Music Review: Various Artists, All About The Girls

By Melissa Bratcher

Croydon Municipal, as I have mentioned frequently, is an amazing boutique label. An offshoot of Cherry Red Records, Croydon Municipal is run by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley, who culls his gargantuan record collection to curate brilliantly themed, thoughtful compilations (like his Popcorn Girls collections, or the current Songs For Swinging Ghosts). On All About The Girls, the theme is lost girl group gems, and it is a delight through and through.

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Blu-Ray Review: Contamination

By Jeffery X Martin

When I stated on Facebook that I was watching the 1980 Italian horror-fi movie, Contamination, I got heat from a couple of people.

“Why?”
“How come you’re watching that?”

And I thought, I’ve built a career out of watching horrible films and writing about them. There’s no reason why this should be a surprise.

Then it struck me: maybe there are people out there who don’t intentionally seek out and watch films they know aren’t great. Wow. That floors me. It leaves me wondering how to recommend Contamination, which is a gigantic piece of shit that I adored.

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Psychic Powers In Cinema: Four Faves

By Less Lee Moore

This is what we psychics refer to as an “axe drop.”

Filmmaker Joe Begos brought his updated (and superior) version of 1982’s Xtro to the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness programme in 2013 with Almost Human. Now he’s back, along with Almost Human actor Graham Skipper and horror legend Larry Fessenden with The Mind’s Eye. You can read my review on Modern Horrors, but here’s a synopsis:

On a snowy back road in New England, police harass a drifter, only to be thrown through the air by an unseen force. Clearly, they’ve picked the wrong man to hassle. Taken into custody, the loner is identified as Zack, a man with a curse/blessing that makes him of particular interest to the seemingly sympathetic Dr. Slovak. Zack finds himself in Slovak’s institute alongside others with similar telekinetic abilities, but the doctor’s intentions are quickly found to be less helpful and more diabolical.

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Neon Dreams Will Bring Your Neo-Noir Fantasies To Life

By Less Lee Moore

Streets of Fire

If you live in the Toronto area and you love movies, you might already know about The Royal Theatre on College Street. But did you know that every month, programmer Brendan Ross takes over The Royal for one night devoted to the best of neo-noir cinema from the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond? Featuring such classics as Body Double, Risky Business, To Live and Die in L.A., and Streets Of Fire, Ross’s Neon Dreams Cinema Club is one of the city’s best kept cinematic secrets.

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Music Review: Various Artists, Songs For Swinging Ghosts

By Melissa Bratcher

Attention humans: be prepared for your record collection to become marginally spookier, but a whole lot weirder with the delightful new release from Croydon Municipal/Cherry Red Records (and just in time for Halloween), Songs For Swinging Ghosts.

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Music Review: Blitzen Trapper, All Across This Land

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s something enormously comforting about a new Blitzen Trapper album. They’ve got a certain sonic texture, that coupled with lead singer Eric Earley’s distinctive, weatherbeaten rasp and slice-of-America lyrics, make them easily recognizable and inimitable. While they have experimented with looser, sparse sounds, their latest, All Across This Land, has that classic Blitzen Trapper feel. It rocks, sometimes gently, and the songs are immersive and evocative, conjuring up dusty back roads that stretch for miles, blue collar desperation, and youthful yearning.

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Five Faves: Final Girls

By Less Lee Moore

The Final Girls (review) is a film about… what else? The hallowed halls of heroines in horror movies (how’s that for alliteration?) have many portraits hung on their walls. Here are a few fave Final Girls that you might not have yet considered, but who are still worthy women.

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Music Review: Patty Griffin, Servant of Love

By Tyler Hodg

Patty Griffin is a musical treasure. There is no modern poet that can come close to the brilliance that she puts out, and her music stands high above almost everything else. But all that is great has to fall at some point, right? In the case of Patty Griffin, that theory has yet to be proven. Her latest album, Servant of Love, is yet another entry in her fantastic catalogue.

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Movie Review: Men & Chicken

By Less Lee Moore

In Men & Chicken, Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) and Gabriel (David Dencik) are brothers whose father has just passed away. He’s left them a videocassette revealing that not only is he not their biological father, but the woman they knew as their mother wasn’t their biological mother. He also reveals that the name of their father is Evelio Thanatos.

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Music Review: Wand, 1000 Days

By Less Lee Moore

And the paintings are now dead
And they looked into your eyes
And the patterns that they set
They will live inside your mind.
—Wand, “Paintings Are Dead”

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