Movie Review: Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

By Less Lee Moore

When I first heard Big Star, I wondered “Why weren’t these guys huge?” like all their other fans have been wondering for the last 40-plus years. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me answers the why, but their lack of mainstream success still boggles the mind. When Brian Wilson sang “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” he could have easily been singing about Big Star.

The story of Big Star is full of both good things—talent, camaraderie, ambition—and terrible ones—bad luck, personal demons, and death. This mixture of the bitter and the sweet is a good metaphor for Big Star’s music, which fuses the two in an unforgettable aural and emotional experience. This is what drew fans and critics to the band and what continues to characterize their legacy.

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Assemblog: June 28, 2013

Among The Living (image from Twitch)

New this week on Popshifter: Chelsea reviews new albums from Dessa and Bosnian Rainbows; Julie puts the music of Dream Affair into a musical context; Paul explains why Christy Moore’s “Delirium Tremens” has multiple meanings; Jeff lifts up his lighter for Styx’s Big Bang Theory; Cait reminisces on Big Star and their soundtrack for the movie Nothing Can Hurt Me; and I try to describe the somewhat indescribable film The Rambler.

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Assemblog: June 21, 2013

Elysium

New this week on Popshifter: Melissa remarks on the good and bad in The Cary Grant Film Collection on DVD; Chelsea loves El Valiente, the new album from Piñata Protest; Jeff finds little to love in Ozzy’s covers album, so cleverly titled Under Cover; Paul remembers some of the great roles from James Gandolfini; I have great things to say about iLL Manors, the debut film from Ben Drew; discuss the horror bona fides of Donna Davies’s documentary Nightmare Factory; and am impressed by The ABCs of Death, now on home video.

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Movie Review: Nightmare Factory

By Less Lee Moore

There’s a fantastic quote from the mother of special effects wizard Greg Nicotero in Nightmare Factory, a new documentary from filmmaker Donna Davies. When she was pregnant with her son, Mrs. Nicotero says, she read a lot of “blood-curdling” novels, all the ones she could find. “It was fun and exciting to be scared,” she adds. This is why horror junkies are horror junkies. The obsession with the craft of special effects is what’s explored in Nightmare Factory, but it’s clear that the fear factor is the spark that ignites the flame.

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Movie Review: iLL Manors

By Less Lee Moore

iLL Manors, the turbulent, invigorating debut film from Ben Drew (a.k.a. hip hop artist Plan B), begins with Drew rapping about the harsh realities of life in a council estate. It’s the kind of intro that will either suck you in or turn you off immediately, but it will definitely get your attention. You should stick with the film, though, because it reveals an incredible depth of insight into and sympathy for a segment of society that is so frequently misunderstood, ignored, or forgotten: kids who grew up in the social services/foster care system and whose lives have been shattered as a result.

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DVD Review: The ABCs of Death

By Less Lee Moore

D Is For Dogfight by Marcel Sarmiento

Even to a horror fan, the idea of a film omnibus devoted to death could seem a bit morbid. The ABCs of Death is a complex, thoughtful glimpse at not only death, but also the work of 26 filmmakers from 15 different countries. Each director was assigned a letter and given complete artistic freedom to pick a word from the alphabet and design his or her own cinematic interpretation of death.

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Assemblog: June 14, 2013

Xanadu, 1980

New this week on Popshifter: Emily reviews Dark, the latest from the British Electric Foundation; Chelsea appreciates the “exuberant energy” of CSS’s Planta; Melissa thinks Gap Band VII has “moments of brilliance” and enjoys the “invariably perfect” Volume 4 of Music from True Blood; Jeff introduces us to his next Waxing Nostalgic series on cover albums; and I review the new film Peaches Does Herself from the inimitable Peaches and the “remarkably original” John Dies At The End, now on DVD.

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DVD Review: John Dies At The End

By Less Lee Moore

John Dies At The End is a remarkably original movie, even though it’s based on a novel. Director Don Coscarelli, who also adapted the screenplay, has merged several different, potentially conflicting styles— horror, comedy, sci fi—into a movie that resides firmly in its own universe(s).

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Assemblog: June 7, 2013

Insidious Chapter 2

New this week on Popshifter: Melissa B. calls the expanded edition of Doris’s Did You Give The World Some Love Today, Baby “mind blowing and brilliant” and thinks Pokey LaFarge’s self-titled debut is “excruciatingly fine”; Cait wants to remind everyone of Dudley Moore’s musical talents in her review of From Beyond The Fringe; I chat with Jen and Sylvia Soska, directors of American Mary; Chelsea explores the “eclectic style” of Young & Wild; Lisa hopes that After Earth will “represent a step back toward redemption for M. Night Shyamalan”; and Jeff gives his first impressions of “Came Back Haunted,” the new Nine Inch Nails single.

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Fifteen Minutes With: Jen and Sylvia Soska, The Twisted Twins

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

The Soska sisters in a scene from American Mary

When Jen and Sylvia Soska’s feature debut, Dead Hooker in a Trunk, was released it caused quite a stir, among horror fans and those less enamored with the genre. Their latest film, American Mary, has a less controversial title, but still treads into controversial territory: rape, revenge, and body modification. It’s an emotionally affecting, nuanced, and powerful film that is way better than the most of the big-budget, CGI-laden, Hollywood productions that fill the multiplexes (read my review from last year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival)

Cineplex Theaters have scheduled American Mary for a special week-long run across Canada as part of their Sinister Cinema series, which is an amazing achievement for an indie horror film. I recently spoke with the Soska sisters and asked them about modern horror and the role of women in the genre, the method behind their madness, and what their future holds.

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