The Backroom

Length: 107 min
Rated: PG-13
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: 2009-05-01
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Ryan Reynolds, Lynn Collins, Will.i.Am

Directed by Gavin Hood
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter, Hugh Jackman, John Palermo
Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods




The first big summer release of 2009 delivers big action, big special effects and big mutants. Unfortunately it doesn’t address some big questions. How are Wolverine and Sabertooth growing up as kids at the beginning of the film, but ageless after the first 20 minutes? How does adamantium change the shape and look of Wolverine’s claws? How many Twinkies did the Blob have to eat to get that big, that quick? And why, every time I say or hear ‘Wolverine”, do I think of Red Dawn. (Which I just learned is set to be remade next year.)


Look, the bottom line is this: if you love comic book movies, you’re going to love Wolverine. If you’re a comic book purist and pick apart every comic book movie, you’re going to be frustrated and complaining about the demise of the franchise. I loved the movie. I thought it was fun and had great pacing to the tension between story and action. It gives you just enough back story to make it worth telling. And it introduced some new (to the movie goer, not the comic reader) characters that were pretty awesome like the well played tough but mysterious Gambit (Taylor Kitsch, Friday Night Lights TV show), an interesting but too quickly disappearing Wraith (Will Am I of Black Eyed Peas band fame) and the makes-the-movie fun, wise-cracking Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, Adventureland and Van Wilder). But overall it focuses on Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, X-Men 1,2 and 3, and Australia) and his brother/buddy/enemy Sabertooth (Liv Schreiber, Defiance). Here’s hoping that we get to see a future film with a lot more Gambit and Deadpool involved in the story. Wolverine and Sabertooth get top billing and do a great job carrying the movie. But Gambit and Deadpool give it the intrigue that gets a little lost as they focus on one hero.


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You gotta love this one... This is a ceiling mural in a smoker's lounge!

A senior citizen drove his brand new Corvette convertible out of the dealership.
Taking off down the road, he floored it to 80 m.p.h., enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left. "Amazing," he thought as he flew down I-95, pushing the pedal even more.

Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw a state trooper behind him, lights flashing and siren blaring.
He floored it to 100 mph, then 110, then 120. Suddenly he thought, "What am I doing? I'm too old for this," and pulled over to await the trooper's arrival.

Pulling in behind him, the trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch, and said, "Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I've never heard before, I'll let you go."

The old gentleman paused. Then said, "Years ago, my wife ran off with a state trooper. I thought you were bringing her back."
"Have a good day, sir," replied the trooper.

A staggering exhibit at New York's Gagosian gallery documents the tumultuous final years of Picasso's life.

"Picasso: Mosqueteros" is the first exhibition in the United States to focus on the late paintings since "Picasso: The Last Years: 1963-1973" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1984. Organized around a large group of important, rarely seen works from the collection of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, as well as works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museo Picasso Málaga and other private collections, "Picasso: Mosqueteros" aims to expand the ongoing inquiry regarding the context, subjects, and sources of the artist's late work. Building on new research into the artist's late life through the presentation of selected paintings and prints spanning 1962-1972, the exhibition suggests how the portrayal of the aged Picasso, bound to the past in his life and painting, has obscured the highly innovative and contemporary nature of the late work.





The tertulia, an Iberian tradition of gregarious social gatherings with literary or artistic overtones, played a major part in Picasso's everyday life, even after he moved to the relative seclusion of Notre-Dame-de-Vie in the 1960s. The inner circle of Picasso's last years differed from its precedents in that, in addition to the writers and artists whom Picasso had always favored, it included a contingent of imaginary personages—musketeers, matadors, cavaliers, prostitutes, circus performers – borrowed from the history of art or developed in conversation with his friends. These characters, who fill the late paintings and prints, were drawn from a vast array of sources, from the old masters to the media. As a body of work, Picasso's late period is among the greatest demonstrations of his constant invention of the new, in terms of style, technique, and subject and, indeed, in relation to the history of his own creative output.


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8 part documentary film, Based on the best-selling book by Naomi Wolf, The End of America