Month: June 2024

i’ll give you something to cry about

escapatoria

Time to get this over with before it becomes overwhelming. At the moment I’m feeling depleted, hence that wording, and presently wishing I could find entertainment that was engaging that didn’t trigger some negative emotional state. Alas. Here we are. This is all the new stuff I’ve watched since I signed my lease.

love lies bleeding
not sure if it’s recognizing similarity or a crush on ks here, but vampire movies aside, i’m interested in what she has going. this felt like a fairly grounded crime-romance thing at first, but went to the weird place. i’m not sure if i liked it or not, but it was watchable and interesting.

late night with the devil
horror about a 70s late night tv show on halloween night gone awry. this one felt like a take on ghost watch, 15ish years earlier. i appreciated how it was otherwise pretty novel, fresh, and memorable.

argylle
it has a 5.7 on imdb at present, so you can imagine. it had an interesting storytelling perspective and felt sleek but hero movies were getting old 20 years ago and making it a nervous lady doesn’t make that basic plot any more interesting.

dashcam (news guy murder story)
i fucked up and got the wrong dashcam movie. this seemed to be a covid-made movie. it centers on a guy in his room looking at pre-air news footage where he discovers some proverbial bad news he wasn’t supposed to see. proceed the oh noes they’re gonna git me.

dashcam (girl goes to england)
also a covid-made movie, but this time featuring an extremely arrogant unlikable woman who wanders across the globe to spread her brain worms only to learn disease was already waiting for her. there was a spark of a good idea here, but it started boring me after a while.

nefarious
guy on death row thinks he’s a demon and has an involved long conversation with another guy who has the ability to pardon him if he thinks demon boy is insane. it’s a mostly shot in one room focused on their conversation. i don’t know how these single setting movies end up being more interesting than sleek action movies, but here we are. if this was set in the past and had a little more movie glitter to it, it would probably be better known.

hatching
narcissistic mom tries to mold perfect daughter. daughter takes her sads out on a strange creature she finds. this is fucking weird and was all kinds of lovely for that reason. glad nu daddy stood up for himself but i honestly thought he was going to stick around.

flash gordon
i caught this on the actual television, with commercials and everything, but because it’s been in the back of my mind for so long, i endured, and that meant a lot of zoning out. i remember why young me tried not to watch movies on tv now. anyway, this was super corny for modern standards and reminded me a LOT of star trek voyager where paris keeps going to fantasize about saving the world, which may have been intentional. otherwise it was a flashy movie, pun not intended when i started typing that word but i’m keeping it.

abigail
kid actors are the true horror. it had interesting elements but the transparent reference (and even saying it in the movie!) to the story and then there were none quickly narrowed down how the movie was going to go. the vibe/energy/tone was brighter than i expected, which likely makes it more fun for folks who don’t like fucked up horror and/or violence so much. it was interesting but i got tired of it before the end.

tarot
holy fucking shit jesus, no. astrology and tarot are two entirely different forms of divination and the cross-breeding here to create a streamlined story was so frustrating. on top of that, it was a bad horror movie.

the first omen
“here’s another hint, hope it isn’t too obvious so you don’t know where this movie is going to go HINT HINT HINT”. it wasn’t the worst movie ever – there are far worse nun, demon/devil, evil children movies – but i am not a fan of bad narrator shit. i don’t recall a single thing about the omen but i doubt it needs watched before this.

exhuma
a group forms to cleanse a grave site of its crappy energy to save a rich family from turmoil. turns out they were not prepared for what was actually in the ground. this is horror but it has some fantasy elements for someone who has no frame of reference for the asian culture stuff going on here. think european troll movies.

godzilla minus one
i enjoyed the cute pointing reference, and it’s a flashy movie with a smidgen of depth besides being a monster movie, but it was overrated. it’s fine. you’ve probably seen it already and don’t need my words about it.

the unbearable lightness of being
i probably should have done something else with my time, what with how i know lady tends to “go there” with the dark emotional shit in movies she stars in. additionally i put visuals in my head i didn’t want, and i’m not talking about all of the naked people. that walking-the-line gray rape scene ruined my day.

i saw the tv glow
i feel like the writer/director here has yet to reach their peak, that something really great is just around the corner, though we may be in for a ride through some weird tunnel of spooky chocolate river to get there. this was slow but pretty interesting, modern, fresh. hey look, it’s king woman.

am i ok
comedy about a lady who figures she’s probably gay and decides to check. not sure how i wouldn’t have guessed that was its plot but somehow i managed to go into this blind. i was in a bad mood and needed simple but… the hell with the ending?!

the keep 1983
this started with some pretty great atmosphere that reminded me of early 80s fantasy movies. very open world full of possibilities and secrets, with a sprinkling of “i should play skyrim” or even “when’s the last time i watched stargate?”. or deep space nine, with the cardassian necks. the second half of the movie, while they tried, didn’t hit the same. the actor had a little pre-LOTR moment, at least: “you shall not pass, vampire!”

the worst person in the world
a day-ruining dramatic romance. i didn’t need these feelings this day. in a sense i’m glad i put off watching it because i wasn’t feeling up to heavy emotional movies when it came out, but the timing of this was terrible.

After that I joked I should just watch Apocalypse Now. I actually did start to watch Apocalypse Now, but the early violence towards the innocent then remembering a big scene to come made me nope out. Not today, Satan. I spent the extra hour or so of my life researching books to read instead. Pluto is closing in on square my Moon again so of course I made another emotionally regressive choice there, but I’m not sure anything is going to let me escape free. Can we just not?

Best Music of 2024… So Far

escapatoria

How about a mid-year music update? And hell, while we’re at it, let’s just free advertise my personal best of the year so far. It’ll certainly help when I’m thinking of my favorites of 2024 in December.

I’ve been preoccupied and enjoying both environmental and sonic silence, so I haven’t heard as much new music as I’d generally like. Mean-to and will-do-eventually might come to fruition, might not, we’ll see… but here’s what I’ve heard more than a song or two from and found quality from 2024 so far.

The best of the best start-to-finish ALBUM albums, go on a ride:
Slift – Ilion
Iota – Pentasomnia
Haunted Plasma – I

Why not Iota? I’ve only been a fan since hearing “Shit Luck” going on 20 years ago now. At first I was like, well, this just sounds a lot like a heavier Dwellers, but then I remembered I like Dwellers, too, and keep returning. You might say I’m a returner… Anyway, the spacey heavy here is (chef’s kiss) and they made a cohesive album from it. Meanwhile, Slift took me on a journey. I’m now going to connect their music not only to memories of Myst (the song “Confluence” has Myst soundtrack vibes) but a bunch of life shit I don’t feel comfortable discussing on the internet today. Slift has gotten enough general praise in recent history that if you were going to hear them by now, you probably have, but I didn’t find their prior music as cohesively solid as this, so take this as your recommendation if you didn’t find their prior music worked for you. Haunted Plasma is a band I only knew of by association with other bands and their Internet Roadburn performance, with no evidence of record of said performance for me to chew on since. How can I trust a mid-pandemic brain to tell me what’s quality outside of that very moment? Turns out it was an insta-love thing after all. They’ve got ~aesthetic~ down, if pre-apocalypse sci-fi if-T2-was-a-vampire aesthetic. brb going to go generate some AI images because John Connor is dead in this timeline.

Yes please may I have some:
Allie X – Girl With No Face
High on Fire – Cometh the Storm
Bongripper – Empty

Bongripper was initially in the former category but I remembered how much mood and setting plays a part in “hearing” their music and knocked them down. It’s certainly meant to be digested as a whole album, but if you’re not prepared for 45 minutes of slow (black metal spasm on “Empty” aside), and I am often not, it doesn’t hit the same. At least they do what they do well. Is there anything for me to say about High on Fire that anyone who sees that name doesn’t already know for themselves? The album is a soul-embracing, heavy refresh in some ways, a speedy gonzales hey-‘member-Motorhead attack on the senses in others, taking me back to the first time I ever heard the band right when Death Is This Communion came out. That was goddamn 17 years ago?! Well long live daddy doom, then. Allie X is new to me this year, and certainly I was sleeping on her as the song suggests, but the album has song-by-song revealed itself as a favorite. Who knew my Depeche Mode-loving ass would appreciate some 80s-inspired gothic synth-pop? The videos (including the spinning) have been sehr wonderbar. More weird pls.

OK? OK? OK? OK! (the less digested, less heard, or singles collections):
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft
Black Pyramid – The Paths of Time Are Vast
Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight
Dua Lipa – Radical Optimism
Heavy Temple – Garden of Heathens
Idles – Tangk
Justice – Hyperdrama
Kim Gordon – The Collective
Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol – Big Dumb Riffs
St. Vincent – All Born Screaming
Ufomammut – Hidden
Whores – War
Zombi – Direct Inject

Much of these I’ve heard part of and enjoyed but didn’t like the whole thing. Others are generally favorites who haven’t been fully digested yet. Idles, for my taste, is half absolutely fucking fantastic. Justice led with some amazing songs then fell off a cliff for my musical preferences these days. Billie Eilish’s “Chihiro” is a current favorite song this past week or two but the album largely feels foreign to my ilk. I need more time with Ufomammut… but don’t we all.

If you’re counting, that’s 20 so far. Here’s a few more that either didn’t release this year or aren’t albums.

Not albums:
Conan – DIY Series, Issue 1
A Perfect Circle/Puscifer/Primus split

Gosh, an old Tool fan with an old APC username likes the 60 split, huh? Who’d a thunk. On the flip side, gosh, an aggressive doom fan likes Conan? Gee whiz, tell me less. If you know me at all, these were easy to guess additions to my listening habits. Both have at least one good song!

Not from this year but recent and OMFG:
Frankie and The Witch Fingers – Data Doom
Chappell Roan – The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess

Holy bah-geezus with the Chappell Roan this year. Seems like a whole subset of the population has gone stupid for her/them. If you’re a lady, a member of the rainbow spectrum, into pop music you can sing and dance and cry and play dress-up to… you should hear this. That Olivia Rodrigo tour was a good match. Back to what you straight men and straight nerds are here for: Frankie et al has made something just short of stoner rock for jazz fans. It’s so good and it pisses me off I didn’t hear it last year so I could throw it on some imaginary who-gives-a-shit winners list for 2023. I really need to hear their older music already.

And I’m presently looking forward to:
Fu Manchu
REZN
SUMAC
Greenleaf
Orange Goblin
Oranssi Pazuzu
Anciients
Ils

Omigawd new Anciients is coming! I already have.

If it’s not here, I haven’t heard it… or haven’t heard it enough to care. Isn’t it great I stopped listening to King Buffalo 24/7, finally? Shit I just triggered myself. MOAR SUNSETS! Hilariously, today was King Buffalo t-shirt day, so it’s not like there’s been any change in the weather at all.