Thanksgiving Prayers By William S. Burroughs & Johnny Cash

What better way to give thanks then to listen to the unpatriotic and sardonic musings of good ol' decrepit William Burroughs (RIP). This is one of our faves.

Another classic. Johnny Cash sings a "Thanksgiving Prayer" on an episode of "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman." How amazing is this? You can totally see Jane Seymour swooning.

More cinematically, take a look a scene from "Charlie Chaplin's Thanksgiving Meal" and douchebag Eli Roth's "Grindhouse" faux trailer for "Thanksgiving." Note everyone's off, and online content will be scarce, but we should still be posting during the holiday weekend.

French Playboy Kinda Hotter Than Regular American Hamwich Playboy

If we can get all dude nerd movie site for a second, Juliette Binoche is 43 and the mother of two children, but damn if her French Playboy shots aren't the hottest thing we've seen all year (and 10 times better than most American Playboy shoots).

The shots are high on the arty side and much less on the naked side, but hey, when you leave something to the imagination... They're probably too arty for most, but we think they're gorgeous.

Binoche recently starred in "Dan In Real Life," (which co-stars Steve Carrell and has a soundtrack composed by Norweigan kid Sondre Lerche) a film one of our trusted contributors tells us is actually pretty good (seems debatable to us; we're very skeptical) and she also starred in Krystof Kieslowski's "Blue" - the first part of his masterpiece French trilogy ("Red, White, Blue"), one of the finest cinematic triumvirates ever.

Off The Cuff Pre-Thanksgiving Day Movie Review: 'Enchanted'

You know the family Thanksgiving crowds are gonna go see this.

"Enchanted" was infuriating. It started off actually really smart and biting (you can tell the Disney team was getting off on mocking their history.) But it pulls it's punches every step of the way, and what could have been a really scathing satire turns into one long ad for the magic of Disney. My wife - a women's studies professor - actually shouted something at the screening and was shushed. It has this terrible "pro-feminism" stance, which just amounts to letting Amy Adams take off her high heels and wield a sword. A major theme in the film is "there's no happily ever after." Patrick Dempsey spends the whole movie telling Adams that she should date her prince charming (a solid James Marsden, believe it or not) instead of just marrying him after only knowing him for a day, and the movie hints that Adams is going to discover that she doesn't need a man to live happily ever after.

But then she fucking falls in love with Patrick Dempsey...and they live happily ever after! It was mindboggling.

What a wasted opportunity. Could have had really genius jokes about the lack of people of color in Disney's history, or how insanely skinny the princesses are, etc. And every time it looks like the movie is going to go there and say/do something interesting, it shoots itself in the foot.

And while Amy Adams might give the most ANNOYING performance in recent cinema history, there's a spectacular CGI chipmunk who deserves an Oscar. Seriously. [ed. thanks to our contributor JC]

Four For Friday Wednesday: 'Eternal Sunshine,' 'Lost In Translation,' 'Marie Antoinette,' 'The Squid & The Whale'

We haven't done Four For Friday in a while now and since it's basically the weekend for Americans about to take off for Thanksgiving, we thought we drop another installment. It's not really Thanksgiving-themed, sorry, but we think it's pretty decent nonetheless.

We suppose we're in a Sofia Coppola kind of mood (or you could even say 'hipster film' mood), cause we have two songs from her soundtracks, both "Lost In Translation" and "Marie Antoinette." From everyone's favorite fish-out-of-water trip to Japan comes the moody synth track by Brian Reitzell/Roger Joseph Jr. Manning (Beck's old keyboardist) "On The Subway." As we've noted countless times, Reitzell is Coppola's go-to soundtracks guy, both for composing original music and helping her in a music supervision role.

Since My Bloody Valentine is reuniting, we thought it would be nice to rep some of the great remixes that MBV headmaster Kevin Shields did for 'Antoinette,' namely their cloud-fluffing of their take on "Fools Rush In." Jon Brion's "Strings That Tie To You" from Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" might be the best song he's ever written, it's gorgeous in every way. And "Waltzing Matilda" was always our favorite Lou Reed song (from Street Hassle) and in fact, we always thought it was the perfect song to make a movie and there we were watching Noah Baumbach's excellent "The Squid & The Whale," and of course the film ended with that amazing song (and as much as we were thrilled, we thought, "shit, there goes our idea.")

Yeah, yeah, every 20-something loves these films and we have problems with the idea of the 'hipster film' (more on that one day), but all these songs are excellent.

Download: Brian Reitzell/Roger Joseph Jr. Manning - "On The Subway"
Download: Bow Wow Wow - "Fools Rush In" (Kevin Shields remix)
Download: Jon Brion - "Strings That Tie To You"
Download: Lou Reed - "Street Hassle/Waltzing Matlida"

Ghostface Confirms 'Iron Man' Appearance

Tony Starks, what? Remember when we said Ghostface Killah was going to be in "Iron Man," the film based on the comic starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by John Favreau?

Turns out it's the truff and Ghost confirmed it to MTV News today. As we wrote last time, Ghostface Killah actually named an album after his favorite comic book character Iron Man (one of Ghost's aliases is Tony Stark - the super hero's alter-ego) so he was pissed when he wasn't initially invited to appear in the movie. Apparently that got situation got fixed.

"I jumped in there for maybe 12 or 16 bars, nothing too major," Ghost downplayed before describing his scene with the film's star. "It was a good look for the kid because Robert Downey Jr. recognized me as soon as I seen him. He was like, 'Yo, Tony!' ... For him to recognize me, I was kinda surprised by that. I didn't know he even knew about the kid. ... We called each other Tony onscreen. I'm like, 'Tony Stark, I got your jet, I didn't mess it up.' He was like, 'I got the Bentley for you, I laced it up.' I had two girls with me, I was like, 'That's you [pointing toward the girls].' I sent two birds at him. It was a wrap for that scene. He's a cool dude and funny. Big up to Robert Downey Jr."

As we've noted numerous times, Ghost also has a small part in "Walk Hard: The Story of Dewey Cox," which he described as thus: "We had a bugged-out scene in there, with me, Jewel, Lyle Lovett, and we did a track," he explained. "It was crazy though. ... I'mma start doing a lot of [acting] in the next year. My character on the screen is incredible. Acting is nothing for me, man. It's all an act. Rap is cool, but acting, that's my star. When you get me in front of a camera, it's a whole different aura."

There you go, look for the Wu-All Star on many screens in the future. Ghostface Killah's new record, The Big Doe Rehab, comes out on December 4. You can hear the new single, "We Celebrate," on his myspace page.

'I'm Not There': When Todd Haynes Painted His Masterpiece - Review

We saw "I'm Not There" at the New York Film Festival weeks ago, but here finally is our full review.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks They really found you.
- Bob Dylan "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"

The obsessive appeal of Bob Dylan is easy to understand. Here's a man that was always on the run, an enigma always setting fire to creative periods that happened to catch on; restless, relentless, contrarian in spirit, elliptical, elusive, bemusing and slippery as an eel. Of course you'd want to know more and find out who he really was, especially as he was jettisoned chrysalises and identities with masks to confound, to provoke or simply to just get the dogs off his scent. Bob was always trying on new and anonymous masks; like Brando diving into a Stella Adler method whether it be with a Woody Guthrie pantomime or a Rimbaud fixation.

When introduced to the mid-60s Newport Folk Festival by Ronnie Gilbert as, "and here he is . . . take him, you know him, he's yours," this might as well as been Bob's epitaph and sensing the ominous meaning in this possessiveness, he soon bailed on the whole dogmatic scene, repeating this escape hatch technique throughout most of his career when the wolves got hip and tried to box him in. Trying to grab hold of is like catching a flame that goes out; it's addictive as a drug; a never ending quest.

Todd Haynes knows this; this is why he decided to make "I'm Not There," a dazzlingly refracted and semiotic portrait about everything Bob Dylan isn't, is, can't be, never was, used to be, wished to be, aimed to be, and other states of faked tentative being and reality all at once. Haynes film career has been marked by a preoccupation with identity, sexual or otherwise, so it's not a surprise he'd get in deep with Dylan's fleeing metamorphic tricks, plus try and infuse an electrical Dylan with an ambiguous sexual energy via Cate Blanchett - the perfectly startling choice to jostle viewers and remind them in '65, Dylan looked like a banshee freaknik.

Those trying to grasp Dylan here are going to fail and Haynes knew going in he'd never win, but that's the point, you can't pigeonhole and pin the tail on this particular donkey. "I'm Not There" (is the title anymore obvious?) is not a biopic, rather it's a daring, thrilling, freewheelin', kaleidoscopic reimagination based on the mythology of Bob Dylan (or "the many lives of Bob Dylan" as the film says); the truths, the fabrications, the exaggerations, the fiction, the facts, the unknown, the suppositions - all of it.

Reading an article about himself in the D.A. Pennebaker doc "Dont Look Back" Dylan famously remarked with exasperation, "I'm glad I'm not me," which like everything he ever said could mean a thousand things to a thousand different people, but some correct answers include, "Thank god, I'm not the monster/person I'm made out to be here," and "Thank god, they'll never really know who I am."

Dylan sought to always keep his critics and the intrusive vultures at bay and 'INT' doesn't attempt to shed any light or pull back the curtain to reveal any cosmic truth. Instead it reinvents the many stages of Dylan's lives through seven different demarcated personas, played by six different characters in hopes of reflecting a small glimpse of what was happening on the other side of his mirror. It tries to capture nothing and in doing so is free to create and invent.

The script is like a rubik's cube and a puzzle that doesn't aim to solve itself, with time, temporal space all represented on a canvas that overlaps, superimposes, cuts, twists and pastes all over itself. It's an art film in the sense that it's created with an artschool frame of mind, but fortunately Haynes isn't enough of an egghead to just serve the cineastes and Dylanites that will surely drool over this thing.

This imaginative, audacious high-wire act of filmmaking is pure fantasia but let's not forget to remind that all this artifice, all this outer icing, doesn't subtract at all from the drama.

There's a heart, a story, an emotional center, a whimsical inviting sense of humor, an arc and an examination of who we are when we refuse to be just one thing. Anyone wary this film is an elitist self-congratulatory cocoon for insiders need not be worried, the references might fly fast and furious, but you either catch them or you don't and being unaware of them doesn't take detract from the film's enjoyment one bit (they're mostly just non-winky nods for nerds like us).

If anything, it's abstractness reminded us slightly of Oliver Stone's "JKF" in the way it blurred truths and speculation to create a new fiction; a new reality (the way the film jumps around with different cinematic looks and film stocks is also fairly reminiscent).

This is George Washington" - Joan Baez introducing Dylan to the Newport stage in 1964.

The film's narrative follows no linear logic, cutting and pasting in shards, fluidly moving like a painterly collage; like an interlocking puzzle and it's all the better for it. The whole story is shimmering with creative impulses, and radiating with mad ideas and energy.

I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in your dream, I said that
- "Talkin' World War III Blues"

Get to know your Dylans: The "I'm Not There" Guide.
I had to rearrange their faces And give them all another name
- "Desolation Row"
The Prophet - The Film Within The Film
Christian Bale as the folk singing protest troubadour Jack Rollins is actually only seen in the film in a quasi document about the life of the long gone folks singer. This part of the film alludes to Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home" as aged hippies and folkies (like Julianne Moore's Joan Baez composite) remember Rollins in documentary-style sitdowns and archival footage of Bale.

Star of Electricity
Another composite, Ledger's Robbie Clark has a complicated meta-role: he plays a James Dean-esque actor that in his youth plays a the folksinging Dylan portrayed earlier in the film by Christian Bale. Heath Ledger, who signed on to the role after Colin Farrell abruptly exited, has the bearded-look of the Dylan's New Morning period, the dissolution-of-a-marriage despair and trajectory of Blood On The Tracks. This late-60s Vietnam-era period is also cinematically represented by visual, colorful Jean-Luc Godard cues (films like "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," "Weekend"). His wife Claire (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) is given a name with a slightly altered reference; in Dylan's 1976 identity opus "Renaldo in Clara," Sarah Dylan plays Clara. The divorce story told within acts as the film's emotional centerpoint.

Blonde On Blonde (Judas Iscariot)
Cate Blanchett's (as Judd Quin) gender-bending take on what Haynes sees as the androgynous, thin mercurial Dylan is obviously grabbing all the headlines and that's as much due to the gender twist as it is, Blanchett playing Dylan at his most defiant and recalcitrant: the folk renouncement and the plugged-in electrical days that polarized fans and was Dylan's first really punk-rock move. This section of the film nods to Frederico Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2" and the wiry, amphetamine-petulant Dylan of "Eat The Document." It's her movie to steal cause she's got the juiciest role to play and she runs with it (probably straight to the Oscars).

That Old, Weird America
Richard Gere's plays Billy in the highly allegorical section of the film (and unfairly maligned by some critics) where he plays the outlaw that hides in the basement of an old, weird American town called "Riddle." His self-imposed exile represents emotional escapism and a patriotism to all creative freedoms, or from the press and hangers-on that wanted a piece of Dylan at the time (similarly Dylan dropped out after his 1966 motorcycle accident, one that he played up and took refuge in Woodstock, New York in the late '60s.) Characters are named after Basement Tapes characters (the belated record that Dylan recorded with the Band for fun during this period) and when the Pat Garett-like sheriff returns to town Gere hides out in a translucent, clown-mask straight from the opening of "Renaldo & Clara." The film also is obviously based of Dylan's appearance as the character Alias (fitting name) in "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid." This section also has vague homages to Sam Peckinpah's entire canon and '70s anti-westerns like Robert Altman's "McCabe & Ms. Miller." Some critics tend to think this section is slow, but they're missing the big picture. You'd savor the Cate/Blonde on Blonde section cause it's never overdone. There's some John Wesley Harding in there too.

The Preacher Man Gets Saved
Christian Bale's double duty as Pastor John is fairly limited. It consists of one scene in the film, but damn if the jewfro and his sermonizing rendition of the Saved-era gospel track by John Doe, "Pressin' On" is not one of the film's powerful musical highlights.

'I Is Another' - The Liar & Thief
Ben Wishaw plays Arthur, an obvious homage to the influential symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud that not only heavily colored Dylan's songwriting approach and more allusive lyrics ("Rimbaud and his poet bff Paul Verlaine are namechecked in "You're Going To Make Me Lonesome When You Go"), but his elliptical poems, led Dylan to begin talking in imagistic, cryptic metaphor during mid-60s interviews perplexing and aggravating journalists all the more. Arthur appears only in McCarthy-esque interrogation scenes where disembodied voices ask him questions about who is and his intentions and of course, he answers each answer with an almost-impenetrable metaphoric code (dialogue much of which is taken straight from the text of Zimmy interviews from the mid '60s)

The Bound For Dustbowl Glory Fake
Marcus Carl Franklin plays Woody, an early incarnation of Dylan's initial preoccupation with Woody Guthrie (Franklin's acoustic also has written on it, "this machine kills fascists"). Most of this story is based on Dylan's mythic and falsified origin of running away from home, joining the circus and having ridden on the hobo boxcar circuit. He jams with Richie Havens, does a pilgrimage to the sick Guthrie (just like Dylan did), gets swallowed by Moby Dick and is taken in by a kind family whose mother pointedly tells him to "live his own time" - a statement meant to represent Bob shaking off his Guthrie fixation and finding his own voice and style. Watch for his cameo in the Richard Gere section where Franklin's Chaplin-esque character is a nod to Charlie - one of the excised characters in the original script that was supposed to represent Dylan's early New York Grenwich Village days. The vignette also tips its cap slightly to Hal Ashby's Woody Guthrie biopic "Bound For Glory" (a role which Dylan was once up for in an earlier incarnation of the project).

"I feel like anytime I’ll work on a film, it’s like a giant dissertation, a gigantic undertaking, and this is probably the biggest one. Probably the Ph.D.," Todd Haynes said in the recent New York Times Magazine cover story about "I'm Not There," and after experiencing the film (as one can't just watch it), one walks away with the feeling they've just witnessed as successful and masterful thesis in action.

Expectations are a bitch. You build something up, you anticipate it obsessively and of course it can never meet your hopes. Somehow 'INT' adventurous deconstructions match your hopes all the while elevating the art form of film and pushing the cinematic language to it's edges (it's not reinventing the wheel, but the old European masters would be proud).

Layered, fractured, dense, replete with cinematic, literate and musical references to Dylan's mythology both via his films, books, photographs, interviews and influences of the time, the film's is a cineaphile's wet-dream, demands multiple viewings and its cult status is already secured. "I'm Not There" is not a biopic, it's a thrilling, feverish dream, a panoramic prismic effort and a wonder to behold. [A] [ed. there a review, finally!]

Lavender Diamond's Beck Stark Scores Songs & Role in Tom Hanks Produced 'City Of Ember'

Tom Hanks must have a thing for indie-rockers. First it was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! who play themselves and wrote songs for Hanks' "The Great Buck Howard" and now it's uber-earnest folk pop outfit Lavender Diamond's lead kook, singer Becky Stark who has scored a role in the Hanks-produced, "City of Ember" (directed by Stark's buddy Gil Kenan).

"It's perfectly in line with my ideals and it's a Hollywood movie!" Stark told the VF Movies Rock issue with sincere incredulity (not online). In the apocalyptic 'electricity is dying' story, Stark plays a member of the Believers, a singing troupe that brings hope to the subterranean town of Ember. She's also composed the keep hope alive songs that the Believers group will sing in the film.

The film is set to star Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, and is already scheduled for an October 2008 release. It's great news for Lavender Diamond attention, their very-excellent Imagine Our Love is sure to be on our top 10 list for 2007.

The fruitcake neo-hippies in Lavender Diamond last appeared and performed on screen in the indie science fiction film, "One Day Like Rain." Apparently Stark is now writing a "green" movie musical about"finding true love - and about the weather." Alrighty then.

Download: Lavender Diamond - "Oh No"
Lavender Diamond - "Open Your Heart" (directed by Australian singer Sia)

Sienna Miller To Play Cobra's Baroness In 'G.I. Joe' Movie; Common Almost Confirmed For 'Justice League'

In today's edition of stupid comic book/animated cartoons that become movies. British pinup Sienna Miller of all people is the first actor announced as officially signed up for the upcoming "G.I. Joe" movie. Now Variety doesn't say exactly who she is playing, but they do say, "the British actress will play the film's female lead, described as a raven-haired baroness and sexy femme fatale skilled in espionage." So this makes her the evil Cobra character the Baroness, right? Der. Guess she's got a dye job in store for herself.

Though there was Scarlett on the good guys team, but she was/is a red head. It's weird to think of the Baroness as a lead character in the G.I. Joe/Cobra world of things, she always seemed more of a side player in the cartoon (man, we just revealed the inner nerd inside).

In related nerd news. It appears that Common's appearance as the Green Lantern in the misguided, rush-it-out-before-the-strike "Justice League" movie is all but a fait accompli according to most of the nerd movie sites on the web (all of them). Told you so.

Hey Have You Possibly Heard Of This 'Cloverfield' Film??? AKA New J.J. Abrams Film Hopefully The 'Snakes On A Plane' Of 2008

There's clever viral marketing and there's overdone, annoying viral marketing and J.J. Abrams n' company's new ultra-secretive (oooooh) new project, code name "Cloverfield" falls squarely into the later category (no one on Earth actually knew what the actual film was for months and apparently audiences won't know until 5 minutes into the film; not really, but might as well, it's fucking ridiculous).

Their absurd viral campaign has included posters with no names and only dates, oblique teasers in front of equally lame movies like "Transformers," and "Gayowulf," creating fake blogs with games, cast members being kept in the dark, and a lot of other rabbit hole nonsense for losers with waaaay to much time on their hands (think the smart Nine Inch Nails campaign for Year Zero only ratcheted up to a shrill 11). The film - which looks like Godzilla (monster movie) meets lo-rent "Blair Witch" - has been obnoxiously hyping itself each week with some new puzzle piece ostensibly since July (or earlier) and it went from being a 'what is this?' curiosity to a full-on "go away already" eye-sore and irritant.

What's it about? Apparently J.J. Abrams went to Japan and got all bonered up with nerd ideas. "We saw all these Godzilla toys, and I thought, we need our own monster, and not King Kong, King Kong's adorable. I wanted something that was just insane and intense."

What are its chances? First off, "Cloverfield" is due in January (dumping ground for studios; though that could be its advantage) and secondly it's just been too much too soon and we're expecting "Snakes On A Plane"-like hype-gone-wrong... no we're hoping for it. We really hope we never have to hear from this film again and we're so put-off, we're praying to Allah that it bombs. We've tried to steer clear of this thing, especially since folks like Vulture have been following its every silly little move, but we couldn't stay silent any longer. Join the "Cloverfield" boycott now. Just eight-s0me week until you can fully ignore it.

Todd Haynes Talks Dylan Song Inspirations

Todd Haynes quasi Dylan film "I'm Not There" comes out in two days, woo.

Play, the rhapsody blog has a cool feature with Haynes on the Dylan songs that inspired the movie and the songs that inspired each of the seven characters in the film.

Arthur -“Angelina"
“In my ‘Arthur’ songs list, there are songs of ‘Dylan the visionary.’ ‘Angelina’ is a great song, completely surreal and bizarre.” (from The Bootleg Series 1-3)


Billy - "Seven Curses"
“In my ‘Billy’ mix—for a moment there, it was even a title I was playing with for the film.” [frpm The Bootleg Series 1-3. A Times Are A Changin' era outtake.

Iggy Pop & The Stooges - "Ballad of Hollis Brown"
“[This song] was going to be in the film, and ultimately it was replaced by that great Iggy and the Stooges 'Ballad of Hollis Brown' [cover] that’s in the film now, from a 1973 rehearsal session. It’s the only Dylan cover I know of that they’ve done.”

"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
“The best song of all time. Maybe it’s my favorite of all.”

Hayne also namecheck "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," "I Want You," "Fourth Time Around," "Love Minus Zero / No Limit," "Girl From the North Country" for Heath Ledger's Robbie character, "I Was Young When I Left Home" for the Woody character and "Precious Angel," for his Pastor John/Christian Bale character. Here's the list of all the music used in "I'm Not There." For Haynes' entire Dylan-inspired playlist, go to the Rhapsody blog.

Download: Bob Dylan - "Seven Curses"
Download: Bob Dylan - "Angelina"
Download: Bob Dylan - Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands"
Download: Iggy & The Stooges - "The Ballad of Hollis Brown"

It's Not Cox Unless Dewey Cox Says It Tastes Like Cox

Oh punny double entendres. Funny or Die has an extended clip of the "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" Cox sausage commercial that can be seen in the original trailer. It's amusing stuff.

Karen O To Appear On Spike Jonze's "Where The Wild Things Are" Soundtrack

Apparently Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and her ex-paramour director Spike Jonze are still cool despite being broken up and both having moved on.

According to a very small mention in the VF Movies Rock issue (not online), O will perform on Jonze's upcoming ""Where The Wild Things Are" soundtrack.

How many songs? VF doesn't say, but you'll remember a 16-song collection of raw demos of O's titled The KO at Home leaked back in December 2006 (prompting some major blog rage from TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek) and some of the tracks sounded like very-early Cat Power with minimal acoustics and slow measures.

While they were dating, Jonze directed the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Y Control" video, their MTV Movie awards live performance of 'Maps' and created an Adidas commercial with a song "Hello Tomorrow," sung by Karen O and written by Spike's musician/producer brother, Squeak E. Clean (aka Sam Spiegel - he produced the Yeahs' Show Your Bones). Clean also produced O's long-overdue solo album; a record he said would likely come out sometime in 2007 back in 2005. Where is that thing? Perhaps some of these songs will surface on the "Wild Things' soundtrack? Dare to dream and speculate...

An adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic kid's book, Jonze co-wrote the 'Wild Things' script with novelist Dave Eggers (Vulture says it's great), the movie is currently in post-production and is due in October 2008 according to the always-fallible IMDB.

Sendak, who has been notoriously protective of his children's novel did not see eye-to-eye with many of the now long-dead concepts (the book is only 338-words in total), but the current vision of the pic has his strong support. Sendak told the New York Times in October of 2005, "I am in love with it. If Spike and Dave do not do this movie now, I would just as soon not see any version of it ever get made."

Apparently the budget this film is pretty gigantic, somewhere in the ballpark of $80 million; surely Jonze's highest to date. Last year O collaborated with electronic artist Peaches and Johnny Knoxville to record the track "Backass" for the movie "Jackass 2" and just recently she lent her voice to the Bob Dylan covers soundtrack for "I'm Not There."

Download: Karen O - "Pumpkin/Save The Seeds" (from the The KO at Home demo)
Download: Karen O and Kool Keith - "The Teaser"
Download: Karen O & The Million Dollar Bashers - "Highway '61 Revisted"
Download: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps" (acoustic)
Watch: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Y Control"
Watch: Karen O and Spike Jonze's Adidas commercial "Hello Tomorrow"

Soundtrastic: Lou Reed, John Mayer, Jonny Greenwood, Dan Zanes, Wild Style

After 40 years of being rock's biggest asshole Velvet Underground leader, current tai-chi and mediation-music enthusiast Lou Reed is finally starting to soften. Reed has composed two songs - "Gravity" and Safety Zone" - for the upcoming film "Nanking"--a documentary about the Japanese invasion of Nanking, China, in the early days of World War II. The press release calls it "an emotional reminder of the heartbreaking toll that war takes on the innocent." We hope the songs are as good as his new-age-y yoga album, Hudson River Wind Meditations. Staged readings of the Westerners’ letters and diaries as performed by Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow, and Stephen Dorff, among others.

John Mayer is contributing a song to the Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman life-affirming feel good tear jerker "The Bucket List." Mayer, trying to distract the world from his infintitely more interesting personal life posted the song "Say" from the movie on his blog.

Atease is reporting that Hollywood insiders are telling them that Jonny Greenwood's "There Will Be Blood" score has a good shot at an Oscar nomination and victory. Newsflash to them, everyone is saying this. Good on Greenwood.

Children's Music star Dan Zanes has filmed a small part in Sam Mendes' upcoming film, "Revolutionary Road" which reteams Mendes' wife Kate Winslet with Leonardo DiCaprio.

"It was a huge party in the theater; people were selling loose joints in the back row. People would stay there all night. It was definitely a party." "Wild Style" director Charlie Ahearn recalls the seminal hip-hop movie's premiere in the Bronx. The film just celebrated its 25th anniversary and is now out on DVD in deluxe format. [Play]

Download: Lou Reed - "Hudson River Wind (Blend The Ambiance)" (from Hudson River Wind Meditations)

Vanity Fair's Lists Their "Top 50 (Mostly) Rock Soundtracks of All Time"

Remember we told you about Vanity Fair's "Top 50 Soundtracks of All Time" which featured Prince's "Purple Rain" at number 1, The Beatles' "A Hard Days Night" at 2 and the reggae classic "The Harder They Come" at 3?

Well, Vanity Fair, in their "Movies Rock" issue (practically dedicated to our raison d’être) have finally put out their Top 50 list (but it's not online).

The top 10 which we had already posted last month looked like this: In bold are some of our particular favorites and linked are any previous posts we've done about these soundtracks (generally with mp3 context). You could quibble about placement all day long, but hey, it's just their opinion. There's no major reason to get too upset (it's a very decent list we think).

01. "Purple Rain"
02. "A Hard Day's Night"
03. "The Harder They Come"
04. "Pulp Fiction"
05. "The Graduate"
06. "Superfly"
07. "Trainspotting"
08. "Saturday Night Fever"
09. "American Graffiti"
10. "The Big Chill"

The rest of the list continues like this.
11. "Rushmore"
12. "24 Hour Party People"
13. "The Blues Brothers"
14. "Easy Rider"
15. "National Lampoon's Animal House"
16. "Midnight Cowboy"
17. "Boogie Nights"
18. "Dazed & Confused"
19. "Almost Famous"
20. "Goodfellas"
21. "Shaft"
22. "Moulin Rouge"
23. "Resevoir Dogs"
24. "Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels"
25. "The Committments"
26. "O Brother Where Art Thou?"
27. "Marie Antoinette"
28. "Crooklyn"
29. "Tommy"
30. "Help!"
31. "Performance"
32. "Pretty In Pink"
33. "8 Mile"
34. "Nashville"
35. "Repo Man"
36. "American Gigolo"
37. "Top Gun"
38. "Pat Garett & Billy The Kid"
39. "Friday"
40. "Rock N' Roll Highschool"
41. "Once"
42. "Grease"
43. "Garden State"
44. "High Fidelity"
45. "This Is Spinal Tap"
46. "The Last King of Scotland"
47. "Singles"
48. "Hedwig And The Angry Inch"
49. "Broken Flowers"
50. "Viva Las Vegas"

We'll admit we're sort of surprised that the 40-genarians writing for VF didn't pick anything by The Rutles (maybe cause there's no specific soundtrack to "All You Need Is Cash") and the "Dead Presidents" soundtrack, but hey, no one's perfect. I'm sure others will complain about something that's missing so feel free to sound-off in the comments section. Our biggest beef is probably the exclusion of Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" (though we understand most people all remember that for one song - Public Enemy's "Fight The Power," but man, what a song.

Download: Brian Eno - "Deep Blue Day" (Trainspotting soundtrack)
Download: Underworld - "Born Slippy" (Trainspotting soundtrack)
Download: Rick Springfield - "Jesse's Girl" (Boogie Nights Soundtrack)
Download: The Chantels - "And Then He Kissed Me" (Goodfellas soundtrack)
Download: Smog - "Cold Blooded Old Times" (High Fidelity soundtrack)
Download: Steppenwolf - "The Pusher" (East Rider soundtrack)
Download: Bob Dylan - "Billy (Main Title Theme)"(Pat Garett & Billy The Kid soundtrack)