A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING George C. Scott in A Christmas Carol You can have Seymour Hicks, Alastair Slim, Albert Finney, Mickey Mouse and the Muppets, I’ll take George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. The elaborate 1984 TV movie that starred the always cantankerous (and often drunk) Mr. Scott arrived upon the Dixon family’s TV set at Christmas time with the same clockwork regularity as the annual post-presents brawl between my sisters and I over, well…just about anything. And while it’s always a special treat to watch the criminally underused David Warner (as Bob Cratchit), Scott’s performance stands out both as a showcase for a rare feat of onanistic scene-stealing and because his character seems just as grumpy, deranged and misanthropic after finding yuletide redemption as in the early goings when he gives the Christmas spirit the smackdown. Thus, Scrooge’s shout-out to the poor street Urchin on Christmas morning, “Boy! What day is it?” — it’s very hard to transcribe any dialog George C. Scott ever said without italicizing it — is delivered with all light-hearted élan as the opening speech in Patton. Airs on AMC Sunday, December 7th at 7pm and Monday, December 8th at 12:15pm *** KINDA WANNA READ Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling While countless articles have tried to zero in on the reasons for Harry Potter’s popularity, I’ve always thought that Stephen King went to the heart of the wizard’s success in his NY Times review of Goblet of Fire: “Although they bear the trappings of fantasy, and the mingling of the real world and the world of wizards and flying broomsticks is delightful, the Harry Potter books are, at heart, satisfyingly shrewd mystery tales.” Often times I find that those who love contemporary fantasy...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Dry Storeroom #1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey Was there ever a place more magical than a museum? In the middle of my birthday party evolutionary chart, where fast food restaurant playgrounds begat roller skating rinks, swimming pools, movie theaters and, eventually, bars, stands my 11th birthday party at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. I don’t know if I ever again felt such genuine glee, awe and wonderment as when, accompanied by my likewise amazed friends, I stepped off the echoing marble floors of the museum hall and descended into the basement to come face to face with a group of paleontologists busily uncovering the fossil remains of a Dryosaurus. With that in mind, it is no understatement to say that the release of Dry Storeroom #1 has given me a geekgasm. In the book, Richard Fortey provides us with a backstage tour of the Grand Dame of them all: The Natural History Museum of London. Fortey takes us behind-the-scenes and, in the best you-couldn’t-make-this-up tradition, introduces us to a host of exciting, ingenious and unbelievably eccentric characters who seem better suited to populate a Monty Python sketch then to exist in real life. This is geek reading of the highest order. In Bookstores Now KINDA WANNA READ The 10 Big Lies About America by Michael Medved I sometimes feel bad for The Right. Al Franken runs for the Senate in Minnesota (result: To Be Continued…) and the only celebrities Norm Coleman can round up to star in an ad warning of the perils of electing a celebrity — Arnold, Ronald and Fred please collect $200 and pass Go — are John Ratzenberger, Victoria Jackson, Stephen Baldwin,...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING “Have You Seen…?” The Jews had Moses to deliver the Ten Commandments, and those of us who worship at the altar of cinema have David Thomson. The author of the magisterial The New Biographical Dictionary of Film has given us a holy treat with the release of his new book“Have You Seen…?” Unlike the Biographical Dictionary, which chronicled the whole history of cinema through Thomson’s own critical prism, “Have You Seen…?” focuses on the 1000 movies Thomson believes that you need to see before dying. Don’t worry, this is NOT a dry volume that will sit on your shelf unread. Along with Anthony Lane and Manohla Dargis, Thomson is one of the few critics whose interpretive brilliance is matched only by his gold medal prose acrobatics and each one-page review in “Have You Seen…?” sparkles with his quirky, intelligent and contrary nature. Take for example, Thomson on Rain Man: “Little more than a commercial for itself. Stuffed with self-admiration and gloating coups. I don’t think it goes too far to say that it’s the smug movie of a culture charging down a dead-end street.” I must warn you however, make sure your health care is up to date before buying; the book’s heft may cause a hernia while its addictive quality guarantees that hemorrhoids await any unsuspecting soul who dares enter a bathroom with it in hand. In Bookstores Now   KINDA WANNA SEE Quantum of Solace For those of you who want your action shaken-not-stirred, the release of Quantum of Solace should send a tremor of delight into your loins. While Pierce Brosnan’s well-coifed performance in 1995’s GoldenEye signaled a renaissance at the box office for the franchise after Timothy Dalton’s low-grossing twin pics, the series has...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCE ANTICIPATION Ghost-to-Ghost on Coast to Coast While it seems like truly bizarre radio programs can now only be found while driving deep into the desert or hiking through the dueling banjos territory of Appalachia, the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (airing 10PM-2AM, six nights a week) is perhaps the final outpost where the rest of us can experience the weird and wacky. Coast to Coast deals with a variety of topics, but frequently focuses on the paranormal or conspiracy theories. However, what’s particularly amusing about this show is that, no matter the crazy quotient of the content, host George Noory acts as a late night Larry King, believing the interviewee fully whether he is talking about the financial crisis or ghosts that haunt the White House. For those of you who want to give it a listen, there’s no better night than tonight’s Ghost-to-Ghost broadcast where listeners call in with their scariest “true” ghost stories. On Air tonight at 10PM PST (check local listings) . Note: Dear Readers, do you have ghost stories to share? Write about it the comments section below. Let’s make this a weekend of the Fierce and Ghostly. KINDA WANNA SEE The Miracle of Christmas Perhaps in an effort to beat the Devil at his own game, The Sight and Sound Theatre is opening The Miracle of Christmas at their Strasburg “Witness was shot here” Pennsylvania location this weekend. If Cirque du Soliel is too outré for you, than these religious extravaganzas might just be the spectacle fix that you’re looking for. With well over a million visitors per year and having just opened a new location in Branson “The Broadway of the Bible Belt” Missouri (now showing: Noah!...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING The Original Faces of Death: 30th Anniversary Edition Before the internet allowed us to watch footage of people being mauled by animals for free,  any aspiring video age Percival had to search high and low for quality smut, and there was no relic so highly prized as the Grail of gross, Faces of Death. Often shelved in the backrooms of those pre-Blockbuster video stores located in strip malls, grocery stores and along lonely roadsides, this mondo masterpiece was spoken of by those who had seen it in a hushed, foreboding tone reminiscent of Large Marge’s admonition to the hitchhiking Pee-Wee. A dark fate surely awaited anyone brave enough to press play. However, as the new 30th Anniversary DVD makes clear, aside from the rather pedestrian suicides, autopsies, and much deserved baby seal clubbing, the most fondly remembered scenes– everything from the eye-bleeding electrocution to that cute grizzly nibbling on a little foie gras d’ humain –were, alas, fake. In hindsight, the fact that a “Dr. Francis B. Gross narrated this film” should have been a red flag regarding its legitimacy. But like most of you, I too really wanted to believe–if only for a brief glimpse into the unfathomable Hellmouth very few of us will ever enter– that someone had actually shot footage of young women (surprisingly buxom, considering the supposed Third-world location) sacrificing a willing man, eating his flesh and engaging in an orgy where the corpse’s blood proved a far better lubricant than K-Y Jelly ever could.  In an age where unrelenting cruelty and violence is easily accessible both on our computer monitors and at any local multiplex, there is something magical about stepping into this not-so-long ago analog sideshow that returns you to...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon (Surgeon General’s Warning: May Cause Hemorrhoids if Read on the Toilet) FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Haunted Houses Halloween is here and that means it’s time to make the pilgrimage to haunted houses. Here are the three must-visit haunted destinations in Southern California: Spooky House Haunted Theme Park (Chatsworth, CA): Looks can be deceiving. Despite the fact that it’s stuck in an old strip-mall in Chatsworth, this two-attraction complex offers more scares per dollar than any other haunted park in So Cal. Halloween Horror Nights (Universal Studios): Even with a host of complex rebates that make the bailout plan look like a first grade math problem, H.H.N. remains one of the most expensive haunted destinations, but it does offer the best production value, even though the amount of time waiting in line is often far more frightening than the attractions. Shipwreck at the Queen Mary (Long Beach, CA): There’s nothing scarier than a haunted ocean liner, unless of course you find yourself walking up Long Beach’s post-apocalyptic Anaheim St. at night and confront a group of East Side Longos asking for trick-or-treat candy by putting a glock to your head. Since moving to Los Angeles my knowledge of other haunted destinations across the Heartland has diminished, but the rest of you have the great opportunity to explore one of the over 500 Hell Houses currently populating our nation. Instead of the usual black light encased rooms featuring the paranormal pantheon of ghouls, ghosts and guys who volunteer only to cop a multitude of free feels from unsuspecting nubile girls, Hell House’s provide Middle America with a litany of “Terrors from the Coasts” meant to scare the Jesus into you. Gay wedding chapels, suicide rave rooms and aborted fetus monsters make up...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Honk! Festival of Street Bands What happens to all of those awkward, yet enthusiastic high school and college-age souls who take off their shakos and leave behind the sex-crazed, drug addled lifestyle of the marching band? Well, it seems that many of them have thankfully forgotten to indulge in a quarter life crisis or middle-aged angst and instead have started “street bands.” The music of street bands defies easy categorization and blends brass infused power with the sounds of Bollywood, the Balkans, New Orleans, Samba, and Hip Hop. However, the music is, much like sex, far better to experience live and the 2008 Honk! Festival this weekend in Boston is the Woodstock for street bands. For those of you who can’t make it to New England, there’s no better way to sample the street band sound then to listen to What Cheer? Brigade, the Providence-based group that is the forefront of this musical movement. October 10-12, Tufts University, Boston, MA KINDA WANT TO READ Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling Bret Hart Since the WWE’s sleeper hold on the industry will probably prevent a truly uncensored look at the Wagnerian opera on crack that is professional wrestling, Bret “The Hitman” Hart’s autobiography Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling might end up being the best behind-the-mat saga we’ll get. Unlike nearly all of the other memoirs by professional wrestlers, Hart wrote the book without a ghostwriter and it’s being published independently of WWE Books. The tome should include plenty of juicy anecdotes thanks to Hart’s long and tortured history with the company, which stems from the controversial in-ring death of his youngest brother Owen Hart in 1999 and the...

/ A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Religulous / An American Carol Not since 2004’s The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 have two movies been released that so perfectly represent the opposing views in our national Cold War of ideology. While it’s almost a given that Maher’s film (directed by Borat helmer Larry Charles) will be funny, smart, controversial and probably slightly condescending, the real question is whether or not An American Carol, a “patriotic” updating of Dickens’ seminal work directed and co-written by out-of-the closet conservative David Zucker (he of the ZAZ trio), will actually be funny. While Conservatives are masters of humor in literature (Kingsley Amis, Christopher Buckley, G.K. Chesterton, for starters), their attempts at striking the funny bone in film and television have turned them into the multi-media equivalent of the Washington Generals.  However, with the support of the “Friends of Abe,” an Illuminati-like collection of Hollywood conservatives started by Gary Sinise, Zucker has assembled a fairly impressive cast that includes charter F.O.A. members Jon Voight (as George Washington), Kelsey Grammer (as General Patton) and the Matisse of ethnic villains himself, the great Robert Davi, whose portrayal of the Arab terrorist Aziz marks quite a departure from his most recent role as the gravel voiced narrator of all those film montages shown at this year’s Republican National Convention. KINDA WANNA VISIT Minus 5 After Star Trek: The Experience shuttered its doors forever last month, I wondered if I could ever love Vegas in the same way again.  Suffice it to say with the recent opening of Minus 5, I may be taking off my black armband.  Simply stated, Minus 5, located in Mandalay Bay, is a lounge completely made of ice, 18 tons of it to be exact....

A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Neil Diamond in Concert The Oughts have been very good to Neil Diamond. Like his fellow pop-culture roller-coaster rider William Shatner (both “Solitary Man” and Star Trek first appeared in 1966), for a long time it looked like the career trajectory for both men was going to be a long, dark descent from pop-culture icon into oft-mocked camp cartoon. But the dawn of our post-ironic world has bathed these entertainment titans with the light of renewed adoration and critical recognition for a host of recent projects (Diamond’s albums 12 Songs and Home Before Dark / Shatner’s Emmy-winning role on Boston Legal, his album Has Been and work as the Priceline pitchman), which have thus allowed them to reclaim the mantle of “cool” with no strings attached, except perhaps for those holding the sequins together on Diamond’s shirts. October 1st and 2nd, Hollywood Bowl KINDA WANNA SEE Rock of Ages With the firey deaths of We Will Rock You (featuring the music of Queen) and Dance of the Vampires (Michael Crawford sings Jim Steinman) it looked like all hope was lost for the emergence of a truly great musical that incorporated songs from Rock’s Bronze Age, but in the words of Yoda, “There is another.” And thus Rock of Ages (not to be confused with the mutually popular Christian and Hanukkah hymns) steps into the spotlight. After a middling 2006 run in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, sources have confirmed that the book has been substantially rewritten, which is probably a good thing because this show is now allegedly the biggest budget off-Broadway production of all time.  The one thing that hasn’t changed since its previous run though is the music. And what music it is! Prepare to...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman. I may be threatening to enter uncharted nerd territory by writing about a book that explores the behind the scenes machinations of the Bush administration for the second week in a row, but this newly released tome is the first to fully focus on the most controversial and enigmatic character in our long national Commedia dell’Arte-cum-Jacobean Tragedy: Dick Cheney. In most previous works that explore Bushworld (thanks, Maureen Dowd), Cheney comes off as a sort of Voldemort of the Rockies, lurking in the shadows as his more high-profile subordinates go about his bidding. That this new book places him center stage could very well prove to be a creative challenge for Gellman. How do you shine a bright enough light on a person whose very tenebrous secrecy is the reason for such ongoing fascination? I’m rooting for Gellman to succeed in creating a fully nuanced portrait as opposed to the sort of generic, Freudian simplification that Thomas Harris succumbed to in doing so much damage to the literary legacy of Hannibal Lecter; while the Grand Guignol Hannibal remains one of my favorite literary guilty pleasures, Hannibal Rising was a smelly, bulbous turkey of a novel. And yes, I am fully aware that I’m comparing our Vice President to a cannibalistic serial killer, but I’d like to believe that the self-deprecating Cheney might actually take this analogy as a compliment. In stores now. KINDA WANT TO SEE Mandy Patinkin in The Tempest. Sadly, I’m not provided with enough space to fully detail the level of artistic admiration and love I feel for the man who has given the world both Inigo Montoya and a signing Che Guevara. With that...

. A blogumn by Ryan Dixon On the subject of what to do this weekend… FIERCELY ANTICIPATING The food at the Los Angeles County Fair. While Southlanders on low-carb diets may equate a trip to the fair with the Bataan Death March, for those of us who assume that technology will advance fast enough in the next 20 years to allow Nanobots to clear out our sure-to-be-clogged arteries, there’s nothing better. Here’s just a sampling of the deep-fried delicacies I can’t wait to taste:  Snickers, Oreos, avocado, Pop Tarts, Cheese Ravioli, Spam, frog legs, Twinkies, pickles, zucchini, banana pudding, cheesecake, Milky Way bars, Coke, White Castle burgers, and, my favorite from last year, the deep-fried Krispy Kreme chicken sandwich. In between the eating, I hope to rid my body of at least a few hundred of the newly arrived caloric compadres by heading over to the Winter Wonderland expo where one can ice skate in the indoor rink, sled down the “sledding ramp” and use the fake snow that falls every half hour to start, well, a fake snow ball fight. Thru September 28th. KINDA WANNA READ The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008. Aside from a mile-long title that I find strangely reminiscent to X2: X-Men United, I’m excited to dig into the fourth part of Bob Woodward’s chronicle of the Bush presidency. As usual per the Woodward brand, the book includes a host of juicy headline grabbing behind-the-scenes events including revelations about the intense spying the Bush administration subjected upon Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government. . WOULDN’T GO IF YOU PAID ME ApologetiX: Live in Concert. For those readers living in or near Farmer City, IL, this Saturday night you’ll have the opportunity to hear the miraculous...