// Category Archive for: Reviews

Music Review: Masked Intruder, Love and Other Crimes

By Tyler Hodg

Who needs time machines when throwback bands like Masked Intruder exist? The band’s latest effort, an EP titled Love and Other Crimes, sounds like a direct callback to pop-punk’s heyday in the early 2000s, but perhaps a little too much. Although still a fun listen, a lack of originality removes much-needed substance from the album.

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Movie Review: Star Trek Beyond

By Brian Baker

Let me level with you, I’m not particularly keen on Star Trek.

That’s not to say I don’t like it, or dislike it. Science fiction is just not my milieu when it comes to films. All that diplomacy between antagonistic alien species and the Federation of Planets has never been an impetus to get me to the theater. I also don’t play favorites. That means I’m not into Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica, either.

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Movie Review: Lucha Mexico

By Sachin Hingoo

The lure of a colourful mask, high-flying and fast-paced energy, and over-the-top characters can’t be denied, even among non-fans of pro wrestling. Lucha libre, Mexico’s own brand of pro wrestling, is an intrinsic part of Mexican culture, and Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz’s documentary Lucha Mexico puts this phenomenon on full display, warts and all.

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Blu-Ray Review: Hired To Kill

By Less Lee Moore

How is Hired To Kill an actual thing that exists? Getting the Blu-ray from Arrow Video solely on the basis of the press release describing the film’s co-star Oliver Reed “chewing up the scenery behind an elaborate moustache,” I did not recall any of the plot details when I popped in the disc. So it was with much disbelief and amusement that I watched 90 minutes of something so outrageous that it felt like a parody but was shockingly, not intended as such. If Astron-6 ever gets around to doing for action films what they did for Giallos with The Editor, the result would be akin to Hired To Kill.  (more…)

Music Review: The Muffs, Blonder and Blonder (Reissue)

By Less Lee Moore

For the first half of the 1990s, if Redd Kross was involved in something, I was interested. Any band they toured with or recorded with or even name-checked was a band that I would check out. I was rarely disappointed. Enter The Muffs, who I associated with Redd Kross originally because they were both from Southern California and had both punk rock and bubblegum pop cred. And there was the Bill Bartell connection. Plus, Kim Shattuck and Melanie Vammen were ex-Pandoras members, a band I was fond of after hearing them on WTUL New Orleans in the mid-’80s.

Not long after the band’s eponymous debut, Melanie left and former Redd Kross drummer Roy McDonald replaced original drummer Criss Crass. So I was extremely interested in hearing Blonder and Blonder, The Muffs’ 1995 release from Warner Bros./Reprise Records.

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Music Review: JG Thirlwell, The Venture Bros. Original Score, Volume Two

By Ben van D

The truly terrific soundtrack should be harmonious with its narrative and transcend and elevate the work as a whole. After all, Psycho isn’t Psycho without its violent shower strings; Star Wars isn’t Star Wars without its “Imperial March;” and the panther isn’t pink without Mancini setting the palette. JG Thirlwell is equally inseparable from the DNA of the Venture Bros., and this collection is hard evidence as to why.

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Podcast: TV or GTFO Episode 6, “The Littlest Hobo”

On this episode of TV or GTFO, Sachin and Gary take a look at the most Canadian show ever, The Littlest Hobo!

Running from 1979 to 1985, but somehow not aging or changing or evolving in any meaningful way in that time period, this is the story of one dog (or is it multiple dogs?) and his journey to help rural Canadians out of any number of sticky situations over the course of 114 episodes.

Why does Hobo constantly find himself with a gun? Can he successfully co-pilot a helicopter and operate a parachute? Why is he consistently smarter than any human on the show? Is Michael Bay producing a gritty 2020 reboot called “H.O.B.O”? How did they find a bunch of dogs that are better actors than the Olsen Twins? Well grab your hat, travel light, and join us for this week’s episode – HOBO STYLE.

Subscribe to us on iTunes or your favorite podcast app, or take a listen right here!

Music Review: J.D. Malone and the Experts, Town and Country

By Tyler Hodg

The genre of country music is one of the worst offenders in producing soulless drivel. J.D. Malone and the Experts’ latest effort, Town and Country, is superior to the work of most mainstream artists in the same classification, but that’s not saying much. Where the album succeeds in exerting passion, it lacks in quality songs.

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Blu-Ray Review: Manhunter

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto residents! If you haven’t seen Manhunter in a while or if you’ve never seen it on the big screen, you’ll get your chance tonight at The Royal, where the Neon Dreams Cinema Club is putting on a screening of the film at 8:00 p.m. As always, come early for the pre-show and remember that The Royal is a fully licensed venue.

When most people think of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, they think of Anthony Hopkins. This is a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who fell in love with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and subsequently, Mads Mikkelsen as the titular killer. Yet even before that TV show birthed the devotees known as Fannibals, there were still those of us who always gave Hopkins’ portrayal of Lecter the side-eye. After all, he wasn’t the first to take a crack at the doctor cum psychopath (even though they only called him a psychopath because they didn’t know what else to call him).

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Hunting Witches with Jeffery X Martin

By Laury Scarbro

I have had the pleasure, nay, honor of being able to review the book Hunting Witches by our very own Jeffery X Martin. This “non-vel”, as he calls it, took many months of work, blood, sweat, and alcohol to construct, and it is more than worth the wait since the last installment of the happenings in Elders Keep. The Elders Keep anthology began as a series of short stories, released individually on Amazon, and can now be acquired in the form of Black Friday, which includes the stories that started it all: “Be Sweet,” “Mouth,” and “Candy.” “Mouth” personally had me cringing, which is not easily accomplished from words on a screen or paper. You can bet, I will be giving that book another read just to fit everything together again.

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