LISTMANIA 2009: The Top 15 Songs of 2009

15. Daniel - Bat for Lashes
The talent for moody, arresting singles that gave the world "What's a Girl to Do" in 2008 clearly hasn't abandoned Natasha Khan. She can still work spooky magic with a drum machine.

14. Young Hearts Spark Fire - Japandroids
A bittersweet song about drinking your way through the anxieties of growing older. "I don't wanna worry about dying. I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls."

13. Standing on the Shore - Empire of the Sun
Riding the crest of Australia's current dance-pop wave (which also includes Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy), Empire of the Sun wields a sleek and breezy sound that seems custom-made for high-end marketing campaigns. (The band's "We Are the People" already soundtracks a recent Vizio ad.) But being slick isn't always a bad thing. Pour yourself a tequila sunrise and let the pre-party begin.

12. When I Grow Up - Fever Ray
Not to be confused with the 2008 Pussycat Dolls song of the same name, Fever Ray's first single is a slow-burn epic of mind-boggling Euro-art. The video, in which a refugee from the "Love Is a Battlefield" video makes a swimming pool boil, is something to behold.

11. Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
In 2009 YYYs made the big-room synth album no one knew they wanted to make, and "Zero" is the floor-filling A single, replete with prodigious use of the phrase "shake it."

The Best Live Shows of 2008Listmania Late Edition

2008 is already a distant memory, but I had so many concert shots from this year lying around it seemed a shame not to do a quick roundup of the year in live music. Since it's hard to rank this kind of thing (especially when music festivals are involved), this year I'm sticking with chronology. Plus it's a great way to chart the gradual development of my photography skills (by which I mean "incremental camera upgrades"). [Also, check out some highlights from the year in outdoor concerts.]



The Best Live Shows of 2008

1. Dead Meadow
Bowery Ballroom, Manhattan, Jan. 16

[flickr set]

LISTMANIA!The 20 Best Albums of 2008

(If you haven't already, be sure to check out the runners up and the best songs of 2008.)

2008 is over. Shall we raise some hosannahs to the sky? In all fairness, I shouldn't add to the chorus of bellyaching; economic collapse aside, I still have a job and my loved ones all seem to have their health. Besides, 2008 ended up being a pretty good year for music. The top end was especially loaded, with no less than three albums with legitimate claims to the top spot. Still, if the Highlander movies have taught us anything (and they have taught us so much), it's that there can be only one.

We've also learned that, just as 2006 was a great year to have "wolf" somewhere in your band's name (Wolfmother, Wolf Parade, etc.), 2008 was the year of "crystal," with fantastic albums from Crystal Castles, Crystal Antlers, and Crystal Stilts. And we've discovered that it was a terrific year to be Bradford Cox, who released not one, not two, but three albums (technically) that made the *bitter defeat* top 20. That's fairly impressive. Finally, we've learned that young, noisy bands playing in warehouses and backyards are still the most exciting game in town, from "elder statesmen" like Jay Reatard, Fucked Up, and No Age to up-and-comers like Ponytail, Vivian Girls, Crystal Antlers, Pissed Jeans, and Abe Vigoda.

LISTMANIA 2008The Best Albums of the Year: Honorable Mentions

Only twenty candidates made the cut this year, but there were quite a few excellent albums lingering at the edge of the bubble...like Syracuse on the NCAA tourney selection special. Some simply weren't top-twenty material, while others I could only hear briefly or piece-by-piece via free downloads, but all are worth picking up if you have the means (or a Limewire account).

I would also like to mention a few albums I wanted to listen to, but never got to hear in their entirety: TV on the Radio - Dear Science; Guns & Roses - Chinese Democracy; Boris - Smile; Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak; Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull; Spiritualized - Songs in A & E; and Hot Chip - Made in the Dark.

(Don't forget to check out the 40 Best Songs of 2008!)

Here, in no real order, are the Listmania 2008 runners-up.

LISTMANIA 2008The 40 Best Songs of the Year, Part 2

Fleet Foxes at Sasquatch!, May 24, 2008

Although time constraints have prevented me from providing any commentary thus far in the Listmania season, rest assured that the 2008 Album List will, in fact, contain actual written content. What can I say? As you all know, 2008 has been a total bitch. In the meantime, here are the top 20 songs of 2008.

Don't forget to check out nos. 40–21 first!

NOTE: All streaming audio has been removed due to bandwidth issues.

Songs 20–1

20. "Midnight Vignette" – Evangelicals

19. "L.E.S. Artistes" – Santogold

18. "Recent Bedroom" – Atlas Sound

17. "Where Do You Run To" – Vivian Girls

16. "Always Wanting More" – Jay Reatard

15. "We're Gonna Rise" – The Breeders


14. "Strange Times" – Black Keys

13. "No Future" – Titus Andronicus

12. "Daddy Needs a Drink" – Drive-By Truckers

11. "A Thousand Eyes" – Crystal Antlers

10. "Cold Son" – Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

9. "The Rip" – Portishead

8. "Knots" – Pete & The Pirates

7. "Nothing Ever Happened" – Deerhunter

6. "Electric Feel" – MGMT

5. "A Milli" – Lil Wayne

4. "Fools" – The Dodos

3. "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" – The Helio Sequence

2. "In the New Year" – The Walkmen

1. "White Winter Hymnal" – Fleet Foxes

LISTMANIA 2008The 40 Best Songs of the Year, Part 1

Islands at Siren Fest, July 19, 2008

After a long holiday layoff, *bitter defeat* returns with the first installment in the 2008 edition of LISTMANIA. We begin with the 40 best songs of the year, a list that says far more about the author than it does about the actual musical landscape. Of course if you try to cover the actual musical landscape, you end up with something like Rolling Stone's mind-bendingly schizophrenic Top 50 Albums of 2008 list, which includes No Age, the Jonas Brothers, Jackson Browne, B.B. King, Metallica, and (SHOCKER!!) Bob Dylan. No single publication should attempt to simultaneously appeal to me, my mom, and my (imaginary) 11-year-old sister. Still, there is something to be said for balance, and I'll be the first to admit that I failed once again to really delve into hip-hop and "urban" music this year. Lil Wayne aside (and let's be honest here... Lil Wayne is this year's Hip-Hop Artist that White Indie-Rock Fans Like), my tastes ran to white, blogger-approved, guitar-driven indie music.

Admissions of White Liberal Guilt aside, there remains the usual raft of disclaimers, qualifications, and guidelines that go into any respectable year-end list. To begin with, for the sake of variety I decided to limit entries to one per artist. In addition, although most of these songs were, in fact, released as singles, that is in no way a requirement; album tracks are just fine. Additionally, a couple of tthese may technically have been released as singles in 2007, but if I first heard the song in 2008 and it was included on an album released in 2008, then it bloody well counts. Conversely, if the song was on an album released in 2007, but was released as a single in 2008...then give me a fucking break. In other words, no Radiohead songs came out this year, so Radiohead has no place on any 2008 best-of lists.

Since this intro was so damned long-winded, I'll also forgo lengthy commentary on songs 40 through 21.

31 20-Something Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Horror Movie Halloween Countdown, Day 29

"Did you ever see that movie where the body is walking around carrying its own head, and then the head goes down on that babe?" -- Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham in American Beauty

With that line from 1999's Oscar winner for Best Picture, Re-Animator went from beloved cult film to dorm-room sensation overnight. (And as a result, "I want to borrow your copy of Re-Animator" became code for "I want to buy some pot.") It even surpassed The Big Lebowski on EW.com's The Cult 25 list.

Released in October 1985, Re-Animator bridged the gap between the Frankenstein/mad scientist genre and zombie movies. It also solidified the cult-horror transition from the bleak nihilism of the post-Watergate years (The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so forth) to the self-referential sardonicism of the Reagan years and beyond, from Evil Dead 2 to Feast.


The plot is simple: an unbalanced genius has discovered a "reagent" (which looks suspiciously like the stuff inside a Glow Stick) that brings dead tissue back to life. Unfortunately, everyone that gets reanimated appears stuck on a sliding scale between primal anger and diabolical evil, and West's continuing experiments gradually unleash a cavalcade of very pissed-off zombies in various states of articulacy (and decay). It all starts when he brings back his roommate Dan's cat, Rufus, in what may be the film's best sequence. Dan, who is ostensibly the film's "hero," had already discovered his former pet stiff as a board in West's mini-fridge, whereupon West made up an oh-so-plausible story about "the poor thing" getting its head stuck in a jar. Cut to the following night, as Dan finds West in the basement doing battle with an extremely agitated, formerly deceased kitty. They finally manage to re-kill old Rufus by throwing the poor little bastard against a cinderblock wall, but our boy Herbert is just getting started: he then re-reanimates the cat, by way of demonstration ("Don't expect it to tango, it has a broken back"). The entire sequence (which comes, mind you, about 15 minutes into the movie) is a fitting preamble for what's to come: a perfect mix of gore, scares, and pitch-black gallows humor. It also tells you all you need to know about Herbert West: the good doctor is batshit insane.

When West's nemesis, Dr. Hill, attempts to steal the secrets of reanimation, West has no choice but to dispatch him by first clobbering and then decapitating him with the blade of a shovel. Face it, you would do the same in his position. Naturally, West gives the head a shot of Glow Stick filling, but he fails to anticipate Dr. Hill's ability to command his own headless body. Dr. Hill then proceeds, head in hand, to unleash an army of crazed zombies—and to kidnap and, yes, orally molest Dan's hapless girlfriend Megan (whose father, the dean of the medical school, has already been turned into a lobotomized zombie). In terms of "innocent bystander" abuse, the film is essentially a toss-up between Megan and Rufus the cat.


Needless to say, Re-Animator is roughly ninety minutes of unadulterated fun, replete with 24 gallons of blood, naked zombie fights, cat murder, dead cat murder, dead cat re-murder, zombie lobotomies (I know, seems redundant), beheading by shovel, and, of course, decapitated cunnilingus. In other words, it's good, clean family fun for Halloween.

31 20-Something Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Horror Movie Halloween Countdown, Day 22

When is a sequel not a sequel? Is Troll 2 a sequel, even though they just slapped the title on after the fact (and the word "troll" is never uttered in the film)? Probably not. Okay, but what if the original film's director, art supervisor, and producers are all on board, and yet the "sequel" has absolutely no narrative connection whatsoever to its ostensible progenitor? Enter the strange case of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Original director John Carpenter returned (as producer and composer), as did the original co-writer (Debra Hill, now producer), art director (Tommy Lee Wallace, now director), and executive producer (Halloween godfather Moustapha Akkad). But they seem to have forgotten someone rather important: Michael Myers. And I don't mean like how Jason Vorhees isn't technically the killer in Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th VI: A New Beginning. No, I mean there is nary a mention of Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, or the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, throughout the entire film. Aside from a brief scene from the original Halloween being shown on a TV at one point, there is no acknowledgment of the previous films in the series.

Cynical cash-in? Well, yes and no. At the time, the filmmakers planned to leave Michael Myers dead (he did get blown to smithereens at the end of Halloween II, after all) and relaunch the franchise as a kind of horror anthology series, with a new but wholly unique Halloween film coming out every year. But while that's a great idea, it would have made a lot more sense had the first sequel not been a continuation of the original movie. So one can't help but conclude that the filmmakers were either hopelessly naive about audience expectations, or that this horror anthology idea was really just a rationalization for an obvious cash-in opportunity. In any case, the public was less than pleased by the apparent switcheroo, and Halloween III managed only a very modest profit. (Say what you will about horror movies, they're usually a smart investment; even the flops tend to recoup their ultra-modest budgets.)

Well that's all fascinating, you might say, but what about the movie? As it turns out, Halloween III: Season of the Witch stands on its own as a halfway decent early-80s horror film, and it's sufficiently season-appropriate as to make fantastic October viewing.


The always reliable Tom Atkins (of Night of the Creeps and Carpenter's The Fog) stars as alcoholic adulterer Dr. Dan Challis, who joins a young woman in investigating the bizarre death of her Halloween-mask-making father. Their search takes them to the aggressively Hibernian hamlet of Santa Mira, California, (also the name of the fictional town at the center of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and its financial linchpin, Silver Shamrock Novelties. Silver Shamrock happens to have the most popular line of Halloween masks on the market, and they are tied into a big nationwide Halloween-night "horrorthon" and "big giveaway" that all the kids just have to tune into.


Why kids are falling over themselves to hear the most mind-meltingly insidious, irritatingly repetitive theme music in history is never really established, but it does play into the film's sly critique of holiday consumerism. As it happens, Silver Shamrock's president, Conal Cochran, is behind some very sinister doings. In an attempt to bring the festival of Samhain back to its Celtic roots (and, really, because he's just an impishly evil fucker), Conal and his minions have brought an entire monolith from Stonehenge to Santa Mira. Conveniently, Cochran tells us this during his Big Speech, which packs roughly thirty minutes' worth of explication into about two minutes of screen time. (Oh did I mention that his minions are actually superhumanly strong androids filled with an orange-ish goo somewhere between strained carrots and uncooked pumpkin pie filling?) Anyway, each Silver Shamrock mask contains a computer chip with a tiny sliver of Stonehenge embedded in it, and when the big "Happy Happy Halloween" broadcast signal is activated, all the kiddies at home with their masks on will have their heads melted and bugs and snakes will essentially pop out of their brains. It looks something like this:
That Conal Cochran is quite the trickster, but his business acumen is shoddy at best. Melting consumers' faces off is a horrible way to encourage repeat customers. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that it's pretty great.

Obviously the Halloween III experiment was considered a failure by critics, audiences, and the filmmakers at the time (the film's reputation has improved considerably with time), and Michael Myers shambled back onto the screen in 1988's aptly titled Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Although it's hard to defend the filmmakers' logic at the time, it's equally difficult to imagine that the world needed another six Michael Myers films more than it needed a quirky horror anthology.

31 20-Something Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Horror Movie Halloween Countdown, Day 17

When it comes to getting things done on a schedule, you give me an inch and I'll take a nap. I've already gone from diligent worker bee to the stoned, C-level college student who's constantly making up stories about demagnetized floppy disks and broken printers and increasingly elaborate family tragedies in order to get a two-day extension on that big ten-page "Metaphysical versus Epistemological Interpretations of Hume's Critique of Causation" paper. (Did I seriously date myself with the floppy disc reference?) Suffice it to say, it's October 17 and my thirty-one-film Halloween countdown has covered exactly ten films...and that's including the present entry.

Pathetic.

Although the very notion of having a "favorite" something is always problematic, for any self-styled critic or overly committed cultural consumer there is the added pressure of having so-called "respectable" tastes and opinions. Although the very notion of "canon" should be anathema to the truly enlightened critical mind, there is nonetheless an understanding that you are supposed to "appreciate" (or at least have an opinion about), say, Fellini or Warhol or any number of other artists who can be referred to solely by their surname. This is especially the case with directors, despite the relative disrepute of auteur theory these days. I bring all this up because I would love to claim that my favorite director is Billy Wilder or Akira Kurosawa or Sam Fuller. I would be happy to say something mature and noncommittal (and undeniably pretentious) like, "The very notion of having a favorite director is limiting and ridiculous."

But my favorite director is John Carpenter. Specifically, John Carpenter from 1974 (the year Dark Star came out and, coincidentally, the year of my birth) through the 1988 release of They Live. Since the 1992 release of Memoirs of an Invisible Man (which also arguably ended Chevy Chase's "good" years), Carpenter has been on an extended cold streak, the highlight of which is probably the so/so (and completely batshit insane) In the Mouth of Madness.


Perhaps the most poorly regarded film of Carpenter's fertile period is the 1987 oddity Prince of Darkness, which happened to be released right when my dedication to horror movies was at its most fervid. Despite its spotty reputation, it remains one of my all-time faves; a bizarre, genuinely affecting victory of atmosphere over narrative.


Basically, a priest (a completely over-the-top Donald Pleasance) discovers the activities of a secret Catholic sect called The Brotherhood of Sleep, who have been charged over the centuries with guarding a big cylinder filled with swirling green goo; a sinister-looking lava lamp on steroids. Realizing that All Is Not Well, the priest enlists the help of a theoretical physicist and his crack team of graduate students to figure out What In The Hell Is Going On. This team includes the film's ostensible hero, a PhD candidate and amateur prestidigitator played by Jameson Parker (of Simon & Simon fame). The film's real hero, however, is Jameson Parker's Totally Awesome Mustache:
In a nutshell, the team's investigation leads to the following revelations (so to speak): Jesus was an extraterrestrial; the cylinder is an elaborate, rapidly decaying prison for the son of the Devil; Satan himself is a kind of antimatter to God's matter; psychically speaking, the homeless are roughly on par with cockroaches and worms; you can send tachyon transmissions back in time to talk to people in their dreams; and Jameson Parker's Totally Awesome Mustache may not be powerful enough to save us all from oblivion. As you can see, despite the film's tenuous grasp of particle physics, calling Prince of Darkness a thinking man's horror movie is something of an understatement.

Like David Lynch's Dune, another unfairly maligned favorite of mine, Prince of Darkness was written off as uneven, dialogue-heavy, and "hard to follow." And, as is the case with Dune, these criticisms are spot-on. However, Prince of Darkness is also unremittingly creepy in a doomed, Lovecraftian way—it's the kind of vibe that few filmmakers aspire to anymore. Carpenter is an unparalleled master of atmospherics, using sparse, haunting music and wide open, almost sterile framing to produce an eerie feeling that borders on a kind of existential dread. Just consider the frozen wastes of The Thing or the abandoned suburban afternoons in Halloween. Isolation is the real enemy in these films (small wonder that Carpenter constantly returns to the "siege scenario" in his films), and in Prince of Darkness that isolation is simultaneously physical (the scientists are all trapped in a run-down urban church), emotional (the main characters are pointedly unable to articulate their romantic feelings for one another), and spiritual (Jesus was an alien and Good and Evil are reduced to subatomic abstraction). And really, what's scarier than facing unstoppable monsters all by your lonesome?

Prince of Darkness is best watched in the dark (otherwise it would be called Prince of Sufficient Lighting), with one or two friends. This is especially important afterwards as a) the film rewards a good post-viewing discussion; and b) you won't be able to go anywhere near a mirror by yourself for the next twelve hours or so. (It's not as bad as Candyman in this respect, but still...)

31 20-Something Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Horror Movie Halloween Countdown, Day 15

Okay, okay. So it turns out that thirty-one movie posts in thirty one days was a classic case of biting off more than one can chew. Especially when you throw a five-day weekend into the mix. It seems counter-intuitive, but booze-soaked vacations in tropical locations are not conducive to blogging. Who knew?? Anyway, let's get back to the spookin'...

Last night Kim and I turned off all the lights and I popped in The Tingler. Uh, let me rephrase that...


Last night Kim and I turned off the lights and I put in a DVD of William Castle's 1959 schlock-horror masterpiece, The Tingler. Vincent Price stars as Dr. Warren Chapin, a moderately creepy pathologist who takes time from his busy autopsy schedule to conduct research into the physiological manifestations of fear. His "experiments" (which include shooting himself up with massive doses of LSD) lead to the ever-so-plausible discovery of a parasitic creature that grows along the base of the spine during moments of terror, a creature that disappears when its host inevitably lets out a scream. After a hapless deaf-mute woman is frightened to death, the good doctor is able to remove one of the creatures, which promptly starts creeping around in a crowded movie theater.


And at this point the genius of William Castle shines through: "Amazing NEW TERROR Device Makes You A Living Participant in the FLESH-CRAWLING ACTION! PERCEPTO!" Ever the master of schlocky marketing gimmicks, Castle invented Percepto, which was essentially just a vibrating buzzer contraption installed in select theater seats. So, once the Tingler is released in the theater on screen, the buzzers go off and mayhem ensues. Castle even went so far as to hire "nurses" to wait in the lobby, lest all that terror should prove too much for some poor patron. The film also includes a brilliant scene in which a sink and a bathtub fill with bright red blood... even though the film was in black and white; the sequence was shot in color, and everything, including the actress' face, was painted in black and white.


Of course, The Tingler loses much of its charm in your living room, but it's still worth watching for the hilarious creature effects and some genuinely nasty dialogue between Warren and his cheating wife (check out the B-Movie review for sound clips, etc.). Besides, a film that so deeply influenced John Waters has to be good, right?

31 Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Halloween Countdown, Day Eight

Today we leave the 1980s behind and take a look at a nasty little gem from 1968 called Witchfinder General, which stars Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, the titular professional witch hunter. Set in the mid-1640s, amid the turmoil of the first English Civil War, the film splits time between Hopkins—who travels from town to town ferreting out "witches," torturing people for fun, and collecting fees for his troubles—and a young pro-Parliament soldier whose betrothed has been raped by Hopkins's brutal assistant.


Unlike the other films we'll discuss this month, Witchfinder General isn't a horror film, strictly speaking. There are no actual witches, most of the action takes place in broad daylight, and the torture scenes, while unpleasant, are largely historically accurate. At its core, the film is about the depravity of its title character, and the horrible toll his callous abuse of power takes on the innocents around him. But the very presence of Vincent Price, along with the fact that it was produced by Tigon British Film Productions, qualifies it at least as a "thriller." And speaking of Price, Matthew Hopkins is one of his finest creations—a creature of pure self-serving malevolence—and it's a remarkably subtle performance by Price standards. Perhaps adding to the its horrific mystique, director and co-writer Michael Reeves was found dead at the age of 25 after an accidental barbiturate overdose just months after the film's release.

Witchfinder General was released by American International Pictures in the U.S., but the title was changed to The Conqueror Worm. Although there is little more than a passing reference to Edgar Allen Poe's poem in the film, AIP was hoping to cash in on Roger Corman's successful string of Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price (such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Raven (1963)).

31 Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Halloween Countdown, Day Seven

A brief explanation of the split in America's cinematic zombie mythology:

After the 1968 release of Night of the Living Dead, a dispute between co-writers John A. Russo and George A. Romero resulted in Russo retaining the rights to the "Living Dead" portion of the title. Romero, who directed the original film, went on to complete his trilogy with Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead (he later expanded the series with Land of the Dead and last year's terrible Diary of the Dead). Romero's Dead films continued with essentially the same "rules" set forth in the original film: there is no explanation for the sudden reawakening of the dead, the zombies crave human flesh, and if you destroy the brain you kill (or, re-kill) the zombie.


Meanwhile, John Russo doesn't seem to have done much of anything until around 1984, when he tapped Dan O'Bannon to write the script for Return of the Living Dead, based on Russo's own novel of the same name. When Tobe Hooper (director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist) dropped out of the project in order to direct Lifeforce (we'll get to Lifeforce later this month), O'Bannon (who wrote the screenplay for Lifeforce, along with Dark Star, Alien, and Total Recall) agreed to try his hand at directing. Confused yet? The situation gets even more confusing when you consider the proliferation of unauthorized sequels to Dawn of the Dead in Italy, but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, Return of the Living Dead came out in 1985, bringing with it a mordant sense of humor, an amazing punk-rock soundtrack featuring TSOL, the Flesh Eaters, and the Cramps, and an entirely new set of rules for the undead.


As you can see from the trailer, the whole "destroy the brain" thing doesn't work anymore, which means, in technical terms, that everyone is royally screwed. The zombies can also run and talk... although they mostly just repeat the word "brains." As you can also tell from the trailer, the movie is ruthlessly funny, employing the "deadpan" humor that also characterized so many mid-80s cult-horror classics.

For any fan of the horror-comedy genre (think Re-Animator, Dead Alive, Evil Dead 2, etc.) or for anyone looking for a great 1980s punk/new wave fix, I cannot recommend this film enough.

31 Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Halloween Countdown, Days Five and Six

Troll 2 (1990) is among the most celebrated bad movies of the last twenty years—a film whose technique, acting, and plot are so mind-bogglingly inept that no one knows quite how to read it. Is it the nadir of direct-to-video exploitation filmmaking? An avant-garde camp masterpiece? A loveable slice of outsider art? As Scott Tobias points out in his incredible New Cult Canon piece, a lot depends on whether or not the filmmakers are in on the joke, but no consensus exists on that central question.


Rather than regurgitate the plot, I'll simply refer you to Mr. Tobias's article, the Wikipedia entry, and the trailer for the upcoming Troll 2 documentary, Best Worst Movie. I'll just sum up by saying, "You can't piss on hospitality."


On the other end of the sequel spectrum, we have Don Coscarelli's cult favorite Phantasm II (1988). I had planned a lengthy entry, but I was unable to watch the film again because, as I was surprised and saddened to learn, the film has never had a domestic release on DVD.


Based on what I can remember, Phantasm II is essentially a remake of the original, with the addition of a psychic blond chick and more bloody action from the series' trademark killer silver orbs:



In a nutshell, a tall scary guy called (imaginatively) the Tall Man runs a mortuary in which he turns dead bodies into hooded dwarf slaves. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Some good guys attempt to thwart his evil plans. Shotguns and killer balls and Druid dwarfs... needless to say its a favorite among both horror fans and stoners. Anyway, if you still own a VCR, it's an essential Halloween treat.

31 Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Halloween Countdown, Day Three

Day three, and we're still hangin' in the 1980s. One of the more bizarre major-studio releases of the decade, Wolfen (1981) stars Albert Finney and Gregory Hines as a New York City detective/pathologist pair investigating a series of murders that appear to have been perpetrated by some kind of animal. Not to give too much away, it turns out that a mysterious race of ancient, super-intelligent wolves who live in the abandoned wastelands of the South Bronx are killing businessmen who are planning an urban reclamation project in the wolves' neighborhood. Yeah. Oh and a bunch of Native American construction workers (including Edward James Olmos) who hang out atop skyscrapers and might be shapeshifters are also involved somehow.


The trailer doesn't do the film's knotty plot and literate screenplay justice (and according to Roger Ebert's original review, this is intentional). But it does allow you to see the cool in-camera digital effect they used to indicate the wolves' POV. I've heard conflicting stories about this, but my understanding is that this was among the first films ever to use computer-generated visual effects. In addition, the film was largely shot among actual abandoned neighborhoods in the South Bronx, and the borough's level of sheer devastation has to be seen to be believed. In fact, the creepiest thing about Wolfen is its depiction of the eerily abandoned nocturnal New York of the early 1980s. Here's a representative clip (in German)...


1981 was a banner year for wolf movies, with The Howling and An American Werewolf in London rounding out what has proved to be a classic threesome, but Wolfen remains the least-known of the bunch. That's a shame, and I strongly urge you to redress this oversight as soon as you can. Tune in tomorrow, as the wolf genre storms into the twenty-first century.

31 Days of Horror:The Movie-a-Day Halloween Countdown, Day Two

Today's selection is simultaneously a great B-horror movie and an unabashed love letter to the genre itself. Released in 1986 to mixed reviews and little fanfare, Night of the Creeps has gone on to enjoy a dedicated cult following. (In fact, Kim and I caught a midnight screening at the Sunshine just last weekend.) The film's reputation is easy to understand: it's a goofy, tongue-in-cheek aliens-and-zombies movie that's chock full of in-jokes, references to classic horror and sci-fi, and even some stunt casting (including the venerable Dick Miller in a small role).



The plot, itself an homage to Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space, is relatively simple: A cannister of experimental alien brain slugs crashes to Earth and the slimy little bastards start infecting the brains of both living and dead hosts. A pair of dorky college freshmen and a semi-suicidal detective (the always awesome Tom Atkins) stumble into the middle of it all, and lots of zombie mayhem, head-exloding, teen wisecracking, and slug-burning ensues. It's also another wonderful relic of the 1980s, chock full of preppy blond bad guys, terrible sweaters, neon, and period music by Stan Ridgway, Jane Wiedlin, and others. Hell, the hero is played by the dude who played Rusty in National Lampoon's European Vacation.

Put simply, it's amazing. Unfortunately, Night of the Creeps remains unavailable on DVD, so the only way to experience it is to buy a VHS copy on eBay. Or you could just live vicariously through the movie's MySpace page.

31 Days of Horror: The Movie-a-Day Halloween Countdown, Day One

October is the favorite month of the year around these parts, primarily because of Halloween, the greatest holiday of all. And so, in keeping with the *bitter defeat* tradition of Halloween observance (not to mention pathological listmaking), this year we present one lesser-known horror movie for each day of the month. These creepy little gems are the ideal way to while away those chilly October nights. Just curl up on the couch, crank up the video machine, and pour yourself a nice goblet of goat's blood. So let's get this ghouls 'n' goblins party started, shall we?

We begin with the appropriately titled Trick or Treat, a 1986 teensploitation horror flick directed by beloved character actor Charles Martin Smith. (Smith—whose only other notable directing credit is 1997's flying-dog classic Air Bud—is a solid member of the "hey it's that guy" fraternity of character actors with instant face recognition and zero name recognition.)


Somewhat less beloved character actor Marc Price (best known as Erwin "Skippy" Handelman on TV's Family Ties) stars as nerdy metalhead outcast Eddie Weinbauer. Eddie, already distraught about constant bullying at school, is nearly shattered by the apparent burning death of his hero, Satanic glam-metal star Sammi Curr. Taking pity on the poor nerd, local disc jockey Nuke (played by none other than Gene Simmons) gives Eddie the only extant acetate pressing of Curr's final recording. Unfortunately, it turns out that Curr's immolation occurred during a Satanic ritual, and as soon as Eddie plays the record backwards—because, hey, that's what kids these days do with that Devil's music—Curr literally explodes from the speakers with really bad facial burns and lots of creepy demonic powers. Many authority figures (including a PMRC-type preacher played by Ozzy Osbourne) and good-looking popular kids get their comeuppance at the hands of Eddie and his resurrected role model, yadda yadda yadda... Skippy fights Sammi, Skippy gets the girl, the end.

Reverend Ozzzy
Despite its goofy premise, Trick or Treat boasts a few decent sequences, most of which involve Sammi Curr's apparent ability to travel via audio and video signals. Yet despite being tied to some decidedly dated subject matter (hair metal, the PMRC, vinyl, and the Sony Walkman, to name a few) the film resonates today because Eddie's character just screams "Columbine." The idea of a nerdy, metal-obsessed, army-jacket-clad loner taking violent revenge on the "normal" kids who torment him at school carries a hell of a lot more cultural baggage today than it did in 1986. If that isn't enough to send you running to your Netflix queue, then maybe this scene will convince you...


Guitar-solo demonic rape still not enough for you? Well how about a smokin' soundtrack by metal middle-weights Fastway? Put it all together and you've got an 80s curio with kickass music, Ozzy and Gene Simmons, and disturbing echoes of one of the worst tragedies of the last decade. You can't lose!

The Movie Autobiography, Part 3: 1994–2007

Sorry for the delay, but my day job just keeps trying to get in the way of my life.

Today is the final installment of the Movie Autobiography project begun last week.

Let's do this...

1994
Then and Now: Pulp Fiction
Talk about a galvanizing moment. Pulp Fiction is one of the few cinematic experiences I remember from top to bottom: where I saw it, who I went with, what scenes had an immediate impact, etc. In fact 1994 was the year that my sensibility truly returned to the underground, thanks in no small part to Berkeley's now-defunct UC Theater, which ran a mind-shattering rep schedule (not to mention a Hong Kong cinema double feature every Thursday night). It was also the year I started winning free tickets on KALX's Film Close-Ups, where I would eventually become a co-host and reviewer. (Craziness: Greg Scharpen, the show's current host, was a reviewer when I started on the show, way back in 1996!) One last thing: Pulp Fiction dominated this year, which is too bad for Tim Burton's Ed Wood, which would have been my favorite in just about any other.

1995
Then: TIE, Se7en and Heat
Now: Dead Man
Obviously I was not immune to Hollywood's charms, even during my indie reawakening. Other films that had a big impact: Kids, City of Lost Children, and Ghost in the Shell, which remains my favorite anime.

1996
Then: Trainspotting
Now: Fargo
That's not to say that my admiration for Trainspotting has dulled any. It's just that Fargo is the very definition of a film that grows more rewarding every time you see it. I also walked out on a movie in 1996, one of only three times this has happened. It was the absolutely abysmal The Trigger Effect, starring Kyle MacLaclan, Elizabeth Shue, and Dermot Mulroney. (The other two are The War of the Roses, wich everyone else seems to like, and Moulin Rouge!, which made me want to punch Baz Luhrman in the neck.)

1997
Then: Grosse Point Blank
Now: Lost Highway
John Cusack's hitman rom-com barely edged Kevin Smith's hopelessly overwrought Chasing Amy back in the day. I shant waste time here defending my Kevin Smith habit (and no, I will not defend Jersey Girl, mainly because I've never seen it). David Lynch's snake-eating-its-own-tail mindfuck Lost Highway is another classic that gets more interesting with every watch.

1998
Then and Now: The Big Lebowski
Although this was an easy one, a lot of really interesting movies came out in '98. (I never realized it before, but BOTH of Kim's favorite movies, Rushmore and Shakespeare in Love, came out in the same year.) And let's face it, the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan are the most exhilarating since the opening of Pulp Fiction.

1999
Then: American Beauty
Now: TIE, Sleepy Hollow and Fight Club
Yeah, I drank the Kool-Aid on the overwritten Oscar winner. I have subsequently realized that if you're gonna go with slickness, go with fun slickness.

2000
Then: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Now: O Brother Where Art Thou
A big year for kinda middle-awesome movies (Almost Famous, American Psycho, High Fidelity, Gladiator, Memento, Snatch, Shadow of the Vampire, etc.). Where in the hell did all the horror movies go?

2001
Then and Now: The Royal Tenenbaums
Again, not even close. Shout-outs to Gosford Park, Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive, and Wet Hot American Summer.

2002
Then and Now: 24 Hour Party People
Runners-up were 28 Days Later and Super Troopers.

2003
Then and Now: Kill Bill Vol.1
Very close runner-up was X2: X-Men United (which was the best superhero movie ever until two weeks ago). 2003 was, without a doubt, the worst year in movies I have encountered.

2004
Then and Now: TIE, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Shaun of the Dead, and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Hey, YOU try choosing between those!

2005
Then: Batman Begins
Now: The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Again, Brokeback Mountain may have been the best movie of the year, but I'm not sure how many more times I can watch the damn thing. Honorable mention to Serenity and The Devil's Rejects.

2006
Then and Now: Children of Men
With respect to The Departed and Pan's Labyrinth.

2007
Then and Now: TIE There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men
Couldn't decide last year, can't decide now.

Whew! That's it. A life in movies. I feel a) old, and b) more than a little embarrassed by my pedestrian tastes.

The Movie Autobiography, Part 2: 1984–1993

On the heels of yesterday's post, which covered the years 1974 through 1983, we continue the latest in a long line of pointless pop-culture lists: Pick a Movie for Every Year of Your Life.

1984
Then: Ghostbusters
Now: Repo Man
Hey, I honestly wish I could claim some cool favorite like Paris, Texas, but I'm trying to be totally honest here.

1985
Then: Back to the Future
Now: TIE, Ran and Real Genius
Hell, I even tried to dress like Marty McFly. As for the tie, Ran is one of the few foreign films I never get tired of watching. It's just friggin' amazing. However, Real Genius may hold the record as the film I've watched the most times. I just couldn't choose. Also, Re-Animator came out in '85.

1986
Then: Aliens
Now: Blue Velvet
Howard the Duck notwithstanding, 1986 was an unbelievable year in film. Just remarkable. Sentimental favorites like Big Trouble in Little China and Ferris Bueller's Day Off stand alongside genuine classics like Manhunter, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Fly, and Sid and Nancy. This was also the year I made the crucial transition from shitting myself every time a horror-movie commercial came on TV to being completely obsessed with horror movies.

1987
Then: Summer School
Now: Evil Dead 2
And yet, despite 1987 being quite possibly the best year in American horror films since the 1930s, my favorite movie was a Mark Harmon/Kirstie Alley vehicle. In my defense, Chainsaw and Dave's whole schtick was that they were into horror movies. So I was basically watching a film about myself. (Seriously, look at this horror lineup: Hellraiser, Near dark, The Lost Boys, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, Prince of Darkness, Predator... man, what a year!) Oh I do have a "regular" pick for this year as well: Wings of Desire.

1988
Then: A Fish Called Wanda
Now: Die Hard
So apparently I've gotten dumber in the last twenty years. Other possible favorites were Dead Ringers, The Last Temptation of Christ, and They Live. My god... I am seriously one of the people I've spent my entire life hating. Die Hard????

1989
Then: TIE, Heathers and Pet Sematary
Now: Crimes and Misdemeanors
So back then I was clearly going through my safe suburban version of an "edgy teen" phase (although, for reasons I cannot begin to explain, I was also a big fan of Steel Magnolias). Apparently I am now a big Woody Allen fanatic. Who knew?

1990
Then: TIE, Edward Scissorhands and Pump Up the Volume
Now: TIE, Goodfellas and Miller's Crossing
Talk about symmetry. In high school, my favorite movies were about high-school outcasts. Now I go in for gritty gangster movies.

1991
Then: The Doors
Now: The Silence of the Lambs
What a weak year for movies! Oliver Stone's ridiculously overblown Jim Morrison biopic was ideal viewing for a classic rock-obsessed sixteen-year-old. But now? Other possibilities were either semi-ironic (Point Break) or deeply cult (Dead Again).

1992
Then: Singles
Now: Glengarry Glen Ross
Another weak year. My senior-year obsession with all things Seattle naturally included Cameron Crowe's grunge rom-com (not to mention the soundtrack). The contemporary pick came down to Reservoir Dogs and Hard Boiled canceling each other out by virtue of their similarity.

1993
Then: True Romance
Now: Dazed and Confused
Given its basic subject matter, it's astounding how great Dazed and Confused is (though apparently True Romance screenwriterQuentin Tarantino agrees).

Tune in next week for the concluding entry, 1994–2007.

The Movie Autobiography:Pick a Film for Each Year of Your LifePart 1: The First Decade

In the fine *bitter defeat* tradition of stealing/copying any and all ideas/content from the AV Club, I'm following up the Album Autobiography with the Movie Autobiography ("inspired" by this and this, respectively).

Once again, such an undertaking raises such logistical questions as "How could you have a favorite movie when you were an infant?," "Are you listing your favorites or 'the best' of each year?," and "Why should anyone give a shit about your opinion?" Luckily, I have answers to all three questions: a) You couldn't; b) I'll get to that; and c) They shouldn't.

First, the ground rules: For each year, I have simply chosen my favorite film, rather than what I consider the "best" or "most important" film. In those cases where my choice at the time differs from my current favorite (either because I saw my current favorite later or because I am no longer, say, eleven years old), I will provide both. For years when I was too young to have an opinion, I'll list whatever I liked as a kid, where applicable.

Now it should be noted that I hold a graduate degree in film history, theory, and criticism, so my current-day favorites should be foreign and boring, with lots of midgets and dream sequences and allegory and criticism of commodity culture. I will be shocked if this turns out to be the case. For someone with "training" in the "aesthetics" of "the cinema," I have astoundingly "pedestrian" tastes. In other words, I tend to prefer "awesome" over "important." Please don't mistake this for false modesty on the one hand, or self-congratulation for "keeping it real" on the other. No, it's simply sad when a person drops tens of thousands of dollars into someone else's pocket just so they can use bigger words to explain why Ghostbusters rules.

The Movie Autobiography, Part 1: 1974–1983

1974
Then and now: Young Frankenstein
See? I told you my choices would be unimpressive. Sure, I love The Godfather, Part II, but I don't love it as much as Young Frankenstein (or other 1974 standouts like Blazing Saddles (What a HUGE year for Mel Brooks!), The Longest Yard, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Zardoz, Dark Star, or my runner-up, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

1975
Then and now: Jaws
I'm not sure "favorite" is the right word for how I felt about Jaws as a child. It's more like "the reason I feared any non-man-made body of water until I was six years old." Still, it seems that no one was releasing children's movies in the mid-1970s, so it's the only thing I remember seeing as a kid. (other notables are Monty Python and the Holy Grail and my runner up, Three Days of the Condor.)

1976
Then: The Bad News Bears
Now: Carrie
Carrie barely edged out The Marathon Man for my current choice. (And remember what I said about no foreign films? Seems like there aren't any in the Wikipedia lists anyway, so it's a non-issue.) Yes, I realize that Taxi Driver came out in 1976. I honestly think Taxi Driver is overrated.

1977
Then: Star Wars
Now: Annie Hall
Finally, a year with some conflicts! Not for my "younger self" pick, which was a no-brainer, but it killed me to have Dario Argento's Suspiria come up second. (And I guess there are foreign films after all. Another personal favorite: Slap Shot, the greatest sports movie ever made.

1978
Then: TIE, Superman: The Movie and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Now: Halloween
Even as a child I knew Superman just wasn't that good. I mean, it shared my heart with a movie in which The Beatles are replaced by The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, co-starring Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, and George Burns! As for my current pick, let's just say it was a big year for horror, with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead in the runner-up spot.

1979
Then: The Muppet Movie
Now: Manhattan
What a great year to be a kid! The Muppets were up against The Black Hole, Breaking Away, Meatballs, and Moonraker. This must have been the year my dad started taking me to movies, because I was crazy about all of those. Oh and Woody Allen wins again, edging out Alien and Apocalypse Now.

1980
Then and now: The Empire Strikes Back
Sorry to Raging Bull and The Shining, but this year was in the bag.

1981
Then and now: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Another runaway winner. This was also a big year for me as a kid, with the big three of semi-racy sword-and-sorcery movies: Clash of the Titans, Dragonslayer, and Excalibur...all of which my dad took me to see in the theater. What was he thinking?? A spacial shout-out to John Landis's An American Werewolf in London.

1982
Then: TIE, TRON, Conan the Barbarian, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Now: The Thing
You think that tie is a cop-out? Well I just couldn't answer with any confidence. I remember each of those films (not to mention The Dark Crystal and The Secret of NIMH) having a massive effect on me. (Also, my dad got in SO MUCH trouble for taking me to see Conan.) Also, Blade Runner was a very respectable runner-up, but The Thing is one of my top five films of all time.

1983
Then: Never Say Never Again
Now: Videodrome
It's very hard to believe that a fanboy like me could pick anything over Return of the Jedi, but for some reason I was quite taken by Sean Connery's controversial late-career return to James Bond. From an "adult" standpoint, 1983 was a shite year for movies. If it wasn't for Videodrome, I would have been choosing between Terms of Endearment and Trading Places.

Go to Part 2, 1984–1993

The Album Autobiography:Part 3, 1995–2007

The closer this little project comes to the present, the less my choices diverge. Not exactly a revelation, but it's nice to see that I can still be proud of the music I listened to in high school. I mean, sure, I thought Boyz II Men's "End of the Road" was a pretty good song at the time, but I also purchased everything The Smiths ever committed to disc and I wore out my cassette of Bad Religion's Suffer. So I can hold my head high, while writing off my enthusiasm for EMF and Jesus Jones as youthful folly.

The home stretch...

1995
Then: The Cardigans - Life
Now: Pulp - Different Class
Pavement gets stiffed again: Wowee Zowee comes in a tough second. 1995 was the year I rediscovered vinyl. It was also the year I stopped buying pot and started spending all of my money at Amoeba records in Berkeley. (And dropping the strict chronology for a moment, my actual favorite albums that year were Superchunk's Foolish and The Cramps' Bad Music for Bad People...neither of which was released in 1995.)

1996
Then and Now: Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
Weezer's Pinkerton was a close second that year... I was in a solidly "twee as fuck" punk-meets-indie-pop phase. Oh wait. Still am.

1997
Then: TIE: Pavement - Brighten the Corners; Sleater Kinney - Dig Me Out
Now: Radiohead - OK Computer
Duh. (Special shout-outs to Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One and Mogwai's Young Team.)

1998
Then and Now: Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
Apologies to the Beasties' Hello Nasty.

1999
Then: Blur - 13
Now: The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin

2000
Then: Outkast - Stankonia
Now: Radiohead - Kid A
A new century, a boring choice. What can I say...Radiohead, she makes-a good records!

2001
Then: Fischerspooner - #1
Now: The Strokes - Is This It
What can I say? I was "working" as a music journalist and I totally drank the Kool-Aid on the whole Electroclash thing.

2002
Then and Now: Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights
Not even their shitty last album can spoil me on the majesty of their debut.

2003
Then: The White Stripes - Elephant
Now: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
And it hurt me to have to leave out The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow.

2004
Then: The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows
Now: The Arcade Fire - Funeral

2005
Then and Now: LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem

2006
Then and Now: Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

2007
Then: Deerhunter - Cryptograms
Now: Radiohead - In Rainbows
In Rainbows pulled the ultimate "grower."

So there you have it. Thirty-three years of music. One life, feebly encapsulated.