Punk Soul Poet

Reposted from: filmthreat.com

Director Kevin Slack’s third short film, The Drought, tells the story of an elderly umbrella salesman toughing it out during Brooklyn’s driest months.  Shot on a RED camera, this twelve minute short looks fantastic.  Crisp colors and purposeful lighting are picked up well and, overall, the film has an impressive aesthetic.  As for the story, The Drought…

Reposted from: pitchfork.com

San Francisco’s Desertshore ostensibly took their name from Nico‘s 1970 album, the one where she began writing her own songs and exerting more control over her sound and style. A decidedly more personal than commercial album– with a few songs in German and one sung by her son– Desertshore was not a hit, at…

Reposted from: pitchfork.com

James Holden’s Border Community is a label known for its between-genre dislocation, an imprint that takes dance-music influences, warms them over on the stove, and then buries them in fuzzy pink noise. Home to artists like Nathan Fake, Luke Abbott, and, of course Holden himself, it has a habit of drenching techno in longing nostalgia and…

Reposted from: rollingstone.com

If you’ve ever slowly blinked back to consciousness in a dentist’s chair, unable to distinguish dream from fact, you already know what King Krule sounds like. Archy Marshall, the 17-year-old who wrote and sing- mumbles this five-song EP, exaggerates his South East London accent and douses his voice in echo, so it’s slurred and evasive. Slow hip-hop beats…

Reposted from rollingstone.com

This best-of compilation cleaves Patti Smith‘s career into two halves: nine songs from her 1970s years as a firebrand-New-York-City-poet-turned-punk-rock-high-priestess, nine from her post-1988 comeback. A perfect primer for those who’ve discovered her through her recent National Book Award-winning memoir, it flows better than 2002′s double-disc anthology, Land. It also does…

Reposted from bookmarksmagazine.com

T. Jefferson Parker is a three-time Edgar Award winner. The Border Lords, fourth in a planned six-book series, features a host of characters working along America’s southern border and both sides of the law. In the series: L.A. Outlaws ( 4 of 5 Stars May/June 2008), The Renegades (2009), and Iron River (2010).

When undercover ATF agent…

Reposted from filmthreat.com

Does anyone still think clowns are funny? I never understood the appeal. A traditional clown is, well, lame. Shakes the Clown is the only one who has ever made me laugh, and that’s more to do with the hilarity of alcoholism than the nature of his vocation. What’s so funny about big shoes…

Reposted from indiewire.com

“Someone wanted us to vanish,” says one of the several survivors in “The Tiniest Place,” a chilling look at the trauma of past oppression haunting its victims in the present. Director Tatiana Huezo, making her feature-length debut, interviews the residents of a small village called Cinquera buried in the Salvadoran jungle and still coping…

Reposted from indiewire.com

The concept driving “The Artist,” a silent, black-and-white feature designed to imitate 1920’s Hollywood productions, is more commendable than its execution. Michel Hazanavicius steps beyond the self-conscious parody of his two “OSS 117” films for a bittersweet homage to the sweeping language of the silent screen. Just as sound technology had a destructive impact on the careers…

Reposted from indiewire.com

In an early scene of Julia Leigh’s “Sleeping Beauty,” the proprietor of a high-end prostitution operation orders Lucy (Emily Browning) to strip down to her underpants, at which point the mistress and her assistant aggressively fondle nearly every inch of the young college student’s body. Their hands roam across her trim physique, pausing briefly on the slight…

Reposted from bookmarksmagazine.com

Unfolding over three centuries in Blackwell, Massachusetts, a fictional Berkshire County town, The Red Garden follows many generations of women as they long for lives beyond their reach. In “The Bear’s House,” the fearless, English-born Hallie Brady founds Blackwell (originally named “Bearsville” for her friendship with a gentle bear) in 1750. In later stories that take us…

Reposted from sputnikmusic.com

Past Life Martyred Saints is a curious beast. The debut record from Erika M. Anderson demands a visceral reaction, its gut-churning sonics prompting either revulsion, rapture, or a healthy dose of both. But it’s also an album that takes its sweet time to really get under your skin. There’s a palpable sense of displacement and uncertainty that…