PopSmart

Get ready to face reality in the next two weekends with a couple of reality TV casting calls.

For all you bad girls out there, Bunim-Murray Productions is looking for seven women (not ladies) with attitude (problems) for the 3rd season of Oxygen’s hit series “The Bad Girls Club” — it’s like VH1’s “Charm School,” but with more heart and fewer references to Flavor Flav. So if you like throwing cat fights and saying words that need bleeping — and it’s hurting your relationships — you could benefit from living in a mansion with six back-talking girls on the Oxygen network’s highest-rated original series.

Casting for “The Bad Girls Club” is Saturday, June 7, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at Rock Bottom Brewery in Buckhead Plaza. You must be 21 or older (and wildly sassy) to apply. For more information, go to Bunim-Murray.com.

Good girls and boys needn’t fret, though. If you’ve got a great dog — well behaved, friendly and completely obedient — good for you, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. Ricochet Television is looking for bad dogs for a new series based on a hit U.K. show. Misbehaving mutts, purebred punks, alliterative alpha-dogs — all are welcome to come enlist in this doggy boot camp from the producers of “Supernanny,” “The Alaska Experiment,” and “The Real Housewives of New York City.” The casting call is Saturday, June 14, from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at Atlantic Station’s Central Park. To apply, visit their website or call 877-44-DOGGY.

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The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the 40th anniversary of which is remembered today, was the first historical moment that had any kind of resonance with me. There remain only fragments of it: plopped on my family’s living-room floor while my family, including my Massachusetts-born father, watched the news coverage. I knew something bad had happened, and I think I remember it being Kennedy’s murder, but mostly something bad. But the more vivid memory came days later, on our way down to South Florida for a summer vacation, when my dad lost it and yelled at us in the back seat while we were playing with each other. His anger and grief had overcome him. That emotion resonates and stays with a person over the years.

That’s history for you, especially when you’re young. Sometimes you only remember swatches of moments, and images. Four decades on, RFK seems to live on in a variety of those swatches. Like his speeches, whether on the campaign trail or after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, in which he did his level best to tamp down on the violence sure to come …

Kennedy, like his brother John, has endured a rather spotty interpretation on film (but for the excellent “American Experience” documentary). He was portrayed with surprising timidity by Linus Roache in the 2002 TV movie, RFK, which failed to capture but a lick of his charisma and depth of feeling. My favorite portrayal comes from Martin Sheen, who at various times has portrayed both brothers but was brilliant in the 1974 TV movie The Missiles of October, about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. (I can barely remember how Steven Culp portrayed him in Thirteen Days, which was more a vehicle for Kevin Costner as a presidential aide than anything else.) Last year brought us RFK Must Die! The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which raises new questions about whether Sirhan B. Sirhan (still serving a life sentence in a California prison) actually pulled the trigger.
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Last night was a great night for TV watching, particularly if you love informative filmmaking, but a horrible one if you don’t have TiVo. It was bad enough that Turner Classic Movies dedicated the evening to its “Race and Hollywood: Asian Images in Film,” which runs Tuesdays and Thursdays in June. The 35-film retrospective, hosted by Robert Osborne and University of Delaware professor Peter X. Feng, started with the 2006 documentary, Slanted Screen, and continued with screenings of The Cheat (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), The Dragon Painter (1919), Mr. Wu (1927) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932).

If you missed that history lesson, the series continues Thursday night with the 2008 documentary Anna May Wong — Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend, followed by The Toll of the Sea (1922), Old San Francisco (1927), and Piccadilly (1929).

But then there was the season-three premiere of Morgan Spurlock’s always-entertaining “30 Days” (F/X, 10 p.m. cable 43), which features the star/director of the thrilling Super-Size Me (and the near-woeful Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?) spending a month in the lives of compelling characters and situations. To kick the season off, instead of placing someone else in a compromising position, Spurlock spent a month in his native West Virginia as a coal miner. It was, quite simply, great television, showing once again Spurlock at his best (offering a bird’s eye view of coal miners’ lives and humanizing them every step of the way) and his worst (his cloying voice-overs are as awkwardly delivered as his camera-facing confessionals are naive and obvious).

But as harsh as I’ve been on Spurlock, he does his fair share of digging, so to speak, and he paints a picture of a people addicted to the good-paying ($60,000 a year) yet lethal jobs that while charging our homes and lives also rape the beautiful West Virginia landscape. By the end of the hour, you really feel like you know the people better, and that in the end is Spurlock’s goal. (Next week: Morgan throws a dude into a wheelchair for a month.) (more…)

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Thanks to everyone who played our Summer Guide Contest this year. We had 180 submissions, which if memory serves was double the total of last year’s contest. Last Friday was the deadline, and we had a flurry of last-minute entries for the drawing that was held under a pounding June sun on Monday afternoon. As you can see, it was quite a challenge for Marketing Director Shana Langfur (pictured above right and below), who had her hands full in keeping track not only of all the submissions, but also of the prize package. Before we announce the winner, let’s tell her what she won:

* Two passes to see the IMAX film Ends of the Earth: From Polar Bears to Penguins, which opens Saturday, June 7, at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. (We also threw in two general-admission Fernbank passes.)
* Two tickets to the opening-night performance of Broadway Across America’s touring production of Mamma Mia!, which opens Tuesday., June 10, at the Fox Theatre.
* Two tickets good for any performance of Georgia Shakespeare’s season: As You Like It (June 11-Aug. 1), The Merchant of Venice (June 26-Aug. 2) and All’s Well That Ends Well (July 10-Aug. 3). Performances are held at the Conant Performing Arts Center. Two tickets (good for any performance).
* Two tickets to Creative Loafing’s BeerFest: Beer’lympics, on Saturday, June 14, at Woodruff Park.
* Two tickets to any remaining screening of the Coca-Cola Film Festival: Shine a Light (June 5), Horton Hears a Who! or Atonement (June 8), Casablanca (June 17), No Country for Old Men (June 18), Enchanted or Ben-Hur (July 13). Screenings at the Fox Theatre.
* Four tickets and two parking passes to the series-opening game between the Atlanta Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday, June 23, at Turner Field.
* Admission for two on the guest list for Corndogorama on June 26-29 at Lenny’s Bar.
* Two tickets to see the Dave Matthews Band on Monday, July 7, at Lakewood Amphitheatre.
* Two tickets for Cocktails in the Garden, which runs from July 10-Sept. 1 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Also, two general-admission passes for Atlanta Botanical Garden.
* Two tickets to attend the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which runs from June 12-15 in Manchester, Tenn.
* Two tickets to see Mark Knopfler on Tuesday, July 29, at the Delta Classic Chastain Park Amphitheater.

Shana did plenty of rummaging through the lottery bin before finally pulling out the name … BARBARA PAYNE! She found all 11 of the (oh so hard to find) clues to the best of the 111 things to do this summer. Thanks for playing, Barbara.

(Photos by Edward Adams)

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 We here at Creative Loafing know that everyone is on pins and needles regarding the impending announcement of the winner of our Summer Guide Contest. And the winner is … well, hang on. We needed to delay the announcement just a bit. Stay tuned. Clearly, as you can see from the photo, we’re almost there. The good news is, we had 180 submissions this year, which is about double last year’s total.Thanks for your patience.(Photo by Edward Adams)

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Monster Bash is like Drive-Invasion without the humidity and with more makeup. OK, it was already pretty warm on Sunday when hot-rodders, devil dolls, rock ’n’ rollers and ghouls of all ages got all tatted up at the Starlight Drive-In. The event sold out, with barely a parking spot available by mid-afternoon in which rockers and sci-fi/horror-movie fans could camp out, cook out and rock out. (”It’s like an inner-city version of a hippie fest,” said one Basher during the post-sundown viewing of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (which was followed by The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman).Before that, Bashers were treated to loads of bands (including Super X-13 and Van Heineken, which featured Shane Morton and his Silver Scream Spook Show posse, which helps put on the event), as well as hot rods and a “model shootout.” It was a great way to kick off the summer, drive-in style, but next time I’ll have to remember it’s a BYOB affair. (I probably could’ve gotten a PBR contact high, though.) Morton says that folks drive in from around the Southeast to catch the show, and it’s no wonder. The costumes alone are worth the price of admission.If you missed this one, just go ahead now and mark down Drive-Invasion, held over Labor Day Weekend, on your calendar. They’re working on the lineup as we speak, but it should be fun no matter who shows up. Previous bands have included Agent Orange and Southern Culture on the Skids. On a related note, you might want to mark down Splatter Cinema’s showing of 1988’s The Return of the Living Dead on June 10 at the Plaza Theatre. Silver Scream’s next screening, of the 1956 Shakespearean sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, is on June 28, also at the Plaza.

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So much of Screen on the Green on Thursday night, with its showing of Jaws, felt familiar. There was the huge signature banner covering the monster screen. There was the crowd of picnickers camping out on the sloping grass, this time Centennial Olympic Park. There was the sort-of entertaining pre-screening music act, this time in the form of Athens’ Blue Flashing Light. There was, ultimately, a really cool community vibe that makes Screen on the Green one of my favorite Atlanta experiences.

But there were plenty of differences, some perfectly understandable, others irksome, others a little of both. For starters (and I should have known this given the persistent warnings), there was no outside alcohol permitted, which meant I had to trudge back to my car to drop off that awesome $6 bottle of Cabernet. I loved the cops’ response to my questioning why we could do this at Piedmont but not here: “This is a different park.” Indeed. Centennial Olympic Park is different in a lot of ways. For starters, the lovely view of Midtown is replaced by an almost equally lovely view of downtown. I’m no fan of Atlanta’s bizarro modern aesthetic — where the motif seems to be “20th Century Hodgepodge” — but almost anything looks good at sundown, including the skyline. But still, being forced to pony up $6 for crappy, plastic-bottled Budweiser seemed a ripoff from the get-go. Even more annoying was reliance on the CNN Center for on-the-go food. Am I the only one who misses access to places like Silver Grill? (Added travel note: I decided to use the MARTA train for the first time since moving here, and while I was bummed I wasn’t accosted by Soulja Girl, I LOVED the perspective it gives on the city. Lesson learned.)

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Well, the weather forecast for tonight’s Screen on the Green season kickoff of Jaws at Olympic Centennial Park looks free and clear (only about a 10 percent chance of rain), so the only question remaining is: Are you tired of Jaws yet?

I can’t wait to find out if I am. When Turner announced the Screen on the Green schedule, like a lot of folks I was a bit underwhelmed — not just at the inclusion of such modern films as Big Momma’s House but also the complete lack of a truly old-fashioned, black-and-white classic from Hollywood’s Golden Era. Perhaps the switch from Turner Classic Movies to Peachtree TV had something to do with the programming.

But as far as classics go, Jaws is certainly one of them. It’s also one of cable TV’s most oft-played movies, and has therefore desensitized viewers over the years. And remember how it was a staple on TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” tile on their homepage? What gives with the Spielberg love? His E.T. the Extraterrestrial will also be shown at Screen on the Green (June 19). Could it have been some deal cut when he agreed to do the “Spielberg on Spielberg” interview last fall? No matter. It’s all good. (By the way, check out Curt Holman’s spot-on take on Spielberg’s more recent films last week in PopSmart.)

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Adrian Belew

(Courtesy Adrian Belew)

1) Adrian Belew performs at Smith’s Olde Bar with Elliot Holden.

2) South African writer Rose Moss comes to Charis Books for a reading and discussion of In Court.

3) Halo Lounge hosts Pop Art, an evening of art featuring iconic pop culture images.

4) Screen on the Green kicks off its first screening of the summer with Jaws at Centennial Olympic Park.

5) X performs at Variety Playhouse with Detroit Cobras.

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I practically grew up on Sydney Pollack, the actor, the producer and the director. And as many of the eulogies note, his passing is practically that of an era in Hollywood when directors tried to make accessible adult-themed movies. Never a true auteur, Pollack nevertheless did the kind of things directors of even the highest artistic vision don’t always do. He could get great performances out of actors who were playing in often conventional storylines. If you didn’t know a Pollack film, you certainly knew a Robert Redford performance.

While it’s a given that his later directing output was substandard, Pollack was an important Hollywood figure in other ways, and not just as an actor. He remains the best host of Turner Classic Movies‘ “The Essentials” showcase of the no-brainer films, mainly because without any trace of ego (looking at you, Peter Bogdanovich) but with all the passion and smarts, he could crystallize what made an essential movie an essential movie. This is where his acting ability really served him well; he knew how to “sell” it.

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