The Seven Jack Nicholsons & The Enchanted Mental Hospital

Pop culture artist Dave MacDowell is a happy new find for me. MacDowell paints in the "Lowbrow/Pop Surrealism movement... focusing on Contemporary Cultural Nightmares," which thrills me to no end.

My favourite out of the dozens and dozens of his painting is The Enchanted Mental Hospital, featuring Jack Nicholson as the Seven Dwarfs. You get Jack from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Jack from The Shining, Jack from Batman and I'm not sure about the rest. I figure Jack from Five Easy Pieces and maybe Jack from Chinatown.

Anyway, I love the details: the bottle of Red Rum, the Grady girls from The Shining as twin Tinkerbells and a rat with Mickey Mouse ears.

See more at his studio, on his Flickr page and on his blog.

Ok, one more for good measure: The Samuel Jackson 5

(Link via SuperPunch, who shows me the coolest things.)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Robocop on a unicorn
Angelina Jolie as Our Lady of Celebrity Worship

Pop Culture Lobbyists

It probably would have gone straight to video or at least died a quick death during the August cinema doldrums, but because of the rabid interest of fans on the web, Snakes on a Plane is well on its way to becoming a cult classic.

The film has been floating around Hollywood since 2000 and has since been the subject of fan art, trailer mashups, shirts and blogs, a phenomenon of its own. Interest in the movie has encouraged the studio to shoot more scenes, adding more deaths, nudity and, of course, snakes to the film. It’s called Snakes on a Plane, what else could you expect? Also on tap will be Samuel L. Jackson yelling: "I want these motherf**king snakes off the motherf**king plane!"

Jackson stars as an FBI agent who has to fight a planeload of snakes unleashed by an assassin bent on killing a witness in protective custody. "That's the only reason I took the job: I read the title. You either want to see that, or you don't," Jackson has said of the film. Collinder.com agrees, stating that maybe fans just want what they want, ironic or not.

Not all fans are quite so lucky. Depite much whiney resistance to new 007 Daniel Craig by fan groups such as the Craignotbond site, the blonde Bond has been signed on to a second round, once Casino Royale wraps.

Some have vowed not to see any Bond film starring Craig, despite there having been little footage to base their opinion of his work on. So here we have two films with intense online interest and it will be intriguing to see which group will impact the box office more.