Stick to the day job ... Juliette Lewis and the Licks. Photograph: MJ Kim/Getty
This week, film stars in bands. What strange force is it that says to these people, "What you really need to further your career is to form a deeply average indie band, or inflict your penchant for tortuous 12-bar blues on your fans at any human cost"? Maybe it's raw ego; maybe some weird desire for anonymity, a misguided notion that dazzling star power can somehow be stifled behind a long fringe and a fuzzy, low-slung bass. Whatever: this loophole should be closed.
1) Bruce Willis bothered the charts in 1987 with his "take" on Under The Boardwalk. He gives it his karaoke-best, but the master smirker's weedy vocals only tickle the Temptations' five-gun-salute on the chorus. And, there's more, with the Pointer Sisters.
2) It was almost compulsory for a Generation X 90s newcomer to have a duff indie-rock act on the side. Johnny Depp had P, River Phoenix had Aleka's Attic and, here, are Keanu Reeves' Dogstar inciting a Milwaukee crowd to shout some rather unkind things.
3) Everyone knows about William Shatner turning his internationally renowned dramaturgical talents to the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. A few years on, he serenaded George Lucas, "from one star voyager to another", his interpretative powers ablaze once more.
4) Scarlett Johansson, a touch low in the mix, backing the Jesus and Mary Chain on Just Like Honey at Coachella. She's the new Tom Waits, you know...
5) To be fair to Juliette Lewis, she does seem to regard her band, the Licks, as a proper job in her own rather than some shabby adjunct to her "brand". Her get-up - Cherokee squaw meets Hoxton urchin - is better than her choons - assembly-line rooster-strutting rock'n'roll - though.
Thanks for your monster-related suggestions last week. Here are some of your recurring nightmares:
1) No surprises that HR Giger's Alien got repeated mentions - a true original, and about as close to beautiful as monsters get. Five minutes of high-grade tension culminates in the inevitable for poor Harry Dean Stanton.
2) "We have such sights to show you." I suppose he breaks my no-speaking rule, but Hellraiser's Pinhead is a pretty damn scary warning of the perils of acupuncture addiction.
3) The ancient Greeks knew how to do monsters. And so did Ray Harryhausen. The dream team works its magic in Jason and the Argonauts, as Talos awakes and so do some skeletons.
4) Always a handy cultural reference point when confronted with a particularly dishevelled friend or family member, Creature from the Black Lagoon is the archetypal crap movie monster. That's crap in a good way, of course.
5) Spielberg's superbly vicarious take on terror from the deep, Jaws is almost the definitive example. He was clearly taking cues from another source of primal dread, too - Mr Alfred Hitchcock. Check out the crazy reverse zoom on this.
