Caught In The Act

Rockfest

At a mere 7 years young, Rock Fest has developed into the premier Classic Rock festival in North America. Featuring all-star lineups (this years alone consisted of Whitesnake, Twisted Sister making their first appearance in 13 years. Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, Loverboy, Sammy Hagar, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Heart and Boston just to name a few) and a world-class stage and sound system, fans have been flocking to the four day festival as a yearly destination. With soaring ticket prices a fact of the industry, Rock-fest gives fantastic value with early bird tickets selling for only $120, Vendors, camping, parking and refreshment prices are almost too good to be true for an event this large, and the organizational team does a phenomenal job keeping the show running on time and the fans happy. With a seemingly endless sea of people singing, smiling and waving their arms in the air, it’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of the experience. Bands cater to their career long fans, pulling out all of the audience’s favorites during their full-length sets. If anyone is looking for a fountain of youth, you can find it each July in Cadott Wisconsin.

At The Movies

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

State-of-the-art digital 3D technology puts something special into special effects action for the whole family. On their latest assignment, under-age agents Juni and Carmen Cortez journey inside the virtual reality world of a video game. Sylvester Stallone joins the cast as the power-hungry villain the ‘Toymaker,’ who wants to take over the youth of the world, and Juni and Carmen must battle their way through tougher and tougher levels of a three-dimensional game ingeniously designed to outwit and defeat them. The Spy Kids must win every high-flying, puzzle-solving challenge, from racing road warriors to surfing on boiling lava. Meanwhile, high-definition digital 3-D sequences and special viewing glasses give the audience a chance to interact with the larger than life excitement on screen.

On Video

Final Destination 2

You can't fool father death but you sure can try. This sequel to the 2000 sleeper horror hit picks up one year after the events of the first film in which a group of teens cheat death by leaving a doomed airliner but, one-by-one, are claimed by Death and follows nine people who, thanks to a premonition by teenager Kimberly (A.J. Cook), avoid a massive freeway pileup. But Death comes a'knockin and starts to get its due. Kimberly seeks out Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), one of the survivors of the first film, and the pair attempts to save the victims. As in the first go-round, Death strikes in unusual and outlandish ways, titillating the horror-lovers in the audience.

The Buzz...

Avril Lavigne is sending a subtle message to Metallica, Linkin Park and other groups who have pulled their music off Apple's iTunes recently — Let Go. The Canadian singer is supporting the new service by giving iTunes an exclusive five-song collection featuring live cuts of Sk8er Boi, Losing Grip, Nobody's Fool, Unwanted and a cover of Green Day's Basket Case. As always, each track is only 99 cents.

Remember the days when you had literally years to wait between a film's theatrical debut and it becoming available to buy? Giving you just enough time to recap events before Revolutions comes out in November, The Matrix: Reloaded DVD will be available October 14.

Ozzfest second stage headliners Cradle of Filth have been making quite an impact on the annual tour of evil. Fans have been turning up early to witness their amazing stage show (sometimes referred to as a macabre circ de soliel) and relentless pounding sound. Check out England’s latest exports newest release, Damnation and a Day, or go to cradleoffilth.com to see the next big thing.

Use of several Internet file-sharing services – KaZaa and Morpheus - declined the week after the music industry threatened to sue online music swappers. The 15 percent drop translated to about 1 million fewer users. With the negative publicity and threat of steep fines, some surfers appear to be backing off, but these applications aren't likely to go off-line in the near future.

doc ock revealed

Columbia Pictures released the first image and video clip from the highly anticipated Spider-Man sequel. The image reveals Spider-Man's newest nemesis Doc Ock, who is portrayed by Alfred Molina (Frida). The brief clip featured surgeons attempted to extract the metal tentacles which have become fused to Doc Ock's back. However, the arms are not so willing to be sawed off and begin to flail around the room, thrashing at the doctors, beating them senseless and, with massive metal claws, grabbing the helpless surgeons and flinging them aside. Spider-Man 2 is set for release worldwide on July 2, 2004.

The Hulk has left the building. The mega-budget comic book adaptation has fallen off the top 10 chart in just its fifth week of release, edging its total box office to just over $128 million.

Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose wandered into the Crazy Horse Too in Las Vegas Wednesday morning (July 16) and treated the nearly empty strip club to a preview of tracks from his band's long-delayed Chinese Democracy album. In addition to blasting new cuts over the club's PA system, Rose also visited the VIP room, ordered champagne and signed autographs, according to an employee.

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos has joined the cast of Marvel's The Punisher. Fans are well acquainted with the actress' work in the X-Men movies where she played Mystique. In The Punisher, Romijn-Stamos will play the role of Joan, the alluring neighbor of Frank Castle with a troubled past who comes into his life after his family is killed.

X-Files star David Duchovny has ditched his search for little green men in favor of joining the gals of Sex and the City. Duchovny is set to appear in four episodes of the long-running hit HBO series starting in August, where he'll play a potential suitor for Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw.

The Freaky Friday soundtrack, due July 29, features several cover songs: Simple Plan's remake of The Turtles' hit Happy Together, Bowling For Soup's rendition of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time, Lillix's cover of The Romantics' What I Like About You and the late Joey Ramone's version of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. Other acts on the album include The Donnas, American Hi-Fi, Andrew W.K. and Diffuser.

The first single from Nickelback’s next LP titled Someday goes to radio early in August. The anthemic rocker features equal parts guitar muscle and commercial sheen.

The screenplay for a proposed Iron Man movie is expected to be completed by September. Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, executive producers of the WB’s Smallville, took on the challenge of finding a way to update the story beyond simply that of a man in an iron suit.

HBO racked up a record 109 Emmy nominations, including Best Drama nods for Six Feet Under and The Sopranos and Best Comedy nods for Sex and the City and Curb Your Enthusiasm. By comparison, NBC placed second on the totem pole, with 77 nominations; CBS came in third, with 59; Fox followed, with 37; and ABC took fifth place, with 33.

Road Runner Records refused to let Santana release the Chad Kroeger-fronted cheese-pop cut Why Don't You & I as a single, spurring the guitar hero to hire The Calling's Alex Band to re-record the vocals.

With Pan Anderson and Tommy Lee spending more time together, in wake of dumping their fiancées, the busty blonde’s family is warning her against hooking up again with the ex-Crüe member. Apparently Anderson isn’t listening - "I love Tommy and always will. He swears he's a changed man. He got rid of his fiancée so we can give marriage a second try."

limpbizkit frontman Fred Durst has been performing the Who's Behind Blue Eyes at the first few shows of the Summer Sanitarium tour - a poignant moment for a misunderstood malcontent singing a song about being a misunderstood malcontent. Plus he has blue eyes. The beloved Who classic is slated to appear on bizkit's next album, their first in almost three years.

Superstar Jennifer Lopez reportedly ordered her picture on the poster for new movie Gigli to be digitally altered to downsize her famously-full bottom.

Is this the one where Joey gets his really big break? Maybe so. Sources say talks are accelerating among NBC, Warner Bros. TV and Matt LeBlanc to cut a deal for a Friends spinoff sitcom revolving around LeBlanc's Joey Tribbiani character.

DreamWorks is so "extremely disappointed" by the poor box-office performance of Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas that the film will be the studio's last hand-drawn animation feature. Sinbad, which reportedly cost $70 million to produce, has earned only $23.3 million since its opening on July 2.

Instead of releasing Quentin Tarantino's latest film Kill Bill, starring Uma Thurman, in its current three-hour-plus length or asking the director to cut it, Miramax is now planning to release it in two parts. The first part is due to be released on Oct. 10.

A strange practice indeed to change the ending of a film after it has been released and shown in the cinemas for seven months, but, that’s exactly what Fox has done with horror flick 28 Days Later. Director Danny Boyle rejected the original ending because it was too bleak, but now it is set to appear after the end credits of the existing US theatrical run.

Actress Kelly Hu’s character Lady Deathstrike may return for X3. "My contract was for two films, but we'll have to wait and see what happens when people actually sit down to write the next one."

With music stores experiencing an unprecedented plunge in CD sales, managers are devoting more and more space to DVDs. "In general, DVD is keeping us alive," said Tower Records founder Russ Solomon.

Fox is working on a script for Ice Age 2 and expect to get into the studios sometime around late fall, with Dennis Leary, John Leguizamo and Ray Romano reprising their roles.

The Rock's new movie, also starring Sean William Scott, will be called The Rundown and will be released on September 26.

Pop star Jessica Simpson fears her new MTV reality show The Newlyweds will turn her into a national laughing stock in America because fans will be able to see her for who she really is.

Pop vixen Christina Aguilera is set to join acting stalwarts Robin Givens, Farrah Fawcett and Melissa Gilbert in the small screen adaptation of Jackie Collins' raunchy novel Hollywood Wives: The New Generation.