http://hightimes.com en-us 0.4 By Brian Abrams In 1998, Wes Anderson was critically lauded for his prep school slacker flick Rushmore, and it all went downhill from there. Ever since, the writer/director has puked up the most pretentious and annoying movies onto the big screen, and they get worse every time. More than a decade ago, when Wes Anderson teamed up with Luke and Owen Wilson to shoot his quirky debut Bottle Rocket, the Texas trio made a pretty funny and charming buddy comedy out of it. With …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2448?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:44:57 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2448?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams On paper the plot sounds all too familiar: father Frank (Danny DeVito), son Dennis (Glenn Howerton), and his two high school buddies Charlie (Charlie Day) and Mac (Rob McElhenney) own a bar in the City of Brotherly Love. Dennis's struggling actress sister Deandra (Kaitlin Olson) helps out in between auditions. If you're behind on season three of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which premiered its first two episodes last week, then you'd probably dismiss the …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2407?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:30:18 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2407?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams In an interview last year on NPR, Artie Lange said “The Howard Stern Show is a hit because it entertains dumb and smart people at the same time for different reasons.” He went on to cite The Simpsons as another show that masters this double-natured brand of humor. The Sirius Satellite’s radio program offers lowbrow and gross-out forms of entertainment such as skullfucking and Sybian machine-riding, but Stern and Lange and the gang also …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2331?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:20:13 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2331?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams Michael Moore’s latest assault-on-celluloid certainly pushes buttons – and that’s despite your partisanship. Sicko puts the screws to the American healthcare system the way Moore’s Roger and Me did to General Motors and as much as Fahrenheit 9/11 did to the current administration, only this time the Oscar-winning documentarian doesn’t ask you to so much pick a political party as he does ask the government to have a …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2299?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:37:45 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2299?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams The artwork on the poster for William Friedkin’s Bug carries the weight of your everyday supernatural thriller. With Ashley Judd’s mug front and center, the remainder of the advertisement is dark, covered in spooky shades of black and blue. It gives you the feeling that the movie follows the footsteps of your typical creature feature in which a large cockroach chases innocent victims down subway lines or of one where the leading lady has telekinetic …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2267?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:27:54 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2267?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams For a larger-than-life adaptation based on Marvel comic book characters, Spider-Man 3 isn’t bad, necessarily; it’s just a bit much. The most common problem among these blockbuster superhero series is that, by the third installment, the screenwriters have painted themselves in a corner. Tim Burton’s Batman movies held strong through the first two titles (the convincing back-stories of The Joker, The Penguin, and Catwoman were pretty …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2237?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Tue, 08 May 2007 15:37:57 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2237?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams David Arquette’s directorial debut The Tripper tells the story of a mysterious psycho who stalks a bunch of party animals at a music festival in a small backwoods town. But don’t mistake the independent title (opening in select theaters April 20) as just another genre-laden slasher with a marketable jam band soundtrack. There could be more to this indie scare-comedy. Arquette cleverly uses the serial-killer-thriller formula as a pretext to illustrate …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2109?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:07:20 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2109?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams Rock star burnout Glen Danzig shops for a house that has blood pouring from its walls. A talking robotic chicken clad in post-apocalyptic armor obsesses over false histories of the evolution of its species. An overweight, unemployed hairy New Jersey-ite attempts a bowel movement in his front yard with a space-age waterless toilet designed to conserve the world’s most precious resource. These are only a smidgen of plot lines in the harebrained Aqua Teen Hunger …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2039?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:27:56 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/2039?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams Stanley Kubrick was a well-known recluse. The New York-born photographer-turned-iconic filmmaker wasn’t seen much at parties or involved with Hollywood shenanigans; it was always understood that the late, great one kept to himself at his home in England, where he was probably working on his next ambitious epic project. That’s probably why it came so easy to Alan Conway to assume the man’s identity for a few months in the early 90s, when the con man …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/1938?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:37:08 -0400 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/1938?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams By Brian Abrams Soft-core porn from the disco era is without question a prime example of poor filmmaking. Nonetheless, there is still a fan base for this brand of low-grade fare. Even with unapologetic, misogynistic content, the drive-in nudie movies were just deluded and over-the-top enough to please the smut-seekers back in the day, and, what’s more, manifest a cult audience years later. At no point did these skin-centric pieces of shit pretend to have a purpose outside of …More]]> http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/1823?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Thu, 08 Mar 2007 17:36:22 -0500 http://hightimes.com/entertainment/babrams/1823?utm_source=rss_section_Brian Abrams Brian Abrams