CliqueClack

The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame: Still crazy after all these years

There’s been so much controversy over the years at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (scandal, lack of transparency in the selection process, a tightly controlled nomination process by individuals who aren’t musicians, blatantly ignored inductee petitions, more) you have to wonder if the Hall even knows what they’re doing … or if they even know what their mission statement is.

First, let’s take a look and see who’s being considered for the 2014 crop as announced last week:

Kiss. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Chic. Hall & Oates. Deep Purple. Peter Gabriel. LL Cool J. The Meters. Nirvana. N.W.A. The Replacements. Linda Ronstadt. Cat Stevens. Link Wray. Yes. The Zombies.

See anyone who should be in the Hall?

Wait … that might not be a fair question. One should be at least somewhat familiar with the Hall’s induction process. It will help ease some of the angst you’re no doubt experiencing having seen that list of artists being bandied about … don’t you think?

I’ll be brief. First and foremost, artists are eligible 25 years after their first release. Additionally, induction into the Hall must contain criteria which, in so many words, “includes influence and significance of artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll.” Continue reading 'The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame: Still crazy after all these years' »

Win free passes to see Free Birds in Baltimore or DC

All passes have been claimed for this event. Please follow @CliqueClack on Twitter for alerts on contests, news and reviews.

CliqueClack has partnered with Relativity Media and Allied Integrated Marketing to give readers in the Baltimore and DC areas a chance to see the new animated film Free Birds at a special advance screening. The film features the voice talents of Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, and Amy Poehler. In this irreverent, hilarious, adventurous buddy comedy for audiences of all ages, directed by Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!), two turkeys from opposite sides of the tracks must put aside their differences and team up to travel back in time to change the course of history — and get turkey off the holiday menu for good.

The screening will be held on Saturday, October 26, 10:30 AM at the following locations:

• AMC Mazza Gallerie, Washington, DC
  
• AMC White Marsh, Baltimore, MD

Please read the following instructions on how to get your passes:

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Win free passes to see About Time in Indianapolis

This contest is closed. Please follow @CliqueClack on Twitter for alerts on contests, news and reviews.

CliqueClack has partnered with Universal Pictures to offer readers in the Indianapolis area a chance to be among the first to see the new romantic comedy About Time starring Rachel McAdams, Domhnall Gleeson, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, and Margot Robbie. The film is directed by Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill). The film tells the story of 21-year-old Tim Lake (Gleeson), who discovers he can time travel. The night after another unsatisfactory New Year party, Tim’s father (Nighy) tells his son that the men in his family have always had the ability to travel through time. Tim can’t change history, but he can change what happens and has happened in his own life—so he decides to make his world a better place…by getting a girlfriend. Sadly, that turns out not to be as easy as you might think.

The screening will take place on Tuesday, October 29, 7:00 PM at AMC Castleton Square. To enter the drawing, please read the following instructions:

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Win free passes to Blue is the Warmest Color in DC

All passes have been claimed. Please follow @CliqueClack on Twitter for alerts on contests, news and reviews.

CliqueClack has partnered with IFC Films and Allied Integrated Marketing to give readers in the Washington, D.C. area an opportunity to see the new film Blue is the Warmest Color at a special advance screening on Thursday, October 24, 7:00 PM at the Landmark E Street Cinema. The film centers on a 15-year-old girl named Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is approaching adulthood and dreams of experiencing her first love. A handsome male classmate falls hard for her, but an unsettling erotic reverie upsets the romance before it begins. Adèle imagines that the mysterious, blue-haired girl she encountered in the street slips into her bed and possesses her with overwhelming pleasure. That blue-haired girl is a confident older art student named Emma (Léa Seydoux), who will soon enter Adèle’s life for real, making way for an intense and complicated love story that spans a decade and is touchingly universal in its depiction.

25 Admit Two passes are available for this screening. To obtain yours, simply leave a comment on this post telling us why you want to see this movie. Please note: the film is rated NC-17, so no one under the age of 17 will be admitted. Passes will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. Have a look at the film’s trailer after the break, and then let us know if you would like to see this film, which won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Ridiculousness: What’s your excuse?

I’m tired.

I really am.

I’m tired of the ridiculousness of some people and their harping on things that don’t really need to be harped on. But that’s the nature of the beast: Put something out there for public consumption and there’s a contingent of folks who take issue with it. Sometimes it’s a legitimate issue, other times it’s not. (Let’s be realistic: Most of the time it’s not.)

The latest round of ridiculousness incorporates a couple of images which have borne gaggles of stupidity. The first — courtesy of Mary Kang — is something that’s been floating around for quite some time now, but has recently gained a lot of attention. Read the brief piece about her and the “controversial” photo of she and her kids and you’ll form your own opinions. Continue reading 'Ridiculousness: What’s your excuse?' »

Scandal deals in lies and secrets

I screened The Fifth Estate earlier this week (you can find that review elsewhere on the site), and thus spent a great deal of time discussing the role of Wikileaks and Julian Assange in the role of geopolitics. My review didn’t get into my view; I did a pretty good job, I think, talking about the movie and not the subject. I thought I was done questioning whether or not we should live in a world were it is OK for some secrets to exist. Then tonight’s Scandal came along.

I have been a fan of Shondaland’s latest show longer than most of its current watchers had even seen the first episode (I guess that’s cheating, as I saw the first episode months before it premiered). Despite me still having some issues with the show – particularly the Fitz/Olivia relationship that has become its core – I am still as much of a fan as I ever was. At its roots, Scandal is a procedural; one that is obviously different from your run of the mill cop or lawyer show. The cases that Pope & Associates take transcend crime and are much more personal and they are generally “bigger.”

Continue reading 'Scandal deals in lies and secrets' »

12 Years a Slave doesn’t flinch on the brutality but speaks volumes on the human spirit

Despite the love Americans have for their country and its history, there is always that lingering shame of our terrible past. Among all the awful things done to build the nation, it is difficult to argue that anything was as soul-crushing or evil as legalized human slavery. It’s something that has come up quite a bit in recent times; last year had two very different looks at slavery, both from a “justice” perspective. Django Unchained was the over-the-top, hyper-violent and borderline cartoonish spirit of vengeance against slave owners, while Lincoln was the overly dramatized and streamlined legal thriller “based on real history” variant. But the lives of real slaves tended not to have such happy or even bittersweet endings — the exceptions stand out because they show an important truth: even in the darkest times, there is still hope.

Continue reading '12 Years a Slave doesn’t flinch on the brutality but speaks volumes on the human spirit' »

The Fifth Estate fails to make a point

Just like the website that is the basis of the story, The Fifth Estate has seen a great deal of controversy long before it premiered. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has campaigned against the film, going as far as releasing the script on his website and making a public appeal to star Benedict Cumberbatch to distance himself from the film. Assange forgot the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. A great deal of attention has been paid to his comments, and the incredibly poor buzz the film has gotten has been largely ignored … not exactly working in his favor. The question that faces us now, however, is whether or not The Fifth Estate’s bad buzz is deserved.

I’m not so sure. Maybe I was swayed by the whispers I had heard in advance a little too much, as I walked into the film with expectations that the person behind me in line could have tripped over. But as someone who largely ignored the Wikileaks saga as it happened, I was fascinated by the story. The performances were all pretty damn good, and it was an incredible cast (it is a dream cast for nerds; you had Sherlock/Khan, Harry Potter‘s Professor Lupin, Deep Space Nine‘s Doctor Bashir, the next Doctor Who, Game of Thrones’ Melissandre and Marvel’s Dr. Erskine and the Falcon). But did all of these things add up to a good thing? Well no, the whole was less than the sum of its parts. The Fifth Estate isn’t a horrible flick, but it surely isn’t a great one either.

Continue reading 'The Fifth Estate fails to make a point' »

Pacific Rim on Blu-ray will give your home theater a real workout

One of the biggest puzzlers of the year has to be the lackluster performance of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, at least here in the US. Was the film over-hyped? Did American audiences just not connect with the traditional kaiju/mecha genre? The film did incredibly well in Japan, however, and probably made enough money for the studio to get behind a sequel (del Toro confirms he is writing a sequel, but the studio has yet to give him the greenlight for production), and now with the home video release, those reluctant to plop down the cash for a night out at the movies can check the film out in the comfort of their own homes.

If you’re not familiar with the story, in a nutshell, the planet has been under attack from giant monsters, called kaiju, from another dimension. In the initial attacks, shown with chilling effect in news footage, the kaiju decimated large coastal cities but the humans finally fought back by building giant robots called Jaegers which required two pilots to operate. The pilots had to be linked by a process called The Drift so that they shared everything, from motor skills to memories. The world government decides to shut down the Jaeger program to build giant walls around the coastlines instead, but when the walls prove to be less than impenetrable, a rogue group of Jaeger pilots and officers surreptitiously restart the program to save the earth from kaiju domination.

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See 1963’s Dementia 13 for its atmospheric flair … not its plot

Where you go with Dementia 13 — the initial effort by the legendary film (and wine) maker Francis Ford Coppola — is up to you. Is it a classic? Is it a cheese-fest? A diamond in the rough? Or do you simply chalk it up as a film by a young, wet-behind-the-ears first-time director looking for his sea legs?

It’s all of these, actually.

I consider myself somewhat of a creepy old film buff (and yes, there was probably a better way to word that which wouldn’t directly reflect on me, but I’m good with it), so my initial viewing of Coppola’s freshman effort revealed plenty of pluses going for it … but with a caveat. You have to get into a 1960’s mode of thinking (which was when it was made) where mystery and suspense were paramount in films of this sort and where the gore was relatively tame by today’s standards.

Having disposed of her husband’s body in a lake when he suffers from a heart attack, Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) heads over to the Haloran estate to see about convincing her dead husband’s mother that her will needs to reflect Louise as a beneficiary. But mystery abounds around the Haloran home where Louise discovers an annual ritual revolving around a tragic accidental drowning death of mother Haloran’s young daughter. In her attempt to convince her mother-in-law she can speak with the dead child, Louise winds up “sleeping with the fishes” as it were, courtesy of a shadowy, ax-wielding figure. Continue reading 'See 1963’s Dementia 13 for its atmospheric flair … not its plot' »