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Supermarkt (BLU)
1974 German film from Roland Klick, director of cult classic Deadlock (features a Can score). A classic juvenile delinquent film set in a gritty 70s Hamburg. Highly recommended if that's your thing. Now they just need to release Bübchen, his killer little kid movie.
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Yes, Madam! / Lady Reporter (aka The Blonde Fury) (BLU)
2 Cynthia Rothrock Hong Kong action films available on Blu-ray for the first time. I love HK action films (and comedies) and these are 2 great examples. Chock full of amazing stunts and fights. Yes, Madam! co-stars Michelle Yeoh.
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Fallen Leaves (BLU)
I am a huge fan of Aki Kaurismaki so any new film of his is automatically a big deal to me. With this one he goes back to the same extra stripped down plot as earlier films such as Shadows in Paradise and Drifting Clouds. I love that Aki continues to make films about people in the lowest rungs of the working class, something that seems oddly missing from most movies these days. I know film is escapist, but do we really need to see more movies where we are supposed to feel bad for someone living in a 5 bedroom house in the suburbs? I love Aki's visual style and the pacing and dialogue cadence he employs. There is no extraneous dialogue or emotion yet you feel just as deeply for these characters.
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Stopmotion (BLU)
A horror film about a gal working on a stopmotion animated movie. Family trauma and mental illness are explored using the little characters made of morticians wax and carrion. Loved the vibe and look of this. The animated elements are so damned creepy.
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Huesera: The Bone Woman (BLU)
This is one of the hippest Mexican films I've seen. Chock full of cool music and a wild underground post-punkish concert scene.
The film revolves around a young woman who finds herself pregnant and is maybe having second thoughts which manifest in extreme anxiety and parnoia as we delve deeper and deeper into folk and body horror territory. I can't imagine watching this as a young woman who is facing societal and familial pressures to have children. Bleak and beautifully shot and a great performance from the newcomer lead actress.
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Film Releases I am excited about but still haven't seen: (BLU)
I embarrassingly have way too many new releases on my watch list that I haven't gotten to. (Too many video games and Chucky movies/shows)
I am excited about these releases. Maybe they suck, but I kind of doubt it.
"Beijing Watermelon": 80s Japanese drama from the director of Hausu.
"Beauty of Beauties": 1965 Taiwanese epic in the vein of Kurosawa's Ran. Looks as beautiful as the name implies.
"Bounty Hunter Trilogy": Lone Wolf (and Cub) himself Tomisaburō Wakayama
stars in these 3 spy/assassin flicks from the late 60s and early 70s. I had never heard of these and they sound really fun.
"Bushman": 1971 An immigrant from Nigeria comes to San Francisco and reflects tribal, personal, and racial frictions during the tumultuous sixties. The actual actor was deported before the filming was completed and my understanding is it takes a documentary turn when this happens. Sounds fascinating and an almost unknown San Francisco shot film!
"The Shape of Night": 60s Japanese film that very much looks akin to "In The Mood For Love" (a personal favorite). Can't wait to check this out. Super colorful!
"Shinobi Trilogy": 3 60s Japanese ninja films! Can't go wrong... I assume.
"World War III": a homeless day laborer in Iran ends up cast in a Holocaust film. Things go very wrong. I've heard comparisons to the Chinese film A Touch of Sin and the Korean film Burning... both excellent. We don't get enough Middle Eastern films released in America, so it's worth checking out.
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Rust in Peace, South of heaven, Ride the lightning, Arise, living in darkness, Revenge, Deathalbum 1&2, holiday at lake bodom 15 years wasted youth (LP)
Megadeth, Slayer, Metallica,
Seven Swans (20th Anniversary Edition) (LP)
Sufjan Stevens
Coming hot off of the success off of “ILLINOISE,” the Broadway adaptation of his album “Come On Feel The Illinoise” from 2005, Steven has put out a 20-year anniversary revisitation of “Seven Swans,” Illinois’s predecessor and arguably where Stevens began to put his style down into cement. His fourth studio album, the original pressing of “Seven Swans” is poetic, obsessively biblical, literary, and often nonsensical in its lyrics; “Abraham” and “The Transfiguration” recount bible stories while “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” takes its name from the famous Flannery O’Connor story. Stevens’ songs are an intricate puzzle of references and spirituality (both universal and personal to him). Up until the release of his latest album “Javelin” which he dedicated to his partner Evans Richardson who had recently passed, Stevens’ songs were infused with a quiet queerness which both intoxicated and infuriated listeners. Like the track “Size Too Small” which refers to the narrator’s tuxedo while being the best man at your best friend (and ex-lover’s?) wedding.
The 20th anniversary reissue includes two bonus tracks not on the original album, “I Went Dancing With My Sister” and “Waste What Your Kids Won’t Have,” two quiet and genuflecting songs which feel quintessentially Sufjan.
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I Saw the TV Glow (Original Soundtrack) (LP)
Dir. Jane Schoenberg, Various
Dreamy and utterly spectral, the artists on the “I Saw The TV Glow” soundtrack had an almost impossible task: to make music that matched a film which was at once nostalgic and futuristic, full of choppy discordance while still lulling listeners into the spell of the Pink Opaque along with its main characters.
The film pulls off the lost 90s-teen-movie-style art of having a real-life band perform their songs in the soundtrack in a scene in the movie, like Letters to Cleo in “Ten Things I Hate About You” or the Offspring in”Idle Hands.” In director Jane Schoenberg’s take, indie darlings Sloppy Jane and Phoebe Bridgers perform an original song from the soundtrack at an otherworldly, edge-of-town dive bar, serenading the characters of the film: “I think I was born bored; I think I was born blue; I think I was born wanting more; I think I was born already missing you”
Mostly comprised of original tracks, the soundtrack also includes a cover of the Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” which is pitch-shifted and put through a glitchy electronic filter which produces a version of a familiar favorite which just feels a little off in a deeply unsettling way, exactly what it seems like the movie is trying to achieve. With Florist, Bartees Strange, Caroline Polacheck, Jay Som, and Maria BC, the soundtrack is kind of an X-Men situation of indie powerhouse artists. It would have been nearly impossible to make a bad album.
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Umbilical (LP)
Thou
Thou is a juggernaut of heavy music, heavy riffs and heavy subject matter. Umbilical is an excellent album. I can fell the anger, the doom and gloom. The heat of living in Louisiana, all the unsanitary beer soaked cigarette perfumed music venues where kids are exorcising their own frustrations, fears and energy by standing, grinding and bumping their sweaty bodies against each other like sardines in a can. Thou is one of the rare bands that have never disappointed me, and this album is no different. I can find no filler, I can find no faults, this is one album that is close to perfection.
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Nell' Ora Blu (LP)
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats
The creativeness and imagination to put together a highly atmospheric soundtrack to a made up “forgotten”giallo film is very impressive. But what is just as impressive, is the music contained within the album. Being a fan of many thriller - horror - giallo types of films, the music is one hundred and ten percent on point. This is the type of album that sparks one imagination and escapism, that is desperately needed in todays world.
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G.o.a.t. (LP)
ACXDC
Antichrist Demoncore deliver the goods with G.O.A.T. This is a band with one hoof planted in all things hardcore and the other hoof in the realm of grind. G.O.A.T. is excellent at being heavy, fast and unpredictable. In a genre that is hard to tell one song from the next ACxDC does an excellent job of writing songs that not only push abrasive fastness but actual songs that you can differentiate.
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