PopSmart

1) Atlanta rock band Morning State (right) plays the Earl.

2) Virginia-Highland hosts its first annual Cinco de Mayo Celebration and Block Party.

3) Fulton County Public Library opens its Great Speckled Bird historical exhibit, which includes covers, articles, cartoons and graphics from Atlanta’s underground paper.

4) Local and national bands rock out for 500 Songs For Kids at Smith’s Olde Bar.

5) American Kidney Fund hosts a margarita tasting at No Mas! Cantina.

(Courtesy of Indie Outlaw)

Rumor has it that this week will break records in pop culture profits: Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale on Tuesday and could sell 9 million copies. If so, the console game could earn well over $400 million in its first week, and earn the highest “first week” gross of any entertainment product of all time.

I cannot claim to have much proficiency with games like Grand Theft Auto. In 2002 I wrote a feature story about console and computer games, and this is my experience with Grand Theft Auto III in a nutshell:

After two hours, my career as a criminal is not going well. My assignment is to pick up Misty, one of Luigi Goterelli’s working girls. But en route to our meeting at the Liberty City clinic, I keep accidentally knocking down lampposts, driving over fire hydrants and hitting pedestrians. My car gets crumpled from every angle, steam billowing from the radiator, and before I can even find Misty, I get arrested. In one attempt, my burning auto explodes, killing me. Could a wannabe carjacker possibly come to a more shameful end?

Fortunately you don’t need to be any good as a virtual car thief to enjoy this item from Cracked.com, “25 Rejected Ideas From Grand Theft Auto IV.” The reader Photoshop contest received some highly amusing suggestions for “missions,” such as “Promote literacy throughout the city” and “Nail this country duet with Dolly Parton.” If you’re not down with the games, reading it can at least give you the simulation of feeling hip.

(Image courtesy of Rockstar Games)

So everybody’s all jacked up about Jon Stewart coming to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre on May 10. (By everybody, I’d include me, too.) No doubt Stewart will deliver the same kind of witty political satire that fuels his work as the host of the Emmy-winning “The Daily Show” and his 2004 book, America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction.

But for my money (literally), the better deal might be the appearance by “Daily Show” correspondent and stand-up comedian John Oliver at The Punchline, on June 13-15. Call me a cynic, but I can’t help but feel “The Daily Show” has suffered a small talent shortage with the departure of Stephen Colbert and what feels like a lessening role for Samantha Bee. This crop suggests quantity over quality, but that said, Oliver is best of the bunch. He seems to get more play than, say, Rob Riggle or Jason Jones.

Maybe that’s because the British-born Oliver, more than the others, is able to tap into the more nuanced peculiarities of political satire. He also gets extra credit for walking the walk during the writers’ strike. While Oliver is also known for his podcast “The Bugle” with partner Andy Zaltzman, he also will premiere his own Comedy Central stand-up special “John Oliver: Terrifying Times” on April 20. (More on that show next week; the previous link offers a hilarious snippet from the show.)

For now, here is one of my favorite examples of his “Daily Show” work, where he interviews Qatar’s ambassador to the United Nations. Classic …

CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien will host CNN Presents: Black in America, a series of investigative reports, beginning with a special devoted to the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death called “Eyewitness to Murder – The King Assassination,” April 3 at 9 p.m. Speaking by phone from New York in her unmistakably cheerful and warm voice, O’Brien described the perils of a journalist’s life (too much time in airports, too much Panda Express) and what America wants: “I have never once had a question where someone says, ‘Tell me more about Paris Hilton.’”

Continue reading Speakeasy.

Homer Simpson once said “You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life with an electrified fooling machine.” PopSmart is taking those words to heart, so instead of hoaxing people, we’ll be linking to the media hoaxes of others. Some of these I found thanks to Livejournal blogger (and former Atlantan) Yendi. I’ll pass along more as I find them: if you’ve come across any, mention them in the comments field.

The first one I found this morning was an “interview” on the web-site Hollywood Bitchslap that the director of 21 would be helming a big-screen movie of The Wonder Twins, starring Dane Cook and Jessica Alba as the notorious sidekicks from the “Super Friends” cartoon.

On Salon, Farhad Manjoo of the site’s ‘Machinist’ blog announces his new start-up, “I Google For You,” which is self-explanatory.

Speaking of which, Google is apparently notorious for April Fools’ Day gags, and today announces “Virgle,” a collaboration with Virgin for history’s first colony on the surface of Mars. Here is the application.

The front page of ThinkGeek is devoted to new, fake merchandise such as Spazztroids Caffeinated Cereal and a video game Super Pii Pii Brothers (”Amazing virtual pee experience from Japan!”).

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(Photo © 2006 Lionsgate Films)

Of all the back-and-forthing over Tyler Perry in anticipation — and subsequent reviews — of Meet the Browns, arguably the most compelling criticism I’ve read so far of the Atlanta filmmaker appears courtesy of Andre C. Willis, an assistant professor of the philosophy of religion at Yale Divinity School, on the website The Root. In his thoughtful essay, Willis accuses Perry of succumbing too conveniently to what Willis calls the filmmaker’s black evangelical spirituality, offering too-simple solutions to secular problems …

To address entrenched social misery, lack of opportunity, economic inequality, poor schooling and housing discrimination, Perry’s work trumpets prayer. For more personal and familial struggles such as drug abuse, infidelity and child abuse, his work similarly prescribes redemption through a stronger, deeper and more committed Christian faith. Even his core audience is acutely aware that his work is creatively limited, and yet they are drawn to it because it presents them with a world that is highly recognizable—in language, tone and theme.

I might quibble with some of Willis’ conclusions about the importance of strong faith in someone’s lives, but not having seen Perry’s work, I wouldn’t want to get into uncharted waters. But it’s a great read, and is ripe for dialog.

Creative Loafing has teamed up with radio station WMLB-AM (1690) for “Air Loaf,” a weekend preview on noteworthy arts and entertainment stuff worth checking out around Atlanta. This week CL Editor Ken Edelstein and CL A&E Editor Debbie Michaud discuss everything from Indulgences at Dad’s Garage to the AC3 hip-hop festival at the CW Midtown Music Complex. You can catch “Air Loaf” around 8:20 a.m., 10:20 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. Wednesday through Friday.

Here’s a podcast of this week’s segment …

Audio clip.

(Photo courtesy Turner Classic Movies)

One of the more intriguing (and much-discussed) decisions under the new Turner Classic Movies’ management covered in my recent cover story was the recruiting of actress Rose McGowan to join Robert Osborne as the co-host of “The Essentials,” which seeks to educate viewers on some of the most classic of TCM’s classics. (The no-brainers, if you will.) If ever there were an indication that the reconfigured TCM management structure, led by Turner Entertainment Group President Steve Koonin, wanted to “young up” the viewership, it would be the hiring of the star of the recent Grindhouse double feature as well as oft-syndicated “Charmed” TV series.

McGowan reportedly wowed the TCM people with her preparation for her appearance on last November’s “Guest Programmer” series, as well as her enthusiasm for classic movies. Who knew? But before we get into the selection of McGowan to host, some back story to “The Essentials” …

“I think that when we launched this franchise several years ago, there was lots of internal discussion about which way to go,” says Charlie Tabesh, TCM’s senior VP for programming, who presented the key question as, “Do we give an academic perspective or introduce people to classic movies? We could show ‘The Essentials’ and have a more academic discussion, and we did that for several years.”

This meant recruiting veteran Hollywood director, sometime actor and general raconteur Sydney Pollack, my personal favorite, who offered a pitch-perfect blend of Film Appreciation 101, Hollywood history and an instinctive, accessible love of movies. He was followed by director and film scholar (and “Sopranos” co-star) Peter Bogdanovich, whose Texas-sized ego and talent for mimicry added up to its own peculiar charm. Then came the decision to bring in TCM host Robert Osborne to strengthen the TCM presence, and to add film critic/historian Molly Haskell, which was to kill two birds with one stone: add a second person to make the intros feel more like a conversation and to “balance the ticket,” so to speak, by having a woman. The problem is, Haskell only provided the latter; her reticence forced Osborne to carry the conversation, and she was far from passionate the few times she did engage in the banter. Actress and author Carrie Fisher (daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher) was up next, and while she met the challenge of getting a conversation going, she seemed a bit … what’s the word? … wacky?

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One of our new sister papers, Chicago Reader, today announced what most folks in the alt-weekly world already knew: Longtime film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum is officially retiring from the paper after 20 years. Rosenbaum is a certified giant in the world of film criticism even if mainstream readers are more familiar with his (overrated) Chicago counterpart, Roger Ebert. (Why Ebert won a Pulitzer Prize remains a mystery to me.) It should be noted that the alt-weekly world has sent its share of kick-ass film critics to the daily-newspaper world (the New York Times‘ excellent Manohla Dargis worked at the Village Voice and LA Weekly before jumping to the Los Angeles Times).

Rosenbaum, like J. Hoberman, has remained in the alt-weekly world, and has written several critically acclaimed books on film including 2000’s Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See. He won the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ award for arts criticism in 1997 and 2000.

According to the Reader, Rosenbaum will continue to write for the paper and its On Film blog, while the two will develop his own website. Check out this link, which includes Rosenbaum discussing his retirement.

(Sony Pictures Classics)

It feels like it’s been a decade since “The West Wing” went off the air, and I’m still waiting for a TV show that matches its blend of wonkish politics and lofty idealism whipped into a compelling and witty dramatic narrative. Maybe that’s because, in 2008, I’m pining for Jed Bartlet as my president, because Martin Sheen portrayed a greatest-hits/composite president that was one part John F. Kennedy, one (small) part Bill Clinton and bits of other Democrats who deserved a closer look but never made it to the White House.

But that’s not to say the TV series’ legacy exists in a vacuum, as Slate’s Torie Bosch notes in this fascinating “Life Imitates ‘The West Wing’” video posted today. Seems the parallels between Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain and “The West Wing” last-season candidates Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), Bob Russell (Gary Cole) and Arnie Vinick (Alan Alda) are more than merely coincidental. Seems that a “West Wing” writer had picked the brain of an Obama political consultant while shaping the Matt Santos character, hence Santos’ lofty rhetoric of hope, change and tolerance. And while the Vinick/McCain parallel apparently wasn’t so consciously crafted, here’s one Democrat who wouldn’t mind seeing McCain in a Santos … er, Obama cabinet.

Check out the clip.