The Salvation is a Western. It’s not a comedy western, it’s not a horror western, and it’s not a science fiction western: it’s just a Western. It’s about revenge and it stars Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It’s also outstanding.
Towards the beginning of La Grande Bouffe one of the characters states, “Gentlemen, we are not here to have a vulgar orgy.” It is a droll bit of dialogue eventually revealed to be alarmingly ironic.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Noomi Rapace movie in theaters. She co-starred in last year’s excellent The Drop with Tom Hardy, while another film with Hardy, Child 44, seemed to come and go with nary a whisper, unless you count the dreadful 24 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
I only knew of Steven Soderbergh’s TV drama The Knick by name but it was a series of tweets from filmmaker Aaron Moorhead (Resolution, Spring) that got me interested in it.
Welcome to The Official Popshifter Podcast, Episode #01, “Styx and Stones May Break My Bones, But Save Hannibal”
Featuring Managing Editor Less Lee Moore and Featured Contributor Jeffery X Martin! Enjoy and thanks for listening.
Ted Nugent, Free-For-All (Expanded Edition)
Goblin Rebirth, Goblin Rebirth
Pit Stop Blu-Ray
Veruca Salt at Lee’s Palace, Toronto ON
Satanic Panic: Pop Cultural Paranoia In the 1980s
The Black Room Manuscripts (all proceeds go to Blue Cross UK)
July 28, 2015
Toronto, ON
Imagine, if you will, the early 1990s. Back when alternative music was all the rage, indie wasn’t a sonic genre, and bidding wars were still a thing, a time before blogs grabbed the reins of underground music writing away from printed fanzines and Facebook was just a gleam in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.
When I was nostalgic for the 1980s in the ’90s, I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the last decade of the old millennium. Yet, here we are in 2015 and Veruca Salt has reformed with the original members, released a new album called Ghost Notes, and is currently wrapping up a North American tour.
When Roger Corman approached Jack Hill to make a film about stock car racing, Hill was hesitant; he hated both stock car racing and movies about stock car racing. The fact that Pit Stop is such a marvelous example of 1960s independent art cinema is a huge testament to Jack Hill’s tenacity and talent.
Tell me who’s got a conscience that’s more pure / A servant of God or a girl they call a whore?
—Institute, “Christian Right”
If you didn’t know they were from Austin, Texas, you might assume that Institute was from the UK. On Catharsis, they’ve got a laconic, sardonic edge that sometimes comes across like the post-punk of bands like Joy Division or Magazine, but at other times recalls The Minutemen. Regardless, don’t let Moses Brown’s disaffected, distorted vocals fool you into thinking these are dumb punks. Unlike a lot of other bands that trudge through the same fertile ground, Institute are sharp, smart, and firmly committed to not only their sound but their specific aesthetic.
The musical tornado that was NXNE 2015 blew into Toronto on Wednesday, June 17, boasting hundreds of bands performing over a five-day span, not to mention various film screenings, installations, and even a record sale. It’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of feet, but it is an exhilarating, if exhausting, event.
(more…)
In 1972, African-American writer, director, and actor Bill Gunn was given free reign to make a film that would capitalize on the success of Blacula. The result was the bizarre yet beautiful Ganja & Hess, his rumination on addiction, religion, and African-American culture, which would thrill audiences at Cannes, only to be savaged by critics upon its eventual release. The producers re-edited and repackaged Ganja & Hess as Black Vampire and the film was mostly forgotten.
But Bill Gunn never forgot. In 1973 he wrote a scathing letter to the NY Times, which said, among other things, “Your newspapers and critics must realize that they are controlling black theater and film creativity with white criticism.” Sadly, Gunn died in 1989, after making only one more film, 1980’s Personal Problems.