In case you missed it, the trailer for CBGB debuted this week, and I'm not surprised that it appears rather lackluster. It looks like the famed punk/underground rock 'n' roll club got the bland Hollywood treatment, and there's enough bad wigs in this piece to make Oliver Stone blush.

Die Hard and Harry Potter star Alan Rickman plays HIlly Kristal, the late owner of CBGB's who opened the bar in the seedy Lower East Side of NYC in 1973. The original name for the bar was CBGB and OMFUG, which stood for "Country, BlueGrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers." To my knowledge the bar didn't get a lot of country musicians stopping by, but it did give The Ramones, Television, The Patti Smith Group, The Talking Heads and Blondie their start.

Going by the trailer, I'm disappointed by a few things other than the awful wigs. Alan Rickman is no slouch, but the casting of Roseanne's Johnny Galecki and The West Wing's Bradley Whitford screams "TV movie." The Foo Fighter's Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop? Pure blasphemy. Don't even get me started on Rickman's fellow Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint as Cheetah Chrome, the ginger-topped guitar player for The Dead Boys and The Hangover's Justin Bartha as that band's legendary depraved, deceased frontman, Stiv Bators.

Even though the film appears to smell as bad as the CBGB's infamous bathrooms, I'm sure I'll be there when it opens in Tucson. Maybe I'll sneak into it. I'm a sucker for punk rock movies, even though I should have learned my lesson after the woeful Germs biopic came out a few years back. Let's face it: Hollywood has never gotten punk right. Either punks are portrayed as dog-collared spazzoid villains or they never seem to figure out that liberty spikes and pierced tongues weren't the norm in the late 70's.

Oh well. What should you expect from a CBGB's movie after this?

It would be fair to say, I think, that Werner Herzog has put together one of the most uncompromising careers in film history, alternating between fiction and documentaries, eating his shoe, etc. Last year, he released a television series in the UK looking at the stories behind several Americans on death row, but I don't suspect most people would have imagined his follow-up would be a film for AT&T discouraging people from texting while driving.

However, Herzog told AP that he didn't see any reason not to make the PSA:

"What AT&T proposed immediately clicked and connected inside of me. There's a completely new culture out there. I'm not a participant of texting and driving — or texting at all — but I see there's something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us...."It's very easy to reconcile that," said Herzog. "This has nothing to do with consumerism or being part of advertising products. This whole campaign is rather dissuading you from excessive use of a product. It's a campaign. We're not trying to sell anything to you. We're not trying to sell a mobile phone to you. We're trying to raise awareness."

And, unsurprisingly, the film still feels like a Herzog work, staring directly into the faces of the victims and the texters who caused the crashes, and it definitely makes the point AT&T intended. So, I guess it's a perfect use of Herzog's skills and experience.

I've written about my deep love of the Muppets almost as much as I've written about anything else on The Range (I think this is post #11?), so I guess I feel like I have a lot emotionally invested in what are really little more than malleable concepts with backstories. That doesn't make much sense in the post-Jim-Henson era, since Disney can basically do whatever they want with Kermit and Miss Piggy and all of these characters I loved in my childhood, but I guess that's what happens. Who the hell knows? Lew Zealand and his boomerang fish could show up as a resident of a Hamptons mansion on ABC's Revenge, if Disney thought there was some money in it. What the hell do they care?

So, every time something new comes out with any Muppet connection whatsoever, I go through a weird initial burst of excitement followed by the dread that whatever the next thing is will be more Muppets in Space than The Great Muppet Caper. So, while I really did love the Jason Segal written film The Muppets from 2011, he's off to work on other non-Muppet projects, but the rest of the people who made that film are back, including Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords.

However, the first teaser for the sequel came out yesterday, and it's just not funny. I mean, jokes about "Moves Like Jagger" seem stale now and the actual movie isn't coming out until 2014. Tina Fey in a costume will always likely be amusing to me, but there's over a minute of footage that's supposed to make me excited to see Muppets Most Wanted and I don't think I smiled once. I'm sure it'll work out fine, but if you need me, I'll be huddled under my desk crying.

Just as an opening note, I have no idea how the Charles Bradley show at the Rialto isn't sold out yet. Tickets are cheap—$15 general admission—so there's no excuse. A friend of mine saw Bradley at Lollapalooza this weekend and said he thought it might have been the best performance all weekend, and he wasn't alone. That same sentiment showed up in a bunch of recaps of the festival. The best act of a festival with a stacked lineup and that performer is playing in our city the same month. For $15. I just don't get it.

Charles Bradley's music is so great on its own—a perfect take on Wilson Pickett-style soul—that you don't really need to know the man's back story. But, wow, once you get a sense of where Bradley came from, and how long it took him to get to where he is today, playing festivals like Lollapalooza this weekend and the Rialto on Aug. 22, you'll be a fan for life. Last year's documentary, Charles Bradley: Soul of America, is available on DVD and Video On Demand, and if you enjoyed the Buena Vista Social Club or Searching for Sugarman films, hard-luck stories with a happy ending, this will be right up your alley.

So, see the documentary, then get tickets to the show. Actually, maybe do that in the other order. If this town's music fans come to their collective senses, the tickets won't be available by the time you get to the closing credits.

It's a new month (wait, when did that happen?), so there's new stuff to stream on Netflix. This might not be interesting to you, as you could have a life and/or interests that involve leaving the house, but for someone of my social status, something new to watch is a biggish deal. There are some actual films of some cultural significance joining the streaming lineup (Do the Right Thing, a bunch of James Bond movies, The Breakfast Club), but what I'll be watching tonight and as many times as I can get away with? The Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal vehicle Running Scared from 1986.

The story of two wacky cops with unorthodox methods running afoul of their hard-nosed old school boss and trying to close one last case before retiring together, it's truly a cinema classic. Plus, the soundtrack featured songs by Klymaxx, New Edition, Ready for the World and the Michael McDonald jam "Sweet Freedom" (seen above). 

Oh, the adventure and hilarity! They'll drive that stuck-up captain crazy! Will they ever get to open that bar in Key West? So many questions and so much enjoyment. Feel free to use the comment section as a forum for discussing the depth of this film's meaning and nuance.

Oh, and the most recent episodes of Breaking Bad are on there now, ahead of this month's final-season premiere. That too.

Once I saw All About My Mother, I was all in on Pedro Almodóvar, trying to see his movies here as they opened, even driving up to Scottsdale once to catch Volver when it took forever to get to Tucson. While I'll likely still get over to the Loft this week to see his new movie, I'm So Excited, a campy romp set on an airplane and, yes, it's named after the Pointer Sisters song, I would describe the trailer as confusing, but maybe that's the point.

The reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes could be described as conflicted (currently, the score sits at 49%, but that might also be a case of critics holding one of the favorite filmmakers to a higher standard), but, on the other hand, Grantland's great film critic Wesley Morris describes it as Almodóvar "off his meds" which doesn't sound bad at all. I'm so confused, people. I don't know if I'm quite emotionally prepared for Fruitvale Station, but maybe this will be too far in the other direction? Are we supposed to take mescaline before we see it? Is that part of the experience?

Anyhow, it opens tomorrow at the Loft and, somewhat strangely, at the Century Theaters at the Oro Valley Marketplace.

Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times"? David O. Russell directing his follow-up to Silver Linings Playbook? 70's haircuts? Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence? It feels cruel that I have to wait until Christmas (assuming this actually opens here on the date) to see American Hustle.

No matter what your opinion on actually heading out to the movies or the state of the film industry today, there's nothing quite like seeing a movie on a huge, theater screen.

Unfortunately, your choices as to where you can catch a new, first-run flick have dwindled a bit over the years, leaving us with a number of large, corporate-run multiplexes (and the Loft, which is doing everything it can to remain amazing).

Thankfully, there's a site out there that's trying to hold on to those old memories: CinemaTreasures.org, which has photos, comments and maps related to each of the theater houses of the past, from drive-ins to multiplexes to long, long-gone single screen auditoriums.

I'll admit that many of these theaters are from before my time in Tucson, but that doesn't mean I wish I could've been a patron -- after all, there are few things like actually going to a drive-in (of which there are only two, if the quick Google search that led me to drive-ins.com is correct).

Head over to Cinema Treasures to check things out, but be warned, there's a good chance you'll be engaging in a lot of nostalgic thinking.

Everyone knows about Easter eggs in Disney films: King Triton is on a Mardi Gras float in The Princess and the Frog, Mrs. Potts and Chip are brought along in Tarzan and Mickey, Donald and Goofy are in a crowd at the beginning of The Little Mermaid. But, for a few years now, people have been speculating that all Pixar films take place in different times in the same universe. You might have heard that Boo made an appearance in Toy Story 3.

Well, Jon Negroni heard about the theory pretty recently by watching a video on Cracked. He spent the next few months, um, let's call it studying.

He published his findings (and bite sized info graphic) on his website. The timeline probably isn't what you're expecting:

1. Brave
2. The Incredibles
3. Toy Story
4. Toy Story 2
5. Ratatouille*
6. Finding Nemo*
7. Toy Story 3
8. Up
9. Cars
10. Cars 2
11. Wall-E
12. A Bug's Life
13. Monsters University
14. Monsters Inc.

What? Obviously the big surprise is the placement of A Bug's Life, but Negroni argues that's one of the easier jumps to see:

Because the machines tip everything out of balance, Earth becomes an unfit planet for humans and animals, so the remaining humans are put on Axiom (or Noah’s Ark if you want to carry on the Biblical theme where Wall-E is basically Robot Jesus and his love interest is aptly named Eve) as a last-ditch effort to save the human race.

[Note: Can we all just agree to refer to Wall-E as "Robot Jesus" from here on out? Yes? No? OK, moving on.]

After Wall-E liberates the humans and they rebuild society back on Earth, what happens then? During the end credits of Wall-E, we see the shoe that contains the last of plant life. It grows into a mighty tree. A tree that strikingly resembles the central tree in A Bug’s Life. That’s right. The reason no humans exist in A Bug’s Life is because there aren’t a lot left. We know because of the cockroach that some of the insects survived, meaning they would have rebounded a bit faster, though the movie had to be far enough in the timeline for birds to have returned as well. There’s something strikingly different about A Bug’s Life when compared to other Pixar portrayals of animals, which leads me to believe it takes place in the future. Unlike Ratatouille, Up, and Finding Nemo, the bugs have many human activities similar to what the rats in Ratatouille were just experimenting with. The bugs have cities, bars, know what a bloody mary is, and even have a travelling circus. This all assumes that the movie is in a different time period.

I won't spoil the big theory that ties everything together, but it certainly surprised me. I'm not sure how I feel about the Pixar theory. It's pretty unlikely that, back in 1995, Pixar had this wacky universe in mind. A Bug's Life was only Pixar's second film. Could the writers really have been thinking this far ahead?

Probably not. But I love the idea that, at some point, the writers sat down and decided the company needed a storyline of its own.

The post has been getting quite a bit of attention since it went up last Thursday. Negroni has been responding to readers on Twitter, in the comments and within the text of the original post.

Does anyone else feel a Pixar marathon coming on?

*Note: In different posts, Negroni switches Ratatouille and Finding Nemo on the list. I guess we'll never know.

Andrew Garfield, who plays the lead role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequels, posited this idea the other day: why can't Mary Jane Watson (the love interest and eventual wife of Spider-Man), be a man?

From Entertainment Weekly:

Andrew Garfield has loved Spider-Man since he was a little kid. He can speak eloquently and at length about how open the Spider-verse is for interpretation. Recently, he says, he had a philosophical discussion with producer Matt Tolmach about Mary Jane or “MJ” to fans.

“I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ,” he tells EW. “And I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”

Considering that there was, at one point, popular talk of having Spider-Man portrayed by an African-American (see the Donald Glover for Spider-Man campaign, mentioned in his stand-up special), it's an interesting idea, I think.

Not one that will see the light of day, considering this country's touchy feelings on homosexuality in popular culture (I can hear the shitty jokes now: "WELL I GUESS IT MAKES SENSE CONSIDERING PETER PARKER WAS ON BROADWAY LOL," one homophobic nerd types into a comment section before high-fiving himself and going back to ranting about how the current iteration of X-Men is the worst ever because the main cast is all women), but the idea of completely flipping the script on well-known characters is one that should have more legs than it does.

[h/t: Comic Book Movie]