2008

Thanksgiving dinner had not yet been cleared and TV stations across the land already had the Christmas movies queued up and ready to go. Between November 28 and December 26, you will only have about 147 chances to watch your favorite holiday movie. So here is a quick list of five Christmas movies well worth a couple of hours of your time in the next few weeks.

Christmas Vacation (1989)

It doesn’t get much better than “Shitter’s full.” The Griswolds bounced back in a major way from a somewhat lackluster trip to Europe to provide the straight up funniest of the holiday standards. It might not have the heart of A Christmas Story or the nostalgia of Rudolph’s bad claymation but Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and the third installment of Griswold children, including an already-on-her-way-to-creepy Juliet Lewis, provide solid yuletide yucks.

Clark fights many battles in this one. Among them are taking on his neighbors, including a yuppie bitch played by Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, fighting to get the Christmas lights working and being bitchslapped by his boss, played brilliantly by Brian Doyle-Murray. There’s also the gratuitous hottie, played by Nicolette Scorsese, who works in the department store (“Can’t see the line, can you Russ?”) and reappears in Clark’s poolside fantasy.

READ ON for the rest of Luke’s list of classic holiday movies…

Old HT favorite Marco Benevento recently announced details about his new studio album, Me Not Me. They keyboard wizard covers My Morning Jacket, Leonard Cohen, Beck and Deerhoof among others

Though the contests are still very close, we’re going to call The Seeker for Pearl Jam and All Of My Love for Ween. Now that’s cleaned up, we’ll move on to this week’s edition which looks at Burning Down The House.

Remember Pop-Up Video? It appears MTVMusic.com has these up for free streaming now – awesome. I was inspired to to pick this song after seeing David Byrne’s production last week in New Bedford at the Zeiterion Theater. A fantastic, almost too perfect, production complete with beautiful vocal harmonies, choreography and cult-like matching white outfits for all onstage.

Be sure to login to IMEEM before streaming the playlist below to ensure you get full-length clips.

RSS Readers, Click here to launch the playlist

READ ON for the lowdown on this week’s contestants…

After a lengthy delay the lineup for Langerado 2009 has finally been announced and it’s way more eclectic than ever. Headliners include Snoop Dogg, Death Cab For Cutie and Ryan

[Originally Published April 18, 2008] The recent release of Shine a Light had all the veteran rock critics throwing roses to the Stones and Scorsese. Others marveled at the Mt. Rushmore crevices on the weathered faces of the Glimmer Twins. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards do, indeed, look about 2,000 light years past “elegantly wasted” at this point—not to mention the miracle man, Charlie Watts, on the kit, Foghorn Leghorn on rhythm guitar, and that cat that AIN’T Bill Wyman still holding the bass notes all down the line.

Actually, the flick is damn good. Martin Scorsese is still a master at rapid pacing, wicked close-ups and quicksilver edit cuts. Marty is also America’s Best Director (to watch if you just scored a huge bag of blow). The Stones are not the Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World—that was more of a sweet bit of chutzpah spoken by a road manager rather than an actual claim. Hell, for a few moments in 1969 when The Who wasn’t touring behind Tommy, Hendrix wasn’t napalming the hippies in upstate New York, Iggy wasn’t stroking blades, Zeppelin was in between tours, groupies, mud sharks, Acapulco gold, Ballantine beer and a heaping pile of coke, that rock crown claim may have been true.

But by the early ’70s, the Stones had begun a love affair with the jet setters, Jann Wenners, Truman (Where’s Waldo?) Capotes and scenemakers on the edge of rock music and, for all intents and purposes, that trip really never changed much. Except, of course, the Twins got older, stopped doing loads of drugs, cut back on inspired songwriting and, in their fifties, started to tour way more often than they ever had in the past. Money, my friends, will get anyone off the velvet couch and onto the sprawling stage amidst 40-year old songs and a frontman who defies time, taste and a treadmill. Read on for more of this week’s Hidden Flick…