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01/14/09
Actor, director, musician and Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton chats about his films, music, and baseball
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01/14/09
Movie critic Pete Crooks' thoughts on the best movies of the past year—plus plenty of runner-ups
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01/09/09
Electric hillbilly meets British Invasion meets Tony La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation concert this Saturday night
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01/07/09
A few years back, I wrote a story for Diablo about Lisa Kolarich, a Ygnacio Valley High grad who packed her bags and moved to Nashville to take a shot at the big time, country muysic style. Just heard from her dad that Lisa's latest song, "Parading in the Rain" is currently number three on the independent country charts. Yahoo! You can hear the song by clicking on listen, and scrolling down to "2007 recordings" at www.lisakolarich.com.
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01/05/09
The folks at Berkeley's Another Planet Entertainment have sent out a great Happy New Year gift to East Bay music lovers today: announcing the first show bookings for the fabulous Fox Oakland, which is opening in February. I can not wait to see legendary rockers Social Distortion (Feb. 6) in this historic venue, the night after the Fox's opening gala. Michael Franti and Spearhead, B.B. King, and the Black keys are also booked—click here for more information about upcoming shows. And look for a story about the Fox in the February issue of Diablo—I've taken a couple of hard hat tours and this place is simply incredible—we're...
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01/01/09
In October, I wrote a Speak of the Devil story about Rawson Marshall Thurber's film adaptation of Michael Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. The Berkeley author has two more movies being made from his books. Director Stephen Daldry, whose current film, The Reader, is in theaters now, has been tapped to direct The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the Y2K novel that won Chabon a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Daldry, who also directed The Hours and Billy Elliott, is very good with book-to-film adaptations and seems like a smart choice for this sprawling story. The late Sydney Pollack and Sam Mendes had been...
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12/22/08
Brit rockers Coldplay sold a ton of copies of their most recent album, Viva la Vida, in 2008, apparantly to the chagrin of East Bay guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani. Satriani, who moved to Berkeley in the 1970s to record his well-reviewed catalogue of solo instrumental albums, and has taught guitar to famous players including Kirk Hammett (Metallica) and David Bryson (Counting Crows), sued Coldplay recently for copyright infringement, claiming that Viva la Vida's title track borrows from Satriani's 2004 song, "If I Could Fly". Here's
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12/19/08
This has not been my favorite year in cinema, in fact its been pretty weak. I'm hoping that the remaining weeks of 2008 bring some surprises, but for now, I can't imagine anything topping Let the Right One In. I caught this amazing Swedish vampire film on Monday night at the Cerrito Theater, and its playing there another week.
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12/19/08
Every December, Diablo bestows Threads of Hope awards upon five outstanding community volunteers. Click here to read about this year’s honorees. And in the spirit of giving back to our community, I enjoyed reading this story from a former Diablo colleague, Lisa Cecconi, about her Danville church’s experiment, seemingly inspired by the Y2K film Pay It Forward. I can’t recommend that film (for fans of sentimental cinema, try David Lynch’s understated masterpiece The Straight Story instead), but read on to see how members of a Danville church turned an anonymous $1,500 donation into...
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12/17/08
When you say “movie star”, Bruce Campbell might not come to mind as quickly as Brad Pitt, Will Smith, and Tom Cruise. But Campbell fits comfortably into the definition of “cult movie icon”, thanks to roles in popcorn flicks like The Evil Dead trilogy, the Spider-Man films, and the epic B-movie Bubba Ho-Tep, in which Campbell played a geriatric Elvis Presley who has to battle a mummy. Needless to say, I’m a fan.
Campbell is currently acting in the TV show Burn Notice on the USA network. He also recently directed and starred in My Name is Bruce, a movie that spoofs his status as a movie star who appeals to uber-geeks of the horror and sci-fi genres. In Bruce, Campbell plays a version of...
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