I was first turned onto Dublin's Lankum when we interviewed All You Need Is Death director Paul Duane last year. Ian Lynch - who did the brilliant soundtrack for that film - counts his time as a member of this group, and that's really all I needed to know.
From their 12" of the same name, which you can buy HERE.
Noirvember:
I blew through a rewatch of NWR's Copenhagen Cowboy over the last few days. I am in love with this man's approach to Cinema all over again.
I've never seen anything like this. It's Noir, Gothic, Modern, Horror, Fairytale...
..
1) Too Old To Die Young
2) Mona Lisa
3) Thief
4) Copenhagen Cowboy
5) Black Angel
Playlist:
Ritual Howls - Their Body E.P.
Drain - ... Is Your Friend
Steven Moore - Jimmy and Stiggs OST
Etta James - Third Album
Creeper - Sanguivore
Various - Copenhagen Cowboy OST
Wake the Devil - Singles Playlist
The Leather Nun - F.F.A. (single)
lords. - bleeding out
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Six of Cups
• Nine of Wands
• XX: Judgement
Nostalgia works against perseverance. Judge past loyalties accordingly.
You know, Dreamkid's seriously 80s affectations prevented me from adding 2024's Daggers to my top ten list, but looking back on 2025, I've probably listened to that record way more than some of those that made the list. I really root for Dreamkid, and even if he sometimes leaves me a little cold at first, I overall really love his music.
This track's gonna have to grow on me, but one thing that definitely made my ears perk up is the brief spoken word part near the end - total M83 influence there! Very cool.
NCBD:
Big week. Let's go!
This one leads into big things, as issue 23 saw some crazy shit happen on the Great Ring, and 25 is due to kick off the Quintesson War. Huh - weird that, as we'll see below, this month's GI JOE kicks off the "Dreadnok War." Lots of war in Kirkman's Energon Universe these days, but that's to be expected with all the giant robots and laser weapons.
James Stokoe's second volume of Orphan and the Five Beasts promises more of Stokoe's insane art and probably even more insane martial arts action! Love this series. Just look at the cover art - how many hours could that have taken? The detail is insane, and when you figure that every page of the interior is of the same caliber, well, breathtaking. That's all I can say.
This entire issue is a Liam Sharpe opus, and I cannot wait!
Planet Death! I almost forgot about this book. Still pumping out those old school, mid-80s Dark Horse vibes, for sure.
Jeff Lemire's Minor Arcana returns and I have to confess - I'm considering stepping off this monthly and buying the Hardcovers when they come out. But then I'd have to wait and... I just don't know if I can do that.
Talk about first-world problems.
Here it is, folks - the aforementioned Dreadnok War! I love the Dreadnoks and can't wait to see how this is going to go down. Reading between the lines, I think they'll be a body count here.
Okay, I know I pop in and out of Amazing Spider-Man, so this isn't that weird, right? I think I do it because I need one title that I engage with the way I did as a kid on an allowance, in and out, based on what interests me. This cover? This interests me because that looks an awful lot like Warlock from the New Mutants. I know it's not Warlock, but if it's a Phalanx, this could be very interesting (as long as it doesn't even remotely resemble Phalanx Covenant).
Watch:
Saturday, November 1st, I kicked off Noirvember by watching something like nine hours of Nicolas Winding Refn and Ed Brubaker's 2019 series Too Old To Die Young. I finished it Sunday and now I have a great big Refn-sized hole in my life.
This is Refn's version of what David Lynch did with Twin Peaks: The Return, a 13-hour-long movie cut into episodes, or 'volumes' in this case.
Total.
Fucking.
Masterpiece.
Not going to be for everyone. Hell, it took me three attempts and six years to finally do the entire thing.
Refn likes to create gorgeous images with ugly content (see Vol. 5: The Fool), and he really wants to punish his audience at times. This is nothing new; you see increments of this in Only God Forgives, Neon Demon and I'm sure some of his other work I'm not familiar with (Pusher alienated me within minutes and I've never gone back). That penchant for beautiful ugliness, combined with his “painting” style will test a lot of people’s patience. n my opinion? It’s 100% worth it. Especially if you’re a Lynch fan, because although his influence is always apparent in NWR’s work, this feels like a love letter to him.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Jimmy and Stiggs OST
Perturbator - Age of Aquarius
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power
The Cramps - Date with Elvis
Dreamkid - Apocalyptic Love Song (single)
The Leather Nun - Primemover/FFA (single)
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons (pre-release singles)
Blut Aus Nord - 777: The Desanctification
Ritual Howls - Ruin
White Hex - Gold Nights
The Damned - Night of a Thousand Vampires
Opeth - Still Life
The Damned - Darkadelic
Testament - Para Bellum
Young Widows - Power Sucker
Slow Crush - Thirst
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XIX: The Sun
• Four of Cups
• Eight of Cups
The Triumphant of the Spirit. I like the sound of that. The cards on either side of XIX seem to be telling me to pick up both the bass and the guitar again, something I have ideas for throughout the week during my daily life, and then go blank at night when I have time to actually work on something. Four of Cups is an emotional powerbase, and Eight of Cups is a little bit like that pays off, so I'm thinking I might find it rewarding to put a period at the end of this sentence and then plug in a guitar for a little while, even if I don't have any ideas in my head at the moment.
While you listen to the wonderful opening track from Erosion Cycle's 2015 Maladies - available on their Bandcamp HERE - follow the logic of how I re-discovered this artist I first connected with about a decade ago. It's a weird and winding road.
I began Sunday morning in a manner I try not to begin any morning; I picked up my phone. Sunday's go one of two ways: I either barely touch the damnable device all day and reach for a book instead, or I feel the need to read the latest Orbital Operations from Warren Ellis the moment I open my eyes. Yesterday proved a case of the latter. From that OO email, I redirected to Ellis' Ltd site (his daily notebook, which I often pick at during the week via the RSS reader Feedly). The article that caught my eye is titled "Cory Doctorow Blogging Style." One of the things I love about Warren Ellis, besides pretty much everything he writes, is how he serves as a hub for access to so many other writers. I share Mr. Ellis' fascination with hearing what writers have to say about their Process, and although I am familiar with Mr. Doctorow in name and reputation alone, a glimpse into his blogging style held a strong pull for me. Blogging continues to be a passion of mine, and in an age where it seems to have largely lapsed as a relevant cultural format, I find inspiration and solace in other people's versions of it. Especially someone as prolific as Cory Doctorow.
In familiarizing myself with Doctorow's Pluralistic, I began to lurk about, reading various thoughts and articles from the site's four-year history. That's when I hit on the "Enshittification" piece and, subsequently, THIS PIECE Electronic Frontier Foundation published as a five-part article on the cunning (and ruthless) manner in which social media companies basically capture an artist's followers and then ransom them back to them. I finally get it. For anyone else who feels as though their posts are the equivalent of hollering into a cyclone, here, then, is the answer.
When I used to add links to these daily posts on social media, at the very least I'd get some interaction from friends and followers. Then, for years FB began to classify any link to my blog as "inappropriate or harmful," based on, I finally deduced, the link to one of my previous musical project's names. This, as well as a growing general disdain, led me to all but stop using FB and eventually deactivate the page for a number of months. Later, when I re-engaged, the idea to link this Blogspot page to the URL www.shawncbaker.com solved the censoring problem. However, now I had next to no engagement for the posts whatsoever.
Zero engagement can be tough when you've previously enjoyed a livelier go. I write here for my own benefit primarily, however, those years of having others chime in on my thoughts/work had created a sometimes reciprocal relationship with interaction. It's the same with all the podcast projects I do - it's nice to know someone other than myself is listening.
So now I understand. I've known since the Muskrat took over the bird page and made it x that my posts were being squashed in order to persuade me to pay for that blue checkmark. Not doing that. Hell, I'd love to actually drop my account there altogether. That said, like FB, it is the only avenue of "direct" connection I have with some folks, so I keep it regardless of how my steeping resentment prompts me to avoid actually posting on it for large swathes of time.
Anyway, by the time I finished reading all those articles by Cory Doctorow, I A) felt physically gross from staring at my phone for so long, despite the intellectual gymnastics my choice of reading promoted, and B) I ended up falling down a rabbit hole and pruning my follows on x (yeah, I don't understand how staring at a largely vapid social media feed fed to me by an algorithm that devalues me at every turn could prompt more time spent on said platform, but that's an avenue of insidiousness perhaps best left deconstructed by someone who earns their dimes in a field of psychological study). It was while doing this that I stumbled across Erosion Cycle for the first time in literally probably ten years, and fell in love as soon as I hit "Play."
Watch:
TENET absolutely blew my mind.
I am SO happy I waited four years for a chance to have my inaugural viewing of this film (because there will be oh so many more) on an IMAX screen.
For comparison's sake, I'll say this: Christopher Nolan is the exact opposite of Nicolas Winding Refn. Refn makes beautiful images that he strings together with concepts so foul he basically dares you to continue watching. This is not a negative criticism, and also not exactly accurately applied to Refn's MO until he became a box office draw. Only God Forgives, Too Old to Die Young, Neon Demon - all of these followed the breakout success of Drive and all of them, in some way or another, attempt to punish the viewer's revelry for their imagery with themes, characters and situations that are psychologically grotesque. We see examples of this in but not limited to Martin's high school GF or, hell, episode five of TO2DY; Gordon's request near the beginning of Only God Forgives and Julian's relationship with his mother, or pretty much all of the themes in Neon Demon.
Christopher Nolan, on the other hand, takes such care and pride in his work as a cinematic creator, that he develops stories that require multiple viewings to fully grasp. If you make a beautiful movie that everyone understands outright, they may return to it from time to time, but not nearly as much as if you challenge the audience's intellect; in this way, Nolan creates a compulsion to return to his films to "figure them out." I was halfway through TENET and already planning my next viewing.
Brilliant.
Cast:
The new episode of The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror is up on all podcast platforms and with a swanky video on youtube. Full-Spoiler discussion on Gerald Kargl's 1983 "Video Nasty" Angst. I've been putting more and more work into these, and that's definitely starting to pay off:
Also, the recent episode of Drinking with Comics - now an "only YouTube" show, where Mike Shinabargar and I talk in-depth about Robert Kirkman's Energon Universe, especially what he and Joshua Willamson are doing with GIJOE:
I had a lot of fun doing both of these, which is really what it's all about.
Playlist:
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST
The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre
The Bronx - (I)
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the War is Over
Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face
Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears
John Carpenter - Lost Themes II
Erosion Cycle - Maladies
Amigo the Devil - Everything Is Fine
Jerry Cantrell - Brighten
Nobuhiko Morino - Verses OST
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Page of Wands
• IX: The Hermit
• Six of Pentacles
Page of Wands, the Earth of Fire; Tempering the Will to Earthly Concerns. The Hermit is, in my experience, often an indication to regroup and lay low. Finally, the Six of Pentacles can indicate the Balance of those Earthly Concerns, so I'm reading this the same way I've been reading a lot of these of late - take a respite, regroup and save, then redirect my Will. Several "Earthly" concerns I could align this with, but I'm wondering if this is a direct response to something I've been thinking about just before breaking out the cards. The idea that I consulted them without consciously realizing that's what I was doing is a little too good to pass up.
I rewatched Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 The Neon Demon yesterday and was once again completely blown away by it. The visual textures are sleek and beautiful while remaining as soulless as the industry they house in the story. This is perfect for Julian Winding's throbbing, minimalist techno (not calling it EDM, sorry).
Watch:
Interestingly enough, not a day after I read an article about Huesera: The Bone Woman in the latest issue of Fangoria, the trailer dropped:
The first feature from writer/director Michelle Garza Cervera and distributed by the delightful XYZ Films; I'm kind of chomping at the bit to see this one. Something about the mythology at play here really fascinates me.
Read:
Last week I doubled down on my James Tynion reading and picked up the first four trades of Department of Truth. This is research for an upcoming deep-dive Butcher and I are doing for The Horror Vision; the project began as a lay-everything-out for Tynion's Something is Killing the Children mythology; only before we could get going, The Book of Slaughter dropped and kind of answered everything we were going to attempt to draw conclusions on. However, knowing the overall premise of Dept. of Truth, I began to realize the real deep-dive is seeing how these two connect because I am almost certain that they do.
We'll obviously get more into it on the show, which will hopefully drop in about two weeks, but for now let me just point out that in SIKTC, the thing that manifests the monsters is belief, and the titular Department in DOT's entire job is managing belief in conspiracies because the big secret of the world is that if enough people believe in something, it becomes reality.
There's a layer to my enjoyment of DOT I hadn't anticipated, and that's that it looks and reads almost exactly like a late 80s/early 90s Vertigo title. I'm still picking away at the first couple trades of Peter Milligan and Chris Bacchalo's Shade The Changing Man from 1990-1991, and there are so many similarities, it's unreal. Add to that the Bill Sienkiewicz-like art from Martin Simmonds, and I've realized this is a book I should have been reading from the beginning. Better late than never, though.
Playlist:
David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time
Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct
Various Artists - Twin Peaks (Limited Event Series Soundtrack)
Metallica - 72 Seasons (pre-release singles)
The Police - Synchronicity
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
Off! - Free LSD
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Katatonia - Sky Void of Stars
Cliff Martinez - The Neon Demon OST
Final Light - Eponymous
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil
Special Interest - Endure
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
A strenuous emotional sacrifice to achieve a goal. (that's a crappy reading, but I'm short on time)
From the criminally under-referenced The Buddha of Suburbia album Bowie released as, in his words, "a quasi soundtrack" to Roger Michell's series adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel, neither of which I am familiar with. I LOVE the Saxophone on this album, especially this track. Little considered fact: Bowie plays all the Sax on this record. Granted, there are some Bell Biv Devoe-style beats on this one (South Horizon, I'm looking at you!) but they work! Overall, it's a marvelous record.
Watch:
Many thanks to Heavenisanincubator for reminding me Nicolas Winding Refn's Copenhagen Cowboy recently dropped.
I blew through the entire six episodes this past Tuesday. If Refn's previous foray into sequential streaming Too Old To Die Young left you a bit cold, fear not, I found Copenhagen Cowboy a considerably easier ride (that said, applying the adjective "easy" to Refn's work is a bit misleading. You still have to work for it here, too, only this time, the contents don't make your skin crawl so much).
Tin Machine - Live at La Cigale, Paris, 25th June 1989
Bigg Doggett and His Combo - All His Hits
Lorn - Rarities
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Completion of Will requires a partnership or collaboration that will ultimately balance my somewhat topsy-turvy confidence. Could be good news, I have a couple of possible collaborations in the near future.
I'm fairly certain I posted this track here at some point in the distant recesses of the past. This is the track that made me a fan of Ms. Jesus. Reconnecting with her music of late (via that old iPod), I was pleased to see she released an album this year.
Watch:
Holy smokes. Nicolas Winding Refn has a Noir releasing on Netflix just after the new year?
I cannot wait for this. Despite the fact that I still have not finished Refn's previous series, the "We'll release that but f*&kin' bury it so no one knows it's on here" To Old To Die Young that Amazon 'released' on Prime back a few years ago. I really dig the series, however, when I copped to the fact that it is an exercise in one of Refn's favorite philosophical mantras, namely - It's so beautiful you will want to watch it, but it's so ugly you'll have trouble doing so - I nodded in understanding but moved away and haven't yet gone back to it. This will probably be the same, but I'm game regardless.
Read:
Two days ago, I restarted my reread of Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell collection. I blew through the first four stories - all as fantastic as I remember them from my initial reading several years back upon the book's release - and when I got to Visible Filth, I'm telling you. This is just one of my favorite pieces of prose ever. I fall so hard into the narrative, and every sentence, every sentiment and setting and character arc, they are all satisfying on a level not much else is. What I did not remember from that first reading was how absolutely glorious the final story in the volume is. The Butcher's Table - so named after a pirate ship that crosses from the Gulf of Mexico to the black seas of Hell, is nothing short of a masterpiece. With a remarkably wide and diverse cast that runs the gamut from the Egalitarian members of a refined Cannibal cult and a Secret Order of High Society Satanists, all the way down (or is that up?) the food chain to cutthroat Pirates and hired Victorian Dock Scum, this story winds itself taut and then literally springs to a conclusion that is satisfying right down to the final sentence. The Butcher's Table also showcases Mr. Ballingrud's ability to write in any timeline.
If you've not read this, please do yourself a favor and do so. I've already posted the US cover to Wounds multiple times, so in the interest of seeing something new and awesome, here's the Turkish cover, where the book was renamed The Atlas of Hell.
Playlist:
The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing - Now That's What I Call Steampunk, Vol. 1
Zola Jesus - Stridulum
Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands
The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing - Eponymous
Bat For Lashes - Fur and Gold
The Knife - Silent Shout
TVOTR - Return To Cookie Mountain
TVOTR - Staring at the Sun EP
Drab Majesty - Careless
Shellac - Dude Incredible
Vaguess - The Bodhi Collection
Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
The outcome of a material endeavor, possibly with an accomplishment.
Frank Black Appreciation Week continues here with probably my second favorite all-time Frank Black-related track, from the first Grand Duchy album, Petite Fours. With its men in black, government UFO cover-up vibe, this track always reminds me of a sequel to Space (I Believe In), from The Pixies Trompe Le Monde. Listen to Black's voice on those refrains - soul searing. I love everything about this and the album it's on.
**
After Stranger Things 3, K and I slipped back into episode two of Nicolas Winding Refn's bleak-as-all-holy-fuck Neo LA Noir, Too Old To Die Young. This show! It seems to me the second episode will be the firewall - anyone not in NWR will give up halfway through. Others will revel in the slow, contemplative nature of this hour-and-thirty-seven-minutes of a film maker drinking his setting and characters for tone and nuance. It's a fantastic piece of filmmaking and actually built up enough momentum that I had to force myself not to drift straight into the next episode, primarily because it was already past my bedtime.
Here's an interview with Refn; I'm leaving this here but not watching it until after we finish the series, just in case there are spoilers.
**
Ghost added a lyric video for Faith, my favorite track from last year's Prequelle record. I'm not usually into lyric videos, but this is pretty cool. Also, if the band's previous protocols are still in place, by my calculation we should be getting an EP from these guys any time now.
**
Playlist from 7/10:
Low - Trust
Tennis System - Shelf Life (Pre-release Single)
Tennis System - Pain EP
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - Up Your Alley
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance
David Bowie - Heroes
Drab Majesty - Careless
Judas Priest - Firepower
Johhny Marr - Call the Comet
Balthazar - Fever
Zonal - Eponymous (Pre-release Single)
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Godfodder
Frank Black and the Catholics - Pistolero
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor
**
Card of the day:
Paradigm shift. Not 100% on how this fits into my life at the moment; as usual, my inherent reaction is to read it as regarding my writing. Currently unable to mop up two things because of a hanging third. Does this say leave that third behind? Switch gears? Maybe, but an open loop is an open loop, especially when it comes to 'solving' something you've invested a lot of time and creative energy into.
The Body is clearly the Brian Michael Bendis of bands, as they are more prolific than anyone I've encountered maybe ever. The new album - which is another collaboration with Uniform (see last year's Mental Wounds Not Healing) - is titled Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back and is available for pre-order from Sacred Bones HERE.
**
New episode of The Horror Vision is up! Topics of discussion include but are not limited to Godzilla: King of Monsters, The Perfection, The Dark Backward, and our movie of the week, Josh Lobo's I Trapped the Devil! Check it out:
K and I watched the first episode of Nicolas Winding Refn's Too Old To Die Young last night. Wow. I've been excited for this for a while, not only because it's Refn doing long form, but Criminal scribe Ed Brubaker is involved with the writing! What a collaboration, eh? Anyway, the first episode is eerie as hell in a completely down to Earth, Neo Noir way, which was exactly what I'd hoped for this series. Can't wait to dive back in!
Balance in a time of crisis. Unexpected Symmetry. Hmm... I'm reading this more about the little swords at the top and bottom, the small details you can overlook when focused on the major plot points.
I've been listening to Tricky's Maxinquaye a lot of late. An amazingly album built around uncomfortable atmosphere, Maxinquaye remains timeless. Those aberrant sonic elements that comprise many of the tracks will, I think, always feel fresh and groundbreaking. No one does shit like this except Tom Waits, and that's just a different thing.
**
I had a long flight yesterday. An hour and fifteen to San Jose, where I arrived at 5:00 PM and had until 7:55 PM before my connecting flight to Spokane. No problem. Seriously, some people would hate this, but I looked at it as time to write. Hot to trot on Ciazarn, I found an unbelievable business room in the San Jose Airport - with desks and everything - and I put up shop, adding bullet points to my outline and trying to figure this story out. In this regard, I ended up researching everything from the Dustbowl of the 1930s and what States it affected most, to the evolution of the Railroads up until and including the landmark Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company court decision of 1886 where the U.S. Supreme Court first ruled a corporation has the rights of personhood. This is, by the way, one of the most detrimental moments in Earth's history, if you ask me, because it makes corporations the dominant species on the planet. But I digress. A lot of these events and ideas may not explicitly occur in Ciazarn, but all of them most definitely inform its world. I think I have bigger plans for this project than I first thought, which is cool.
**
Well, FINALLY. Can't wait for June 14th:
Being that this is not only Nicolas Winding Refn, but Ed Brubaker also worked on it - and John Hawkes - I am so in.
Playlist from 4/07:
Boards of Canada - Campfire Headphase
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Boards of Canada -
Black Queen - Infinite Games
Ben Frost - By the Throat
Belong - October Language
Barrie - Canyons (single)
Tricky - Maxinquaye
No card today. Running late walking to this week's gig.
Finally watched this last night and it might just be my movie of 2016. Beautiful is an understatement; the visuals are equally hallucinatory, mesmerizing, magnificent and scandalous. And the score - once again Mr. Cliff Martinez hits it out of the park when pairing sounds to Mr. Refn's images. I will own this eventually, and I will order it in the equally mesmerizing double vinyl set on the Milan Records website.
The Neon Demon only strengths my resolve that Nicolas Winding Refn, along with Fede Alvarez and Denis Villeneuve, is at the top of my "modern directors I would follow to hell" list.
Wow. Really cool - new track from the forthcoming record Today, due out on Last Gang Recordsin 2014 (which is right around the freakin' corner!). If you don't recognize the name of the band you might the sound - they were featured on the soundtrack to Nicolas Winding Refn's brilliant Neo- Noir Drive two years ago or so. I had forgotten about this band after falling in love with that film and the music in it, and while this has reminded me to seek them out it has also made me slightly suspicious as Innocence is A LOT like the track A Real Hero track w/ College from the Drive Soundtrack.
When we went to see Drive two years or so ago it was at my friend Shailesh's recommendation. Shailesh knew I would skip it if he didn't say something. Turns out my wife and I loved it. As we left the theatre that night I kept saying, "Nicolas Winding Refn - where have I heard that name before?" I imdb'd him and realized he was responsible for the film Bronson, which I'd seen a year and some change previously and fallen for so hard that I immediately went out and tried to buy a copy of the DVD the day after the viewing. It'd been a while since a movie like that had come along at that time.
