| Archives of Nolan's Pop Culture Review | ||
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 LA FLORIDIANA Will and Karen's Cabbage Key and Key West Kraziness, Part Four....Comet Machholz....Thanks, I'm Semi-Outta Here!...And The Winner Is... by William Moriaty | ||
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEWS "Elektra" by Mike Smith | ||
"White Noise" by Nolan Canova | ||
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE The Top 10 Best Albums of 2004 by Terence Nuzum | ||
ODDSERVATIONS An Afternoon With Chris Sarandon by Andy Lalino | ||
SPLASH PAGE Pimp Is Not Evel....Wade In The Hall, But Who Are These Voters?....Bizarre Sports Note....The People's Choice....Just Some Updates....Goodbye to the Godfather, Will Eisner by Brandon Jones | ||
MATT'S RAIL WMD And Me....Happy Birthday To Me....Lizzie Borden Took An Axe....Football Playoffs by Matt Drinnenberg | ||
MIKE'S RANT Happy Birthday....Also In This Issue....Movie Notes....Censorship -- A Good Thing?....How Do You Spell Punk? M O S S....Jaws: The Story, Part 1 by Mike Smith | ||
LETTERS | ||
Established A.D. 2000, March 19. Now in our sixth calendar year!
Number 251 (Vol. 6, No. 2). This edition is for the week of January 10--16, 2005.
The Renegade Saints & Sinners Film Festival's website hasn't been updated in over a year and the event is generally thought to be legally dead. Here again, back issues of PCR will bear out that a good, if sometimes controversial, time was generally had by all. Sorry to see it go.
Fortunately we still have the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image, and of course, the Romeo Coffeehouse Film Series (which is Thursday of this week, don't forget).
So what happened to all the great momentum?
Search Called off for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq California Mudslides Claim 10 So Far Primordial Mammals Ate Dinosaurs A few folks have asked about NolanCON 2005, postponed from last year's '04 version due to hurricanes. All I can say is if we can make this year, we'll do it. It has been suggested that if I can't afford the big version, we do a smaller version, like a big party, or even a cruise. I'm not really a cruise kinda guy, but I like the party idea. In any event, yes, it's still in the works, and details are being worked out.
Tampa Film Scene Setback
• WMD search called off
• California Mudslides
• Rocket Impacts Comet
• Mammals ate dinosaurs
The TamBay Film Festival is no more
This has got to be the most discouraging thing I've heard in a while. According to their official website, the TamBay Film and Video Festival has been disbanded due to inability to secure sponsors. Since its inception in 1999, this was, I thought, the most prestigious event of its kind in this area and immune to such things as lack of sponsorship. It obviously says something about the lack of public support in the Tampa Bay area (and you know how I hate to say that). TamBay head Leora Chai is to be commended for giving us a good five-year run (as evidenced by several mentions in the back issues of PCR), and throwing in the towel only when all hope was lost.
You didn't really think I was going to elaborate on this did you?
It's as if the earth has rebelled. Four hurricanes are still fresh in the minds of Floridians, a killer tsunami wipes out over 150,000 people in Southeast Asia, and now freakish rains in California have caused a mudslide in La Conchita that buried homes and has claimed at least 10 lives so far.
Rocket To Impact Comet
In one of two very exciting science news topics this week, NASA launched "Deep Impact", a project obviously named after the movie. In a reverse scenario from the movie, Deep Impact will rendezvous with the comet Tempel 1 some 83 million miles from earth and deliberately collide with it, forming a deep crater, and accessing its secrets. Launched Wednesday with a one-second window(!), it is expected to collide with Tempel 1 July 4th of this year. Despite the obvious opportunity to lay claim to "celestial fireworks" for the 4th of July (the explosion should be visible from Earth), NASA said the timing is coincidental.
The other exciting science news this week re-writes (to some extent) evolutionary theory which used to state that dinosaurs had to die off completely 65 million years ago in order to let small mammals, previously prey for the large lizards, grow and eventually become....us. Scientists recently uncovered fossil evidence of a much larger species of mammal, resembling a very large dog, that had a small, parrot-like dinosaur in its stomach. Dating back 100 million years, it is 20 times larger than any previously known mammal and forces a re-evaluation of how early mammals evolved into larger specimens.
A shout out and a Happy Birthday to Matt Drinnenberg who turned 44 January 9th. Also birthday wishes go to Nicholas Castellano who turns 5 Thursday the 13th, and old friend Scott van Sickle who turns 42 the next day, Friday, January 14th.
