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page 7 ?V< "1 M •■ ' '• >*% *m j" IMj §M m3 M tm?Wi !■ on im/lffil U%MU j|ip - jbp ' *** .y. online I dajlytarheel.com POPES ON HIGH Chicago's Smoking Popes bring stellar pop rock to Cradle TROY RISES AGAIN Hard-core crew The Fall of Troy makes its mark RAY LAMONTAGNE Artist delivers blues-tinged sophomore record rfiv(SsloilS BY WILLIAM FONVIELLE STAFF WRITER They aren’t designed to provoke goatee-scratching discussion. Film studies courses, most likely, won’t be including them in a lecture wedeed between “Citizen Kane” www.dailytarheel.com BY WILLIAM FONVIELLE STAFF WRITER They aren’t designed to provoke goatee-scratching discussion. Film studies courses, most likely, won’t be including them in a lecture wedged between “Citizen Kane” and “The Godfather.” They won’t be winning any Oscars. Hell, they even won’t be win ning any Golden Globes. More often than not, they’re just flat-out bad movies. But with the recent advent of the perhaps over-hyped “Snakes on a Plane,” one thing’s for certain: Cult movies have, at least temporarily, conquered the mainstream. Of course, “Snakes” ate venom at the box office, churning up a paltry $26.9 million by early this week (or about one dollar for every million You Tube parodies, if you want a rough estimate). This would seemingly put a bit of a damper on its “cult clas sic” status, minted even before release. But while that might be true in the real world, cult mov ies exist in some sort of bizarro Hollywood, where gory is the new tasteful, cheesy is the new intel ligent, and the box-office bomb is the new smash hit. That just begs one little ques tion: What in the name of Bruce Campbell is a cult movie? Some say all it takes to be a cult movie is a legion of faithful fans, but in that case, wouldn’t “Star slowly began to gravitate around it Wfbfn iim charm until now, when it has mad approximately $l4O million on it concerts BOTTLE ROCKET Chapel Hill's Roman Candle plays to packed Cat's Cradle, delivering a solid evening of rock enjoyment. PAGE 12 J Wars” qualify? Others will claim it’s the cheese factor that “so bad it’s good” quality that makes for fun viewing and even better drinking games. And while that sense of playful condescending can’t hurt, c’mon, does anyone still care about 1997’s critically panned “Anaconda”? Exactly. Stacey Gamble, video buyer for Vis Art Video in Carrboro, has her own definition for cult movies. “I think it’s something that doesn’t really have a large box office appeal when it was first released, but has found a large fol lowing with moviegoers. Things like ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch,’ or ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ that people just gravitate toward, because it’s unlike typi cal Hollywood standard fare that you’re used to seeing,” Gamble says. So it need not necessarily be the campy horror schlock or inept sci fi romps that are the staple of cult film lists. It should just be some thing you won’t find Billy Bush hawking on “Access Hollywood.” Of course, Gamble says, being a box-office reject certainly adds to the appeal as well. The quintessential cult classic, “The Rodcy Horror Picture Show,” was a glorious bomb upon release, with critics not quite knowing what genre to pigeonhole it in. Audiences slowly began to gravitate around its charm until now, when it has made approximately $l4O million on its music CANT STOP THE POP Electro-pop trio Stefy takes the best of the 'Bos, adds pop sensibilities of the '9os and today. PAGE 11 initial $1.2 million estimated bud get, despite never playing in more than 200 theaters at a time. Yes, audiences who see it once a month at the local midnight cine ma have seen it more than a dozen times. Yes, they know every line by heart. Yes, usually they even can anticipate what their fellow audi ence members are going to say or do during the showing. That’s not the point. As with most true cult movies, the movie itself is almost immate rial. It’s the collective atmosphere among fellow fans that makes the late bedtime worthwhile. “I think the routine is part of the appeal for some people,” says Amanda Phillips, a 21-year-old N.C. native who regularly plays Magenta in her local “Rocky Horror” screening. “The people who have been doing this for years, the ones who know all the callback lines by heart, they like being a part of something that has endured for so long.” The $2.4 million (initial gross of “The Evil Dead”) question, how ever, lies in the inherent paradox of cult movies: At what point does a movie cease to be a cult favorite and become a widespread hit? “Snakes on a Plane” might not have raked in the heavy dough, but it certainly garnered enough maga zine covers to drape one of Samuel L. Jackson’s walls. And there’s hardly a film lover alive who hasn’t at least heard of‘Rocky Horror.” So if a film eventually finds mainstream prominence, must it be forced to drop its cult moni ker? “If it were a huge, phenomenal, worldwide, universal success, there would be no value in being a mem ber of a cult,” says Bruce Stone, co owner of Chapel Hill’s Varsity and Chelsea theatres. “The more obscure it was, the bet ter it becomes the object of a cult” SEE CULT MOVIES. PAGE 9 movies BEERBOMB "Beerfest* leaves audiences with heady, overly base movie that might just be worthy of walking out on. PAGE 12 thursday, august 31,2006 Q&A SKA: HIGH AND MIGHTY Diversions interviews the High and Mighties —a band that used to play Sublime, now plays bouncy ska tunes. PAGE 11
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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