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The Bubbler

Rob Thomas puts pop in Madison's pop culture

5/22/2008 10:58 am

Bubbler: Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Midnight Screening

It's too bad that "I'm getting too old for this ----" wasn't a catchphrase from the "Indiana Jones" movies, but in fact from that other '80s franchise, the "Lethal Weapon" movies. Because, as I dragged myself out to Star Cinema last night for the 12:01 a.m. showing of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," that phrase was on my middle-aged (EARLY-middle-aged) mind. I expected that fellow Gen-Xers would be out in force to see the first "Indy" movie in 19 years, but for the most part the full house was the usual midnight-crowd -- groups of college-age kids, mostly boys.... READ MORE

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4/17/2008 12:52 pm

Bubbler: Lyle Lovett back at Overture Hall on July 13

Mickies Dairy Bar might want to get the table ready, because Madison favorite (and regular Mickies customer) Lyle Lovett is coming back to Overture Hall on Sunday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m. It's the first appearance in town for Lovett since his "It's Not Big, It's Large" CD came out, although he debuted some of the songs off that album, such as "All Downhill," when he last played here in the summer of 2006. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 26 and range from $45 to $55 through the Overture Hall box office at 258-4141 and www... READ MORE

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4/14/2008 10:37 am

Bubbler: This. Was. Jeopardy!

So there's only one thing missing when you go see a live taping of "Jeopardy!" You never hear the theme song. At the Kohl Center on Saturday, the ditty that padded Merv Griffin's retirement fund wasn't heard during the opening and closing, nor during "Final Jeopardy." You could maybe catch a bit of it during the "closed captioning provided by" ad at the end of the show, but even that was hard to make out. Other than that, seeing Alex Trebek, announcer Johnny Gilbert and that big board of questions up close and personal was quite a thrill for any "Jeopardy!" fan. I sat through three semifinal tapings... READ MORE

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4/11/2008 11:49 am

Bubbler: What's the best soundtrack for a pillow fight?

For April Fool's Day, Volume One, the Chippewa Valley arts magazine, decided the city of Eau Claire should make feathers, not war. So they roped off a parking lot and invited residents to come out armed for a public, free-for-all pillow fight. They filmed the downy carnage, and the results are viewable here YouTube. It's pretty funny -- gotta love the adorable little tyke who beams at the camera and says "I like hitting people." But of special note to Madison residents is the soundtrack. Just what band would you use to score a pillow fight? What band's... READ MORE

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4/07/2008 11:48 am

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 4 -- "My Brother is an Only Child"

The last film I saw at this year's Wisconsin Film Festival was one of the best. Daniele Luchetti's "My Brother is an Only Child" is a terrific, funny and heart-rending coming of age story about two brothers growing up in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s and taking very divergent paths. Hotheaded younger brother Accio (a fantastic live-wire performance by Elio Germano) is naturally attracted to the two-fisted approach of the Fascists, while his more romantic older brother Manrico (Riccardio Scamarcio) hooks up with the Communists. There's tension here, of course, as the brothers fight both physically and... READ MORE

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4/07/2008 11:30 am

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 4 -- "In Search of a Midnight Kiss"

Is the indie romantic comedy dead, or at least on life support? That seems like an odd thing to say, but it's been a while since I saw a really good, low-budget, no-star indie romantic comedy. "Juno" was sort of a romantic comedy, but obviously much more than that. More typical of the independent rom-com genre is something like "Dedication" or "Garden State," which seem positively loathe to embrace the genre, but end up doing so anyway. Well, I've finally come across a really good, low-budget, no-star indie romantic comedy, and it's Alex Holdridge's... READ MORE

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4/07/2008 12:34 am

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 4 -- "Welcome to Macintosh" and "Pageant"

Cap Times writer Mary Bergin hit two very different documentaries on Sunday afternoon. Read on: What do drag queens and computer geeks have in common? Think passion, people, passion! Absolute absorption. Total excess. Obsession.It was all very Madison -- two documentaries about very different folks on the fringe, filling two theaters in the Chazen Museum of Art basement on a Sunday afternoon. The crowds were not wild, but they were engaged. At least one laptop was hoisted for an iSight crowd shot before... READ MORE

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4/06/2008 11:52 pm

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 4 -- "Sixty Six" and "Freedom's Fury"

While the Wisconsin Film Festival didn't offer any documentaries about her beloved Drake Bulldogs, sports fan and Cap Times assistant features editor Jane Burns did check out a double-feature of sports-themed films on Sunday afternoon: As the April part of March Madness winds up this weekend, it seemed only logical to check out the sports offerings at the Wisconsin Film Fest. Instead of domed stadiums in San Antonio and Tampa, however, these sports journeys involved... READ MORE

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4/06/2008 11:45 pm

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 3 -- "Nerdcore For Life"

Gettin' giga with it? Against my better judgment, I decided to stay up late Saturday night and hit the 11:15 p.m. world premiere screening of the documentary "Nerdcore For Life" at the Bartell. Boy, was I glad I did. What a fun doc, and what a totally fun screening that was well worth the lack of sleep. Dan Lamoureux's immensely entertaining film looks at the exploding subgenre of "nerdcore" rap -- basically, nerds putting together hip-hop songs about their favorite "Star Wars" characters, "World of Warcraft" exploits, computer programming slang, and the like. Rappers with names like MC Hawking, The... READ MORE

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4/06/2008 11:21 pm

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 3 -- "Madison"

The toughest ticket to get at this year's Wisconsin Film Festival was easily "Madison." The world premiere of Brent Notbohm's drama on Saturday night at the Chazen was the first sellout of the festival. No surprise there -- not only is the film set and shot in Madison, using an all-local cast drawn from American Players Theater, but the movie's called "Madison" for heaven's sake! In fact, the filmmakers joked before the screening that the film sold out so fast that they weren't able to pack their first audience with friends and family. Even with a few friendly faces in the audience, you have to think Notbohm, lead actor... READ MORE

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4/06/2008 10:24 pm

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 3 -- "Boxing Day"

One of the quintessential magical experiences of attending a film festival is getting shut out of a film you had intended to see, wandering to another theater to see a film that you've never heard of, and discovering a wonderful, enriching cinematic surprise that changes your life. This was not my experience seeing "Boxing Day." I had intended to see "Urban Explorers" at 6 p.m. Saturday night at the eensy Fredric March Play Circle, but 15 minutes late is 15 minutes late, and there wasn't a seat to be found. So I headed over to the second-floor ticket office in the Memorial Union to look over a schedule and see what... READ MORE

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4/06/2008 10:06 pm

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 3 -- "The Meaning of Tea"

It's not often the film festival will add a second showing to accommodate audience demand, but when the initial screening of the documentary "The Meaning of Tea" became one of this year's first sellouts, festival organizers added a last-minute second screening on Saturday afternoon. Cap Times assistant features editor and "self-avowed tea snob" Jane Burns reports: American tea drinkers may have finally found their champion in filmmaker Scott Chamberlin Hoyt.In... READ MORE

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4/05/2008 11:17 am

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 2 -- "Bon Cop, Bad Cop"

In a scene early on in "Bon Cop, Bad Cop," a dead body is found dangling across a giant sign that separates Ontario from Quebec, half of his body in English-speaking Canada, half in French-speaking Canada. Two detectives, one from Toronto and one from Montreal, bicker about who has jurisdiction. Through a series of mishaps, the two detectives end up dangling from the sign, each holding on to one end of the body for dear life. Then, the body splits in half. As gore and body parts rained down, some audience members at the Orpheum rocked with laughter, while the person sitting next to me clapped her hand to her... READ MORE

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4/05/2008 1:39 am

Bubbler: Film Fest Day 2 -- "Up The Yangtze"

While I was at the Orpheum Stage Door seeing "Still Life," a fictional film based on the real Three Gorges Dam project, Cap Times assistant features editor Jane Burns was across the street at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art seeing "Up the Yangtze," a documentary on the exact same subject. Here's her take: The beauty of film is how it helps us traverse distance. The obvious distance can be that from one to another, but what... READ MORE

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4/05/2008 12:45 am

Bubbler: Film fest Day 2 -- "Still Life"

Here's a prediction I feel pretty comfortable making -- Zhang Ke Jia's "Still Life" will not take home the Audience Award from this year's Wisconsin Film Festival. Based on the grumbling I heard from fellow audience members as they filed out of the Orpheum Stage Door on Friday afternoon, some of them were definitely ripping the "1" or "2" on their award ballots to indicate their displeasure with the film, which is slow-moving, elusive and, well, still. "There was one line of dialogue per minute," one woman groused. I remember having the exact same reaction to the first Jia film I saw,... READ MORE

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4/04/2008 11:00 am

Bubbler: Film fest Day 1 -- TEAM coverage of "Mad City Chickens"

Forget French spies ("OSS: Nest of Spies"), Japanese super-sized heroes ("Big Man Japan") or Scandinavian whimsy ("Waiter"). The real action on opening night of the 10th Annual Wisconsin Film Festival on Thursday was at Monona Terrace, which hosted the world premiere screening of the homegrown documentary "Mad City Chickens" before an enthusiastic sellout crowd. (For some background on the Madison chicken-raising phenomenon, check out stories in the Capital Times by Katie... READ MORE

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3/21/2008 10:48 am

Bubbler: Van Halen reschedules Milwaukee show for April 28

Nobody's saying just what mysterious ailment Eddie Van Halen came down with that caused Van Halen to postpone its April 7 show at Milwaukee's Bradley Center. But whatever it was, it doesn't seem to be stopping the veteran hard rockers (including original singer/ex-ambulance driver David Lee Roth) from rescheduling the show for three weeks later. The new date for the show, announced yesterday, is Monday, April 28, and all tickets bought for the original date will be honored for this one. If you haven't gotten yours, they are still available through Ticketmaster outlets, online at ... READ MORE

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3/18/2008 3:11 pm

Bubbler: "Kids in the Hall" coming to the Barrymore April 25

Funny. I just met somebody over the weekend who was the spitting image of "Darryl" (excuse me, "Da-RILL") and was wondering what the "Kids in the Hall" were up to lately. The venerable Canadian sketch comedy troupe has scattered to the five winds over the years, returning to the fold every once in a while for a reunion tour. Well, that time has come again, because the reformed "Kids in the Hall" are doing a reunion tour that will bring them to the Barrymore Theater on Friday, April 25 for two shows at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets are $36.50 and $38.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday... READ MORE

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3/18/2008 10:49 am

Bubbler: "Chicago 10" director responds to my review

Last week, I wrote up a review of "Chicago 10," the new documentary about the street protests in chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the brutal police crackdown that resulted, and the subsequent trial of antiwar "co-conspirators" like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. I gave the movie 2.5 stars, basically the reviewer's equivalent of sitting on the fence. I thought the footage of protesters taking over Grant Park, and the bloody clash with police in riot gear was mesmerizing, and director Brett Morgen's decision to use a contemporary rock score by bands like Rage Against the Machine... READ MORE

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3/13/2008 2:11 pm

Bubbler: SoCo Music Experience will return to Madison in September

The Flaming Lips at the SoCo Music Experience at Willow Island, Sept. 8, 2007. Photo by Mark Sadowski, distributed via Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license. You are free to share and make derivative works of this file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it under this or a similar license. This is Part Two of The Bubbler's ongoing ... READ MORE

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3/13/2008 10:08 am

Bubbler: Wilco's favorite beer comes from our neck of the woods

This is part one in an occasional series that we might call "Things I Learn From Reading Rolling Stone In the Office When I Should Be Working." While I was perusing through the latest issue (the one that features a portrait of Barack Obama on the cover that looks like it was commissioned for a Franklin Mint commemorative dinner plate), I came across an article on Wilco's five-night stand at Chicago's Riviera Theater. The reporter went backstage to see what the band was eating before the show, and it turns out they were washing their salmon and jasmine rice with a special-order keg of beer from the New Glarus Brewing Co.!... READ MORE

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3/11/2008 10:52 am

Bubbler: And the first sellout of the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival is . . .

Photo by Pete Olsen Tickets for the 2008 Wisconsin Film Festival went on sale Saturday at noon at the Memorial Union box office at www.wifilmfest.org, and, according to the intrepid folks at Dane101.com, by 8:30 p.m. the festival had its first official sellout. Not too much of a surprise -- the sellout was the world... READ MORE

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3/10/2008 10:16 am

Bubbler: Suddenly, "Crazy about Swayze" becomes more meaningful

When it was first announced, the Majestic Theater's "Brew and View" double feature of Patrick Swayze films just seemed like a really fun, cheesy way to spend a Wednesday night. Both "Dirty Dancing" and "Road House" have their cult followings (very different cults, I'm guessing), united by the sight of a shirtless, poofy-haired Swayze in his late '80s prime. Well, last week's news that Swayze is battling pancreatic cancer puts a poignant edge on the idea. But rather than cancel the screening for fear that the bad news might cast a pall on the screenings, the... READ MORE

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2/29/2008 1:13 pm

Bubbler: Ballet + Shatner = my undivided attention

A virtual deluge of press releases cascades through my Inbox every day, to the point where it can take a lot to actually grab my attention. (And a tip to publicists everywhere: using and abusing the little red exclamation point icon does not help your case.) But when the words "ballet" and "William Shatner" leapt out at me from a recent release, I was hooked. And, in fact, the news lives up to the promise, and has a Wisconsin connection to boot. A company called "Big Screen Entertainment" has announced plans to make a documentary about the Milwaukee Ballet's 2007 effort "Common People,"... READ MORE

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2/25/2008 11:56 am

Bubbler: Talkin' Oscars at 6 a.m. on a Monday

If you still want to hear more Oscar talk, I was on Joy Cardin's Wisconsin Public Radio program at 6 a.m. this morning talking with listeners about the Oscar winners and the broadcast. (Boy, some people REALLY don't like the fact that "No Country For Old Men" won.) You can listen to the program by going here and clicking on the RealPlayer link... READ MORE

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2/24/2008 7:19 pm

Bubbler: Oscar night blog

Oscar night! Here we go! 7:15 p.m. -- Regis is raving to Cameron Diaz about Daniel Day-Lewis about his obssessive commitment to a character (they had to talk about something for 23 seconds), but where was the respect for the method work Regis' previous red-carpet visitor, Miley Cyrus? For me, she IS Hannah Montana! 7:18 p.m. -- Mickey Rooney is still alive. That's one thing I learn every year from the Oscars. 7:25 p.m. -- Oscar conductor Bill Conti tells Regis Philbin an anecdote about a fire backstage at the Oscars years ago, proving that every good Oscar story ends with the phrase, "No one died... READ MORE

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2/22/2008 11:49 am

Bubbler: Will "Juno" upset "No Country" at the Oscars this Sunday?

All year long, it's been "No Country For Old Men" at awards season. It's been big on all the critic's awards, won everything from the Screen Actors' Guild top prize to the Directors' Guild, and is the acknowledged front-runner for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this Sunday. The Coen Brothers' pitch-black adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's coal-black novel looks like all but a sure thing. But in recent weeks, if you look at what Oscar bloggers and prognosticators have been saying, some cracks of sunlight have been starting to peek through that dark facade.... READ MORE

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