Pop Culture Roundup April 25, 2007

World of Kane celebrates composer and music technology pioneer Raymond Scott. Y'know those great tunes from old Warner Bros. cartoons? Many of them were written by Scott. He went on to develop a number of electronic musical instruments.

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David Lynch gets deep.

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn't know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn't know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent.

I don't think I'll ever say what that sentence was.


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Taking a cue from Dark Horse's new "Buffy Season 8" comics series, IDW Publishing plans a season 4 "Star Trek" comic.

Star Trek: Year Four will follow along the same lines as the single-issue, self-contained stories that are being featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Space Between. In the premiere issue of this all-new series, Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise discover the Strand—a multi-planet construct of a dead civilization and a brilliant genetic scientist obsessed with its technology. Kirk discovers the scientist’s secret, resulting in his genetic creations revolting — and forcing Kirk to make a hard decision, pushing the U.S.S. Enterprise into the crossfire.

Best Star Trek Sites.

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The two-part season-ender for CW's "The Batman" animated series features a guest appearance by a Justice League of sorts.

"Martian Manhunter is starting the Justice League," executive producer Alan Burnett says, "and he would like nothing better than to have Batman on the team." Also on the guest list: the Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Superman.

Best Batman Sites.

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The upcoming "Incredible Hulk" film is a new start for the would-be franchise, essentially ignoring the wretched Hulk flick of a few years ago.

Avi Arad, who is producing the upcoming The Incredible Hulk, told SCI FI Wire that the movie will not make use of any of the elements of the first Hulk movie. "It's a new Hulk," Arad said in a news conference while promoting Spider-Man 3, on which he was also a producer. "A new direction, new size, new color, new attitude. No, anything that was done before is not in this movie."

Evidently, Arad says he was joking about the color. However, there are have been rumors that the Hulk will be gray in at least the early part of the film, just as he was in his early comic book adventures.

Best Hulk Sites.

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Excuse Me While I Kiss this Guy Dept.: There are lots of sites out there with song lyrics, but most don't have permission by songwriters to publish the words. But Yahoo! has a new one that's legit:

Yahoo Music in the US is letting users look up the words to 400,000 songs by artists such as Prince and Beyonce.

...the site will also come in useful for settling arguments about classic records.

Does Kate Bush really sing: "It's me! I'm a tree! I'm a wombat!" in Wuthering Heights?

And are Bananarama "guilty as a cocoa bean" in Love In The First Degree?

The answer, in both cases, is no. Bush is singing: "It's me, I'm Cathy. I've come home"; Bananarama are as guilty "as a girl can be".


You can access the lyrics search feature here.

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Rolling Stone features a new Paul McCartney interview as part of it's 40th anniversary issue. You can see excerpts here.

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Director Julie Taymor talks about her new flick "Across the Universe," a musical set to Beatles tunes.

The $45 million film is a love story set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and is told through songs by the Beatles, which the cast, including Evan Rachel Wood and several tyros, perform themselves. (Bono, Eddie Izzard, Joe Cocker and Salma Hayek all have cameos.) Taymor selected the 32 songs from a catalog of 200.

"We move from the early Beatles songs -- 'All My Loving,' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' -- that have that fabulously innocent, early-1960s feel," she says, "to songs like 'Revolution' that, I wouldn't say they got totally political, but they have a certain kind of awareness.

"What I loved was the ability to show, I suppose you could say, the coming of age of six young people through the innocence of high school to the war to the playground of the Summer of Love. They sound like cliches, but when you tell it through the music of the Beatles, it rings with some truth."


Best Beatles Sites.

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Two more "Doctor Who" adventures, "Robot" and "Time Lash," arrive on DVD in the UK this summer with US release likely to follow sometime later on. Here's info on each set's extras:

Robot will include the following special features:
- A 40-minute documentary called Are Friends Electric? will look at Tom Baker's introduction to the series and the making of his first story. This documentary will include contributions from Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe, and Barry Letts.
- A clip from Blue Peter recorded on the Robot sets
- A 15-minute featurette called "The Tunnel Effect" which focuses on the creation of the Fourth Doctor title sequence
- A photo gallery
- Subtitle Production noted
- Radio Times listings in pdf format
- Commentary from Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Barry Letts, and Terrance Dicks

Timelash will include the following:
- A 25-minute documentary called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly narrated by Terry Molloy and featuring contributions from Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Paul Darrow, and Eric Saward.
- A photo gallery
- Subtitle Production notes
- Radio Times listings in pdf format
- Commentary from Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, and Paul Darrow
- There will also be a 'Coming Soon' trailer for the next DVD release



Best Doctor Who Sites.

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Tap is back!

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming.

The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, "This is Spinal Tap," will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7.


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