Assemblog: August 16, 2013

How I Live Now

New this week on Popshifter: Lisa calls The Conjuring one of the best movies of the year; Brad takes a look at Antiviral, My Amityville Horror, Swamp Thing, and The Incredible Melting Man, all out now on home video; Ricky wants to go to a strip club in Hell if they’re going to play Demon Queen’s Exorcise Tape; Jemiah is impressed with Into The White with Rupert Grint; Chelsea hopes The Hot Flashes does better on home video than it did in theaters and suggests Los Nuggetz for garage rock fans who are looking for something they haven’t yet heard; Melissa calls Intoxicated Man 1958 – 1962 a tantalizing glimpse into the early work of Serge Gainsbourg; and I am touched by the music documentary A Band Called Death and amused by the new video from Big Black Delta, “Money Rain Down.”

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New Video: Big Black Delta, “Money Rain Down”

By Less Lee Moore

The self-titled debut album from Big Black Delta, a.k.a. Jonathan Bates, is one of my favorites of 2013 thus far (review). The first single, “Side of the Road” had a cool video which I blogged about in February.

Now there’s another video from the band, this time for “Money Rain Down.” It’s one of the less bombastic tunes on the album, and that makes it even more interesting, as it shows just how much musical range Bates possesses. It’s incredibly danceable and wisely, the video includes lots of dancing. It’s whimsical and clever but not in a cutesy way. Check it out below.

Tour Dates:
August
15th The Fonda, Los Angeles, CA
17th Echo Park Rising, Los Angeles CA

September
7th Hopscotch Festival, Raleigh, NC
8th Boston Calling – City Hall Plaza, Boston MA
13th Lobster Fest at Port of LA, Los Angeles, CA
14th Summersalt Block Party, San Francisco, CA
21st The Courtyard @ The Getty, Los Angeles, CA
25th Bunk Bar, Portland, OR
26th Decibel Festival, Seattle WA
28th Festival Of Hope, Tulare CA
29th Adams Street Fair, San Diego, CA

Movie Review: A Band Called Death

By Less Lee Moore

In an article on Film School Rejects, Scott Beggs points out the similarities between A Band Called Death and other recent music documentaries.

He notes that the trajectory of this film is similar to that of Searching For Sugar Man and Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Watching A Band Called Death, I was reminded of both Bad Brains: A Band In DC and also Nothing Can Hurt Me, the film about Big Star. The trajectory—unknown band, their individual and collective obstacles to fame, and their posthumous rediscovery and appreciation—is one that’s repeated in all of these films.

This is not to say that any of these films are formulaic or that music documentaries are repetitive. As Beggs argues, it just means that our preconceived notions of music history might be skewed.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Incredible Melting Man

By Brad Henderson

The Incredible Melting Man is one of the most recent releases from Scream Factory and this viewing was actually a first for me. If I had watched it as a child, I’m guessing I would have had a different feeling about this . . . movie? The story is basic: An astronaut is exposed with radiation, and then he begins to melt and kill. He shows some emotion but then it ends. Boom.

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Music Review: Serge Gainsbourg, Intoxicated Man 1958 – 1962

By Melissa Bratcher

Serge Gainsbourg was a provocateur. That cannot be disputed. He wrote songs about subjects that raised the eyebrows of the world (Incest? Check. Sodomy? Check. Cigarettes? Heaven forefend, but check) and courted notoriety. Still, the man was a poet and a great wit.

Intoxicated Man 1958-1962 is a tantalizing glimpse into the origins of Serge Gainsbourg. A vast collection (66 tracks), it illuminates his early career as a chanteur, singing story-driven songs. Full disclosure: I know only the most rudimentary French. I could pick out the occasional word I understood (like window and love— he sings quite a bit about windows), so I missed some of the nuances of lyrics. It was a challenge.

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Music Review: Los Nuggetz: ’60s Garage and Psych From Latin America

By Chelsea Spear

If music is the universal language, then garage rock was a generational dialect of rebellion. Bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones inspired an infinite number of teenagers to take to their garages and annoy their parents with three chords and ten decibels. While American and British garage bands have been exhaustively exhumed and cataloged, their peers in Spain and South America have not received the same treatment . . . until now. Los Nuggetz, a four-disc compilation, showcases almost 100 bands that put out singles during garage rock’s peak period of 1964-1968.

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Blu-Ray Review: Swamp Thing

By Brad Henderson

Horror buffs, film fans, and even non-die hard moviegoers know about Swamp Thing. What started as a comic book, oozed into a movie, a sequel, and both animated and live-action television series.

The story of Swamp Thing is actually pretty cool; an incredibly intelligent man (Alec, played by Ray Wise) is working on a top-secret project involving a hybrid plant that can survive and even thrive in extreme situations and environments. A group of soldiers led by a crazy doctor obsessed with immortality tries to steal the formula that Alec is working on. Guess what happens? Yep, Alec manages to get covered in the formula, and Swamp Thing is born.

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DVD Review: The Hot Flashes

By Chelsea Spear

On one level, The Hot Flashes is not a remarkable film. This chicken soup-comforting feature will play as well as a basic cable favorite as it did during its truncated theatrical release. The broad sports comedy follows a beleaguered basketball team made up of middle-aged women (hence the title) who play a series of games against the current high school champions to raise money for a travelling mammogram truck. The script hits all the Save the Cat high points, all but one of the narrative guns from the first act goes off in the third, and the movie leaves its audience on a plausible high note.

Though the film has an agreeably mainstream approach, The Hot Flashes is made with care and has a winningly self-aware quality that elevates it from standard seat- and schedule-filling fare. Director Susan Seidelman made her name on edgy, feminist-minded features like Smithereens and Desperately Seeking Susan, and the goodwill she earned on those films has granted her a good audience base.

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Music Review: Demon Queen, Exorcise Tape

By Ricky Lima

Demon Queen‘s first album Exorcise Tape has been officially described by lead vocalist Zackey Force Funk as “really about satanic stripper shit.” I don’t think I’ve heard a more accurate description of an album in my life. Exorcise Tape is dark, sexy, and super catchy. Zackey Force Funk is totally right; this is the kind of music they’d play in a strip club in Hell, and if that’s the case, that’s a place I want to go to. Zackey Force Funk and TOBACCO have knocked it out of the park in their first collaboration.

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DVD Review: Into The White

By Jemiah Jefferson

I won’t lie—I was interested in seeing this film because it’s one of the post-Harry Potter performances by everyone’s favorite snub-nosed ginger, Rupert Grint, now quite grown up and no longer shackled to the limitations of being good-guy sidekick Ron Weasley (who, admittedly, is a vastly more tolerable character on screen than in the novels, thanks to the talents of Mr. Grint). I have yet to see the other “adult” roles Rupert Grint has done, but he more than holds his own in this admirable historical European indie.

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