By Noreen Sobczyk
You Weren’t There sheds light on the consistently underrepresented punk scene of Chicago. It wasn’t only in New York and Los Angeles that American freaks gathered together to listen to the latest records by punk bands in sweaty dive bars. This well-made and engaging film conveys the excitement many in Chicago felt about the new music bursting forth from the underground.
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By Noreen Sobczyk
Morphine’s music is like a steamy, illicit affair in a slightly dodgy hotel room. It’s dark and smoky and might take you someplace you oughtn’t go, but you are compelled to travel none the less.
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Interviewed by Less Lee Moore
Eric Weber is an incredibly interesting and inspirational person. He’s a cult movie junkie, horror film fanatic, Divine devotée, and luckily for us, he writes about these things for Popshifter.
He’s also a visual artist who includes sketching, painting, and photography in his repertoire.
When he’s not following one of his many artistic and creative pursuits, he reenacts scenes from some of his favorite films in Lego form and photographs them.
By Less Lee Moore
This piece originally appeared on the The CillianSite.com on September 14.
For our story of Cillian Murphy’s appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, go here.
Criss- and double-crosses, lyrical-yet-unpretentious dialogue, and the black comedy of desperation crown the new film by Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon in Perrier’s Bounty, starring Cillian Murphy, Jim Broadbent, Jodie Whittaker, and Brendan Gleeson. If you liked 2003’s sardonic ensemble piece Intermission, also scripted by Mark O’Rowe, you’ll adore Perrier’s Bounty, though it’s decidedly darker, more violent, and more compact.
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By Jemiah Jefferson
Moon is a great example of how to make an engaging, gripping science fiction film with not too much money, but a solid appreciation of cinematic and narrative possibility. It is a remarkable achievement from well-regarded journeyman actor Sam Rockwell and director Duncan Jones, who knocks it way out of the park on his first feature film.
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By David Speranza
When Star Wars came out in 1977, I was among its more ardent fans, seeing it upwards of ten times before it left theaters. But as the years passed and my tastes matured, it became apparent that the coming of Star Wars had essentially meant the end of thoughtful, adult science fiction in movies.
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This piece originally appeared on the The CillianSite.com on September 14.
For our review of Perrier’s Bounty, go here.
Toronto, Ontario is a big city. And as befits such a place, it has its share of big buildings, big festivals, and sometimes, big celebrities. They descend on the city every year for the Toronto International Film Festival, and for those two weeks, one cannot escape news coverage of which films are playing, what parties are being held, who was seen where (and with who), and what they said/did/were wearing.
For film buffs and celebrity spotters, it’s a dream come true. Truth be told, I’m one of the former not the latter. . . with one exception. Cillian Murphy has been my favorite actor for several years now, and for several of those years, one of his films has premiered at the TIFF.
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By Michelle Patterson
A car windshield splattered and smeared with the guts of bugs and men and swirls of dust and haze appears in front of the camera, doubling as a means to lessen the intense sun of South Africa. The bloody spray of horror married with the vroom-vroom of the action film—all in the midst of a bleak near-future within the science-fiction genre. It adds to the grime of this particular dystopia.
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By Jemiah Jefferson
Sam and Dean Winchester are insanely attractive twentysomething brothers who roam the back roads and byways of the United States, acting as de facto supernatural investigators and monster hunters. When they were still kids, demonic forces killed their mother, launching their dad John into a nomadic life of arcane study, occasionally interspersed with some good-old-fashioned buckshot-and-salt, silver-bullet battles for immediate survival. John Winchester trained his sons from childhood to be superlative badasses like him, and continue his quest to defeat the demon who stole away their normal lives, and any other demonic bad guys they run across.

By Julie Finley
Kid Congo Powers (a.k.a. Brian Tristan) has been around. . . and around! If you know the name, you know his pedigree! If you are reading this, you probably dig at least one of the following: The Cramps, The Gun Club, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Congo Norvell, Knoxville Girls, Kid & Khan, Fur Bible, Botanica, Mark Eitzel, The Divine Horsemen, The Angels of Light, Die Haut, etc. (or possibly all of them). He’s sort of a renegade musician—he shows up in a lot of things—but in the past few years, he’s finally doing his own thing, where he’s the focus.
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