| Over the 'Borderline'
Geopolitics being what they are today, Madonna might want to reconsider one element of her "Confessions Tour," which returns to Madison Square Garden tomorrow for two nights. Midway through the show - which is otherwise excellent, even inspiring - a montage of images of world leaders is displayed above the stage. There's President Bush, President Ahmadinejad, Secretary of State Rice, Kim Jong Il, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Fidel Castro, and everyone's favorite punching bag, Vice President Cheney. The montage makes Madonna's worldview quite clear: The only difference between a Republican and a dictator is a mustache. Right, they're all the same. This jolting moment of moral equivalency is topped only by Madonna giving the president of the United States the middle finger. It's all a big dollop of juvenile thinking in the middle of a highly sophisticated show.
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
The Hills Have Eyes is a truly American horror film. Like Manifest Destiny gone horribly awry, the film reflects our obsession with the danger of the West: Its forbidden, desolate landscapes, the rugged masochism it inspires. For Americans, the West is a place where anything can and does happen. And in The Hills Have Eyes our nastiest nightmares are bloodily realized.
Wes Craven's brutal 1977 micro-budgeted The Hills Have Eyes was a post-hippie scream of horror, both at the collapse of the youth-led revolution and the dreadfulness of the Vietnam War. Craven turned his eye to home, to the desolate stretches of vast American desert where he could posit a family of bloodthirsty mutants preying on those who stumble onto their fallout abode, and it could almost (almost) seem plausible.
Daddy Licks guitarist Scott Hott dies in Fla.
When the idea for a Daddy Licks reunion was first floated 18 months ago, guitarist Scott ''Hott'' Schneck had just begun a battle with cancer. A tumor had been found on his left leg, and he was looking at a long period of recuperation after an operation to remove it.
Still, Schneck, who had been living in Florida for the last six years, was excited about joining forces with his former band mates in the R&B-tinged new wave band, which arguably was the highest-profile Lehigh Valley rock act in the early 1980s.
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