You know what Jack Burton says at a time like this? Rock on, baby!
I've been listening to John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China score, which means I'm creeping up on a rewatch sometime soon. It's been a minute.
Watch:
Holy F**K, Predator: Badlands, I. AM. INNNNN!
And yet, I feel as though I must offer a word of seasoned warning. This is Fox, so this is Disney. I love that Ell Fanning is playing a Weiland-Yutani synth, thus bringing the two franchises together again in a less on-the-nose way, but I also remember how excited I was for the Marvel MCU and the first Star Wars movie back. Both of those have been run into the ground, so let's hope lessons have been learned and that won't happen to Alien/Predator.
But are lessons ever truly learned in the strip-mining megastructure called Hollywood?
Trachtenberg's return is a calming boon - Prey is outstanding, and this looks to be a little of that, plus the "Hostile Alien World" of Predators. So I will be there opening day.
Posting, but not listening. New albums Skeletá is out this Friday, 4/25, and although Loma Vista hasn't shipped my vinyl yet - I'm not sure what they are waiting for - I'm holding out until I can at least listen to the entire record on Apple.
NCBD:
Fantastic pull list this week! Very excited to hit the shop tonight. Here's what I'll be reading later today:
Jeff Lemire's Minor Arcana returns, just in time to line up with my Gideon Falls re-read, so I am very much into more Lemire. Plus, this book has been very cool. Atmospheric the way Lemire does so well.
Still one of the strangest books I've read in quite some time, Into the Unbeing continues to confound and delight me. Macrocosmic Body Horror.
Even though I've cooled on Skybound's iteration of Joe, I'm still looking forward to seeing the confrontation promised by this cover.
Two left after this one. Damn, I'm going to miss this book.
Dust to Dust has really turned out as a sleeper. I don't hear much about other folks reading this book, but I know they're out there.
Watch:
I haven't had a chance to say it here yet, but Ryan Coogler's Sinners is an exceptional film, and a breath of fresh air in what started out a strong year for Horror with Presence, Grafted, The Dead Thing and The Monkey, but quickly became stale.
Sinners shares some structural DNA with Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn in that it both films are actually two movies glued together in the middle with blood. What I love about this is that is the world, right? There's the everyday world where you're robbing a bank or driving around, collecting down-on-their-luck musicians to play at your new Juke Joint, and there's the world where something unnatural arrives and takes you into the netherworld.
With Sinners, the detail is fantastic. You can feel 1930's Southern heat, the sticky humidity, and the life to which these characters live to their fullest, even when they die. Very cool film that I recommend everyone up for a field trip take in on the big screen. The soundtrack through the theatre speakers alone is worth the trip.
Playlist:
Dreamkid - Daggers
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk)
Windhand - Eternal Return
Moon Wizard - Sirens
Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial
Mars Red Sky - Eponymous
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Card:
Back to the Thoth deck today for a quick, one-card pull:
From the Grimoire, "How true are you to your inner aspirations and will?"
From their 1995 Masterpiece, A Northern Soul. K and I listened to this out under the stars Saturday night and it proved balm for the weary soul. Been too long; I need to work this one back into the rotation for a while.
Watch:
Noah Hawley's ALIEN EARTH gets a trailer!
Still no exact release date for this one yet, just a reiteration of "Summer 2025." I have a feeling I'll be avoiding this until then, but I had to watch it once.
Read:
My good friend and co-host from The Horror Vision, Anthony (also known as Butcher), recently started reading Jeff Lemire and Andrea Torentino's Gideon Falls, and this has provided the perfect excuse for me to launch my own re-read.
This will be the first time I've read this since it was monthly, so it will be a much more revealing experience. I've forgotten a lot, but not enough to have lost the reverence for this series I hold.
Can't wait to really get into it for discussion's sake, as there will be a Hororr Vision down the road where Anthony and I deep-dive this.
Playlist:
Baroness - Blue Record
OLD - The Musical Dimensions of Sleastak
Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere
Dreamkid - Daggers
Oranssi Pazuzu - Live At Roadburn 2017
Tad - Inhaler
Nirvana - Bleach
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife
Starting the day off with some old school Baroness. Thanks for the prompt, Mr. Brown!
Was super excited to find live footage of this one with Gina. Thanks to Feet First Productions for posting this. I'd urge everyone to check out their channel HERE. Tons of great live footage.
Watch:
In a bizarre turn of events, I'm off today for "Good Friday." Ah, okay? Not complaining - I'll take the day and recharge. Currently sitting outside with the cats, but I'm going to head inside in a little bit, get baked and watch a few movies to charge up for what I hope will be an epic editing session later today. Black Gloves & Broken Hearts will be finished this weekend, so I can send it to my favorite beta reader!
First up:
After that, not sure where I'll go. But wherever I do, I'm certain it will be a place both wonderful and strange!
Play:
I've seen the trailer for David Sandberg's upcoming adaptation of the game Until Dawn a few times now, and although I'll need to see it for The Horror Vision, I'm just not looking forward to it. Then I had the idea that, maybe if I played the game, it might help.
Understand that, while I bought a Switch a few years back, it's the first gaming system I've owned since the original Nintendo, so I've missed nearly 40 years of gaming history.
The problem here is that Until Dawn is a PlayStation game. I looked into buying a used one, because there are a handful of other games I might like to play on the system. After briefly watching snippets of a play-through video, I was reminded of how much I dislike the Uncanny Valley look of many of these kinds of games. It's just not for me; I'm a Metroidvania/2D survival Horror kind of guy, and I really don't want to buy another video game system at this time. So I nixed the entire idea, but this got me thinking: What other Horror games are available for Switch?
I started HERE and now I'm second guessing my Uncanny Valley prejudice, because I'm not sure I can pass this up:
Maybe my aversion to this graphic style will abait after more exposure? Whataever the case, this is currently $7.99 on the Nintendo online store, and I'm thinking about grabbing it.
Holy cow - new music from Stereolab!!! From the forthcoming album Instant Holograms on Metal Film, out May 23rd on Duophonic UHF Disks and Warp Records . Pre-order HERE.
Watch:
A full trailer for Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 28 Years Later dropped while I slept, and just seeing the thumbnail, I'm excited. I'm not going to actually watch this trailer, mind you. But just knowing we're that much closer to this brings me joy.
My fear is this will play before every movie I go to the theatre to see until the film's release on June 20th.
Playlist:
OLD - The Musical Dimensions of Sleastak
Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me
Primus - Pork Soda
Killing Joke - Eponymous
Stereolab - Aerial Troubles (single)
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Tad - Inhaler
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XI: Justice
• Knight of Cups
• Nine of Swords
Balance creativity or sleeplessness could result.
I actually think this is telling me this so I do the opposite - I've wanted to work on some projects at night the last two weeks, but I'm finding it impossible to stay awake later than 11:00 PM most nights. I think I need to generate a fervor to inspire some 'sleeplessness.' Or at least, some sleep-delay.
I am waaaay behind on posting new music here. Mr. Brown alerted me to Pulp's new single last week, along with news of their forthcoming first album in... a really long time! More drops on June 6th. Pre-order from Rough Trade HERE.
NCBD:
Very excited to hit the shop later today. Here's what I'll be bringing home:
Really digging A.J. Lieberman and Mike Henderson's The Hive. The first issue was something I grabbed on a lark, but it was enough to get me to come back for two, and now here I am waiting on issue #3! A street-level crime comic with a very subtle, maybe "Black Mirror-like" Sci-Fi twist.
I'm going to have a boatload of these Z-News waiting for me in Chicago next time I'm on the South Side long enough to shop at Amazing Fantasy. The cover story here is on Joe Kelly helming the recent re-launch (yes, again) of Amazing Spider-Man with a new number one. I saw that on the shelf last week and almost went for it (there were certainly enough covers and copies), but they didn't get me this time, so it will be cool to read Kelly's plans or whatever this "interview" will be.
I feel like this book is tri-monthly at this point, and that's okay with me. Take it slow.
Justin Jordan and Maan House's Mine Is A Long Lonesome Grave is now one of my most anticipated books every month! A creepy A.F. supernatural revenge story, I'm really hoping this runs longer than next issue, which is the last I see solicited. I suppose if it doesn't, we'll have a tight little tale easy to push onto others. Always better to leave 'em wanting more than give 'em too much. Still, this could unfold in some pretty crazy ways. I trust Mr. Jordan implicitly, so I'm here for it either way.
Watch:
I'm not entirely sure how I made it to 2025 without seeing 1994's Brainscan, but I watched the flick for the first time last night and instantly fell in love with it.
With a screenplay written by Andrew Kevin Walker taken from a Brian Owens story, Director John Flynn leaves his 80s Action roots behind and crafts what I can honestly say is the only film I know of that delivers to me the same vibe that Robert Englund's 976-Evil does, and if you read these pages, you know how much I adore that film.
This a 90s film that feels like a natural progression from 80s Sci-Fi Horror; the suburban neighborhood, children who lead a seemingly adult-less existence and do just fine, and an otherworldly entity that singles them out for Horror that feels, at times, theoretically very frightening. I mean, the opening "kill" sees the film's Protagonist Mike (Edward Furlong) commit a savage murder first-person by way of a 'radical new video game.'
If you've read my story "Literal Death", I'm sure you'd think this film burrowed its way into me way back. That, however, is not the case.
So, of course, after watching Brainscan, I had to follow it with 976-Evil.
How could I not? Perfect timing, because I missed this one last year during 31 Days of Halloween, so I was overdue.
I don't know what it is about Englund's sole Directorial excursion that I love so much. It captures not an era, but an era as portrayed by Hollywood so perfectly, balanced on the precipice between when Horror and Exploitation were kind of studio-ish (Post-Terminator) because there were still successful, but still malleable, small studios with widespread distribution. The kids in 976-Evil are exacerbated stereotypes of 80s nerds and hoodlums like we see in so many other films (Return of the Living Dead springs immediately to mind), but combined here with Howard Berger's FX and the faux-small town but still recognizably urban environments the Art Director and Set Designers create, there's an etheral tone I've not seen many other places. Except in Brainscan, where Flynn updates the look to early 90s-but-still-oh-so-close-to-the-80s Suburbia, but still retains that 80s Kids in Danger vibe.
Playlist:
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk version)
Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me
MadLove - White With Foam
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Five of Swords
• Two of Pentacles
• XXI: The World
Routine can be damaging, but it can also help establish a new foundation from which new vantages reveal comprehensive comprehension.
Or something like that. In other words, stay the course.
Recently, I was back in Chicago for my good friend and Horor Vision cohost Professor John Trafton's Moving Histories Panel at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (CSMS) conference hosted at the Freemont Hotel in downtown Chicago. The panel was on Saturday, so I drove in solo on Friday, and my sister Kim and I met John for pizza and beers at Piece Brewery/Pizzaria. Great food, great beer.
After dinner, Kim and I took John to one of the few Wickerpark legends that remains from back in the day - Estelle's. The 5:00 AM on the weekend lounge still has great ambience, a killer jukebox, and an all-around air of history to it. In service of my second point, QOTSA-project Desert Sessions track Subcutaneous Phat came on. I couldn't place it at first, but as soon as I did, I knew I'd be digging out my CD copy of Desert Sessions Vol. 9 & 10 upon returning home.
Absolutely killer track!!!
Watch:
How did I miss that Ari Aster's fourth film, a contemporary Western set during the recent pandemic, is on the horizon? Here's the teaser trailer, the only thing I'll be watching in the run-up to this film's eventual release, which has yet to be announced:
Also, check out this poster. This has to be my favorite film poster in years:
Can't wait for this one to hit theatres. I know Aster's third film, Beau's Not Afraid, did not get the kind of love his first two films, Hereditary and Midsommar, did, but I loved it and, while I'd love to have Aster back in the Horror genre, I'm there for anything the man does at this point.
I had not read this since it was monthly, and although I remembered it being just as good if not better than most of Ellis' work, I'llbedamned if this isn't one of my favorite arcs the man wrote. Maybe it's Williams' art, but the concept and execution are thrilling, kind of a Hellblazer-meets-the-spy-genre-meets-weird-fiction.
