Not an actual still from the film.Photo-illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Beta adopts 'Clown and the Fuhrer' [Variety]
Earlier: Which Will Germans Find More Offensive: ‘Valkyrie’ or ‘Inglorious Bastards’?
8/19/08
It’s a Trend! Third Hitler-Killing Movie Announced
Email
Print
LinkJonas Brothers Coyly Decline to Endorse a Candidate
Bogue: I'm glad they're so concerned about the state of our country.
Kois: It'll be their country soon enough!Photo: AP
In a visit to their future home, the White House, yesterday, the Jonas Brothers were busy: signing the wall of that former swimming pool where celebrities sign their names, attending a meeting on diabetes, meeting Dick Cheney's (presumably weeping) granddaughters. They also demurred from endorsing any presidential candidate … for now.
Surely aware that any endorsement would result in a landslide victory for the candidate in question — as tween girls lock their mothers in the basement and take their places at America's polling stations — the brothers are content to wait until a few weeks before the election, by which time their endorsement will surely be worth a Cabinet position at least. But be careful, candidates: A Jonas appointment as secretary of Defense just means the Jonases will finally have the standing army they've long coveted, and soon you'll be out of a job.
A Chart-Based Review of Andrew Kuo’s Latest New York ‘Times’ Chart-Based Music Review
The Jams of Summer 2008 [NYT]
Artist Adria Sartore Not the Least Bit Worried About Grass Stains
Adria Sartore’s Flora 9 (2006–2007).Courtesy of Eleven Rivington
‘Counterfeiters’ DVD Delves Deeper Into Its Nazi Mystery
Back in February, when The Counterfeiters debuted in the States, this foreign-language Oscar winner from Austria struck us as “arresting, and all the more visceral for being based on a horrific true story.” The story is that of real-life counterfeiter Adolf Burger, a Jewish criminal used by the Nazis to mint fake money. This DVD release goes deeper into Burger's astonishing experience (did he collaborate or undermine the project that kept him alive?) with a Q&A and show-and-tell of his historical artifacts.
To get six recommendations daily, sign up for the Agenda newsletter.
Are You a Serial Killer? ‘Dexter’ Promotional Website Offers Customized Diagnosis
This is how likely we are to snap and murder Lane.Courtesy of Dexter's Psycho Therapy
Often, as the fierce rush for posts catches up with us and we're being pressured on all sides to "be funnier" or "use fewer exclamation points," we consider making a career change into something more relaxing, like serial killing. But we wonder: Do we have what it takes to ritualistically slaughter another human being? Thankfully, the publicity team behind the Dexter season-two DVD can answer that question, with Dexter's Psycho Therapy, an online Rorschach test that measures the user's "killer instinct." This scientific test — which will surely cripple the psychiatric industry as it is adopted by police departments nationwide — is only four questions long but is 100 percent accurate, pegging our natural "killer instinct" at 40 percent ("You're very good at hiding your deadly instincts"). It's remarkably hard to game the system, by the way — to get the above result, we had to type "FUCK FUCK BLOOD DEAD BABIES FUCK" in every box.
Dexter's Psycho Therapy [Official site]
Muxtape Shut Down by the Man, Pandora Probably Next
Photo: muxtape.com
Muxtape [Official site]
Pandora [Official site]
Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its 'Last Stand' [WP via Idolator]
‘Weeds’: Nancy Has Her Vision Quest
The mayor realizes he really needs to get a bigger couch.Photo: Courtesy of Showtime
Christina Applegate Is Awesome
Photo: Getty Images
"Apparently they only make cop and cougar shows here, along with some fine comedy programming. I am just trying to be the best cultural attaché to the city that I can be." —Colin Hanks on acting in New York [NYP]
"It is the work of cash-hounds, and I urge people NOT to buy it. I am not signed to Warner, and no royalties from this DVD will come to me. Please spend your money elsewhere." —Morrissey on his new concert DVD [Guardian]
"To go from 5-feet-5 to 6-feet-1 was awesome. It was amazing for someone short like me to suddenly be looking down at all of my peers — so I kept all the shoes." —Anna Faris on The House Bunny [NYDN]
"I think for the guys who made [Pineapple Express], we're like Tony Bennett to these kids. We're that square— we're so square it's hip again. It's very odd." —Huey Lewis doesn't remember his own song titles [Billboard]
‘Weeds’ Star Hunter Parrish on His ‘Spring Awakening’ Debut
Photo: Joan Marcus
So, is it more nerve-wracking to do a sex scene onstage than it is on Weeds?
Actually, it’s less. When you do it on camera, there’s only four or five people around, but it’s so intimate because you’re not projecting any emotion, it’s just right there, so it’s a little weird — a little close. Plus then it’s on tape, so it makes it onto the Internet, and it’s frozen in time. Onstage, all that awkwardness just doesn’t exist.
German Producers Put 100,000-Euro Bounty on Reviewers of ‘Der Baader Meinhof Komplex’
Alexandra Maria Lara (maybe! We only took a semester of German!) in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, taking aim at … a critic?Trailer screencap courtesy of bmk.film.de
German film fans aren't just spending their time preparing to be offended by Valkyrie and Inglorious Bastards. They're also preparing to hate the biggest German-language movie of the year, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, a big-budget, star-studded drama about the eponymous gang who wreaked havoc throughout West Germany in the seventies. Produced by Bernd Eichinger (Downfall), and starring a who's who of young German actors, Baader Meinhof doesn't open until September 25, but its producers have already completely screwed up. In an attempt to maintain secrecy about a movie on an explosive topic, the producers screened the movie for critics — but forced them to sign a contract that restricted them from writing about or even talking about the movie before its release date, with a penalty of 100,000 euros for those journalists who disobeyed.
Which Will Germans Find More Offensive: ‘Valkyrie’ or ‘Inglorious Bastards’?
Courtesy of United Artists; Getty Images
One upcoming big-budget World War II movie features German soldiers being shot, beaten to death with baseball bats, scalped, and getting swastikas carved into their foreheads. Another features Tom Cruise with an eye patch and (please God) a cheesy German accent. The Times of London asks how das Vaterland might feel about Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-baiting Inglorious Bastards and Tom Cruise's Valkyrie. "This is pop culture encountering Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force," Tobias Kniebe, a German film critic, says. "The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable." (Apparently German film critics are trained to speak only in blurbs.)
This seems a little bit weird to us. Are contemporary Germans really going to have their feelings hurt by a movie in which not a single Nazi "has redeeming value"? We're no expert on the German national temperament, but when we watch movies about how Americans were assholes to, say, the Indians or slaves — to choose two somewhat analogous historical situations — we sort of shrug and say, "Well, we deserve that."
Who’s Suing the Watchmen? That’d Be Fox
Courtesy of DC Comics
First Look: See Joss Whedon and Damon Lindelof in Brad Meltzer’s ‘Book of Lies’ Trailer
What is the Book of Lies? Is it real? Is it a myth? In this trailer for Brad Meltzer's upcoming novel, The Book of Lies, Joss Whedon, Damon Lindelof, Christopher Hitchens, Brian K. Vaughan, and A.J Jacobs — plus one crazy-looking dude in scrubs — debate the tome that just may tie Cain and Abel to Superman. We don't know what the Book of Lies is, but pit Joss against Hitchens and we'll side with Joss every time.
The Book of Lies comes out September 2 from Grand Central Books.
Russell Crowe to Play Bill Hicks?
Photos: Getty Images, Wikipedia
Crowe at the Improv: In what will surely make Bill Hicks's zombie corpse rise up from hell in black-hearted rage, Russell Crowe has revealed that he has a "project based on the life of [the late] comedian Bill Hicks, which is going from treatment to draft stage with Kiwi writer Mark Staufer." True, Hicks and Crowe both seem to have had an affinity for alcohol and picking fights with strangers, but Hicks might agree that a commercial biopic comes pretty close to "suckin' Satan's pecker." [SMH via Comingsoon]
Cruise Feeling Sleepy: Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi have set up Sleeper at Warner Bros., with Cruise "loosely attached to star" in the DC Comics adaptation about a spy who's impervious to pain because his body has fused with an alien artifact. Then the spy goes on to infiltrate a villainous organization and falls in love with a key member named Miss Misery. Um, Robert Downey Jr., any thoughts on this dazzling entry in the DC canon? HR]
The Coen Brothers Get Serious: Tony-nominated Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) will play a professor whose life unravels when his brother won't move out of the house in Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man. Don't worry about opening weekend; Spin City's Richard Kind is playing the brother, lending some much-needed star power to the picture. [Variety]
Advertising
GET THE RSS FEEDVulture Features
Movies | TV | Music | Video | Books | Theater | Art
Art Candy: One new artwork, every day.
Beef: Cultural rivalries and confrontations.
Chat Room: Entertainment and culture Q&As.
The Comics Page: Excerpts from new graphic novels.
The Early-Evening News: So what the hell happened today?
The Industry: The morning trade news roundup.
Kudos: Awards news, buzz, and predictions.
Leak of the Week: Listening in on the file-sharing networks.
The List: Culture by the numbers.
Overnights: Recaps of TV shows.
Right-Click: The hottest new MP3s.
Trailer Mix: Movie trailers reviewed.
Tube Junkie: Nuggets from the online video archives.
Vulture Picture Palace: Exclusive short films.
The Discovery Channel Finds Its Playboy
David Edelstein on Trouble the Water
Raising the Bar Lowers It Further
The Best of the Rest of the Summer 
Most Commented
Daily Intel
Last 7 Days
Vulture
Last 7 Days
Grub Street
Last 7 Days
The Cut
Last 7 Days