Pop focus: Psycho

"Vertigo" may be Alfred Hitchcock's best film. "Rear Window," however, is my favorite. But the scariest is 1960's "Psycho." Any film that can make something as relaxing and pleasant as a hot shower after a long road trip frightening and sinister is coming from a dark, twisted and horrific place.

Here's a look at the film's trailer, it's most famous scenes and other images from the production.















Fans in photo by Ringo Starr ID'd

As reported in this week's pop culture roundup, Ringo Starr was hoping to learn the identities of a car full of fans he shot a picture of while on tour with the Beatles in 1964.

Now, it looks as if those fans have been ID'd:
“All this craziness over a picture — it’s pretty darn wild,” said Charlie Schwartz, 67, who lives today in Sonoma, Calif.

That’s him in the back seat of the car, hand partially over his mouth, staring intently — along with five others — at the car that’s pulled alongside. It is carrying, of course, The Beatles.

“It’s just a great shot,” Starr writes in “Photograph,” released earlier this year as an e-book and out in print on Nov. 22. “They’re looking at us, and I’m photographing them.”

BBC airs Tintin radio shows

BBC Radio 4 is re-running its series Tintin radio dramas, starting with "The Black Island." Check them out here.


New pics: X-Men - Days of Future Past

Empire mag has some new shots from the upcoming X-men flick, which sees the merry mutants in the swinging 60s and today. Here's Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and the gang.









Pop culture roundup: Ringo Starr! Mad Monster Party! Mel Blanc!

All he has is a photograph: Ringo Starr is hoping to identify this carload of fans, whose photo he snapped out a limousine window while touring the U.S. with the Beatles back in 1964. The snap is included in Ringo's new e-book "Photograph" and also will appear in a high-priced collectible version of the tome from Genesis Publications.


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Ringo's got another book to plug, too:





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Read the Mad Monster Party comic book!




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Via BoingBoing: Download more than 40 episodes of the great Mel Blanc's old time radio show!
Mel Blanc's success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS Radio Network, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from September 3, 1946 to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, as well as a wide range of comical support characters.

Other regular characters were played by Mary Jane Croft, Joseph Kearns, Hans Conreid, Alan Reed, Earle Ross, Jim Backus, Bea Benaderet and The Sportsmen Quartet, who would supply a song and sing the Colgate Tooth Powder commercials.

For 50 years, Mel Blanc was the voice of many popular cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, The Tasmanian Devil, Pepe LePew, Marvin the Martian, the RoadRunner ("Meep, meep!"), Barney Rubble, and Woody Woodpecker.

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