Music Review: Ronnie Fauss, Built To Break
Published on November 7th, 2014 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |
Ronnie Fauss’s Built To Break is the kind of album that musicians strive throughout their whole careers to make. Lyrically honest, with distinctive vocals and excellent musicianship, it’s the kind of lovely surprise that makes me love writing about music. It’s all the better to know that Ronnie Fauss isn’t the kind of musician who yearned to make records his whole life; in fact, he only began writing seriously after his first child was born, and even then it took years for him to share his songs, taking up singing once he realized he would need to to get his songs heard.
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Blu-Ray Review: Dolls
Published on November 7th, 2014 in: Blu-Ray, Current Faves, DVD/Blu-Ray Reviews, Horror, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reissues, Retrovirus, Reviews |
Stuart Gordon was one of the first directors I fell in love with. It started when I saw Robot Jox and then continued from there. Gordon’s films have had a huge impact on the horror industry and he still rocks people to this day. He hit it big with Re-Animator and From Beyond at the start of his career and pretty much everything that followed is considered a classic and loved by almost every horror fan. With Re-Animator and From Beyond we have films that blend sci-fi and horror, but both tell ambitious stories. I’ve always thought that Stuart Gordon was diverse because of his multiple styles, as seen in films like Space Truckers, Fortress, and of course, Dolls.
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DVD Review: Hot & Saucy Pizza Girls
Published on November 7th, 2014 in: Comedy, Current Faves, DVD, DVD/Blu-Ray Reviews, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reissues, Retrovirus, Reviews, Teh Sex |
Hot & Saucy Pizza Girls has taught me two things: Bob Chinn is a great porno director and Desireé Cousteau exists and she is gorgeous.
Vinegar Syndrome knocks it out of the park with their vintage hardcore pornography line because they are releasing some truly interesting films. Yes, it is porn (like I always say), but the stories behind them are tremendously captivating.
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Blu-Ray Review: Night Train Murders
Published on November 7th, 2014 in: Blu-Ray, Current Faves, DVD/Blu-Ray Reviews, Horror, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reissues, Retrovirus, Reviews |
Aldo Lado has made some intense films in his day, including Short Night Of Glass Dolls, Who Saw Her Die?, The Humanoid, and Night Train Murders. Lado’s films look incredible: he has a great eye for using just the right amount of light in his shots, always giving a heavy, giallo, neo-noir look to his films.
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Movie Review: Nightcrawler
Published on October 31st, 2014 in: Current Faves, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews |
Now film fans have another name to add to the list of cinematic creepers: Nightcrawler‘s Lou Bloom. He’s got Travis Bickle’s lack of self-awareness and Barry Champlain’s self-aggrandizing thirst for success, and he oozes ad copy-inspired monologues like Patrick Bateman. But who is Lou Bloom?
Music Review: Suzi Quatro, The Girl From Detroit City Box Set
Published on October 31st, 2014 in: Current Faves, Feminism, Music, Music Reviews, Reissues, Retrovirus, Reviews |By Hanna
With Lynsey de Paul having passed away and Noosha Fox now running a restaurant, we only have Suzi Quatro to keep the flame of female Anglo glamrock alive, and I can think of no one who deserves to be its queen more than her. For all the acknowledgement that mainstream music criticism has given her, acknowledgement which is so often denied to female artists, she barely seems to care that she has it. In Performing Glam Rock, Philip Auslander’s analysis of her subversion of the authenticity and masculinity of rock in both her gender performance and musical performance seemed almost too good to be true to me the first time I read it, and difficult to parse based on the German TV performances I knew of her. Only now, after hearing The Girl From Detroit City, do I realize that she’s really even beyond what he describes.
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TAD Film Fest Review: Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
Published on October 25th, 2014 in: Current Faves, Film Festivals, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews |By Siân Melton
There’s no better signifier of a great movie than being more than willing to see it twice. That was the case with my love affair with Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. Sigh. Seriously, I have so much love for this movie. I saw it at Sundance and was so blown away by well, everything: the story, the cinematography, the music (the music!!), and of course Kumiko herself, played by the ravishing Rinko Kikuchi. There’s also a bunny, but I’ll get into that later.
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Music Review: Iceage, Plowing Into The Field Of Love
Published on October 24th, 2014 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |I don’t care whose house is on fire
As long as I can warm myself at the blaze.
—Iceage, “On My Fingers”
Anyone who is surprised by the evolution of Iceage on their new album Plowing Into The Field Of Love hasn’t been paying attention. The seeds of the band’s sound were sowed early on, in songs like “New Brigade” and “You’re Blessed,” a seemingly haphazard collision of styles and sounds hinting that something far greater was in their future. That something has arrived and it’s one of the best things you’ll hear this year, if not for a long while, or at least until Iceage makes another album.
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Music Review: Electric Six, Human Zoo
Published on October 24th, 2014 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |
The first Electric Six album I heard was I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master. As if that title wasn’t strange and unwieldy enough, I literally could not process what I was hearing. What the fuck was I listening to exactly?
After seven years and several albums, I’ve figured out more about Electric Six. But it doesn’t mean that every new album from the band doesn’t make me ask that same question again. Human Zoo, their tenth (!!), is perhaps weirder than most E6 albums, but is also possibly their most cohesive since Heartbeats and Brainwaves, which was itself a bit of an anomaly in the canon.
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Music Review: Bear In Heaven, Time Is Over One Day Old
Published on October 24th, 2014 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Reviews |By Tyler Hodg
This past August, Brooklyn’s Bear in Heaven released their fourth album, Time Is Over One Day Old. Their signature electro-pop sound is prevalent, but it’s clear a natural growth has occurred since their last record. Although Bear in Heaven’s sound might be “in” right now, their creative songwriting has placed them in a genre of their own.
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