// Category Archive for: Issues

Perrier’s Bounty

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.
(more…)

Unclear On The Concept: A Brief History Of The Concept Album

By Christian Lipski

I’m sure it’s not just me, but whenever I start to write a non-fiction article about X, I always want to start with “Webster’s Dictionary defines X as. . . ” I’m sure it’s the lazy high school student in me, but in this case, it’s rather pointless to try to define the term “concept album,” because the definitions are so broad. My first response would be “um, an album made up of songs that contain a common theme,” and that’s an acceptable definition. What’s a “theme”? An album of songs that all start with the letter A would be a theme, and would therefore be a concept album. It’s a weak definition, but there are so many different ways to create such an album, it all turns out OK in the end.
(more…)

Five Things That Truly Terrify Me About Halloween

By Jesse Roth

5. There are strange phenomena known as “hell houses.”

Earlier this decade, I happened upon several articles and a rather interesting (and frightening) documentary dealing with a relatively recent Halloweentime event. Inspired by both the creative possibilities and horror potential of the haunted house, as well as their own ultraconservative evangelical beliefs, several churches across the southern United States were inviting the public to tour their “hell houses.” For a nominal fee (or sometimes for free), tour goers could navigate an otherwise typical but intricately decorated haunted house that substitutes ghouls and chainsaw assassins for graphic depictions of both biblical and modern “sin” (adultery, abortion, etc.). At the end of this joyride, members of the sponsoring church would invite members to absolve their various sins by committing their lives to Jeebus, and maybe some gratis candy and cider.

(more…)

My Problem With Halloween

It’s nearly Halloween, the night when ghosts and ghouls prowl the darkness, when witches and vampire bats scour the sky for victims to spook, and when I reach for a good book to read.
(more…)

Way Past Almost Golden: Courtney Love In The 2000s

By Emily Carney

It’s late 2009, and the endless enigma of the singer and musician we know as Courtney Love has still not spawned a new album or a record deal. The general populace has now come to view Courtney Love as the rock version of Anna Nicole Smith. She has been regularly photographed by paparazzi looking like an anorexic, drugged out mess. In one recent video from TMZ she ranted on for a few minutes about things that made no sense, and syringes were seen in her handbag (I seriously doubt she has any form of diabetes).
(more…)

Moon: A Glimpse at the Dark Side

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.
(more…)

Cillian’s Bounty: Toronto International Film Festival

By Less Lee Moore

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.
(more…)

District 9

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.
(more…)

A Taste Of Terror: Graphic Novels And Horror Comics

By Laura Thomas

October has long been associated with horror movies, Halloween outings, scary music and more, but what about graphic novels? Horror comics are a popular genre of graphic novels that have been popular since the 1940s. They have managed to survive to this day, despite the Senate subcommittee hearings of the 1950s that saw the end of many other genres of comics. In the last ten years or so, horror comics have exploded in the market with one-off graphic novels and ongoing comic book series. So strong is their hold that many movies are being produced based on these graphic novels and comics, and they are often greeted with great success at the box office.
(more…)

Highway To Hell: Supernatural

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.

(more…)