Showing posts with label Christopher Golden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christopher Golden. Show all posts

Friday, January 10, 2025

RIP David Bowie - 9 Years Gone

   
January 10th - nine years ago today David Bowie soared from Earth. Hopefully, he's bringing joy through music to some distant cosmic race (and we'll eventually be able to get copies on vinyl!).




Watch:

Lowell Dean, the Writer/Director of Wolfcop, has a new Horror movie based around an underground Wrestling match meant to raise the Dark Lord? In, 100%.


Even though I don't count myself a wrestling fan, this looks pretty fun. 




Read:

I've been suffering a spot of insomnia and using it to blow through Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola's Joe Golem and the Drowning City.


About 90 pages in, this is a fantastic novel that kind of mashes up modern Steam Punk elements with Lovecraftian Horror and old-school Detective/Adventure/Fantasy tropes. Sounds a bit crowded, but it's not at all. The prose is brisk and vivid, and Mignola's illustrations are light and fantastic, capturing just enough imagery to really help accentuate the images the prose already brings to life. Here's the solicitation:

"In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance. Among them are fourteen-year-old Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong, Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run. Her flight will lead her into the company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, whose own past is a mystery to him."

This is the first of several collaborations between Mignola and Golden that I'm reading, and I have my good friend Chris Saunders to thank for gifting me a beautiful hardcover copy last year during my trip to L.A.



Playlist:

Mick Jagger - Strange Game (Theme from Slow Horses single)
David Bowie - Black Star
Laylow -.Raw
L.A. Witch - Eponymous
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Arcade Fire - Everything Now
Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace
Mr. Bungle - Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
David Bowie - Outside
David Bowie - The Buddha of Suburbia  OST
Vanessa Williams - Dreamin' (single)
Al B. Sure! - Nite and Day (single)
Diana Ross - Missing You (single)
Karate - Unsolved




Card:

Today's card is the Five of Wands - Strife:


From the grimoire: "Often signals the querent is unhappy with a situation such as work or home, but can also indicate inner conflict. Introduces the suite of Wands/For of Will undercurrent of moral or ethical issues (what will ultimately happen to other in the pursuit of our Will?).

Chaos that can prove growth."

Fives are Geburah - Severity; Mars. Fives are demanding cards.

So what are they demanding?

There's a balance found in Four that is interrupted by Five. This is demanding growth! Growth is Chaos, and in pursuing growth, we often offset others' balance as well as our own.  So this is a 'tread with caution, but definitely tread!!!" card. 

Monday, July 1, 2024

Hellboy's Evil Eye

 

From Valkyrie's 2020 album Fear, I dug this one back out recently, and although I did really like it at first introduction, I haven't really given it much play lately. That's changing - this is a fantastic record and one that seems stuck in my current rotation. Also, just realized Valkyrie released a follow-up in 2021 that I haven't heard yet. That's about to change...

You can check Valkyrie out on their Bandcamp HERE or on Relapse Records' site HERE
 


Watch:

I skipped the Neil Marshal Hellboy film from a few years ago because, from everything I read at the time, Marshall's version of the film is not the one that ended up being released. Sure, David Harbour had huge shoes to fill (literally) stepping in as a replacement for Ron Pearlman, but Harbour's no slouch in my book, and I'd expect he did a great job. A few people I know who saw it gave it favorable reviews, but I just don't know - when I read that the Director didn't go to the review because he felt his film had been trifled with, well, I lost interest.

Now we have a whole new Hellboy coming in, and honestly, I'm excited (and I appear to be alone). I won't get my hopes up too high, but seeing that Mignola and Golden wrote the script and were heavily involved, well, that definitely bodes well. Also, hot damn if Jack Kesy doesn't almost look like Pearlman while in makeup. Here's the trailer that Bloody Disgusting posted yesterday; read their more in-depth article HERE.

 

Directed by Brian Taylor, who will forever be in my good book for the Crank films and HAPPY!, it's looking like Millenium Media has pulled off a great new starting point for more Hellboy films, especially seeing that they have definitively stated Hellboy: The Crooked Man is an R-rated Folk Horror Film.




Read:

The latest issue of Fangoria arrived late last week, and it's killing me that most of the articles inside are about movies I'm already chomping at the bit to see. The newsstand cover is Ti West's Maxxxine, but the subscriber cover is, well, apparently a secret:


I've looked around online, and although the embargo has been broken, it hasn't been broken much, and not by Fangoria itself, so I'm playing it cool and only going to post the cover as they have teased it. Regardless, I LOVE this. 




Playlist:

Audio Commentary - A Field In England
Zombi - Direct Inject
Valkyrie - Fear
The Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers
The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me
Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
Tina Turner - Private Dancer




Card:

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


• Four of Cups
• Ten of Swords
• Six of Wands

A solid foundation for emotional support during a climatic time that, ultimately leads to harmony.

Yeah, that's about as vague a reading as I've ever posted here. I'm dancing around shit I don't want to recognize at the moment, and the cards seem to understand that; like they're drawing it out of me. Which, of course, is what they do because the cards aren't magick, they're just windows into our subconscious.