New Single/Video, Upcoming Album: Adam Ant, “Cool Zombie”

By Less Lee Moore

In case you hadn’t heard, Adam Ant has been touring the UK and the US throughout the last couple of years. He’s also got a new album ready to drop on January 21 in the UK. The first single, “Cool Zombie,” was released November 21 along with the accompanying video.

If you’re an Adam Ant fan, you probably know this already. Inevitably, though, there has been and will be a lot of chatter along the lines of, “Adam Ant is still around? I thought he was crazy and/or dead.”

It would be impossible to try and sum up all that’s transpired over the past decade or so regarding Adam’s musical career—not to mention his mental, emotional, and legal struggles&mdsh;in a few paragraphs. The man has been to hell and back and to brush it off as merely a rough patch would be incredibly disrespectful.

If you’ve not seen or heard Adam in a while, you might cringe at this song and video. But get over it (and yourself) because it’s actually a good song. I didn’t think it was that catchy when I first heard it, but when I found it stuck in my head for a few days, I changed my mind.

No, he doesn’t look the same as he did 20 years ago. Yes, he’s gone bald and gained some weight. Check out some of the YouTube clips of his recent live performances, though, and you’ll quickly figure out that he’s the same fantastic performer he’s always been, albeit a little older and wiser.

The new, long-anticipated and much-delayed album, Adam Ant is The BlueBlack Hussar In Marrying The Gunners Daughter, will be out next Monday. You can pre-order it on Amazon.co.uk. You can also order the single on iTunes. Check out Adam’s Facebook page for links to articles, videos, and other goodies.

Sundance 2013: Top Ten Picks

By Less Lee Moore

Il Futuro

It was nearly impossible to narrow down the films at this year’s Sundance into a Top 20, much less a Top Ten. I tried to pick my top choice from each category to give the best indication of the diversity of films screening at this year’s festival.

1. Shorts Competition: The Capsule
Information on this film is scarce, but Sundance’s website description, taken directly from the film’s website, is captivating: “Seven young women. A mansion perched on a Cycladic rock. A series of lessons on discipline, desire, discovery, and disappearance. A melancholy, inescapable cycle on the brink of womanhood—infinitely.” The Capsule is a French production with a Greek cast from director Athina Rachel Tsangari, who produced both Alps (2010) and Dogtooth (2009). Read more …

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Resolution: Interview with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

By Less Lee Moore

Resolution

Resolution was the most unexpectedly intriguing movie of 2012 for me (review). The trailer was fascinating, but I had no idea what I was in for. I could say much the same about writer/director Justin Benson and co-director/cinematographer Aaron Moorhead. Their abilities at keeping an audience transfixed extended beyond the movie and into the intro and Q&A for Resolution at its Toronto After Dark screening.

Luckily, I was able to catch up with the pair a few days ago, in anticipation of Resolution‘s upcoming release on VOD and in theaters. Here’s what they had to say.

On the new poster for Resolution:
Justin: In general, when you make a movie and you make your own key art and you’re really happy with it, you then show it to the distributor who probably has their own ideas, which are very well placed: this is to sell it on VOD. And then you wait for months to get kicked in the balls, thinking it’s gonna be terrible. But we were so happy . . . nothing against horror movie posters, but it doesn’t look like a horror movie poster. There’s something very odd about the poster but it doesn’t look like a horror movie poster.

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Movies: Ten To Watch In 2013

By Less Lee Moore

Passion

I still haven’t seen all the 2012 films that I wanted to and I’m already thinking about what 2013 has in store. Those who complain that there aren’t any good movies anymore are just not paying enough attention. It was tough to pick from the three Ryan Gosling films scheduled for this year and I guess I cheated a little by including two Noomi Rapace flicks on this list, but I will not apologize. I also didn’t include the requisite blockbusters like Star Trek: Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, Thor: The Dark World, and Iron Man 3 because that’s just too easy (plus, I’ll likely see them all anyway). If Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups comes out this year, go ahead and pencil that in at #11.

Here are ten films that I do not want to miss in a theatrical setting this year.

1. Dead Man Down (March 8, US)
Noomi Rapace teams up with Colin Farrell and his real Irish accent. Farrell is New York hitman Victor who has been blackmailed by his new neighbor Beatrice (Rapace) into killing his crime lord boss, played by Terrence Howard, the man who brutalized her and left permanent scars on her face. Dominic Cooper and Isabelle Huppert also star. As much as Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was visually superior to Oplev’s, consider those films were made for TV and at a fraction of the budget for the big screen adaptation. They’re still excellent movies, anyway, and with a cast like this, I can’t be anything but excited. (trailer)

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Assemblog: January 11, 2013

Mads Mikkelsen in NBC’s Hannibal

New this week on Popshifter:
Chelsea profiles Boston band The Grownup Noise; Danny reveals his choice for best turntable; Lisa picks 13 genre films to see this year; Paul tackles wrasslin’ and the potential of a new Prince album in 2013; Cait shares the good news about the upcoming David Bowie album; Julie likes the new Crime & the City Solution compilation A History of Crime; Brad has good things to say about the Blu-Ray for Sleep Tight; Elizabeth is back with a new installment of “TV Is Dead, Long Live TV” with her picks for this new year; I recommend Lost Girl for fans of good television; and give some background on the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which starts January 17.

The only concession I will make to the 2013 Oscars is that they exist. It’s become a ridiculous wankfest and one to which I do not wish to contribute. So I guess you could say that my Oscar snub is to snub the Oscars. Ha!

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Sundance 2013: What’s It All About?

By Less Lee Moore

Although the Sundance Film Festival has only been around since 1978, it’s become synonymous with both indie filmmaking and “the next big thing.” Originally it was called the Utah/US Film Festival; the awkward title reveals the festival’s initial goal: to bring more filmmakers to the US; show older, well-regarded American films; and provide a place for filmmakers operating outside of the Hollywood system to screen their films.

Initially held in Salt Lake City, the festival moved to Park City in the hopes of attracting more people. Who wouldn’t want to spend a few days at a ski resort in January watching good movies, right? Despite the festival’s popularity and success over the next few years, it remained in an astonishing amount of debt. Thus in 1985, Robert Redford’s still-newbie Sundance Institute took over sponsorship and financial backing and the awkward name was scuttled in favor of what we all know now as the Sundance Film Festival. (At one point it was known as the even-more-awkward title of The US Film and Video Festival.)

Sundance has premiered an incredibly diverse selection of independent films throughout its 35 years. If there’s an indie film you know and love from the past three decades, chances are it has premiered at Sundance: sex, lies, and videotape; Reservoir Dogs; El Mariachi; Clerks; The Blair Witch Project; and documentaries like Hoop Dreams, Super Size Me, and Man On Wire all premiered at Sundance and went on to critical acclaim, massive financial success, or both.

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Blu-Ray Review: Lost Girl, Season 2

By Less Lee Moore

As much as I love genre fiction, I’ll admit that most mainstream genre movies and TV shows are fairly sexist. Even if they don’t obviously reinforce stereotypes or display misogynist behavior, the violence enacted against women is often in higher proportion to what their male counterparts must endure. Enter Lost Girl, a Canadian-produced TV show whose title might seem to indicate more of the same, but which is a delightful and welcome entry into the world of genre television.

Lost Girl was created by a woman (Michelle Lovretta) and many of the episodes are written and directed by women. In addition, the gender makeup of the principal cast is half female and half male. The main character, Bo (Anna Silk) is a succubus who is trying to find her way in the world of the Fae (also known as fairy folk) while not committing to either the Light Fae or Dark Fae.

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Best Of 2012: Less Lee Moore

Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander

2012 was the year of the woman. Women dominated the best of music, film, and TV.

The most significant figure for me in 2012 was Lisbeth Salander, the Steig Larsson-created character of the Millennium trilogy of novels, who also appears in the original Swedish film series and David Fincher’s newest film incarnation. Critics and fans may fight over who was better, Noomi Rapace or Rooney Mara, but both were outstanding at portraying my personal favorite female character of the last couple of decades. (Ms. Rapace had the added distinction of playing the more than worthy successor to Ellen Ripley when she inhabited the role of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in Ridley Scott’s misunderstood but brilliant Prometheus.)

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Assemblog: December 21, 2012

Night Shift, 1982

New this week on Popshifter: Best Of 2012 lists from Danny, Emily, Paul, Jeffrey, and Chelsea; Jemiah reviews the Django Unchained soundtrack; and I come up with ten more holiday tunes that won’t make you sick.

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Top Ten: More Holiday Tunes That Won’t Make You Sick

By Less Lee Moore

We all hate the played out holiday tunes that we’re forced to hear every year in malls, grocery stores, offices, and restaurants beginning at the end of November (or for those of us in Canada, the beginning of November). I can’t say I unequivocally hate Christmas music, just the Christmas music I hate. Here are ten songs that might change your mind about holiday tuneage.

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