Showing posts with label Adam Egypt Mortimer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adam Egypt Mortimer. Show all posts

Monday, July 22, 2024

Frank Black Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary Tour

 

Got my tickets to join some of my best friends in the world for Frank Black's Teenager of the Year 30th anniversary tour. Mr. Black even has Lyle Workman back! 




Watch:

Damian McCarthy first impressed the absolute hell out of me in 2022 with Caveat, a direct-to-Shudder film about a man talked into wearing a harness in an old house on a small island in Ireland. The man is supposedly been hired by a friend to watch his niece, but there are all kinds of WTF surrounding that idea, and the film, for all its slow-burn tendencies, rapidly escalates into a terrifying dirge of haunted guilt and bad decisions that culminate in...

Well, read the book. Or, ah, watch the movie. 

McCarthy's new film Oddity was on my radar but just barely, and I was SHOCKED and delighted to find that it opened at our Clarksville Regal this past Thursday. 


So far, it is neck-and-neck with Robert Morgan's Stopmotion for my favorite film of the year. I would post a trailer, but no. PLEASE, go see this in the theatre (it will most likely be gone after this week due to Deadpool) and DO NOT read, watch, or listen to anything about it. Go in blind, and I think this will smack you in the gob the way it did me—so much so that I have tickets to see it again tonight. 




Play:

I've had Playdead's Inside for a couple years now, and while I have played and enjoyed it, it wasn't until this past weekend that I really fell in love with this game. Described as 'dream-like' in all the solicitation copy I've come across, I have to say, that's the perfect description. 

 

A week or so ago, my good friend Maddie messaged me about this game, saying that she remembered I had mentioned it and that she had recently become enthralled. This had me pull the game back out and pick at it off and on for a few days. Then, this past Saturday, I sat down in a darkened room with a beer and Adam Egypt Mortimer's The Obelisk on my turntable and the way the game and the music melded... it was just incredible. I left the sound up so I could hear all the atmospheric sound effects - hurried footsteps through standing water, giant industrial cranes and elevators moving and clanking, explosions, and, yes, dream-like wind and breathing - and my consciousness just folded into this world. It was beautiful. 

I don't want this one to end.




Playlist:

Fear - Live For the Record
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Black Francis - Svn Fngrs
Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
Frank Black - Eponymous
Tomahawk - Mit Gas
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Irony Is A Dead Scene E.P.
Ministry - Rio Grande Blood
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves
The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me
The Besnard Lakes... Are the Roaring Night
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Concrete Blonde - Eponymous
Phil Collins - Face Value




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


• Knight of Wands 
• Four of Pentacles
• Six of Pentacles

The firey aspect of fire, pure white hot Intellect, stripped of all other human trappings. Here, it's being applied to Earthly matters, as we can see via the two Pentacles or Disks cards that follow. Four of Disks indicates stability, and the Six support or balance. What this tells me this morning is the balancing act I now maintain Monday - Friday may require an extra dose of reasoning to maintain. Not sure if this means this will be a heavy spreadsheet week (I'm only half joking and all cringe when I reference a spreadsheet in relation to the Tarot), or if I'll just have to side step emotional reactions to things that will require logical consideration instead of capricious emotion.

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Control Room in The Obelisk

 

Although I've been able to spin this one a few times since the vinyl arrived about a month ago, I've not had a chance to really sit down and digest Adam Egypt Mortimer's The Obelisk. That changed a bit tonight, where I carved out a small niche of time to read the final issue of Rick Remender and Jerome Opena's Seven to Eternity.




NCBD:

Pretty mellow week this week, which is how I think it's going to go from now on. Lots of series ending or me jumping off. Here's what's on tap for today:


I'm not 100% on this one, but it's a one-shot and kinda hard to pass up a book on Bouchh, especially when you read the solicitation and realize the armor Lea wore in Jedi came from a pre-existing Bounty Hunter.  Which, of course, makes me ask what was their story? This, apparently, is just that.


This book is a staple of my monthly reading. Love the story, love the art.


The first issue sold me. 




Watch:

 

I never got around to reading anything past the first trade of this series, and that was a looooong time ago. Since then, and through series like Saga and Paper Girls, I've very much become a Brian K. Vaughn fan. After watching the first episode of the new FX show on Hulu (they dropped three this week, I only had time for one), I'm definitely going to give the show a chance.




Playlist:

The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
X - Under the Big Black Sun
High on Fire - Snakes For The Divine
Jerry Cantrell - Brighten (pre-release singles)
The Marias - Superclean, Vol. II EP
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
 


Card:


Lots of fortification against encroaching neuroses. Time to find my inner Lion (or cat).

Saturday, January 4, 2020

January 4th, 2020 - New Video from The Thirsty Crows!



Fantastic! This, this is only part of the reason these guys made my "Favorite Albums of 2019" list last week. I love this with all my heart, and the time and detail spent on crafting a video for one of the best songs on an album with pretty much only best songs is appreciated and enjoyed!

**

I finally watched Adam Egypt Mortimer's latest film Daniel Isn't Real yesterday, and after viewing it once in the afternoon by myself, the moving left me feeling... vulnerable. A harrowing tale of mental illness that goes to places I absolutely did not see coming, this one rattled around in my head for hours after (still is). Later, K and I watched Enemy with Jake Gyllenhaal, a flick I loved when I saw it several years ago. The similarities between the two struck me as anything but a coincidence, and I followed Enemy up with another viewing of Daniel. I can't recommend this one - and Enemy, while I'm at it - enough. I will forever kick myself that I had to bail on it as the second half of the Spectrevision Double Feature at Beyondfest last year, where it played with Color Out of Space.



**

Oh. One day last week I re-watched Apocalypse Now for the first time in over twenty years. My suspicion is confirmed - might be the best film ever made. Hyperbolic statement? Sure, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

I picked up the BR edition that has all three cuts - Theatrical, Redux, and Final. Having only ever seen the Theatrical, I listened to the director's recommendation in the introduction and chose the Final Cut, his favorite. I'd have to say, the French Plantation scenes didn't do much for me, and that makes me think the ideal version of this film for me is the Theatrical. That said, I intend on watching all versions in the coming weeks.




Playlist:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Boy Harsher - Careful
Boy Harsher - Lesser Man (Extended)
Plague Bringer - Life Songs in a Land of Death
Budos Band - V
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
Arab Strap - Elephant Shoe

**

Card:

Seems about right.