3D’s Wednesday Video Spotlight
After taking a break last week from their series to give us one of their infamous PSAs, the people at Rooster Teeth have returned this week with a new chapter of “Red vs. Blue: Recreation.” Enjoy, but remember RvB is known for its profane humor.
—3D
What to do in Oklahoma on July 29
Ken Crowder, “06 Apr 09, 5 Marbles”
“09 Feb 09, Mr. Majestic”
Today’s featured event:
See works by Tonkawa photographer Ken Crowder in the exhibit “25 Days: Photographs of Oklahoma” today at the North Gallery of the state Capitol.
Searching for a way to reinvigorate his photography, Crowder made the commitment to start the “Photo a Day” project on Jan. 1. The basic idea of the project is to take at least one photograph of artistic merit every day for one year.
The project has forced Crowder to pick up his camera every day and search his atmosphere for images that catch his interest, according to a news release.
“I’ve noticed an increased awareness of my surroundings,” says Crowder in the release, “and I’m sure that I am seeing images I might not have noticed before or wouldn’t have had my camera with me to photograph it. I carry at least one camera with me almost everywhere I go now.”
This exhibit features select digital photographs from the “Photo a Day” project. The photographs are presented in chronological order with titles derived from the date the photograph was taken.
“25 Days” will be on view through Aug. 9 if you can’t make it today.
The North Gallery is on the first floor of the Capitol and open daily from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
For more information, go to www.arts.ok.gov/capitolart/ng.html.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
New releases
The Flaming Lips (J. Michelle Martin photo)
Oklahoma alt-rockers the Flaming Lips are releasing a three-song EP titled “Songs From the Future Album Embryonic.” It is available today through all digital retailers, according to FlamingLips.com.
As the title suggests, the EP includes songs from the Lips’ forthcoming double album “Embryonic,” due out later this year.
The EP includes the songs “Convinced of the Hex,” “The Impulse” and “Silver Trembling Hands.” These songs are off the Lips’ first studio album in more than three years, and I’m eager to give them a listen.
Dean Koontz (Associated Press photo)
And I can hardly wait to get to a book store and pick up my copy of Dean Koontz’s long-awaited “Frankenstein: Dead and Alive,” the third and final book in his series reimaging Mary Shelley’s classic horror tale. “Dead and Alive” has been long delayed, so I fervently hope it was worth the wait.
In DVDs, it’s basically a geek’s paradise, with the complete “Battlestar Galactica” series, first season of the cartoon “Spectacular Spider-Man” and the animated “Green Lantern: First Flight” all releasing today.
Here is a list of the week’s new CDs, DVDs and books, from Amazon.com, VideoETA.com and The Oklahoman:
CDs
The Flaming Lips, “Songs From the Future Album Embryonic” (three-song EP).
Michael Jackson, “The Stripped Mixes.”
Ashley Tisdale, “Guilty Pleasure.”
Elvis Presley, “From Elvis in Memphis.”
George Thorogood & The Destroyers, “The Dirty Dozen.”
Original Broadway Cast, “9 to 5: The Musical.”
Laurent Korcia, “Cinema.”
Fabolous, “Loso’s Way.”
DVDs
Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5
Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series
Dollhouse: Season One
Dragonball: Evolution
Fast & Furious
Green Lantern: First Flight
Knight Rider (2008): Season 1
Miss March
Spectacular Spider-Man: The Complete First Season
Torchwood: Children of the Earth
Books
“Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Dead and Alive (Book 3)” by Dean Koontz.
“The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson.
“Hot Pursuit” by Suzanne Brockmann.
“Dying for Mercy: A Novel of Suspense” by Mary Jane Clark.
“Labor Day” by Joyce Maynard.
“Mastered by Love” by Stephanie Laurens.
“Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America” by Kurt Andersen.
“Watch the Skies” by James Patterson, illustrated by Ned Rust.
“Ender’s Game: Battle School” by Christopher Yost, illustrated by Pasqual Ferry.
“A Good Night for Magic (Magic Tree House Series No. 42) by Mary Pope Osborne.
- BAM
BAM Column: Director Kathryn Bigelow again challenges stereotypes with “The Hurt Locker”
Director Kathryn Bigelow on the set of “The Hurt Locker”
A version of this column appears in Tuesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
War flicks stereotype blown up
The Academy Awards are for film buffs what preseason polls are to college football fans: It seems it’s never too early to speculate on who will be holding the top prize at the end of the Oscars, or the national championship game.
For those of us already musing about the coming film awards season, Kathryn Bigelow tops the list of filmmakers who deserve Oscar glory.
Her nail-bitingly powerful “The Hurt Locker” is more than just the best movie to emerge about the Iraq war. It stands out as one of the most thoughtful – and yes, thrilling – war films in recent memory.
That Bigelow boldly treads into cinematic territory traditionally held by male directors isn’t surprising, at least to those familiar with her previous work. The painter-turned-filmmaker has taken on other male-dominated genres with her 2002 submarine drama “K-19: The Widowmaker,” 1991′s surfer-heist actioner “Point Break,” the 1995 sci-fi thriller “Strange Days” and 1987′s vampire horror-noir “Near Dark.”
The California native says she isn’t necessarily drawn to what some may consider “boys’ films”; she just wants to work from great scripts with “timeless, iconic characters.”
“You just you work out of instinct (when) you’re drawn to material. … I think if it’s a conscious draw then probably it’s for the wrong reasons. I work purely instinctually in terms of making those choices,” she said at spring’s American Film Institute Dallas Film Festival, where she received an AFI Dallas Star Award.
Bigelow’s best film to date and one of my favorites of the year, “The Hurt Locker” showcases the director’s gifts for building suspense, crafting amazing action sequences and telling stories with visual flair.
The film follows three men in the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad, tasked with disarming the bombs strewn along Baghdad’s war-torn streets. The fictional story is based on embedded journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal’s experiences in Iraq.
“It’s really a story of courage and heroism. These men have practically the most dangerous job in the world,” Bigelow said. “That’s an inherently dramatic subject that as a filmmaker you kind of want to step out of the way and let it reveal itself.”
Her goal was to give a “boots-on-the-ground look” at the war.
“There’s a topicality and a relevance that really just fueled me through it,” she said. “It is based on firsthand observation and I think that sort of opportunity to comment on or rather just present a situation that’s currently unfolding was pretty inspiring.”
As far as her role as an inspiration to aspiring directors, she hopes the acclaim she’s getting will “open a door too for other young filmmakers, who perhaps, like me, won’t take no for an answer.”
In Dallas, Boal said the interesting question that comes out of Bigelow’s success is “not so much why does she do movies like that, but why don’t more women do movies like that?”
That’s a good question that anyone who sees “The Hurt Locker” will probably find themselves pondering.
-BAM
Jeremy Renner gets into bulky suit, intense role for “The Hurt Locker”
Actor Jeremy Renner wears an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal suit in a scene from his Iraq war film “The Hurt Locker.”
Jeremy Renner plays Staff Sgt. William James, the leader of a three-man Army bomb squad, in the Iraq war drama “The Hurt Locker.”
A version of this story also appears in Tuesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
“Hurt Locker” is intense, riveting
Explosive Ordnance Disposal team portrayed in movie
DALLAS – In a taut moment of his Iraq war film “The Hurt Locker,” Jeremy Renner’s character determinedly strips off his bulky protective suit and bulbous helmet after finding a stack of homemade bombs in an old car trunk.
“If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die comfortable,” Staff Sgt. William James declares to the two other members of his Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team.
After donning the cumbersome gear on set in the broiling heat of a Middle Eastern summer, Renner, 38, could see his character’s point.
“I have mixed feelings about the suit,” the actor said during a Q&A at spring’s American Film Institute Dallas International Film Festival. “On one hand, it is quite peaceful. It’s like, you know, 100 pounds or so; it’s equally distributed through your entire body, so the physical weight is interesting at first. And the sound you hear is just your own breath, that’s all you hear.
“Always once I got the suit on, I’d put headphones in my ears and I would play Beethoven, “Moonlight Sonata,” and it became poetry. It became this very sort of esoteric, sort of like ‘All right, let’s go paint this painting while I disarm or render safe an IED.’”
But the tranquil feeling of sporting the suit, which looks more spaceman than Army man, always proved short-lived.
“After like, you know, five minutes in it, I’d want to kill myself because it’s so arduous,” he said. “The training in it was a stack of paper clips is on the ground, a stack of hundred, and you pick one up. Just to get on your knees and to get down and pick one up and get up and go 15 feet and put it down, it takes like three minutes just to do that. … So, you move that stack over to there and that’s it, that’s all you have to do, but that’s pretty intense just to do that.”
“Intense” effectively describes virtually everything about “The Hurt Locker,” from the 44-day shoot in Jordan to director Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting action sequencing to the film’s commitment to authenticity.
Set in Baghdad circa 2004, the film follows Bravo Company, an Army bomb disposal team tasked with neutralizing homemade bombs, or Improvised Explosive Devices. For war-weary Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), having James take over the team with just 38 days left of their tour is scary. Along with casting off his safety suit, James tends to swagger casually into potentially deadly situations.
But as they get to know their taciturn new leader, Sanborn and Eldridge wonder whether he is an arrogant renegade hooked on the adrenaline rush or a skilled professional with a penchant for selfless heroics. Renner said the character still has him pondering.
“There’s always a question with discovering this guy,” he said. “Every time I watch, I still question. I think it will always be unfolding to me, and hopefully that reveals itself to the audience: You constantly think you know him and then something or other will turn and give you something else.”
The California native is earning widespread acclaim and early Oscar buzz for his nuanced performance. He already has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best male lead for the film; he was nominated in the same category in 2003 for playing serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the indie biopic “Dahmer.” His other previous credits include the films “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “28 Weeks Later” and “S.W.A.T.,” along with the recent short-lived TV series “The Unusuals.”
“The Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal, who based the script on his experiences as a journalist embedded with bomb disposal units in Iraq, enthusiastically praised Renner and his co-stars.
“You write something and then you’re like, ‘OK, that seems like it might be pretty cool’ – or not. And then you get a great actor to read it, and you all the sudden say, ‘I’m a (expletive) genius, I can’t believe I really wrote that’ because it’s invested with so much humanity and so much depth,” Boal said.
Besides the heavy bomb suit – he wore the real thing since the low-budget production didn’t have the time or money to fabricate one – Renner said learning military procedures was a tough task.
“I had to learn a lot about the rules – about military in general, about specifically EODs – so I knew what rules I could break. James is not your typical EOD guy, so I needed to learn specifically what I was supposed to do so I knew specifically then what I could bend and break,” he said.
“The biggest challenge really was just learning the technical detail stuff, but then everything’s a challenge, right?” he added with a laugh. “Every day was a challenge, and that’s what made it so fun and so great.”
While he respects the real-life Army bomb squads, Renner said he couldn’t really speak to what motivates soldiers to take on the job.
“‘What does it take to put on the suit?’ You know, why does somebody want to be a schoolteacher? There’s a thousand schoolteachers that do it for their different reasons. Why does someone choose to do that? That’s what makes an individual an individual, right? … Why we do what we do separates us from everybody else on the planet. I can only speak for James,” he said.
“I would never do it. Jeremy? No, no, no way. I don’t have the nuts to do it. But I certainly commend those that do.”
-BAM
What to do in Oklahoma on July 28
Today’s featured event:
SHAWNEE – See “A Few of Our Favorite Things: Rarely Seen Treasures from the Permanent Collection” today at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, 1900 W MacArthur Drive
“A Few of Our Favorite Things” will feature objects not seen for many years. The exhibit will be on view through Aug. 23 if you miss it today.
This exhibition celebrates the 30th anniversary of the return of the museum’s permanent collection to Shawnee in 1979 after it was housed in Oklahoma City for several years.
The curator of collections and director of the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art selected unique works of art that have rarely been seen by the public for the exhibit. About 95 percent of the museum’s collection is in storage at any one time. Periodically, pieces rotate into the permanent collection gallery or are part of the temporary exhibits.
The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is on the campus of St. Gregory’s University. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors age 65 or older, $3 for students and children ages 6 to 17, and free for children age 5 and younger.
For more information, go to www.mgmoa.org.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
BAM and family included in Mama E’s segment of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”
Guy Fieri (Photo by Paul B. Southerland/The Oklahoman Archives)
The new episode of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” featuring Oklahoma City soul food restaurant Mama E’s Wings and Waffles just concluded.
My family and I turned out when the Food Network crew was shooting at the eatery, 3838 Springlake Drive, back in May. We were filmed for the show and were excited to see ourselves on TV tonight.
The show included two soundbites from me praising the food, particularly the incredible battered, fried and gravy-smothered ribs. My husband, two sons and I were shown briefly in the background in a couple of shots, and my younger son, Gabe, was in the corner of one of the last scenes of the Mama E’s segment.
The segment showcased Mama E’s signature wings and waffles – which I now have to try – along with the pig’s feet – which looked less appealing but still like a fun culinary adventure. The Food Network Web site also features Mama E’s recipe for collard greens; you can check it out by clicking here.
I wish “DDD” had included more Mama E’s in the episode, and not just because I would have loved to see a quote or two from my articulate hubbie in there. The episode, titled “Mama’s Cookin’,” also featured a Mexican restaurant called Avila’s in Dallas and Polish eatery dubbed Polka in Los Angeles; about half of the episode focused on Polka.
Mama E’s offers so much more than the two recipes spotlighted on the show. The fried catfish is some of the best I’ve ever eaten, the collard greens and mac and cheese are just amazing, and those ribs boggle the tastebuds and the mind. Plus, owner Keith Patterson and his family are just super nice people.
I expect the show will cause an influx of customers at Mama E’s, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving dive. I’m just happy that my family and I got to contribute to praising the great food and to experience of the fun of appearing on the show. And we’re definitely willing to face a crowd to get another serving of those ribs and to try those wings and waffles.
If you missed “Mama’s Cookin’,” the episode will air again tonight at midnight and then on Aug. 14, 15 and 16.
-BAM
Mama E’s and maybe BAM to be featured tonight on “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”
Don’t forget: Oklahoma City soul food eatery Mama E’s Wings & Waffles will be featured tonight on the new episode of the hit Food Network show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.”And you might just see yours truly and my family on the episode.
The episode, titled “Mama’s Cookin’,” will debut at 9 tonight. Along with Mama E’s, it will feature restaurants in Dallas and Los Angeles, according to FoodNetwork.com.
The episode will air again at midnight and at 8 p.m. Aug. 14, according to the Web site.
Back in May, my family and I went out to Mama E’s while the Food Network crew was filming. We were interviewed by the crew; filmed eating our tasty collard greens, fried catfish and mac and cheese; and went back a few days later to meet “DDD” host, Chef Guy Fieri.
So, set those DVRs to 9 tonight to learn about a great OKC eatery and maybe see my family and me on TV.
-BAM
Photo gallery: “New Moon” at Comic-Con
“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” stars, from left, Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson pose for photos at Comic-Con International 2009. (All photos by the Associated Press)
Fans of Stephenie Meyer’s popular “Twilight Saga” were out in force again at Comic-Con International 2009 in San Diego, Calif.
Last year, “Twihard” fans waited in line for hours to get the scoop on “Twilight,” the film based on the first novel in Meyer’s four-book series.
Since “Twilight” was a movie hit, big crowds turned out this year to learn about the anticipated sequel “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.”
Stars Kristen Stewart (who plays human Bella Swan), Robert Pattinson (vampire Edward Cullen) and Taylor Lautner (werewolf Jacob Black) fielded questions during Thursday’s “New Moon” panel, and Ashley Greene (who plays vampire Alice Cullen) also turned out to promote the film.
Check out these Comic-Con photos of the “New Moon” stars, from the Associated Press:
Ashley Greene, who plays vampire Alice Cullen, appears at Comic-Con to promote the upcoming film ”The Twilight Saga: New Moon.”
From left, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson field questions during “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” panel at Comic-Con.
Kristen Stewart answers a question.
Robert Pattinson smiles during the “New Moon” panel.
Taylor Lautner takes a question about “New Moon.”
- BAM
Photo gallery: “Iron Man 2″ at Comic-Con 2009
Star Robert Downey Jr. sings during the “Iron Man 2″ panel Saturday at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Calif. (All photos by the Associated Press)
One of the most anticipated panels at last week’s Comic-Con 2009 in San Diego centered on next year’s blockbuster sequel “Iron Man 2.”
Based on the Marvel Comics series, the sequel seeks to duplicate or improve on the massive success of 2008′s “Iron Man,” which was a huge hit with critics and at the box office.
“Iron Man 2″ will open in theaters May 7, 2010.
All photos in this gallery are from the Associated Press.
Don Cheadle, who takes on the role as Col. James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes in “Iron Man 2,” waves to fans at the Comic-Con panel.
Sam Rockwell takes a question during the “Iron Man 2″ panel. He will play Justin Hammer in the sequel. Read what he said about stepping into the sequel of a highly successful franchise at Matt Price’s Nerdage blog by clicking here.
Scarlett Johansson, who plays Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in “Iron Man 2,” waves to fans during the movie’s Comic-Con panel.
Director Jon Favreau talks about “Iron Man 2″ at Comic-Con. Favreau directed the first “Iron Man” film, which received rave reviews and scored big at the box office.
“Iron Man 2″ star Robert Downey Jr. also promoted his upcoming film “Sherlock Holmes,” co-starring Rachel McAdams, at Comic-Con.
-BAM
