Elina Shatkin

Never has the line between comedy and tragedy been thinner than in this clip of Sen. John McCain asserting that in Baghdad there are areas outside of the Green Zone where Westerners can walk freely thanks to the U.S. success in Iraq. Sure, I guess if you're wearing a Kevlar vest, surrounded by more than 100 heavily armed soldiers and guarded by Blackhawk helicopters and Apache gunships, you would feel pretty safe. Fortunately, McCain's statement...

I am in shock. Despite a ton of promotion, great reviews and legions of Quentin Tarantino fans, Grindhouse opened in only fourth place. That would be $3.4 million behind the "former ghetto rapper heads to the burbs" comedy Are We Done Yet? and only $1.5 million ahead of the "I'm Hilary Swank, and I've won two Oscars, so I can star in whatever piece of poorly conceived commercial dreck I want to" horror film...

The marketing departments of major studios have nothing on Los Angeles' guerilla graffiti artists. This promo for Spider-Man 3 is the second of two billboards for summer superhero movies tagged by (I think) the same artist. The first of these, a Silver Surfer billboard for the Fantastic Four sequel on Melrose near Martel, has since been removed, but you can still see this one (I hope) on the North side of Melrose at Mansfield....

What if the future really did look like a cross between a Eurovision song contest and Cats? It would be The Apple, perhaps the oddest (some would say crappiest) musical ever made....

Grindhouse - I've already reviewed this movie, so I won't bother rehashing it, but trust me, Grindhouse totally freakin' rocks! Three full hours of beautiful cinematic mayhem. Are We Done Yet? - Ice Cube stars as a beleaguered urban dad who moves with his new wife (Nia Long) and her two kids to their dream house in the 'burbs and is terrorized by a contractor (John C. McGinley from Scrubs). Black Book - Dutch-born...

Continuing our week of modern musicals, here's Diane Lane in the 1984 film Streets of Fire....

Don't forget. If you want to see a sneak preview of the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature, Grindhouse (Planet Terror = Rodriquez; Death Proof = Tarantino), head over to the New Beverly tonight at 11 p.m. Actually, head over at 9:45 p.m. That's when tickets go on sale, and there's a good chance it will sell out. If you wanna go in true grindhouse style, I recommend rolling up in a 1970s Dodge Challenger...

I have no idea why, but I'm trying to make all of this week's 4:20 Movies weird musicals (preferably starring or directed by celebrities). Here's David Hasselhoff -- wearing what looks like the the cast-off plastic chest from Wrath of Khan -- in the musical Jekyll & Hyde musical....

You've heard the original version of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," you've heard the disco remix, now hear the 80s power ballad sung in German as a duet between an innkeeper's beautiful daughter and the king of all vampires. It's called "Totale Finsternis" ("Total Darkness"), and it's the opening song from the Second Act of Tanz de Vampire (Dance of the Vampire), a musical remake of the 1967 Roman Polanski film The Fearless...

Grindhouse The week begins with a pair of 70s actions flicks. The Lady in Red, which has one of my favorite taglines of all time "She's made of bullets, sin & bathtub gin!" is a gangster film starring Robert Conrad as John Dillinger and Pamela Sue Martin as his moll. (Bonus: it was written by John Sayles.) In Bare Knuckles a Los Angeles bounty hunter tracks a psychopath who murders women by using kung-fu. Then...