Somewhere around the halfway point of this rockumentary, I came to an odd realization. Here I am, a man who lived through the Eighties, watched the rise and fall of Hair Metal, and yet I have taken the band, Scorpions, completely for granted. After all, has there ever been a world where “Rock You Like a Hurricane” hasn’t existed?
Welcome to The Official Popshifter Podcast, Episode #02, “57 Maidens and No Wrestling at TIFF”
Featuring Managing Editor Less Lee Moore and Featured Contributor Jeffery X Martin! Enjoy and thanks for listening.
The 1970s were a time of sexual revolution. Women’s liberation, bra-burning, birth control pills, swingers, orgies, and who knows what else? It’s not like people didn’t know about sex before, but in the ’70s, sex exploded (which sounds gross). Suburban couples were lining up around the block to see Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door, two pornographic films that found both mainstream success and legal troubles, as both films were placed on trial for obscenity.
Obscenity still has an elastic meaning, and at times the line between artistic license and simple prurient leanings is blurry and hard to see. That’s precisely where 1974’s Immoral Tales lives, in that strange tesseract on the corner of Softcore Porn and Arthouse Loophole.
Duran Duran has been around for a holy crappin’ 37 years. Is that possible? How old am I? Never mind that question. The amazing thing is they’ve never been out of the public eye in all that time. Well, there was one album, Medazzaland, that just sort of fizzled, but we’ll just give that time period a miss, shall we?
It’s possible that the band is on the verge of their third career resurgence with the release of Paper Gods, a schizophrenic dance album for those with bad backs and broken hearts.
Baskin
If you’re looking around town and noticing a lack of Beautiful People, don’t be alarmed. This week, they’re all in Canada for the Toronto International Film Festival. They’re hobbing their nobs, going to movies, shaking hands at fancy parties and sleeping in theatre lobbies to make sure they don’t miss an anticipated showing. Obviously, I’m not there. I’m not beautiful enough. I’m sitting on my couch watching wrestling matches from the mid-nineties. But man, if I were there at TIFF, with all of those pretty folks, these are the five movies I would punch Stephen Harper in the balls to see.
This Turkish movie about police officers who stumble upon a Satanic cult looks dark, unsettling and bloody. The hope is that this one gets truly weird, and early buzz is good.
Early American rural homesteaders fall prey to religious frenzy and grimy evil befalls them. The preview plays out like a mud-covered sequel to The Village.
A pregnant teen is the victim of a home assault led by creepy trick or treaters. It looks like a great combination of the French movie Ils and living in Detroit.
In his final film role, my personal hero, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper fights Cthulhu. If that doesn’t sell you on the movie, nothing else I could possible say will.
An artist moves his family to Texas and gets possessed by Satan. I imagine that’s what happens when you move to Texas, anyway.
Someday, I’ll get to go Toronto and walk around with filmmakers and movie stars, and that will be amazing. In the meantime, oh, look! It’s a ladder match! Time to start drinking.
Most people have a movie they only show to certain people, a movie so strange or weird that you would rather everyone not know you like it. In some cases, that movie is a test. The thought process is: if I show you this movie, and you still like me, then we can be friends. If you like me and the movie, then we can get married.
The year is 2000, and the 72nd annual Academy Awards are in full swing. It’s a heavy year for the Best Actress category, with Hilary Swank, Annette Bening, Janet McTeer, and Julianne Moore all in contention for the golden stature. Meryl Streep is nominated too, for a little movie called Music of the Heart. It’s one of those roles Streep has made a career of, playing strong Caucasian women who overcome the odds and make a huge difference in the lives of others, usually not Caucasians. Streep being at the Oscars isn’t a surprise. The thing different about this picture is the director of Music of the Heart, who is not nominated for an award.
His name is Wes Craven.
The venerable British heavy metal band Iron Maiden is returning with a new double album, The Book of Souls, and the first single, “Speed of Light,” is a five-minute-long, arena-sized rollercoaster ride through a thunderstorm, with a hot riff so slinky, the Lord of Darkness could floss with it. It’s a swift kick in the ass for a rock and roll scene grown stale and over-inflated with buttrock and pseudo-Satania. There’s more energy in this one single than there has been in the last three Foo Fighters albums. Leave it to a bunch of 50-year-old Brits to rear back up and bring a whole genre back to life, like a collective of Victor Frankensteins.
That’s pretty heavy praise for just one song, and I know that, but listen, you guys.
No, I mean, listen to the song.
Winona Ryder has reportedly confirmed that Beetlejuice 2, the sequel no one has been asking for, is actually happening. Director Tim Burton and the old bio-exorcist himself, Michael Keaton, are also on board for the film.
Beetlejuice came out in 1988. That’s 27 years ago.
You’ve seen it before and there’s no sense in denying it. Some things just shouldn’t be paired up. Maybe there’s a couple whose relationship dynamic seems odd and impenetrable. Perhaps someone likes to do strange things with their food. I, for example, put peanut butter on hot dogs. My wife is displeased with this choice.
These examples of poor matching can be applied to the horror film, Inner Demons, a found-footage film which shouldn’t be a found-footage film.