Music Review: Penny & Sparrow, Let A Lover Drown You

By Melissa Bratcher

Penny & Sparrow’s Let A Lover Drown You is the kind of album that feels like you shouldn’t be hearing it. It’s remarkably intimate and naked. It’s emotionally raw, but produced so beautifully that raw isn’t quite the right word. Bare. Honest. Personal. It made me feel like a voyeur listening to it, in the way that sometimes Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam’s songs do. These are quietly organic moments, snapshots of lives, that happen to be gorgeous songs.

Continue reading ‘Music Review: Penny & Sparrow, Let A Lover Drown You’

Today In Pop Culture: Hanging On The Telephone

By Jeffery X Martin

The telephone is 140 years old today, and nobody alive today can remember a world without one. We’ve always been able to reach out and touch someone. Something so remarkable, being able to push a few buttons and talk to another person around the corner or around the world, is something we take for granted.

Continue reading ‘Today In Pop Culture: Hanging On The Telephone’

In Case You Missed It: February 28 – March 5, 2016–Twitter Trolls, TV & More

By Less Lee Moore

This week was part February, part March, and jam-packed with pop culture.

Twitter recently vowed to fight harassment online. Naturally racist and misogynist trolls were outraged, which is hilarious considering their constant whining about “social justice warriors” being outraged on Twitter. Here is an excellent report on the whys and wherefores of this new announcement and whether or not it stands a chance of being successful.

Speaking of controversy, did you know that a straight Christian man posed as gay for a year and then wrote a book about it? It’s pretty illuminating.

If you haven’t been paying attention, our own Tyler Hodg has been faithfully recapping every episode of the new Fuller House series on Netflix. So far, the show has been wildly uneven, but might finally get it right around episode 10. Too bad there are only three more to go…

Also in TV news, Lucha Underground picks itself up after a not-so-great episode from last week (though Sachin warns that we shouldn’t mention Sexy Star vs. Kobra Moon ever again), Outsiders still refuses to develop some of its characters for some reason, and The Walking Dead introduces a new insufferable character named Gregory. Oh, and (spoiler alert) Rick kills someone. Again. (Can’t take that guy anywhere.)

If you’re looking for some old movies you might have missed, Jeffery’s here to help. Check out the new Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1 collection from Arrow or The Bees from Vinegar Syndrome, which includes not only bees but also John Saxon.

Everyone’s been talking about Deadpool lately, but why? As Laury reports, it might just be the comic book movie that will change the game. It got her to become a Ryan Reynolds fan, after all. Wrestling aficionados will be interested in new documentary The Sheik, which Jeffery notes that at times feels more scripted than your average wrestling match.

New music this week gets reviewed by Melissa. It includes the self-referentially titled but ultimately disappointing Music To Listen To Music To from La Sera and the much more enjoyable Poison & Medicine from Marc Stone, who hails from New York but has a shockingly good grasp on New Orleans and the blues.

It’s 2016 and that might mean a new Lana Del Rey album is in the near future. But what if you’re still not sick of listening to Honeymoon yet? Matt Craven explains why it might be her secret masterpiece.

Perhaps the only kind of music more divisive than LDR or rap is country. You might be a country music fan if you like even one of these 16 tunes.

What happened this week on Today In Pop Culture? The Bermuda Triangle, The National Anthem, King Kong, The Salem Witch Trials, and how Leap Year fits into the space-time continnum.

TV Review: Fuller House S1 E10, “A Giant Leap”

By Tyler Hodg

Fuller House comes out swinging in the tenth episode, which is appropriately titled “A Giant Leap”. Guest starring San Fransisco Giants hitter and right fielder Hunter Pence as Stephanie’s boyfriend, the entire gang head to one of his games, and watch the middle Tanner offspring sing during the seventh inning stretch.

Continue reading ‘TV Review: Fuller House S1 E10, “A Giant Leap”’

TV Review: Lucha Underground S3 E06, “The Gift Of The Gods”

By Sachin Hingoo

A very subtle theme in this season of Lucha Underground has been Catrina’s meddling with powers she doesn’t fully understand since wresting control of the Temple from Dario Cueto. Since assuming power, she’s done things like reneging on the stipulations of the Gift Of The Gods title to make Cuerno wrestle Fenix in a Ladder Match instead of giving him his title shot or trying to manipulate Pentagón Jr. (not a good idea at the best of times). She may be a magical teleporting queen of death, but you have to think that these things have consequences.

Continue reading ‘TV Review: Lucha Underground S3 E06, “The Gift Of The Gods”’

Blu-Ray Review: Nikkatsu Diamond Guys, Vol. 1

By Jeffery X Martin

The recent Arrow Video compilation, Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1, highlights the kind of films we don’t often think of when it comes to Japanese cinema. These aren’t cheesy monster movies with guys in rubber suits, nor are they fantastic period dramas about dynastic politics and great wars. These three movies are star vehicles, melodramatic potboilers with handsome leading men and damsels in distress.

Continue reading ‘Blu-Ray Review: Nikkatsu Diamond Guys, Vol. 1’

Music Review: Marc Stone, Poison & Medicine

By Melissa Bratcher

Though he was born in New York, Marc Stone’s adopted home of New Orleans is an undeniable presence in his album, Poison & Medicine. It’s there in the swampy groove of the opener, “I Tried.” It’s there in the killer horns of “When You’re Bad.” It’s there in Stone’s wondrous slide guitar work. It certainly doesn’t hurt that for the past two decades, Marc Stone has been backing a who’s who of seminal NOLA artists like Ernie K-Doe, Marcia Ball, Rockin’ Dopsie, and Terrance Simien, as well as hosting WWOZ’s “Soul Serenade” (incidentally, you can listen to WWOZ streaming on the Internet, and you should. All the time. And send them money at pledge drive time).

Continue reading ‘Music Review: Marc Stone, Poison & Medicine’

DVD Review: The Sheik

By Jeffery X Martin

Normally, when you hear about someone who started with nothing, made it big, then lost it all to drugs and general bad behavior, it’s some Hollywood starlet or Tom Sizemore. This is not the case with The Sheik, a documentary about one of the most famous professional wrestlers of all time, The Iron Sheik.

Continue reading ‘DVD Review: The Sheik’

Today In Pop Culture: The Bermuda Triangle Is Not A Waxing Style

By Jeffery X Martin

The USS Cyclops was a Navy ship during the First World War. She set sail from Rio de Janeiro in February of 1918, carrying a load of manganese ore, crucial for the manufacture of munitions. The ship and her crew set sail for Baltimore on March 4.

They never reached their destination.

What happened to the USS Cyclops?

The Bermuda Triangle, that’s what.

Continue reading ‘Today In Pop Culture: The Bermuda Triangle Is Not A Waxing Style’

TV Review: Fuller House S01 E09, “War of the Roses”

By Tyler Hodg

There is a Fuller House God!

Nine episodes into the first season, D.J. finally shows a heavy heart in regards to her husband, who died tragically on duty as a firefighter. Up until this point, she showed little to no affection towards the love of her life, and father of her three children.

Continue reading ‘TV Review: Fuller House S01 E09, “War of the Roses”’