Saturday, July 26, 2014

Kevin Smith's Tusk Gets a Trailer



And it looks better than I imagined. Oh I do love Michael Parks...

One thing of note here is that during Smith's two episode stint on Bret Easton Ellis' podcast back around the beginning of the year the two talked about the Stanley Kubrick conspiracy doc Room 237 and Smith told Ellis that the idea of Kubrick's visual symmetry in his films was something he actively took away from the documentary and applied to Tusk. I dare say you really see it in this trailer.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Finally! Joe Hill's HORNS Has a Trailer



Horns was the first book by Joe Hill I read, back when I worked for the book store and stumbled into an advanced reader copy. It was great and it led me to read his first novel, Heart Shaped Box which was even better. Since then I routinely keep up with everything the mad does. Just based on the source material alone this movie should be fantastic, and although I don't always love what director Alexander Aja does, he has a lot of talent.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Old News: Watch the Constantine Pilot



This isn't breaking news or anything, I've only just gotten around to finding the time to watch the Constantine pilot and thought I'd share it in case there are any other stragglers out there like me.

Suburban Gothic Trailer



Via Bloody Disgusting. This looks fantastic. The tone the lighting alone conveys is worth the price of admission - or VOD if it doesn't make it into wide release. And really, you had me at "Ray Wise" but John Waters doing a cameo? FAN-tastic!

RIP Tommy Ramone



RIP Tommy Ramone, last original member. NOW it truly is the end of the century, adjust your calendars accordingly.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Cocksure - Klusterfuck Kulture



Recently my good friend Chris turned me on to the fact that Chris Connelly has a new band with Jason Novak of Acuman Nation. The band is called Cocksure and their debut EP Klusterfuck Kulture is available for a mere $3.99 at the bandcamp linked above. This is easily my most listened to new music of the year, and I've only had the thing for about a week (Thanks again Chris!). It's fantastic - a perfect synthesis of everything great about old school industrial but without feeling like a throwback or re-hashed ground. I spent the week in the cryo-lab with this spinning over and over on my ipod, six, seven listens in a row, each time finding something new to love about it.

I read this somewhere however now I can't find the confirmation, but I believe the full album is apparently due next month in August on, of all labels... WAX TRAX! Now that is fucking awesome. Both Touch and Go and Wax Trax pressing new music for the first time in years this year? Awesome.

CORRECTION: The single was on Wax Trax, the album, out August 12th, can be pre-ordered now on Metropolis Records.
.........
* I love most incarnations of Ministry but Connelly-era is my favorite

Nick Cave and 20,000 Days on Earth

image courtesy of meltcomics.com

Last night my wife and I attended the premiere of the new film 20,000 Days on Earth. It is a fictional documentary about Mr. Cave, and probably my favorite film of 2014 (definitely up until this point it is). Read about it on Joup here, where I've also posted Mr. Cave and his Bad Seed's masterpiece And No More Shall We Part as my entry into this week's The Joup Friday Album column.


Sunday, July 6, 2014

Drinking with Comics Issue #9



PodCrashed by Chris Gore! Recasting the Avengers, Batffleck, Saranac White IPA and the worst comic book cover gimmicks of the 1990's (Chromium). Plus, a whole lot more!

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Crystal Castles - Year of Silence


Working on the novel to this right now. LOVE Crystal Castles II. The other two records... not so much.

Horror and Kelley Jones' The Hammer...

image courtesy of readingbypublight.blogspot.com

... are the topics of discussion in this week's Thee Comic Column on Joup.

HOLY!!! NEW FAITH NO MORE



One of two new Faith No More songs performed earlier at Hyde Park in London on July 4th, 2014. Thanks to Bloody Disgusting for posting about this. And thanks to youtube user Felipe Faúndez for having the best audio on one of these I've found yet. 

Don't know the name of this song yet. I've seen a bunch of guesstimates but that's napster-era 
crap. The band will name it when they're ready to name it.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Big Black - Bad Penny



Big Black's Songs About Fucking came out in 1987. Ministry's Twitch came out in 1986 and their follow-up The Land of Rape and Honey came out in 1988. I'm a massive Ministry fan, especially their late 80's period, so this is not meant to be a critical or derogative observation. My theory has always been that the change in Ministry's sound during this era, while not directly obvious in terms of sonic texture, was definitely influenced by Big Black's drum machine-driven sound. Bad Penny is possibly my favorite song on an album where I adore every track.

Ti West's The Sacrament

image courtesy of wikipedia.org


It has definitely been hard for me to find time to post things here, so allow me to play a bit of catch-up on this wonderful three-day weekend.

I first encountered Ti West when my good friend Dennis showed me The Roost. Now, The Roost isn't an amazing film, but it's good and fun and it really left a lasting impression on me. Treated so that it plays on your screen as though you're watching it late at night in 1986 on a UHF station The Roost is creepy and visually fuzzy and features a wrap-around that seals the deal in my opinion. After that it was a very long wait from the time Mr. West's follow-up The House of the Devil was announced to the time it was actually released. I'd had something like two or three years to stoke my anticipation for The House of the Devil and when it finally played at the one theatre in Los Angeles that it did I took my friend Michael and we were both blown away. This is still one of favorite horror films of all time and I wrote an open letter to Mr. West on my then-stomping ground CHUD.com telling him how much I appreciated someone making a movie of this calibre - let's face it, at that time horror was in perhaps the worst era it'd been in for a while, with a lot of promising films stalled or fighting for distribution (ie Satan Hates You, off the top of my head) and a lot of shite being bandied about by major studios.

I went back and brushed up on the one Ti West film I'd missed, Trigger Man, and found it to be an exercise in efficient indie film making. Trigger Man is a very low-budget but very effective film about very real horror - several friends on a hunting trip in Upstate New York are pinned down by a sniper and slowly picked off one by one. Not as immersive as The House of the Devil - but then not a lot is - Trigger Man stayed with me for a long time after I watched it and served as a nice appetizer as I awaited West's next film, The Innkeepers.

Again, I don't love The Innkeepers as much as I do THOD, but as an entry into the timeline of a director I've long thought will evolve into one of the best of this era it's an important piece. The words slow burn, usually associated with Ti West's films, is appropriate here, however in The Innkeepers Mr. West plays with the idea and consistency of the film's tone in a way that, while it doesn't completely land, made the film interesting and enjoyable in unexpected if uneven ways and no doubt served to strengthen his overall approach/style.

West's entry into the original V/H/S is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in a cinema.

Now, The Sacrament. Holy cow, this film just blew me away.

I don't want to say too much, but The Sacrament had me from the opening text. The modern media framework for the story is a fantastic storytelling device and the story itself is both fascinating and horrifying, especially as it takes its cues from a real-life incident. And the acting is top notch. Joe Swanberg and AJ Bowen are becoming must-watch players in the indie realm for me. Gene Jones deserves to at the very least be nominated for an oscar for his performance and Kentucker Audley's portrayal of the character Patrick is, at his end, so chillingly realistic as to engrain his name in my psyche for all time.

The Sacrament is on VOD right now and it's worth every fucking penny. My suggestion? A pair of good headphones to make the immersion complete.

New Shellac Record Dude Incredibe...



...will be released on Touch and Go Records on September, 16th. You can pre-order the record, which is a paltry $21 for 180 gram vinyl that also includes a CD, on Touch and Go's site HERE.

I am extremely excited for this record. It's been seven years since Shellac's last record, Excellent Italian Greyhound was released. Dude Incredible was, as all Shellac records are, recorded in full analog glory. If you should know anything about guitarist/vocalist Steve Albini it's that he's an analog loyalist. If you go back to one of Mr. Albini's earlier bands, Big Black, specifically their 1987 seminal record Songs About Fucking you'll find that the back cover harbors the famous quote, "The Future Belongs to the Analog Loyalists, Fuck Digital". Mr. Albini is known to record on two inch tape (glory!) and of course he takes it one step further. While there are a handful of bands and artists that still use the analog recording medium, far fewer of those few actually take it a step further and master their records in the analog realm:

"Audio quality is paramount, as always, with Shellac. The LP was mastered entirely in the analog domain, using the DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) process. The LPs are being manufactured at RTI in Camarillo, CA using their HQ-180 system. The pressings are 180 gram audiophile quality."

-quoted from the above-linked pre-order page at Touch and Go Records.com