// Category Archive for: Reviews

Music Review: Duncan Browne, Planet Earth: The Transatlantic/Logo Years 1976-1979

By Hanna

This year would have marked Duncan Browne’s 70th birthday, had he not died in 1993. It also marks the 40th anniversary of the Metro album. Extensive re-releases of Duncan Browne’s work are rare, and anyone looking for his music will be happy with this reissue containing all his late 1970s work for Logo/Transatlantic: his two solo albums The Wild Places and Streets of Fire but also the entire Metro album.
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Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes Turns 40

By Tim Murr

This July marks the 40th anniversary of Wes Craven’s landmark horror classic The Hills Have Eyes. It’s a story about an east coast American family taking a trip through the desert when they are besieged by a family of cannibals. The cannibals are loosely based on the real life Sawney Bean clan from the UK, known for attacking and eating travelers. Eventually, the Bean family was arrested and brutally put to death.
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Comics Review: Saga

By E.A. Henson

With these review pieces I normally try and tackle something new and worthy of your attention. For this piece in particular I’ll be taking a look at something that’s not terribly new but still is something of note, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.
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Music Review: Modern Mal, The Misanthrope Family Album

By Melissa Bratcher

Modern Mal is the meeting of a pair of Northern Michigan songwriters, Rachel Brooks and Brooks Robbins. It’s a little psychedelic, a little surfy, a bit garagey, sometimes folky, and it can all be covered by the umbrella of Americana, but perhaps a more Gothic strain.
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Farewell and Thank You to the Makers of “Bates Motel” (Expect Spoilers)

By Tim Murr

This week marked the series finale of A&E’s Bates Motel, a show that many people, myself included, was suspicious of as soon as the series was announced. However, I was won over within the first couple of episodes. I enjoyed the numerous subplots that ran through the five seasons, none of which related back to the original film or book, namely the marijuana and sex slave trades. I also liked the change of setting to Oregon (remember, Hitchcock changed the setting from the novel as well), and nearly all the characters invented for the show and the changes made to the original characters. Yes, at times it was hard to reconcile the show with the film and novel, but when I was able to let go and just enjoy the show as its own thing, that’s when watching Bates Motel became one of the most engrossing and rewarding shows on TV, something it had no reason to be.
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Comic Review: Jeff Lemire’s Royal City

By E.A. Henson

Reading comics is just like consuming any other kind of media for me. You consume what you’re presented with on a weekly basis and there’s a certain baseline enjoyment you derive from it. Spider-Man duking it out with Doc Ock again? Cool. Batman solving a crime while being dark and brooding about it? Right on.

For comic book fans that’s pretty much it. I’m not saying that it’s boring or it’s really even that bad. I’m sure I’ve written before that comics are (for me and I’m sure others) escapism. That’s great, but it can also get stale pretty quickly.

When something truly good comes along it’s easy to notice but you also have to be paying attention. I know how easy it is to get your weekly pull from your LCS (Local Comic Shop), plow through your books, and finish them in time for Arrow to start on Wednesday night. I do it all the time and it’s super easy (is that a super hero pun? I can’t tell anymore).
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Music Review: Honeybeat: Groovy 60s Girl-Pop

By Melissa Bratcher

There is no better mood raiser than a girl-group compilation. This is a scientific fact (that perhaps I have just made up). Finding long-lost girl groups, hearing those sweet harmonies, losing yourself in that “falling in love feeling”: it’s the best kind of bliss. A new compilation from ChaChaCharming and Real Gone Music, Honeybeat: Groovy 60s Girl-Pop, is an instant happy maker, with groups that are unfamiliar, groups that really should have made it, and some names that are a delightful surprise.
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The Best Cult Movie You’ve Never Heard Of: “Thou Shalt Not Kill… Except”

By Jeffery X Martin

There are plenty of people who love bad movies, the ones where the budget is low and aspirations are high. The kind of films where the creators do whatever they can to tell their story. These are the movies that inspire rabid cult followings, titles like Troll II or Miami Connection.

With that in mind, it’s time to talk about Thou Shalt Not Kill… Except.
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Movie Review: Rites Of Vengeance

By Tim Murr

As a far-left liberal I have long since opposed the death penalty. I find it barbaric and rigged by class war. When it comes to child molesters and abusers, though, the only justice I find suitable is to publicly hang them and leave their bodies to be picked over by birds. Fuck you if you think I’m being hypocritical in my views. And fuck you if you disagree with me. These crimes against children are inexcusable, indefensible, and unforgivable. And it keeps happening!
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Music Review: Cait Brennan, Third

By Melissa Bratcher

Cait Brennan’s follow up to her critically acclaimed debut, Debutante, is a stunner. Where Debutante felt like the incredibly talented bastard daughter of Harry Nilsson and ELO, who fell asleep while listening to AM radio in the 1970s and made an album about it, Third lives and breathes where it was born: Ardent Studios in Memphis. Third is muscular and fierce, but it can break your heart with a word.
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