfully mined for laughs. It could be an Andy Kaufman-style hoax; one that Phoenix has been working on since he announced his retirement back in October.

Even in this video where he announces his retirement, it kinda looks like Affleck and Phoenix are acting for the camera. The interviewer doesn’t even believe him. Could be a set-up for the movie!

Andy Kaufman’s wrestling antics were all pre-planned hoaxes. See him on “Letterman” above.

It has to be a hoax for the sake of a funny movie, because otherwise why would Affleck think that this is anything worth filming? If it is for real, and it’s a disaster (and Affleck is counting on this for his movie), then he’s going to mine Phoenix’s misery, and that wouldn’t be cool for two friends. (Casey is married to Joaquin’s sister Summer Phoenix.)

Then, there is the other possibility: Joaquin Phoenix, the man who earned an Oscar nomination playing Johnny Cash (and singing his songs in the movie), is a bad-ass, talented rap artist. It’s just that nobody knows it yet. Wow. Really?

UPDATE: Here is video of Phoenix’s performance in Vegas, which seems to confirm my suspicions. You heard it here. I called it first! Not sure what they were thinking; it’s too hard to get away with hoaxes like this if you’re also using your celebrity. That’s why Sacha Baron Cohen is in disguise. Kaufman did it, I suppose, but his stuff was slightly more in character for what people expected of him than Phoenix rapping. Also, media was not nearly as advanced and immediate in the 80s.

Tags: album, career, casey Affleck, chronicling, direct, documentary, hoax, Joaquin Phoenix, mockumentary, music, rap, rapper, release, singer, to

First off, Dustin and I want to thank everyone for who donated any of their time and/or money to the Scene-Stealers.com “Night of Rock n Roll Horror” event last Wednesday night at the Screenland Theater in downtown Kansas City. Everybody had a great time, and almost everybody went home with some kind of badass prize. Most importantly, we also raised a lot of cash for the Children’s Music Fund.

As you can tell from the photo on the right, sitegoer Lindsay Parker was pretty excited to win the 32GB iPod touch, and she wasn’t alone. Scene-Stealers Top 10 author Tony Sams kicked everyone’s ass in the horror trivia game (despite answering “Kazaam” to one of the questions he didn’t know), walking away with a full-sized autographed “Grindhouse” poster.

We played Rock Band (apparently, I don’t know as many of the words to Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen” as I thought I did, and I certainly can’t sing in tune), did some “Thriller” Jacko zombie dance moves, and drank the Screenland’s special of the night–an actual drink called the Trick or Treat that contained vodka, triple sec, amaretto, and orange juice.

We watched original 80s trailers for “This is Spinal Tap,” “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” “Say Anything,” and “Breakin’.” It was a pretty nice score to have the four original fake trailers from last year’s “Grindhouse,” especially since three of them are not available on the two DVDs they wrongly split that movie into. But I have to say…the trailer for “Theodore Rex,” starring Whoopi Goldberg and a giant animatronic farting dinosaur was pretty spectacular.

Our feature presentation, “Trick or Treat,” in my mind, held up pretty well as a really fun B-movie in a campy sort of way. It was a lot funnier then I remembered, and the Scene-Stealers crowd yelled out their fair share of punchlines. “Don’t play that tape, it’ll blow your bra off!” from the girl in the front row was one of my favorites.

Anyway, thanks again to Transmuto, Spiral16, the Screenland Theater, and all our sponsors for a great night. Here’s a link to more pictures from the event.

Tags: benefit, children's, fund, horror, music, n, night, of, rock, roll, scene-stealers

The score to a horror movie can be the most essential thing sometimes. It sets the mood, the pace, everything. A great score can even make a bad horror movie seem semi-decent if the music is scary enough. Try putting these themes on a Halloween mix for trick-or-treaters this year if you want to keep all your candy. Next week, we’ll do another user-submitted Top 10 (email me your idea at info@scene-stealers.com if you got one!), but for now, enjoy my list of the Top 10 Scariest Movie Themes. Links to related lists: Top 10 Overlooked Scary Movies, Top 10 Movie-Inspired Halloween Costumes, Top 10 Slapstick Horror Movies, Top 10 Giant Monster Attacks! Movies, Top 10 Movie Monsters

10. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), composed by Krzysztof Komeda

Director Roman Polanski hit the zietgeist with this psychological horror classic, in which Mia farrow gives birth to the spawn of Satan. Polanski may have hit a nerve with parents who couldn’t understand what had happened to their sweet children in the late 60s, but it was Polish jazz pianist and composer Krzysztof Komeda who set the mood with his creepy theme music, using a lilting lullaby voice and a string-led waltz to suggest both child-like wonder and sinister goings-on at the same time.

9. Friday the 13th (1980), composed by Harry Manfredini

Do the whispered sounds of “ki-ki … ha-ha-ha-ha” count as a musical score? When they are as memorable as this one they do. Listen below to the original theme song from the very first “Friday the 13th” movie (Part 200 is due out next Spring, in a reboot produced by Michael Bay): the familiar refrain is jammed in between tons of driving “Psycho”-like strings and sound effects that are reminiscent of a steel blade being unsheathed. Chicago-born composer Harry Manfredini has contninued to work steadily on the “Friday the 13th” series and other B-movies such as “Zombie Island Massacre” and “Wishmaster.” Somehow, he also found time to write and bring to Broadway a country/western musical titled “Play Me a Country Song” that opened and closed after one performance in 1982.

8. Suspiria (1977), composed by Goblin

The only Italian prog-rock band on this list, Goblin made a name for themselves scoring director Dario Argento’s horror hits “Deep Red” and “Suspiria.” For a band that looked up to mentors Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, it’s a bit ironic that their sole claim to fame comes from performing galloping, spooky little numbers to watch young women be murdered by. These days, Goblin’s “Suspiria” theme certainly sounds a little dated and cheesy, but that’s also part of what makes it sound so cool. Supposedly, the soundtrack was written before the film was completed; allowing Argento to blast the score at his actors—full volume—to get better, more terrifying performances out of them.

7. “The Shining” (1980), composed by Krzysztof Penderecki

The theme to director Stanley Kubrick’s Steven King adaptation is by Wendy Carlos (who, before sexual reassignmen—and billed as Walter Carlos—played synthesised Beethoven all over Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”), and it’s a fine piece of work. But most of the disturbing and truly memorable music in the movie comes from Polish modern classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The insane dissonance of pieces like “Utrenja Kanon Paschy” and “Polymorphia” (part of which was also used briefly in “The Exorcist”) serve to unsettle Shelley Duvall as she tries to deal with the fact that her husband, played by Jack Nicholson, is losing his grip on reality and breaking down the bathroom door with a very large axe. Start about two minutes in and listen to the unsettling string noise.

6. The Exorcist (1973) “Tubular Bells,” composed by Mike Oldfield

First released as a two-song LP (Part One on side one, Part Two on side two), Mike Oldfield’s album “Tubular Bells” was quickly seized by director William Friedkin to become the theme song to his demon-possession tale “The Exorcist.” As a direct result, the album—a progression of that familiar theme that lasts for almost 49 minutes total—became a sensation, selling more than 17 million copies worldwide and spawning a series of album “sequels.” Ironically, it took Oldfield almost twenty years of disappointing record sales to finally, inevitably return to the well with the creatively named “Tubular Bells II” (1992), “Tubular Bells III” (1998), and finally—to cash in on the impending Y2K doom—“Millennium Bell” (1999). In 2003, Oldfield said goodbye to all credibility and actually re-recorded the entire album, calling it—wait for it—“Tubular Bells 2003.” Regardless, the four-minute-something version that was appropriated as “The Exorcist” theme still retains its inherent spookiness.

5. The Omen (1976), composed by Jerry Goldsmith

The bombastic choral explosion of “Ave Satani!,” from the third devil-child movie on this list, features a chant of the song’s Latin title, which translates to “Hail, Satan!” Jerry Goldsmith won the only Oscar of his long career for this miasmatic Gothic score, which pummels you with screaming highs every time the bad stuff is about to go down. Without Goldsmith’s music, Damien—the little antchrist tiny tot—might not have seemed so scary. Of course, chants of “Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus, tolle corpus Satani” (”drink the blood, eat the flesh, raise the body of Satan”), also help out.

4. Taxi Driver (1976), composed by Bernard Herrmann

This may not technically fall into the category of a horror film, but I challenge you to listen to this theme, used in the opening and closing moments of Martin Scorsese’s chilling urban saga “Taxi Driver” and not feel the chill. The rising, sinister orchestral tones remind me of the slo-mo above shot of aliented vet Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro)’s carnage, and the jazzy interlude is the perfect soundtrack to the scummy streets of New York City, infested as they were with the lowlife scum of the Earth that Bickle so fiercely despised. Sadly, this was last score Bernard Herrmann (“Citizen Kane,” “Vertigo”) would ever work on, since the legendary film composer died shortly after its completion.

3. Halloween (1978), composed by John Carpenter

In order to cut costs on his low-budget slasher pic “Halloween,” director John Carpenter just decided to do the music himself. What resulted is one of the most iconic movie themes around, horror movie or not. The creepy, simple piano run gets lodged in your head after multiple refrains and all I can think of is a masked killer stalking the suburbs with a big butcher knife, looking in all the windows for some fresh meat. Just as the endless amount of slasher movie imitators have caused the film to lose some of its original charm, the music loses a little edge in its production, too. Yet while it may be dated, there is nothing quite like it for immediate shorthand. You put this on, and people know something bad is about to happen.

2. “Psycho (1960) composed by Bernard Herrmann

Using only the string section of an orchestra (the instruments usually used to play a sweeping romantic melody), Bernard Herrmann put together a jarring and terrifying score that sounds like someone jabbing a knife over and over again. Director Alfred Hitchcock originally was going to leave the music out of the infamous shower-murder scene, and it’s a good thing he didn’t stick with that decision. The liner notes of the soundtrack explain: “Several musicians and informed cinemagoers have referred to ‘bird-shrieks’ and ‘distorted, screaming bird cries’ in this connection. There are none. All we hear when Marion is killed are the shrill, stabbing thrusts of the strings in their topmost registers. Herrmann was once asked what thought was uppermost in his mind when creating this unique and hair-raising cue. He replied in one word: “terror.”

1. Jaws (1975), composed by John Williams

“Da-da .. da-da,” it starts out slow. “Da-da ..da-da ..da-da,” speeding up now! “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da” really fast, “Da-da-da-da,” it’s right on top of us! That two-note motif from John Williams’ masterful score to Steven Spielberg’s scream-inducing shark tale, is the key to the entire film. Without the foreboding theme to illustrate that something wicked this way comes, Spielberg has got nothing but an animatronic shark that keeps breaking down on set. With the theme’s rhythmic buildup, Williams made us all feel like there was terror lurking just below the surface of the water, where our legs were kicking back and forth, completely open to attack from a giant shark. Forget that I’m swimming in a swimming pool. The moment I hear those notes, I know what’s coming.

Tags: 10, film, halloween, horror, movie, music, scariest, scary, scores, ten, themes, top, Top 10 Lists, top ten

When you wake suddenly from a dream about Doc Brown and Libyan terrorists who drive around in a VW bus to a loud, static-masked radio station at 7:30 am, you know it’s going to be a long day. (Confused? Read yesterday’s SXSW blog here.) A couple cups of coffee and one continental buffet breakfast later, however, and I was good to go—it really is America’s Best Value!

The Austin Convention Center hosted the SXSW panel discussions for both the Film and Interactive festival line-up. An interesting thing occurred at every film panel I attended, though. No matter where the talk started, it always seemed to get hi-jacked by questions and comments about online distribution, digital content, etc. No panel was complete, it seemed, unless the discussion took a hard left turn into Internet video. Am I the only one left who doesn’t like watching movies on a tiny screen with crappy sound?

The seemingly instantaneous growth of online video is amazing, and I’m right there with it, making shorts and reviews about anything I can get my hands on. But when it comes to a feature-length film, I still enjoy the theatrical experience above all else—except when I have to drive too far to go see it. Then again, it was a little over five years ago that I said I’d never stop shopping in record stores and look what happened.

As the panels continued well on into the day, I took a breather and caught another unsigned indie documentary that revolved around a bizarre American subculture—the obsessed Harry Potter fan.

Like Cameron Crowe’s classic 70s rock valentine “Almost Famous,” “We Are Wizards” explores what its like to be a true fan. The catch is that director Josh Koury believes hardcore fandom is a gateway drug to becoming your own creative person. He’s out to prove it with profiles of a new breed of musicians who call their brand of guitar-based noise “wizard rock.” Confused? The song lyrics take on a perspective of a beloved (Harry and the Potters) or hated (Draco and the Malfoys) character from Potter lore and the players are just almost listenable. Think Iron Maiden cribbing “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but without all the musicianship and a way bigger sense of humor.

Because Koury doesn’t develop his subjects far enough beyond being amusing curiosities, the movie never quite takes flight, but some of them are quite charming, especially the DeGeorge brothers, who play Harry Year 4 and Harry Year 7 while onstage. One Harry Potter fan (movies only—never read the books!) had such an unhealthy obsession, the film argues, that he recorded his own alternate audio track to the “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” movie. Brad Neely’s “fan art” goes far beyond that of the bands, and it seems like his twisted art career would have followed whether Potter ever existed or not. Regardless, his personal take on the characters is hilarious and a welcome respite from the geeky serious love of the other Potter freaks.

“We Are Wizards” is an interesting look into a cult I knew little about, and I dig the idea that reading a book can serve as inspiration to go out and do something.

After trying to hail a cab at the only dead intersection in all of downtown Austin, Craig and I finally made it to the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse with seconds to spare before a showing of Alex Gibney’s hot-offa-Sundance documentary “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.” The celebrated filmmaker (who just won an Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side” a couple weeks ago) has successfully brought to life the work of a maverick and prescient writer who we will never see the likes of again.

Okay, I’ll admit, I’m a little biased, having read and enjoyed at least four of the man’s books. But—if anything—I would think that would make me a tougher audience, too. Gibney starts it off right, reading from a column Thompson wrote on September 11, 2001, where the off-kilter journalist, writing for ESPN, correctly predicted the aftermath of this terrible strike way before we were ready to even accept that it had even happened.

“It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.” (Click here to read the full piece.)

Although he may have been slipping in his old age (a point that the movie doesn’t shy away from), that quote proves that even in his darkest hour, the man knew his stuff and could write it with more blunt truth than anyone else.

There’s a lot of ground to cover in “Gonzo,” and Gibney does it with the author’s own words, as read, appropriately, by Johnny Depp. But the documentarian is also smart enough to address the journalistic quandry of Thompson’s writing as well as its legend. At one point does the reporter become the story? Can “a salt shaker half full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers” actually illuminate the point or does that style of writing completely miss it? It should be obvious to anyone who watches “Gonzo” that Thompson’s perspective was challenging. And while it made for recklessly entertaining and thought-provoking writing, it was Hell on the home front.

“Gonzo” is at once a celebration of a genre-busting writer/rabble-rouser and an elegy for a time period when a freak like Thompson could get access to political leaders and actually affect some kind of radical change. Interviews with Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, and Pat Buchanan are particularly enlightening and “Gonzo” made wish we had someone like Raoul Duke embedded in the current presidential race, telling it like it is—or as they see it.

Next on Eric’s SXSW blog: Seann William Scott and David Schwimmer, oh my!

Tags: 2008, alex gibney, brad neely, draco and the malfoys, film festival, gonzo, harry and the potters, hunter s. thompson, interactive, josh koury, music, raoul duke, SXSW, we are wizards, wizard people

I’ve only been away from Austin, TX now for 24 hours, and I’ve got a huge hangover—not from drinking (although I did my fare share), but because the work at my job that didn’t get done while I was gone is piling up around me and threatening to bury me. There’s something liberating about listening to engaging panel discussions about the state of the interactive world and seeing as many free movies as you like as you rub shoulders with cool celebs like Jeffrey Tambor (”Arrested Development”), Doug Benson (”Super High Me”), and Morgan Spurlock (”30 Days,” “Super Size Me”). The extent of my interaction with each? I’ll let you guess who was who.

1. “Hey, I really enjoyed your acting workshop. That was great.”
2. (pointing) “Heyyyyyy, Doug Benson!”
3. “Hey.”

My South by Southwest escapade may be over, but if the film portion of the festival is any indication, 2008 might shape up to be a pretty great year in film. Of course, for anyone who lives in Austin, every year is a good year because these lucky cinemaniacs live in the home of the world-renowned Alamo Drafthouse chain of theaters. People outside of Austin are finally starting to see what a cool deal they have as the forward-thinking Drafthouses have been popping up in San Antonio, Houston, and Katy, TX.

The geniuses at the Alamo have concocted the perfect mix of arthouse fare, mainstream flicks, and cult movies to spotlight while their variously pierced, T-shirt clad waiters and waitresses bring you a full menu of drinks and dinner. The kicker? You can eat on the bar ledge right in front of you and you never have to get up for another beer (provided you order a bucket of Lone Star, which I recommend highly).

After getting the pleasantries of hotel/badge check-in and bar-hopping out of the way, my friend Craig and I headed straight to the South Lamar Drafthouse showing “Back to the Future” at midnight. I ran into my old pal George, who filled me in that the Master Pancake Theatre (formerly Mr. Sinus Theater) boys would be poking fun Mystery Science Theater-style of one of the 1980s defining works of art. Years ago, when touring with Ultimate Fakebook, I had seen Mr. Sinus tear down the holy scrolls of “Footloose” and “The Lost Boys” and I will never be able to look at those movies the same again.

Friday night was no different. The timing these guys have is impeccable—they just sit there in the front row, drinking beer and heckling. It’s a beautiful thing; especially the late show when the kid gloves are off, content-wise. I’ve often wondered if it would be possible for them to take their act on the road. Maybe if the Alamo chain ever spreads up to Kansas, we might get lucky some day.

For the next four days, I crammed as many movies I had and hadn’t heard of into as much time as I could, and I didn’t see a single bad film. Ironically, my first official film of the festival was my favorite—a tiny-budgeted indie documentary called “Second Skin.”

I knew very little about the world of MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Gaming), except that I was scared. Would it be a movie about nerdy little freaks that hole up in their rooms for days on end with nothing but pizza, Doritos, and the blue light of a computer screen to keep them alive? The surprising answer is no. Brothers Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza (director) and Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza (writer/co-producer) covered the wide spectrum of this addictive and increasingly common form of entertainment by expertly juggling multiple storylines (each with a surprisingly involving story arc). One couple falls in love after their attractively endowed avatars do a bizarre flirty dance together, one gamer loses everything and heads to role-playing rehab (who knew there was such a place?), and a group of gaming buddies who call their living room the Fortress of Dorkitude begin to disintegrate as some members gradually grow up and have children.

As if it weren’t enough to follow the film’s three fascinating main timelines, the Escoriaza brothers briefly explore other fringes of the online gaming world such as “gold farmers” who sell virtual swords and virtual armor to online players for real cash. Their attention to storytelling really shows through in their organization, because when one person’s big reveal comes late into the film, it completely changes the story’s context. “Second Skin” was made with a lot of care towards building character and has the same affection for those characters as “The King of Kong” last year. This movie deserves to be picked up, and fast. Marketed with the right savvy, it could have a huge potential audience. After all, the videogame industry makes way more then the movie industry.

Coming Next: Draco & the Malfoys and the good Dr. Gonzo.

Tags: 2008, alamo drafthouse, austin, film festival, interactive, jeffrey tambor, master pancake, movie, music, second skin, south by southwest, SXSW