| Archives of Nolan's Pop Culture Review | ||
       | ||
 THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEWS "Spanglish" by Mike Smith | ||
"The Life Aquatic" by Drew Reiber | ||
DEADGUY'S DEMENTIA Atlantis Found! by Mike "Deadguy" Scott | ||
ODDSERVATIONS "Filthy" Unites Friends....Hey, '90s, Git Your Own Station!!!..."The Machinist"....New Wave Concert: Duran Duran/The Go-Go's...."Ocean's 12" Fells "Blade: Trinity"....Mark Biero....Bye Bayfront Center....Yes, Jeff Strand, You're Allowed to See That...."Mandatory Guidelines" for the Week by Andy Lalino | ||
MATT'S RAIL Danger, Will Robinson by Matt Drinnenberg | ||
MIKE'S RANT Andy's Letter .... Congratulations .... Did Someone Say 20 Years? .... Meet The Beatles, Part 47 by Mike Smith | ||
LETTERS | ||
Established A.D. 2000, March 19. Now in our fifth calendar year!
Number 247 (Vol. 5, No. 51). This edition is for the week of December 13--19, 2004.
To paraphrase Dr. Bud Mayhem of Strange Agents, the grid went down. Well, not really the grid, but it's how I thought about it. According to my web host, the server that houses Crazed Fanboy (and 100 or so other websites).....broke. Stopped functioning. Died. Kaput.
For all of that night through today (Thursday), a new server was being installed, set up, and information transferred. While I was hopeful some information would be saved, apparently Crazed Fanboy was on a bad sector (don't worry about what that means), and nothing got saved (the jury's still out on the Message Board database). Sure, and now I gotta tell a few freaked-out web clients who share this webspace not to panic---easier said than done.
PCR Year-Ender Around The Corner No Control by Roberto Rosaly: Two emotionally unstable young men struggle with reality, gambling problems and their battle with the underworld boss. I didn't quite get into this one, as the filmmaker came off too much like a Quentin Tarantino wannabe (Chris Woods of ICON noticed that too). Lots of in-your-face violence, quirky characters, over-the-top acting all shot B&W, says the filmmaker watched Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill a whole bunch of times. All that notwithstanding, better actors and a non-derivative script would help on the next go 'round.
It was good to see everybody, and touch base with Walter and Sara Romeo, owner/operators of the Coffehouse. Thanks to Peter and Paul Guzzo for organizing these events and congratulations for the one-year anniversary of the Coffeehouse Film Series which occured this month!
More to come?
For the last 24-plus hours up to this writing I've been fielding emails and phone calls from people wondering if there was any more to come on Crazed Fanboy or had the site gone dark. Starting from early evening Tuesday the 14th, attempts to view this website or log-in to the Message Board were met with error messages such as "Page Not Found" or "Website Not Responding", or simply time-outs. Then a little while ago, a visit to this URL resulted in a "refresh" program that kicked in the site's administrator log-in page. What happened?
In any case, I'm sorry if any of this caused undue stress on the part of our dear readership, but rest assured as long as your captain is alive and has a server to sail on, this website isn't going anywhere. It just may disappear once in a while---just kidding, in all my years on the web, this is the first outage of this duration ever. Let's hope it's the last.
TO ALL PCR WRITERS: the two-week year-end double issue is coming up. Because the calendar doesn't quite jive with the PCR publishing schedule, I'm not sure how the numbering is going to go, looks like Volume 5, Number 52 is going to be a long week at the end of December, and Volume 6, Number 1 will be a short week, basically the weekend of New Year's into the first week of January, but nothing's in granite. Something very similar happened last year. Well, using that experience as my guide, two week's worth of columns would have to be to me in a very short time right at year's end. Worst comes to worst, don't worry too much about the very first week of January, there may be a design shake-up then anyway. Most important thing is to note that next week and the week after are all that's left to file your "Top 10", "Best of/Worst ofs", and "I want to Thank..." lists into the office.
December's Romeo Coffeehouse Meeting
L-R, Chris Woods, Robert Colbert, and Simon Lynx listen as Paul Guzzo (back to camera) explains the set-up.
This was my first trip back to the Coffeehouse at 1515 7th Ave in Ybor City in two months. Work-related traumas, sleep-deprivation, and transportation woes halted my progress in October and November. But with driving companion Gus Perez confidently in tow, we took off for a Yuletide reunion (of sorts) with Tampa filmdom.
The Pitch, The Poker, and The Public by Howard Campbell. A story of manipulation, influence and PT Barnum. It asks the question, "Can one go corporate without losing one's soul? Can you make money and hold onto what is most important in life?" The filmmaker (who related to me how he's being stalked by a lookalike named "Ben") and I engaged in a stimulating conversation after this movie. In many ways, he's commenting on exactly the same as we do in here: how pop culture affects the public's perception. Howard's angle is from a corporate mole standpoint as he is actively employed with an ad agency and is privvy to the inside thinking that goes on there. The movie examines things corporate America uses hucksterism to sway public opinion, going all the way back to P.T. Barnum. I'm expecting to interview Mr. Campbell on Nolan Radio in the near future.
Nolan Canova on left, with ad man/filmmaker Howard Campbell. Howard's being followed by a man named Ben who insists on calling him "Mack".
The Match by Chris McDaniel. Didn't play due to a mix-up on the disc or something. Apparently, the filmmaker sent the Guzzo Bros (the organizers of the Coffeehouse event) a wedding video instead of "The Match"!
L-R, Yours truly, editor John Metheny, and actor Gus Perez mingle after the show.
A big surprise was when the producer from Pinellas' Public Access program Scream @ The Wall arrived and showed some clips of interviews taken at the Halloween Horror Picture Show. Yours truly was featured on-tape for a moment as I waxed eloquent about the local filmmaker scene. This program aired in Pinellas, but I'll see what I can do about trans-coding it into a World of Nolan spot! Thanks so much to the producer for the opportunity to appear. (As of this writing I have misplaced his name, but one of my contacts is sure to remind me of it before the week's out!)
Scream @ The Wall producer, left, speaks with Howard Campbell. The ICON boys look on in the background.
Cross your fingers on the restoration of the website, folks! It'll get there. Right now, I'm just lucky to be "alive"! ---Nolan
