Wednesday 29 June 2016

ANGRY SAMOANS


In the same vein as my last couple of music posts, here's some more nice music for rat people. We can rightfully level criticisms of stupidity at the Angry Samoans ("Homo-Sexual"), but who can deny the infectious catchiness of the good songs off that same album ("Gas Chamber", "Lights Out", "Steak Knife"). Dumb or not, those tracks are some of the most memorable of hardcore's first wave.

For my money, the band's greatest moment came four years after Back from Samoa, in the form of the garage-punk mellowness of the Yesterday Started Tomorrow 12''. It's hard to reconcile the wistful sweetness of tracks like "Unhinged" and "It's Raining Today" with the assholes who wrote homosexual up the ass!, homosexual Darby Crash. Had they grown up a little by 1986? Were they still fuckwits when they wrote these beautiful songs? Regardless of prejudices (theirs or ours), these songs are still lovely.








Monday 27 June 2016

Sigourney Weaver by Helmut Newton




She may have sung "You are my Lucky Star", but Ellen Ripley is surely the unluckiest warrant officer to ever take a job with Weyland-Yutani.

Below you'll find a series of glamorous fashion shots of the beautiful Ms. Weaver, taken by famed art/kink photographer Helmut Newton. Will we see Ripley one more time in Neil Blomkamp's mooted Alien 5? Is the project even a good idea? Did the jaw-droppingly bad Chappie reveal that Blomkamp is a one-trick pony - a director who only had one great movie (District 9) and another good one (Elysium) in him? All will be revealed in the wake of the success or failure of next year's Alien: Covenant (shooting right here in Sydney as we speak).














Saturday 25 June 2016

THE NILS Freedom


Stumbled on this old video for The Nils' "Freedom" the other day. A perfect song from a perfect 7'' (Sell Out Young). Based on this EP alone, The Nils should have been huge. Why did Hüsker Dü make it big while their pop punk peers from Montreal languished in obscurity?




Monday 20 June 2016

Anton Yelchin




Today's news that the young Russian/American actor has been killed in a tragic accident is heartbreaking. Of all the many obituaries that I've posted on this blog, the 27-year-old Yelchin is the youngest by decades. He made a terrific Pavel Chekov. He held his own among heavyweights Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive. But I'll always remember him most fondly as Pat in this year's horror masterpiece Green Room.




Sunday 19 June 2016

PARQUET COURTS Human Performance




Parquet Courts' older stuff never really did it for me, leaving me to wonder what all the fuss was about. With this year's Human Performance they've finally grabbed my attention. And this song. This fucking song. Can't get it out of my head. Perfection.




I know exactly, where I was when I
First saw you the way I see you now, through these eyes, waiting to retry

Those pristine days I, recall so fondly
So few are trials when a life isn't lonely, and now if only

I'd never felt it, I'd never heard it
I know I loved you did I even deserve it, when you returned it

There's no suspicion, no hesitation
Believing through the eyes of sure, adoration

Witness and know, fracture and hurt
Eyes in the fire, blink unrehearsed
Shield like a house, closing its doors
Curved in the dark, rinses of yours

Ashtray is crowded, bottle is empty
No music plays and nothing moves without drifting, into a memory

Busy apartment, no room for grieving
Sink full of dishes and no trouble believing, that you are leaving

Mid-sentence tremors, mind at its weakest
One way of shaking off the thoughts that it sleeps with

Witness and know, fracture and hurt
Eyes in the fire, blink unrehearsed
Shield like a house, closing its doors
Curved in the dark, rinses of yours

In walks the darkness, I pitch without you
Asks me do I realize what I'd done and who I'd done to, indeed I do know

It never leaves me, just visits less often
It isn't gone and I won't feel its grip soften, without a coffin

Breathing beside me, feeling its warmness
Phantom affection gives a human, performance

Witness and know, fracture and hurt
Eyes in the fire, blink unrehearsed
Shield like a house, closing its doors
Curved in the dark, rinses of yours


Saturday 18 June 2016

Real Horrorshow




Feast your glazzies on this trio of outstanding posters for Kubrick's '71 masterpiece, and while you're at it, treat your ookos to Terry Tucker's catchy "Overture to the Sun".


Nikita Kaun:




Tomer Hanuka:




Mark Englert:






Friday 17 June 2016

The Modern Prometheus




Two hundred years ago, on a dark and stormy night at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, Mary Shelley had a dream.




Tuesday 14 June 2016

G.L.O.S.S. Trans Day of Revenge




New G.L.O.S.S.

More of what Sadie and crew served up on last year's scorching demo, but right now this is more necessary than ever. An antidote to a world clogged with poison.




Monday 13 June 2016

More Live Carpenter + some extra gravy




Following on from this post, here's another glacially cool video of Carpenter performing with his new band, this time the main title theme from Escape from New York. This live version has a much harder, more muscular edge than the original, and it is absolutely badass. A friend of a friend of mine just saw Carpenter perform in Berlin and said it was incredible. The Southern Hemisphere awaits you Mr. Carpenter.




Now check out that killer tribute to the master at top, art courtesy of Kid Eternity. It's nice to see In the Mouth of Madness get thrown in with some of Carpenter's more conventionally appreciated films for once, as it's too often ignored. Madness is one of my personal faves, and is long overdue a stacked blu-ray release.

The good news on the blu-ray front is that Shout! Factory is releasing a new SE of The Thing this September, featuring a ton of new special features and a new 2K transfer approved by Dean Cundey. The old Universal SE is still great (in terms of its special features), but a spiffy new transfer is long overdue. That Universal release was one of the first dvds to hit the market (I think it was the first dvd I ever bought, back in '99 or 2000!).

The big, BIG news is that there's a new Halloween movie on the way, a Miramax/Blumhouse co-production. Rumoured directors are The Guest's Adam Wingard and Oculus' Mike Flanagan, both of whom are excellent choices. Carpenter would be executive producing in  a "hands on" capacity (unlike his producing credit on the woeful The Fog remake, for which he accepted a cheque and simply walked away), but perhaps the most exciting bit of news is that he's in talks to come on board to write and perform the score.




Saturday 4 June 2016

SFF 2016: the list




As has become tradition around these parts, here's the list of movies that I'm seeing at this year's Sydney Film Fest. I'm keeping it to a tight six this year, but it's a nice eclectic mix that should keep me on my toes.



PATCHWORK

This Canadian indie comedy is a gory '80s throwback with a healthy amount of golden era Henenlotter and Gordon/Yuzna running through its Frankensteinian veins. Sounds promising, but can it rise above its influences?




HIGH-RISE

After six years of blogging about this movie there's nothing more for me to say, except I can't believe I'm finally going to see it. A screening of Kill List at SFF 2011 was my introduction to Ben Wheatley, so this kind of feels like coming full circle. As with Cronenberg's CrashHigh-Rise has been a divisive film, one that people seem to either love or hate. We'll soon see which side of the fence I land on.




WAR ON EVERYONE

John Michael McDonagh's first feature to leave the shores of Ireland and Brendan Gleeson behind sees his acerbic wit transplanted to New Mexico, where Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña play a couple of Bad Lieutenants on the warpath. McDonagh has yet to put a foot wrong (his last film, Calvary, is a masterpiece) so my expectations for this are high. Caleb Landry Jones, of Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral, shows up as well.




UNDER THE SHADOW

After being impressed by Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, I'm looking forward to another dose of Iranian feminist horror.




SWISS ARMY MAN

Is it weird that I've avoided trailers for this for the specific reason that I want to be surprised by the variety of useful functions that a farting zombie can have? Daniel Radcliffe continues to distance himself as far as humanly possible from Hogwarts.




EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!

Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused is one of my all-time faves, so I'm just another of the millions of fans who were delighted to hear that he was making a "spiritual sequel" set during the '80s. Apparently the college jocks that Everybody Wants Some!! focuses on find themselves at an Austin punk venue at one point. Is it based on Raul's?


Wednesday 1 June 2016

BARBED WIRE (and some other essential rock 'n' roll for punks)




Punk rock 'n' roll has always been a bit of dicey affair for me, but when that shit hits, it hits hard. In 1990 when I was feeling burnt out from a decade of listening to nothing but hardcore*, the Didjits were a new and electrifying discovery for my friends and I (ironic, because they were just updating a style that had been popular over three decades earlier). We fell hard for that band, and Hey Judester, Hornet Piñata and the Fuck the Pigs 7'' remain some of the greatest records of the era.

The rest of the '90s saw dalliances with other similar bands like  Supersuckers, Turbonegro and Rick Sims' later band the Gaza Strippers (whose 1000 Watt Confessions is another certifiable classic). The noughties gave us Oakland's mighty Annihilation Time, and with their demise, the equally amazing Lecherous Gaze.

Now I can add New York's Barbed Wire to that list, and with a pedigree that includes Hank Wood and the Hammerheads and Ajax, this hook-loaded stomper comes as no surprise. Everything old is new again. Rock 'n' Roll will never die.




*Saying that, my first introduction to punk in 1980 came in the form of the pure rock 'n' roll sounds of the Sex Pistols. They didn't sound to me like "rock 'n' roll" at the time though, a style my then 12-year-old self equated with Shakin' Stevens, the Stray Cats and Grease.