Monthly Archives: February 2019

Weekly Reading Round-Up : 02/03/2019 – 02/09/2019, Four Firsts

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

It feels like it’s been awhile since we looked at “Wednesday Warrior” stuff in our Weekly Reading Round-Up, but given that I sampled four new series this past week, now’s probably as good a time as any to steer the focus of this column to the LCS new release racks —

The Girl In The Bay #1 is another “something old, something new” creative team combination of the sort Karen Berger and her protege, Shelly Bond, throw together for their imprints. Dark Horse’s Berger Books line is the imprint in question this time out, and the team is veteran (and consistently undervalued) scribe J.M. DeMatteis and relative “newbie” artist Corin Howell. The premise is intriguing — “hippie chick” gets murdered in 1969, comes back to life 30 minutes later, finds it’s 2019, and  that she didn’t actually die at all but is living out a fairly picturesque dotage in the…

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Music Video Of The Day: Cool Zombie by Adam Ant (2012, dir by Adam Ant and Adam Ross)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, what’s going on here?

I have to admit that my initial response to this video was to make a joke about how it was a look at a typical Thursday night at Johnny Depp’s place but I actually like this video too much to be snarky about it.  It may be an odd video but it’s a good kind of odd, I think  You have to earn the right to indulge in the surreal but I think this song and the video have done just that.

Watching this video, I get the feeling that I’m not so much looking at the end of the world as I’m looking at the day after the end of the world.  Society’s gone.  All the good clothes are gone.  You just have to wear whatever you can find.  But the music is still playing and the boats are still drifting and that’s a good thing.  It’s interesting that one thing that every post-apocalyptic vision seems to share in common is that people still desire entertainment.

Myself, I’ve already made my plans in case society collapses.  It mostly involves watching movies until the Earth plunges into the sun.  I’m thinking I’ll probably want to watch comedies.  I mean, if you know the world’s about to end, I think you would want to laugh as much as possible before the end comes.  Then again, I imagine some people would want to spend the end of the world watching movies about the end of the world just so they can brag about the irony of it all on twitter right before bursting into flame.

While the song is bluesy number about Tennessee, the title is a reference to how Adam Ant felt under the influence of his bipolar medication.  Speaking as someone who shares the struggle, Cool Zombie is the perfect way to put it.

Enjoy!

Necktie Party: Alfred Hitchcock’s FRENZY (Universal 1972)

Posted on by gary loggins

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Alfred Hitchcock’s  previous two films, TORN CURTAIN (1966) and TOPAZ (1969) weren’t well received by critics, who claimed The Master of Suspense was too old-fashioned and had lost his touch. One wag even suggested that, after fifty years in films, it was time to put Hitch out to pasture! But Hitchcock wasn’t quite ready for a life of tea and crumpets in the garden, and came back with 1972’s FRENZY, complete with all the blatant sex, nudity, gore, and profanity of other early 70’s auteurs, proving he could not only keep up with the times, but surpass them by giving us the blackest of horror comedies.

Hitchcock had returned to his native England before to make a few films, but always with actors who had box office appeal in America (Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten in UNDER CAPRICORN, Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman in STAGE FRIGHT). This time around, he…

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Music Video of the Day: Drugs by UPSAHL (2019, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just came here to the party for the drugs….

Truer words have never been heard.

I always appreciate a song that’s about exactly what it says it is.  Even more so, I always like it when a video is about exactly what you think the song is about.  The song is called Drugs.  The song is about drugs.  There’s a lot of drugs to be found in the video.

(And honestly, who has never gone to a party just for the drugs?

Seriously, watching this video made me feel like it was 2007 all over again.)

Of course, neither the song nor the video are just about drugs.  They’re also about the empty banalities that most people use to get through life.  It’s about being so bored with our society and our culture that you turn to something that offers up an easy escape from all the bullshit of people at parties, dropping names and searching for fame.  It’s a song and a video about alienation and I absolutely love it and I’ll probably be singing it for the next few days.

Enjoy!

4 Shots From 4 Albert Finney Films: Saturday Night Sunday Morning, Scrooge, Miller’s Crossing, Skyfall

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Yesterday, we lost another great actor when Albert Finney passed away at the age of 82.

It seems strangely appropriate that Finney’s final film was the James Bond extravaganza, Skyfall.  While Finney himself never played the world’s greatest secret agent, he was still definitely a part of the same British invasion that made 007 a worldwide phenomena.

Albert Finney got his start appearing on the British stage and it was the stage that remained his self-confessed first love.  He started his film career by playing angry young men in gritty films like The Entertainer and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning.  However,it was his starring role as a debauched 18th century adventurer in Tom Jones that made him a star.  (Before being cast as Tom Jones, Finney came close to securing the lead role in Lawrence of Arabia.  That role, of course, was played by another young British stage actor, Peter O’Toole.)

Because his focus was mostly on the stage, Finney did not appear in as many films as some of his contemporaries.  When Finney did appear in the movies, it was often as a character actor as opposed to a traditional leading man.  He played larger-than-life characters but he did so in such a way that, regardless of how flamboyant they may have been, they still felt real.  He could play Scrooge and Hercule Poirot just as easily as he could play Tom Jones or a small town lawyer in Erin Brockovich.  Even in his old age, Finney’s acting instincts remained strong.  Just watch him in Big Fish or Before The Devil Knows Your Dead.  Just watch him in Skyfall, giving off a gruff “Welcome to Scotland” after gunning down the assassins that have come for Bond and M.

So, in honor of Albert Finney, it’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Albert Finney Films

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960,dir by Karel Reisz)

Scrooge (1970, dir by Ronald Neame)

Miller’s Crossing (1990, dir by the Coen Brothers)

Skyfall (2012, dir by Sam Mendes)

Albert Finney, RIP.

Music Video of the Day: Got To Keep On by The Chemical Brothers (2019, dir by Michel Gondry and Olivier Gondry)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A new music video from The Chemical Brothers?

One that’s directed by Michel Gondry?

One that features a lot of dancing?

Of course, I love it!

That said, the video starts out so exuberantly but then it takes a bit off a strange turn about halfway through, which really shouldn’t be a shock considering that we’re talking about Gondry and The Chemical Brothers here.  While I wouldn’t go as far as to call it body horror (because no one appears to be particularly horrified), it still definitely feels as if our dancers taken a trip into the world of David Cronenberg.  Fortunately, things work out in the end.  They always do.

As I stated above, this video was directed by Michel Gondry, who will always have a place in the hearts of most cineastes for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Enjoy!

Big, Bad Mama Monster!: GORGO (MGM 1961)

Posted on by gary loggins

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When Melanie at The Film Detective offered me the chance to watch and review GORGO for them, I immediately said yes! GORGO was one of my favorites growing up as a little Monster Kid, a Saturday afternoon staple on Boston’s Channel 56, and the opportunity to see it without all that UHF “snow” was too much to resist (and if you don’t know about The Film Detective, I’ll clue you in a bit later).

Producers Frank and Maurice King were a pair of slot machine magnates turned low-budget movie moguls who had success with 40’s films noir like WHEN STRANGES MARRY (with Robert Mitchum), DILLINGER (making a star out of Lawrence Tierney), and the Joseph H. Lewis classic GUN CRAZY . When the stateside release of Japan’s Giant Monster Movie GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS proved a hit, the Kings decided to secure the American rights to another kaiju eiga 

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