frank

31 Aug

Link Tank: Frank Oz is Not Happy With the Current State of The Muppets

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The voice of Fozzy Bear and Miss Piggy himself has some choice words when describing the recent Disney additions to The Muppets. “Frank Oz has brought iconic characters like Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and Yoda to life. Having worked with Jim Henson to bring us some of these childhood favorites, he hasn’t been a part of the new era of The Muppets or Sesame Street, and his absence has surely been missed. As someone whose favorite Muppet is Fozzie, Oz has been an iconic part of this series from the jump.” Read more at The Mary Sue Shang-Chi and the…

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17 May

How Tina Turner and Frank Zappa Whipped Up Some Dirty Love

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Tina Turner joins the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2021 in Cleveland this October, along with Jay-Z, Gil Scott-Heron, Todd Rundgren, Carole King, Foo Fighters, and The Go-Gos. Tina is already an honoree as a member of Ike and Tina Turner, and she is also once again distinguishing herself from the group. Even before she went solo, Turner had star billing, such as her turn as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s film adaptation of The Who’s Tommy.  But Tina had to skip the credits for her work with Frank Zappa, who was posthumously inducted into the…

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19 Apr

Link Tank: Why You Should Watch Frank of Ireland

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Are you interested in a comedy series that’s a cross between Community and Peep Show? Then you need to check out Amazon’s Frank of Ireland. “Nearly every beloved comedy you regularly revisit on a Netflix binge has a less assured start, where it’s plainly apparent that the writers and performers are still trying to define the characters, and the jokes never quite land in the way they so regularly do later on in their runs. Amazon’s Frank of Ireland is the rare debut season where you can tell that future seasons will well and truly knock it out of the park…” Read more at…

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12 Apr

Shameless Series Finale Review: Father Frank, Full of Grace

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This Shameless review contains spoilers. Shameless Season 11 Episode 12 “We’re still here. We’re surviving, right?”  Most people would likely not argue that Shameless’s best years are behind it. Showtime, its cable network, even briefly had a reputation for bleeding series dry long after they should have ended. However, even the most egregious examples of this like Weeds, Californication, and Dexter still pale in comparison to Shameless‘s episode count and none of them ever lost their series’ lead. It’s fair to say that Shameless is not as good as when it started or even how it was a few seasons…

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05 Mar

Boss Level is Groundhog Day with a Badass Thanks to Frank Grillo

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Despite its overtly referential title, Joe Carnahan’s unrelenting, made-for-Hulu murder-fest, Boss Level, actually isn’t as desperate to appeal to gamers as one might think. There are a handful of references to video games here and there, and the movie’s time-loop plot device does evoke the low-stakes, repetitive experience of playing games. But this is no Pixels—it’s a blistering action movie first, a middling sci-fi movie second, and, surprisingly, a delayed coming of age story in its fleeting moments of respite. Frank Grillo stars as Roy Pulver, an ex-special forces badass who for reasons unknown relives the same day repeatedly, ducking…

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23 Feb

Frank Zappa’s Son Ahmet Talks Legacy, Labels, and His Father’s Inventions

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Frank Zappa, who died in 1993, is one of the least understood artists of the 20th Century, which is ironic because he was also the most prolific. Introduced to the world as a bicycle-playing artiste concrète sitting naked on a toilet, he was a harmonic genius who experimented with sonic assault weapons and visual subversions. Frank Zappa was the Nikola Tesla of music. Alex Winter’s documentary ZAPPA, which is now available to watch in the UK and Ireland on Altitude.film, clarifies many of the contradictions by highlighting Zappa’s primary focus. The Mothers of Invention bandleader was a composer. As such,…

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24 Nov

Uncle Frank: Paul Bettany Movie Speaks to Every American Family

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Many of us have or had an Uncle Frank in our lives. Mine was my cousin Bobby, who lived with his mother (my great-aunt) in the downstairs apartment of our brownstone in Brooklyn. I lived there too for a while, on the top floor with my mom and grandparents. Bobby was a school teacher, well educated, and one of the voices of calm and reason in our otherwise highly emotional, often high-strung family. Bobby taught me about opera and certain types of pop music whenever I used to stop by and see him as a kid, and he also introduced…

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24 Nov

Uncle Frank

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In 1973, teenaged Beth Bledsoe (Sophia Lillis) leaves her rural Southern hometown to study at New York University where her beloved Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) is a revered literature professor. She soon discovers that Frank is gay, and living with his longtime partner Walid “Wally” Nadeem (Peter Macdissi) -- an arrangement that he has kept secret for years. After the sudden death of Frank's father -- Beth’s grandfather -- Frank is forced to reluctantly return home for the funeral with Beth in tow, and to finally face a long-buried trauma that he has spent his entire adult life running away…

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30 Oct

None of This Would Be Happening If Frank Zappa Had Been President

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The election is days away. No one knows if there will be an orderly turnover or the disorderly donut hole of malevolent maneuverings. The nation is divided and civil unrest is in the air. This follows a summer which was prophetically and perennially summed up in “Trouble Every Day,” a song from Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s 1966 debut album Freak Out! “Wednesday I watched the riot,” Zappa sings on the song he wrote after seeing the Watts Uprising of 1965. “I seen the cops out on the street. Watched ’em throwin’ rocks and stuff, and chokin’ in…

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14 Jun

Being Frank

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Seventeen-year old Philip (Logan Miller) longs to leave his small town for music school in The Big Apple. His dreams are dashed when his overbearing father, Frank (Jim Gaffigan) forbids it. In retaliation to his father's dictatorial parenting, he sneaks away in search of a wild spring break. However, when he crosses state lines, he instead finds a charming lake community where he spots his father with another woman. Turns out, Frank lives in this town and has an entire other family. With this bizarre revelation Philip realizes he can either blow the whistle on his father's deceit or take…

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06 Jun

Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank

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Shot in cinema-verite style between New York and Nova Scotia, where Robert Frank now lives, the film captures Frank reflecting on a lifetime of image making that most famously produced The Americans, probably the most influential photographic book of the last sixty years. From the Lower East Side to Coney Island, Frank revisits places where he lived and photographed, unsentimentally yet humorously noting the erosion of the New York. He recalls his collaborations with the Beat generation, including his film Pull my Daisy, narrated by Jack Kerouac, as well as his infamous Cocksucker Blues with The Rolling Stones. Affectionate conversations…

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02 Nov

Frank Serpico

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In the early 1970s, one man stood up to the entire New York City police force. Hailed as a hero by many, hated by others, officer Frank Serpico made headlines when he blew the whistle on a culture of bribery and corruption within the department. His one-man crusade for police reform inspired the Al Pacino classic that bears his name, but the real life saga is as gripping as anything Hollywood could dream up. Now, Serpico tells his story in his own words: from his Italian-American roots in Brooklyn to his disillusionment with the NYPD to his riveting account of…

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