The A.V. Club - Daily

Film: Newswire:First look at CGI Smurfs hints at exciting levels of sass, pop-culture savvy

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:01:00 -0600

Way back in 2008, before Barack Obama and Conan O’Brien issued a joint decree on the end of cynicism, we (as in “I”) approached the prospect of a CGI reboot of The Smurfs with some trepidation and a whole lot of preemptive sarcasm, as was the style at the time. In those dark, despairing days, when bitterness flowed like the honeyed Sparks whose taurine-y candle would be senselessly snuffed out later that year, and we hadn’t yet learned how to mentally retreat to Pandora whenever mankind failed to live up to our wildly inflated sense of nobility, we ...

TV: Newswire:Second season of Jersey Shore to lose the Jersey, keep the shore

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:36:00 -0600

After rampant, okay, occasional speculation about a possible move, Movieline is reporting that the cast of MTV's Jersey Shore will uproot and shoot the series' second season in Miami's South Beach. To which we say, fah. What is Jersey Shore without the Jersey setting? Sure, moving Snooki, The Situation, JWoww, Tony Macaroni, and Sweaty Dave might provide some fish-out-of-water comedy, but think about the lost atmosphere. (Note: We're not sure all the names in that previous sentence are accurate.)

Games: Contest:Win the new Dante's Inferno game for XBOX 360

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:51:00 -0600

Hey, we've got a few copies of the new Dante's Inferno game for XBOX 360 to give away. Just go here and fill out a form, and you could win. You have to be 17, and not employed by Onion Inc or related to someone employed by Onion Inc. ARV of prize: $59.98. Contest ends Feb. 22 or thereabouts. Good luck! "Inspired by the real Dante Alighieri, but adapted for a new generation and a new medium, the hero of the game is a soldier who defies death and fights for love against impossible odds. The Italian ...

TV: Hater:Time To Get Gangsta On That Syphilis

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:10:00 -0600

Driving home from school in New Orleans every day, I'd always find myself burning with anger and thinking, "God, I really should just kill someone." Nothing would trigger this desire to kill, really. It was just a mid-afternoon spike in the natural murderous rage present in all human beings. And so at every stoplight I'd sharpen the end of my weapon of choice, a spork (for whatever reason, a spork-shiv just made more sense to me for the kind of senseless killing I wanted to do), and scan the streets for possible victims. This would go on for ...

Music: Nashville or Bust:Week 27: Kris Kristofferson, Silver-Tongued Devil

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0600

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop specialist Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. Over the course of this project, I’ve written about a rogue’s gallery of drunks, ne’er-do-wells, and scoundrels, larger-than-life icons who lived fast, died young, and left behind ...

Film: Newswire:Peter Bogdanovich to adapt Kurt Andersen's Turn of the Century

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:05:00 -0600

Peter Bogdanovich has worn many hats throughout his long, checkered, sometimes glorious, often tragic careers: fedoras, stovepipes, straw hats, even the occasional bowler. He's also played a lot of different roles: historian, critic, writer, director, pompous boob, ascot enthusiast, sycophant to great filmmakers everywhere, Orson Welles sidekick. Now Mr. Excitement is about to add a new hat to his collection of hats. Yes, he's headed down to the professional haberdashery and picked up a nifty new number I like to call "Guy who is adapting Kurt Andersen's mammoth novel Turn Of The Century for the big screen ...

TV: Hater:MTV Now Stands For "Mmm...TV?"

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:00:00 -0600

One of the certainties in this modern life is that whenever anything is written anywhere on the Internet about MTV, someone will inevitably remark, "Hey, remember when MTV played music videos?" This point will be made even though MTV has been sloughing off their music videos in favor of actual shows—well, in favor of Cribs—for at least the past 15 years, and, honestly, who cares if MTV doesn't focus on music videos anymore? If your hankering to watch Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know?", say, or that one Ugly Kid Joe video that was all MTV ...

DVD: Newswire:DVD Release List – 02/09/10

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:00:00 -0600

Let’s make this simple: the movie to get this week is A Serious Man. Bitch about the ending all you want, or call the picture pretentious, or too obvious, or too obscure, or what-have-you… you’re barking up the wrong tree with me, buddy. It’s a Coen brothers movie. It’s funny, it’s surprisingly sweet, and it goes to unexpected places. Just get it—even if you don’t “get it.” Also worth your time? Nicolas Winding Refn’s arty crime epic Bronson, which features one of last year’s best performances, whether the Academy wants to ...

TV: The Big Bang Theory:"The Large Hadron Collision"

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:07:00 -0600

A week ago in his review of last week's Big Bang episode, Alan Sepinwall wrote that he has a real problem with the episodes where it seems somewhat impossible to imagine that anyone would be friends with Sheldon. Now, I didn't see that about last week's episode, but I was almost able to see it about this one, where Sheldon is just kind of an unthinking, unfeeling asshole for three-quarters of the running time before the episode rights itself with a bit of karmic justice at the end. I can totally see where the character is coming ...

Music: Interview:Stephin Merritt on the perverse art of love songs