September 11th, 2008
Apparently, things got a little heated in the audience during a screening of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE at the Toronto Film Festival. According to the New York Daily News…
“Soon after the lights went down, a source tells us, “a man in the audience started yelling, ‘Don’t touch me!’ People looked around and shrugged. Ten minutes later, the voice yells again, ‘I said don’t touch me!’”
Again, people shrugged off the disturbance. But a few minutes later, says our source, “the guy stands up in the darkness and thwacks the guy behind him with a big festival binder. He hit him so hard everybody could hear it. Everyone freaked out and turned around.”
Here’s the twist: The guy swinging the “big festival binder” was New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick, and the guy getting hit was none other than Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert.
Reports say that Ebert, who can no longer speak due to throat cancer, was trying to tap Lumenick on the shoulder to ask him to move because Ebert couldn’t see. According to the Daily News, Lumenick didn’t realize who he’d whacked until the deed had been done, but didn’t apologize afterwards.
September 11th, 2008
For months now, The Onion AV Club has spent each Thursday spotlighting a different modern cult movie in a noble mission to establish a “New Cult Canon” to follow the list of classic cult movies developed in the 1970s and 1980s, largely by author Danny Peary (who wrote CULT MOVIES, CULT MOVIES 2 and — wait for it — CULT MOVIES 3).
This week, in a break from the new stuff, the Club is presenting “The Old Cult Canon,” a list of 16 movies that established the idea of just what the heck a cult movie is. Ranging from FREAKS to ERASERHEAD to REPO MAN to (of course) THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, it’s as good a primer as any if you’re looking to investigate the phenomenon on your own. (I’m pretty sure they’re all available on DVD).
I bought Peary’s CULT MOVIES as a freshman in college, and spent the next four years — and countless hours in the campus theater — checking movies off the list. I’ve seen just about every one (many several times), but I have to admit, I’ve never seen THE HARDER THEY COME, EL TOPO or AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD. Anyone out there familiar with these movies? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em?
And has anyone out there seen PINK FLAMINGOS? If you’re only familiar with John Waters from HAIRSPRAY (either version), this one might come as a bit of a shock.
