// Category Archive for: DVD

Best Of 2013: Singer/Songwriter Ducky

Photo © Meredith Dooma

Everything Dopest in 2013:

– DJ Rashad, Double Cup
– That show I went to in a warehouse in Detroit that Jay Daniel played
– My decision to buy the entirety of Daria and The State on DVD
– Arduinos
– DJ Koze’s new album, Amygdala
– Suzi fucking Analogue
– Masters of Sex, especially the boobs
– Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
– This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz
– WebGL
– Ben UFO, fabriclive.67
– DJ Deeon in general
– CodeAcademy/generally learning how to code
– Ableton Push
– Medium (the blogging platform)
– This GIF

– Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things Tumblr
– Lukid
– Los Simpsons
– South Park in German
– Five Leaves restaurant in Greenpoint

Ducky’s newest single, “Two Over Ten,” was released on December 10. The Natasha Kmeto Remix of the track is out today.

DVD Review: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

By Less Lee Moore

There’s no question that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a visually stunning movie. Though set in Texas during the 1970s, it was filmed in Shreveport, Louisiana. Cinematographer Bradford Young takes full advantage of the natural landscape and his exceptional ability to capture light in a shot is impressive. The performances from the entire cast—Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, and Keith Carradine—are outstanding. Writer and director David Lowery certainly has a way with creating a mood. Unfortunately, all of the characters are such slippery fish, that it’s sometimes hard to connect with any of them.

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Blu-Ray Review: Bounty Killer

By Brad Henderson

Exploitation is a term that isn’t used with newer films, although every so often we get a film that looks like it’s from today but has the throwback feel. Bounty Killer is one of those films. However, Bounty Killer never claims that to be a throwback and that’s what I really enjoyed about it. If you are mainly inspired by older films and want to really hit hard with the audience who loves that type of thing, do not call your film a throwback. It ruins everything.

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DVD Review: Passion

By Less Lee Moore

Oh, Brian De Palma. You broke my heart but I keep coming back. First, it was Mission To Mars, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen (and this from a diehard MST3K fan). Then it was the dreadful adaptation of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia. Still, I was excited about Passion. Noomi Rapace and Rachel Adams in an erotic thriller with lesbian undertones? Who could resist? Not me.

The critics weren’t kind at Passion‘s TIFF premiere in 2012. But Noomi Rapace! Rachel McAdams! Erotic thriller! Plus a score from the great Pino Donaggio. My desire to see the film did not wane.

Well, I’ve now seen Passion. And I have a lot of thoughts, and most of them good. It’s vintage De Palma, that is for certain: heightened emotion masking flatness of emotion, weird artificiality bleeding through lush production design, over-the-top music, exquisite framing, and outlandish narrative. I haven’t seen Alain Corneau’s 2011 inspiration Crime d’amour, so I can’t speak to it, but I now understand why so many hated Passion. It’s not a straightforward movie; it’s a straight-up giallo. Forget Hitchcock. It’s all Italian. There’s even a police investigation, a hallmark of the genre.

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DVD Review: I Am ZoZo

By Brad Henderson

The name ZoZo probably won’t ring a bell with normal folk, but if you know me, you should know I’m not normal. I’ve always been fascinated with stories about ZoZo and loved to read people’s testimonies of their encounters with this so-called demon. If you are clueless about who or what ZoZo is, you can find everything you need to know about him online. There is a small community that believes this is real and many have encountered this demon of sorts through the well-known Ouija board.

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DVD Review: Shiver

By Brad Henderson

When the name Danielle Harris appears in a movie, millions of fanboys cry out in joy. However, Shiver is a film that will just make you cry. Shiver isn’t terrible and has a decent plot, but the film suffers from a lack of cleverness.

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DVD Review: Blood

By Brad Henderson

Cop movies are always a difficult thing to pull off. Although there are comedies, action, and sometimes horror cop movies, the most common are cop dramas. To actually pull off a cop drama, a few things are needed in order to keep your audience alert and occupied with what is actually going on.

Blood has these qualities. A cop drama needs not only characters, but good characters. In a short amount of time, we need to establish them and give them history. We need to know that they work well together as well as if they are friends.

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DVD Review: Broken

By Less Lee Moore

Broken is an apt title for director Rufus Norris’s feature debut; viewers will be forgiven if they have a hard time choking back sobs by the end. It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Broken‘s superbly arranged 90 minutes evoke a concatenation of emotions. Certainly there is much chest-constricting dread to be found in the film, and many scenes heavy with emotional baggage, but these are often simultaneously buoyed with moments of exquisite gossamer beauty and unbridled humor, reminders that joy can be ephemeral and often intertwined with grief.

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DVD Review: Evidence

By Brad Henderson

Sometimes we stumble upon a film we think we are not going to like; maybe that is because of the director, an actor, writer, or even the theme or setting. You might end up loving the film anyway or even consider it a “guilty pleasure”. Recently the film Evidence was released from the director of The Fourth Kind, which I did not really care for, so I wasn’t really expecting to like it, let alone expecting it to keep my attention.

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DVD Review: The Colony

By Brad Henderson

Whenever I see a newer flick that has gone DTV with a then or now major star on the cover, I will admit I usually pass. I know that might be wrong but most of those flicks are the same: Big time actor dies within the first five minutes. Done. Rest of the flick blows.

The other day I saw a cover for The Colony and noticed Bill Paxton and Laurence Fishburne on the cover. It looked like a sequel to The Day After Tomorrow. I put it back down and decided to watch something else in my pile. I really couldn’t decide on anything and since I love Paxton and Fishburne, I went against my better judgment and put it in my player.

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