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, […]
review
Posted inArts & Culture
The Campaign
After helming two fact-based political dramas for HBO in Recount and Game Change, director Jay Roach must have found the opportunity to poke fun at the circus irresistible. I’m glad he did. In North Carolina’s 14th congressional district, the four-time incumbent is Cam Brady (Will Ferrell, Casa de Mi Padre), a shoo-in for a fifth […]
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Safety Not Guaranteed
Feature-debuting director Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed marks the rarest of indie comedies — the speculative kind — as Jeff, a cocky magazine writer (Jake Johnson, TV’s New Girl) in Seattle, relies on his intern, Darius (Aubrey Plaza, TV’s Parks and Recreation), to use her feminine wiles to get close to the lonely grocery clerk/would-be […]
Posted inMusic
The Man with the Iron Fists — Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
The compilation is packed with hip-hop heavyweights like Kanye West, Pusha T, Talib Kweli and Wiz Khalifa. Also making appearances are the remainder of the Wu-Tang Clan, R&B singers Corinne Bailey Rae and Mable John, and indie rock band The Black Keys. First things first: You can’t really go wrong with Wu-Tang, whether it’s a […]
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The Pact
Following the death of her mother, an independent-minded waitress named Annie (Caity Lotz, TV’s Death Valley) returns with dogged reluctance to her childhood home — and that’s before her sister (Agnes Bruckner, Kill Theory) and friend (Kathleen Rose Perkins, TV’s Episodes) have vanished there. As made perfectly clear by the cover art, a malevolent force […]
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Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch / Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers / Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
And if there weren’t, why do the sequels keep being re-released? The first four recently were — yet again, but with valid reason to upgrade and/or double-dip. Modest theatrical hits in 1988 and 1989, respectively, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers make Blu-ray debuts courtesy of […]
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The Sorcerers
Explains the Monserrats to a complete stranger (Ian Ogilvy, TV’s Return of the Saint) they’ve secured in what looks like an electric chair, the couple has devised a scientific system offering “complete abandonment with no thought of remorse … intoxication with no hangover, ecstasy with no consequence.” (To the viewer, this means a sequence of […]
Posted inMusic
Wanda Jackson — Unfinished Business
Here she builds on the success of last year’s The Party Ain’t Over, her collaboration with Jack White, but unlike that effort, this album is raw, spare and constructed to showcase the Oklahoma-born-and-bred Jackson’s prodigious gifts. Ample credit goes to Justin Townes Earle, who produced this 10-song collection of blues, country, gospel and soul covers. […]
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‘Shout’ it out loud
Although we live in Oklahoma — Native America, as the license plates read — many people still believe the popular cinematic images of American Indians as tepee-dwelling folk clad in ceremonial headdresses and quick to dispense ancient wisdom while passing a peace pipe. It’s a stereotype that Lawton-born Kiowa/Choctaw screenwriter Steven Judd, co-writer of the […]
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‘E.CO’ friendly
Contemporary art meets environmental awareness in E.CO, a photography exhibit that serves as the perfect showcase for [Artspace] at Untitled, according to Executive Director Jon Burris. “The reason we were interested in this particular show was that it fit our mission. We are an environment designed to stimulate creative thought and new ideas about contemporary […]