Showing posts with label Tilman Singer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tilman Singer. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2024

Simon Waskow - Soft Array


From Simon Waskow's incredible score for Tilman Singer's Luz. I love this film, and a lot of that love comes from the score (not to diminish the film in any way; I feel about this the way I do M83's score for Knife + Heart - they are intertwined perfectly).  



Watch:

K and I hit the local theatre's 7:20 PM screening of Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus last night.


This is everything you want from an Alien film. There's just the right amount of fan service, I think, and that's refreshing after Deadpool Loves Wolverine,  which I enjoyed, but which was 90% fan service. But of course, Fede Alvarez was going to know how to make an incredible Alien film - he already proved his ability to pick up an iconic franchise with 2013's Evil Dead.

I don't want to say too much, but I will say the trailers gave nothing away on this one, and that makes me super happy. That said, I'm still only posting that first teaser. The less you see, the better. The tone and story of Romulus advance the world of "The Company" in a way that I very much appreciated, and a lot of the opening chapter's set designs remind me of that wonderful Metal Hulant Sci-Fi from the 70s/80s.




Read:

Having finished Alan Moore's Swamp Thing last weekend, I began Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Nearing the end of the first collected volume, Preludes and Nocturnes, I'm reminded how much I absolutely love this book. The John Dee chapters are my favorites, and "24 Hours" stands as a watershed moment in my comic book reading life. 


I can still vividly remember the way this book made me feel the first time I read it, and that's rare (although not rare for 80s/90s Vertigo comics). Storywise, Dream doesn't even enter the picture until the last page or so, and that time spent away, watching a demented man amuse himself with the lives of others, as careless as if he were throwing dice, it just sunk in and took root. There is real Horror here, and it's steeped in a glorious 80s Post Punk flavor that just kicked open all kinds of new doors for me at the time I read it in High School, circa... 92 or 93, I think.

Onward to my favorite collected edition - The Doll's House, which will be the first volume that draws from Moore's Swamp Thing by incorporating a transmogrified Matthew Cable as Matthew the Raven and the references to Moore's The Boogeyman Killer. I'm hoping as I read these I might find some other references I'm not familiar with. 




Playlist:

Primus - Antipop
QOTSA - Era Vulgaris B-Sides/Lullabies to Paralyze Vinyl Exclusives
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Jon Cleary - Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen
Danzig - Danzig 4
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II
Matt Cameron - Gory Scorch Cretins
Melvins - (A) Senile Animal
Primus - Green Gnaugahyde




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm's Kickstarter for the Hand of Doom Tarot Art Book is up for four more days. Check it out HERE.


• Ace of Swords
• Two of Pentacles
• Queen of Pentacles

A breakthrough of intellect leads to collaboration and a nurturing future endeavor. Interesting... at least with Vol. 4 published, I can stop reading all of these are pertaining to finishing that book.

Friday, August 9, 2024

Azim Ali - Live at Paste Studio NYC live from The Manhattan Center

 

Full confession - I am not familiar with Azam Ali's music at all. My good friend Dennis sent me this video a few weeks back and it just got lost in the shuffle of the day-to-day. I realized my negligence this morning and fired "Tender Violet" up and was pretty much completely blown away.

Link to the full youtube video in the playlist below. 
 


Watch:

Last night K and I went to see Tilman Singer's new film, Cuckoo.


The night before, I finally watched Singer's first film, 2018's Luz. Having now seen both in tight succession, I can say I will follow this man wherever he goes from here out.

There's definitely something about Singer's work that gives me a hint of Nicolas Winding Refn, but it's just a hint, a sort of Hauntology flavor that doesn't overpower everything else like the current crop of films I would describe using the same reference does. In Singer's work, there's just as much classic Horror and, after seeing Cuckoo I have to say it, 80s action mixed in. What that more subtle predilection for hazy, contemplative tempos and outdated locations/set design does for the film is anchor the story and characters in a recognizable, relatable world, even as the plot and FX push the film into some super bizarre territory. And Cuckoo is bizarre, make no mistake about it. Luz is, too, but in a much smaller way. Cuckoo is, well, a bit cuckoo.

Singer brings along several repeat collaborators, chief among them Production Designer Dario Mendez Acosta, Cinematographer Paul Faltz, and composer Simon Waskow. Waskow's work, in particular, has begun to greatly interest me; the Luz score is something to behold and has made it into regular, daily rotation. Cuckoo's score will no doubt follow.




NCBD Addendum:

I wasn't expecting to pick up the first issue of Spider-Man: Black Suit and Blood this past week, but dammit do I love Black Suit Spidey, so yeah, I did. 


I've enjoyed all of the Marvel "Black, White and Blood" books I've picked up since they started the series a few years back, and especially when I saw J. M. Dematteis' name on this one, I just couldn't pass it up. There are four stories included of varying lengths. Here's what I thought of each.

1) Losing Face - J.M. DeMatteis/Elena Casagrande
    A fantastic story that spins off of a minor event at the beginning of DeMatteis' seminal Spider-Man Story Kraven's Last Hunt, which admittedly is getting a bit saturated with continuity spin-offs and references of late, however, this was tight and really sweet. 


2) Inside the House - Alyssa Wong/Fran Galán
    A quick little "It's coming from inside the house" type story set during the end of Peter's relationship with the symbiote. Very cool. 


3) Dysmorphia - Dustin Nguyen
    Very short but effective exploration of the inherent body horror in the human/symbiote bonding.


4) Fade to Black - J. Michael Straczynski/Sumit Kumar/Craig Yeung/Dono Sánchez-Almara
    I know JMS has one of the historic runs with Spidey, but I've never read any of it, so I wasn't sure how this would play out for me. Happy to report, I really dug it. A kind of current continuity reassessment of Peter's time with the b


Overall, a great issue that has me pulling out my Spidey short box to dig back into some old Black Suit issues. Can't wait for issue two on September 11!




Playlist:

Glen Danzig - Black Aria
Vitriol - Eponymous
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Danzig - Thrall/Demonsweat Live
Danzig - Danzig 4
Earth - Primitive and Deadly
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Deftones - Ohms
Jerry Cantrell - Villified (pre-release single)
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
QOTSA - Villains
QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abbatoir Blues
Deftones - Koi No Yokan




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm's Kickstarter for the Hand of Doom Tarot Art Book is up. Check it out HERE.


• Two of Wands
• Four of Cups
• Five of Wands

Two of Wands tends to suggest avoiding a single-minded Willful push. In other words, there may be more ways to get what you want than the one you're focusing on. Four of Cups in emotional stability, so moving from middle to left I'm getting a "Don't make decisions based on emotion." The five of Wands, then, is a break in emotional stability. This shores up the idea that a big, premeditated decision made in an overly emotional state can be as destructive as not making a decision. More sometimes. Now, what this applies to in my own life at the moment... nope. Never mind. It's work. Loud and clear.

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

The Acid Machine !


Whoah. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon Brazilian Stoner/Doom/Desert Metal band The Acid Machine two days ago, but hot dam! These guys kick some serious ass! New album Mushrooms is out April 12th. You can listen to/support the band at their Bandcamp HERE or by clicking the widget above. 




NCBD:

Another short week on the Pull. Not a bad thing. Here we go:


The third issue of The One Hand. I'm already hooked on this and sister title The Six Fingers; I really enjoy the world Ram V and Dan Watters have built here. 


I'm planning a re-read of Void Rivals sometime soon, so I don't have a lot to say about this one other than I'm still loving this series. That cover is classic 80s SciFi/Fantasy comics, too!


Even though I don't have a bad thing to say about Gerry Duggan's X-Men book, I'm honestly no longer enjoying seeing any X-Book come up on my list. I just can't wait for this Fall of X to be over, so it can do its next thing, and I can leave that alone.




Watch:

From what I saw of this trailer, Cuckoo looks insane in the best possible way.


There is a moment in this that gave me some of the best chills I've had in some time. Very much looking forward. Writer/Director Tilman Singer's previous film Luz gets some great accolades, yet somehow I've yet to watch it. Gonna have to fix that soon. 



Playlist:

The Cure - Disintegration
Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
Chasms - On The Legs of Love Purified
Brown Whörnet - Stroke the Apechild
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk version/Vinyl)
Zombi - Direct Inject
Iron Monkey - Spleen & Goad (pre-release singles)
Spotlights - Seance EP
Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here
Rollins Band - The End of Silence




Card:

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


• Five of Swords
• Four of Pentacles
• IV: The Emperor

Numerically speaking, this is one Five and Two Fours, which suggests Stabilization after Damage. Taking the Suites/Faces into account, that's Earthly structure kicking back in after a hit to the Intellect, and we see that structure is a direct draw from the paradigms or "rules" that govern all life. 

The news of Ed Piskor's death really messed me up for the last two days. I know it seems weird that someone I don't know personally could have that effect on me, but it did. I think part of that came from seeing how the bridge away from his ultimate choice disappeared behind him. There's no way to say whether he did what he was accused of, and now, there never will be. This entire episode sent me into a bit of existential crisis because it further proves what I am having a very difficult time acclimating into my own operating system - the Internet is just not a good thing for human beings and human society as a whole. There's seemingly no way to turn back now, but faaauuuuhhhccckkkk - we're already being ground beneath the heel of a 'Robot Overlord;' look no further than the interface before you. 

The cards are a welcome reminder to look past this modern overlay, at the fundamentals of being "human." Seek a stabilizing path forward with that. Easier said than done, but whatever. It's that or give up, which I don't think I have it in me to ever do.