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Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold

Margaret Atwood

9.0 (3 Ratings) Rate It

Book

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017. Selected as a Book of the Year -...

Frank Carter recommended Adore Life by Savages in Music (curated)

Adore Life by Savages

2016 | Alternative

(0 Ratings)

Album Favorite

"Like I said, I think you're only as good as your last creative output, and I think Adore Life is even better than Savages' first album. I got to see them when they were touring this record live last summer as we shared a few festival bills, and they're just phenomenal. Their show absolute punk rock & roll, but dirgey in the way you feel you've drunk too much iowaska, yet you're just at a gig. Their music is hypnotic, it's trance inducing, and Jehnny Beth is just the embodiment of rock & roll, one of the few hopes we have in British music at the moment. What I love is that so many people got behind it, yet it's still such an uncompromising album. It's work to listen to this record, you're not going to put it on and immediately have a good time, and that's important. We need challenging records."

Source

Kudos

Jenni Olson recommended Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) in Movies (curated)

"As of this writing, it’s been nearly a year since we lost the talent and spirit of Chantal Akerman. Her 1975 breakthrough feature wowed the international film world after premiering at Cannes to a combination of raves and an audience exodus. Truly a film to return to again and again, Jeanne Dielman expands the possibilities of cinema as an art form. Its durational, physiological impact on the viewer is an absolute revelation. I first saw it on a crappy 16 mm print in college in the late 1980s and didn’t get to see it again on the big screen until the late ’90s—on 35 mm at the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival. Now I like to watch it in segments on Hulu (sort of the opposite of binge-watching) just for the shift in consciousness it induces in me after each twenty-minute chunk. Transcendent."

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Kudos

David Hudson recommended Burdern of Dreams (1982) in Movies (curated)

Burdern of Dreams (1982)

1982 | Documentary

(0 Ratings)

Movie Favorite

"Since Grizzly Man and on through Encounters at the End of the World, festival dispatchers often report that audiences walk out of the theater trying out their Werner Herzog imitations. You do the accent, sure, but that’s only the half of it. The other half is what you say; you have to decry the viciousness of nature, the doomed and dooming insanity of it all. I wonder how many of these amateur impressionists realize that the sensibility they’re mimicking with an odd mix of humor and admiration has been somewhat tempered over the years. Burden of Dreams is an almost frightening portrait of that sensibility when it was manic and raw, no matter how calm Herzog’s exterior may at times appear. And, of course, next to Kinski, he was the sane one! Les Blank’s documentary is also, along with Hearts of Darkness, one of the greatest making-ofs of all time."

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Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated The Brood (1979) in Movies

Oct 24, 2020

The Brood (1979)

1979 | Horror, Sci-Fi

7.8

(10 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Key Cronenberg movie starts off relatively restrained but ends up with a festival of bonkers ickiness. A man in the middle of a custody battle finds people connected to his ex-wife are being murdered by deformed child-like dwarves with weird, non-human anatomies. Can unorthodox psychiatrist Oliver Reed shed light on the situation?

Undeniably a horror movie, but one rich in subtext and metaphor, as well as containing several ew-that's-unbelievably-gross moments. (Students of the director may also wonder just how bad his divorce must have been.) Less Oliver Reed than you might hope for, but a remarkable performance from Samantha Eggar, and a great many memorable and disturbing sequences. Works on all sorts of levels, though some people may struggle to see past the more graphic aspects of the film. Still, this is horror done with brains and style.

Kudos

Ross (3284 KP) rated The Boys Volume 5: Herogasm in Books

Sep 24, 2019

The Boys Volume 5: Herogasm

Garth Ennis | 2009 | Comics & Graphic Novels

7.0

(2 Ratings)

Book Rating

A dip in quality

The 5th volume of The Boys sees the world's superheroes take time out, while pretending to be fighting an intergalactic war (similar to the secret invasion), and head off to a remote island for days of extreme sex, drugs and an awards ceremony. Herogasm being the name for this mini-festival of debauchery.
There are some smirks here, mainly aimed at the Fantastic 4, and what they might get up to in private, but the joke is a little laboured over the 6 issues.
I think a key learn for me is that if Darick Robertson didn't ink it, you can probably skip it (he seems to avoid the issues that are heavier on the sex). While there is a little about the corporate corruption and the 9/11 conspiracy, and a naughty attack by Black Noir, this story is somewhat throwaway.