Birth nameThomas Alan Waits Birth information7 December 1949, Pomona, California, USA BioDescribed as one of the last beatniks of the contemporary music, Tom Waits - in fact - had two separate careers. From 1973 (LP "Closing Time") to 1983 ("One From The Heart" soundtrack), he recorded nine LPs for Asylum Records, writing songs mainly in the manner of Tin Pan Alley, mixing them with jazz and blues. Extraordinarily, he never produced a hit, but he earned a cult following all over the world. In 1983 he signed with Island Records, and released a series of albums that stunned the music world. Beginning with "Swordfishtrombones", he introduced a whole new orchestration, which included some of the instruments invented by Harry Partch. He found a new ground for his innovations, searching in sound fields that never before were searched. This second part of his career coincided with his marriage to Kathleen Brennan, a former writer for Francis Ford Coppola (Zoetrope (1999)). His LPs "Rain Dogs" (1985), "Big Time" (soundtrack) and "The Black Rider" are today what Kurt Weill's music was once. "The Black Rider" brings music written for the show directed by Bob Wilson and staged in Germany.

Sam Worthington had a helluva 2009. He was the bright spot in an otherwise underwhelming return to mankind's bleak, Skynet-run future in "Terminator Salvation." Now he's a name on everyone's lips for his starring role in James Cameron's "Avatar," which as of yesterday passed "Titanic" as the top-grossing worldwide release of all-time.
Worthington isn't about to let that cred fade away either; we'll next see him in March -- or April, if yesterday's 3-D news pans out -- as Perseus in "Clash of the Titans." And now there's talk that he may also be getting involved with the latest pop culture phenomenon: vampires. Dracula, to be precise.
Worthington is in talks to star as the original blood-sucker in "Dracula Year Zero," Variety reports. Don't confuse this with "Vlad," the Brad Pitt-produced look at the life of Vlad the Impaler, Bram Stoker's inspiration for Dracula. "Year Zero" is fantasy fiction, »
- Adam Rosenberg

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Two stories today about filmmakers hitting the stage. (Well, one of them is about a filmmaker returning to the stage, but close enough.) First, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are working with Robert Lopez on what is likely to be the musical about Mormons that the three guys have been working on for ages. Lopez was one of the composers and lyricists behind Avenue Q, the adult-themed 'update' of Sesame Street. That featured numbers about porn, racism and homosexuality, so it should be fun to see what the three come up with on the topic of Mormonism. Oh, people will probably be angry. An August-September run is planned for the New York Theater Workshop. [Variety] After the break, the man behind In Bruges teams up with the avant-musical duo of Tom Waits and Robert Wilson. Over the years musician and actor Tom Waits has teamed up with vanguard stage director Robert »
- Russ Fischer

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I’m not entirely sure how to start on this one. I think I’ll jot down my thoughts about The Book of Eli as a film first, and then get on to the actual message. Check out Angelique Moon’s response for a very different perspective. And watch out for minor spoilers in this review. It might be worth seeing the movie first, although I wouldn’t recommend it. So The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic action-adventure starring Denzel Washington as a cat-eating*, rat-feeding messianic figure who is in possession of the last copy of The Bible. He’s been wandering the wasteland that is America for 30 years since some event (possibly both a war and a climate change type thing) literally ripped a hole in the sky, which turned up the heat a little bit. Some people were blinded by it, but on the plus side it »
- Joe West

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