When you are having this much fun, who needs words? That must have been the thought process behind And So I Watch You from Afar, the instrumental rock act from Belfast in Northern Ireland. Armed with cheeky ’80s metal hooks sandwiched between spacious post-rock pillars, the four-piece outfit sounds like Dan Deacon covering Explosions in […]
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Groomed for success
Brooklyn-by-way-of-Oklahoma indie outfit Grooms is just over a month removed from releasing Infinity Caller, its best album to date. It’s a record that almost didn’t happen at all, though. “We weren’t sure if we were going to finish it, really. Once we did finish it, we weren’t really sure whether to try and put it out at […]
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X-Ray / Schizoid
The former, perhaps better-known as Hospital Massacre, comes from the age where you not only could smoke inside a medical center, but could rest a nationwide release on the shoulders of a Playboy personality — in this case, Barbi Benton. She plays Susan, a beautiful divorcée who goes to the hospital to hear her results […]
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The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh
Two more ingenious shorts have followed, and now, finally, Gudiño’s first stab at a feature with The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh. The budget remains small, while the creeps have increased exponentially. Do not watch it while alone and in the dark. Narrated by grand ol’ Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement), the newly departed woman […]
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Police Story / Police Story 2
It’s the next one that does. Fast-forward at least a decade later. In college, a friend showed me a VHS tape of an episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a British documentary miniseries. Chan was that ep’s subject, and clips from 1985’s Police Story — and maybe even 1988’s Police Story 2, if memory […]
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The Big Boss / Fist of Fury / The Way of the Dragon / Game of Death
The first two, I forever have confused and will continue to confuse with one another. Both are directed by Lo Wei and boast cartoonish credit sequences. But only one includes flying dogs, and that’s The Big Boss (also known as Fists of Fury, plural, to further complicate things). That film has him uncovering a murderous […]
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The Protector / Crime Story
Glickenhaus’ The Protector casts Chan in one of the Asian superstar’s three mid-’80s, ill-fated attempts at conquering American cinema, with the other two being The Big Brawl and The Cannonball Run. While this 1985 film is nowhere near the greatness of the product Chan churned out back home, it’s worth the while. It’s also now […]
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Searching for Sugar Man
Take, for example, Searching for Sugar Man. Currently up for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award and new to DVD, the doc introduces us to the saga of the one-named Rodriguez, a criminally unknown singer-songwriter from the early 1970s whose career sank into obscurity in his native United States, but whose influence proved monumental in, […]
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Silent Night / Silent Night, Deadly Night / Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II
In her third horror remake within as many years, Jaime King (My Bloody Valentine 3D, Mother’s Day) stars as Aubrey Bradimore, a crossword-loving sheriff’s deputy forced to work on Christmas Eve — in particular, the annual Santa parade. She lives in a dreary small town where nothing really happens, but she’s in luck: There’s a […]
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House of Dark Shadows / Night of Dark Shadows
Both directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis (Dead of Night), the pair of flicks conveniently has arrived in long-overdue DVD and Blu-ray releases from Warner Home Video. Both also benefit in the production value inherent of theatrical releases, which the live, shot-on-video soap often severely lacked. It took me a while to realize this, […]