Hobo Stu

Hello everyone,

How cool is it that we scored an interview with Malcolm McDowell this week? The star of A Clockwork Orange, Caligula, Star Trek: Generations and, more recently, Halloween and Heroes sat down with the site and gave us one hell of an interview. I’ve never been more proud to be associated with this site than I am right now (even if every time I have disagreed with Joel this week, he has threatened to replace me with a Hobo Polar Bear).

So please check out the Malcolm McDowell interview if you haven’t already. I promise you, it’s an interesting and entertaining read.

Hopefully, even all of you angry Bob Dylan fans who have found your way to the site can put your pitchforks and torches down long enough to enjoy the interview.

Here’s what’s new on HoboTrashcan.com this week:

One on One with Malcolm McDowell
After 40 years in the business and more than 100 films under his belt, to say that Malcolm McDowell has had a long and successful career would be an understatement. The charismatic star of classic films like A Clockwork Orange and Caligula now finds himself doing voiceover work for shows like Metalocalypse and playing Daniel Linderman on the hit series Heroes.

We recently were caught up with McDowell to discuss his distinguished career, his golf game and how it feels to play the role of the villain.

Murphy’s Law – Hero worship
This week, Joel Murphy takes a break from trying out new TV shows and instead focuses his attention on a show that he is already a fan of, Heroes. While Murphy feels that season three is off to a much better start than the much-hated second season of the show, he still thinks there are three issues that need to be addressed before the show will truly shine.

Note to Self – Music City Miracle 2
During a playoff game between the Tennessee Titans and the Buffalo Bills on January 8, 2000, the Titans won the game in the final seconds by throwing a lateral to Kevin Dyson, who ran 75 yards for a touchdown. The play became known at the “Music City Miracle.” This season, both the Titans and Bills are off to 4-0 starts, which is a miracle in it’s own right.

Outside of the In-Crowd – In which I solve the economy
Fierce bipartisan battles have been fought this week over a bailout aimed at saving America’s struggling economy. But while the fat cats in Washington can’t seem to agree on a plan, Courtney Enlow has come up with a way to fix the economy in 10 easy steps.

Overrated – Bob Dylan
Ned Bitters certainly has a knack for rubbing people the wrong way. But this week, Bitters nearly incited a riot by claiming that “The Voice of a Generation,” Bob Dylan, was overrated. Bitters believes that people don’t actually like Dylan’s music, they just pretend to like it to seem sophisticated.

Also make sure to check out our DVD review of Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back, as well as an all-new From the Vault and Recyclables.

- Hobo Stu

Hobo Stu’s Weekly Recap is also available as an email newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter to ensure you never miss an update, send an email to newsletter-subscribe@hobotrashcan.com.

• Introduction
• Death wishes
• What happened to Lars’ car?
• Contractually obligated Batman discussion
• “The Perfect Woman” by Bo Burnham

Week 63 Spotlight: Dude, where’s my car?

When Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott’s car went missing, it was the beginning of a wacky and unpredictable journey involving aliens and crazy cult members. When Lars “Don’t Call Me” Periwinkle’s car mysteriously disappeared one morning, it wasn’t nearly as fun.

After filing a police report, Lars was forced to adjust to a world without a car. It was so hard for him to soldier on that he contemplating ending it all and having his remains sent out to sea in a Viking funeral. Luckily, he found a reason to live – Hobo Radio’s weekly contractually obligated Batman discussion.

Did Lars get his car back? What are Joel’s last wishes once he is dead and gone? Is there any way to save the new CW pilot starring a Batman-less Robin? The answers to these questions and more are in this week’s podcast.

Hobo Radio is the official podcast of HoboTrashcan, brought to you by The Podcast Network.

Similar Posts:

• Hobo Radio 68 – The triumphant return of Lars Periwinkle
• Hobo Radio 65 – Ranting and raving
• Hobo Radio 81 – Radio killed the radio star
• Hobo Radio 55 – Making the world a better place
• Hobo Radio 60 – Armageddon office pool

Hobo Radio 63 - Dude, where's my car? [ 38:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back Release Date: October 7, 2008 Own it on DVD Director: Shawn Papazian Writer: John Shiban Stars: Richard Tillman, Joey Mendicino, Julie Mond, Brionne Davis MPAA Rating: Unrated HoboTrashcan’s Rating:

Ghosts, torture, freaky twins, a freakier midget, a bag of eyeballs and an exploding Porta-John; sounds like the makings of a great horror flick.

These are just a handful of the things that show-up in Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back, the second installment of this horror series produced and written by John Shiban, executive producer and one of the writers of the highly lauded CW program Supernatural. If only the rest of the writers for Supernatural would’ve helped Shiban, Rest Stop may not seem like an 89-minute montage of horror film clichés from the last 30 years.

The story centers on Tom (Richard Tillman), a 30-year-old Army private (or corporal, if you believe the character and not his uniform), who has come home from war to search for his missing brother, Jess (Joey Mendicino) and his girlfriend Nicole (Julie Mond), who are still missing since Rest Stop (2006).

With his blonde hottie, Marilyn (Jesse Ward) and his nerdy best friend Jared (Graham Norris) in tow, he heads west. Let the mayhem begin.

It doesn’t take long for the crew to conveniently stumble upon the exact spot near the edge of California where Jess and Nicole initially met-up with the films veritable buffet of weirdos.

The rest stop killer and the Winnebago family (a demented preacher, his whorish wife, twin sons and a mongoloid midget with a Polaroid camera) are still cruising around the “Old Highway” looking for their next victims. Veteran horror film actor Steven Railsback attempts to bring some credibility to the cast as the foreshadowing gas station owner, but he seems to do little more than a weak take on Brad Dourif ala Nightwatch (1997) throughout much of his scenes.

While I know most horror films are not strong on plot, I do expect them to make-up for it in character. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single individual to give a rat’s ass about in this movie. The three principles are as one-dimensional as soap opera characters, and the dialogue they have to spit-up isn’t even soap opera worthy. To make matters worse, when someone’s not spewing pointless one-liners like, “I’m gonna go Columbine,” we get to suffer through an intrusive and very often annoying heavy metal soundtrack from Bear McCreary.

Papazian appears to be trying to give the movie a feel similar to Rob Zombie’s infinitely superior film, The Devil’s Rejects (2005) with the sparing use of some 16MM shots which look interesting but out of place with the feel of the rest of the film. The film ends up lacking a single coherent vision, and the result is evident on the screen.

In the end, I blame Shiban. Beyond the stiff or forced acting, the grating music (not grating in that creepy-cool Psycho way; grating like my ears are going to start bleeding), or the somewhat aimless direction, it is the man behind the screenplay who is at fault here … Did I mention, damn-near everyone in the movie is actually a ghost or becomes one? Nice.

Shiban basically borrowed from or let himself be influenced by anything and everything that has ever been used as a shock device in horror films. It seems as though there are elements of everything from The Hills Have Eyes (1977) to the Hostel and Saw franchises. The only thing missing is originality.

Written by Jason Cauley. Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back is available on DVD October 7.