Karl 
WONKA WEEK, CONTINUED: There still are not many advance reviews of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but most are positive. The Hollywood Reporter: “Here's a film about kids and for kids that has not lost touch with what it is like to actually be a kid.” Britain's Sun tabloid: says it “is so good you can almost taste it.” Devin Faraci at Cinematic Happenings Under Development: “I can’t deny that Burton’s auterial preoccupations get on my nerves, but luckily he has placed them inside a fairly delightful film.” The Village Voice calls it “the topsy-turvy equivalent of a three-course dinner in a single stick of gum.” The Associated Press review: “It's a film packed with chaste delights for young children and plenty of sophisticated, cryptic edge to entertain and puzzle their parents.” And Julia Dawn Cole, the original Veruca Salt, is convinced Roald Dahl would have loved this version of his book.
FEIST: The Big Ticket not only reviews her Mpls. show, but also has video in Quicktime and WMV formats.
DINOSAUR JR.: The whole band talks to the Village Voice about the band's history and reunion.
BEST OF 2005 (SO FAR): Marathon packs adds another Top 10.
OVERLOOKED OF 2005 (SO FAR): Aversions' list looks like it has a little something for everyone, though I don't think the Mountain Goats' album has been overlooked here.
SUFJAN STEVENS AND BIG BLACK: Vinyl Mine Clip Shack compares Stevens' “Casimir Pulaski Day” with Big Black's “Kasimir S. Pulaski Day” (tip to LHB)
THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS: The reissue of The Psychedelic Sounds of… and the first-ever Roky Erickson retrospective, I Have Always Been Here: The Roky Erickson Story, both score well at the Pitchfork.
THE dBs REUNION: Pitchfork reports their two-stop (for now) tour. Ken King and I already have tickets, natch.
THE LUCKSMITHS talk to PopMatters about truth versus honesty.
RICK JAMES has a new album from beyond the grave coming out in August.
DAVE MATTHEWS: Someone at the Phat Phree is not a phan.
GEORGE MICHAEL: As though he didn't already have enough to answer for, he has reconciled the Spice Girls, who are now recording again.
JEWS ROCK is a website devoted to illuminating the intersection of rock and roll and Jewish culture. The founders, including Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker, originally wanted to call it the Jewish Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but were sued by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Either way, the site has some interesting essays — for example, did you know that Arlo Guthrie was raised Jewish and tutored in Hebrew by the Rabbi Meir Kahane, who later became the leader of Israel’s radical Kach party? (tip to my co-worker Debbie)
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Jolie laid out over 1,800 bucks on X-rated undies and provocative books from upmarket London sex store Coco De Mer. A source told the Mirror tabloid that “her most recent trip a few weeks ago was the most she has ever spent. Brad's one lucky guy.” But not completely lucky — Pitt has been hospitalized in L.A. with a flu-like illness.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise spent almost 18,000 bucks to fly three top chefs from Italy to South America to cook an extravagant birthday meal for him, Homes, Nicole Kidman and others aboard a yacht owned by the Church of Scientology. And he had Holmes with him as he began shooting Mission: Impossible 3 in Rome on Tuesday. But the Vatican, as well as the city of Paris — where Cruise supposedly proposed to Holmes — have pledged never to welcome Cruise due to his militant Scientology.
LI-LO UPDATE: The Lohan, in Mpls. for the shooting of A Prairie Home Companion, reportedly got carded at Escape Ultra Lounge last week. As she just turned 19, she had to demur that she didn't have any ID.
PAM ANDERSON tells a kettle how black it is.
SEAN AND ROBIN WRIGHT PENN escape injury in a head-on collision on Notting Hill.
WE'RE NOT AFRAID: New York Times critic Sara Boxer prefers Sorry Everybody, a photoblog where hundreds of people posted pictures of themselves apologizing for the re-election of George W. Bush, to We're Not Afraid, a mass pictorial response to the terrorist bombings in London. Boxer bemoans what she sees as a shift in sentiment at the latter, fretting that “more and more, there's a brutish flaunting of wealth and leisure” and that the site “seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they're not afraid of the have-nots.” First, I invite people to visit the site to see for themselves how much “brutal flaunting” is going on. Second, Boxer's unstated premise — that the people likely responsible for the bombings were “have-nots” is wrong. Psychologists like Dr. Marc Sageman of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Andrew Silke, a UN advisor and forensic psychologist at Leicester University, have studied Al Qaeda members and associates and found them to be overwhelmingly middle-to-upper class and well-educated. These findings accord with research on suicide bombers from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah. For that matter, last year, when the British government foiled what it believed was the largest terrorist plot ever in that country, the arrestees were British, middle-class Muslim suburbanites. And as noted here recently, a joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier reported that Al Qaeda is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in the U.K. Boxer's article ends up saying more about her than about the website.
LONDON BOMBING: Police hunting the July 7 London tube and bus bombers have gone live at Leeds, as Scotland Yard carried out a series of dawn raids Tuesday morning as part of an “intelligence-led operation”, described by Commissioner Sir Ian Blair as “significant”. Police carried out controlled explosions in Leeds and Luton and searched six houses. Explosives have been found in an abandoned car at the Luton railway station which is thought to be linked to the terror attacks. One man has been arrested in Yorkshire and taken to London. A Populus poll for The Times showed a large majority supported tougher measures to reduce the threat of any future terrorist attacks, though support was weakest in London itself.
IRAQ: Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the PBS program “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” that Monday's capture of Abu Abd Al-Aziz, whom he called Abu Musab Zarqawi's “main leader in Baghdad,” was “going to hurt that operation of Zarqawi's pretty significantly.” U.S. and other foreign troops may be able to withdraw soon from some Iraqi cities, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Tuesday, though he hastened to add there's no timetable. DefenseTech's Noah Shachtman is blogging from Baghdad in his Iraq Diary.
AFGHANISTAN: U.S.-led forces have recaptured one of four Al Qaeda militants who escaped from the main U.S. military detention center in Afghanistan. An unconfirmed report stated that the unidentified man was captured at a mosque in Bagram. Afghan villagers sheltered a U.S. Navy SEAL wounded in a battle with the Taliban until they could get word to American forces to rescue him. Time magazine has a more dramatic version of the story.
IRAN: Students at Tehran University launched a protest against the regime to release all political prisoners, particularly Iran’s most prominent jailed journalist. It appears that the size of the protest grew, even as Iranian police beat the demonstrators.
THE VAN GOGH MURDER CASE: Moroccan-born Mohammed Bouyeri, the self-confessed killer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, faced the victim’s mother in an Amsterdam court and told her he felt no remorse for his crime: “I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer.” He told the court, “I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion.” He added, “I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same.” Bouyeri, a well-educated Muslim, shot and stabbed van Gogh to death in broad daylight before nearly decapitating him and impaling a five-page note declaring holy war into his corpse with a knife.
SHREK-GATE? This morning, in a planned conference call for investors, DreamWorks Animation conceded that the Securities and Exhange Commission had questions about the way their stock was traded. Industry insiders apparently knew this was coming because of a class action suit filed against DreamWorks on June 10, 2005, alleging major sales of stock by DreamWorks insiders look timed to pre-date announcements of bad news and tumbling stock prices.
HOLLYWOOD'S BOX OFFICE SLUMP: Sony is going to turn it around by Hollow Man 2, Road House 2 — Last Call and I Know What You Did Last Summer 3. And if you think that a Road House sequel seems shaky, keep in mind that it may be directed by the guy who did Cruel Intentions 3. Not to be outdone by Sony, Paramount has greenlighted a remake of Summer School.
NETFLIX PLANS 'NET DELIVERY? Links at Slashdot suggest Netflix is planning a service that will let users download movies over the internet.
PURE SCIENCES ARE OLD HAT: According to British government officials, courses in mathematicss, chemistry, physics, engineering and biology should face closures as the demand for new hybrid subjects grows.
DOG IN ZERO-G ENVIRONMENT: MediaFetcher has the video and a discussion.
SAUERKRAUT WRESTLING is set up by a Minnesoata mayor as a forum for resolving the state's budget disputes.
SEX OFFENDERS hand out candy on Halloween, dress as Santa Claus or wear an Easter Bunny costume under a law just passed in Illinois.
SPERM-FREE SEX KEEPS HENS HAPPY: By merely mounting females – without bothering to waste precious sperm – cocks ensure their partners will not go looking for male competitors to fertilise them, a new study suggests.
TOP TEN DEADLIEST ANIMALS, courtesy of LiveScience.
MONKEYS WITH HUMAN BRAINS: Scientists have been warned by a high-powered committee of animal behaviourists, lawyers, philosophers, bio-ethicists and neuro-scientists that their latest experiments — injecting human brain cells into monkey fetuses — may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal. Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare.
