TV Review: American Horror Story

American Horror Story (created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk)
Starring Dylan McDermott, Connie Britton, Taissa Farmiga, Evan Peters, Denis O’Hare, Jessica Lange,  Frances Conroy, Jamie Brewer

Horror is tricky genre to tackle on television. It traditionally ends up in the anthology format and the few occasions it hasn’t been an anthology it hasn’t stayed pure horror, typically becoming a drama with a horror veneer (Dark Shadows, The Walking Dead). The minds behind Glee and Nip/Tuck have decided to create a new horror serial that actually cements its legs firmly in the tropes of the genre. I have to admit, during the promotions of the show during the late summer I wasn’t really sold. However, after viewing the opening five minutes of the pilot I was hooked. Murphy and Falchuk have managed to create an ongoing series that actually gets what makes horror so horrific.

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Movie Review: Drive

Drive (2011, dir. Nicholas Winding Refn)
Starring Ryan Gosling, Cary Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks

There is a sort of anti-hero, noted in films like Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai or Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, who is the epitome of the strong silent type. So too in Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, we have the hero who chooses to act, rather than speak. Its also a role that matches so perfectly with its star, Ryan Gosling, its hard to imagine anyone else playing the part (Hugh Jackman was attached for a time). Drive is a deceptive film in its public perception, having been marketed as a Fast & The Furious analogue, though it is anything but. Drive is a methodical, existential, and ultimately pop 80s movie.

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Digital Mix – 30 Years and Counting

A mix of songs that have been soundtrack-ing my life lately via iPod. Download here.

1. Midnight City – M83
2. D.A.N.C.E. – Justice
3. How Deep Is Your Love – The Bird and The Bee
4. We Rule the School – Belle & Sebastian
5. Colours – Calvin Harris
6. Our Deal – Best Coast
7. The Body – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
8. Go Outside – Cults
9. Life in the D – Brendan Benson
10. Everytime – Oi Va Voi
11. We Are Walking Out – Little Scout
12. Big Red Machine – Bon Iver
13. Did You See the Words – Animal Collective
14. You Came Out – We Have a Band
15. Quand on n’a Que L’amour – Jacques Brel
16. Many Rivers to Cross – Jimmy Cliff

Film Review – Red, White, & Blue

Red, White, & Blue (2010, dir. Simon Rumley)
Starring Noah Taylor, Amanda Fuller, Mark Senter

British director Simon Rumley seems intent on shredding every last ounce of emotional energy I have. As you can read in my review of his 2006 film, The Living and The Dead, he is able to present a psychological horror film unlike any you will ever see. Here too, in Red, White, & Blue, Rumley takes the revenge/gore film made popular in 1970s and still alive and strong today, and goes down avenues no mainstream picture would ever think about. The result is another film that hammers itself into your mind and squeeze every ounce of composure from your soul. The last fifteen minutes left my heart pounding and my head feeling dizzy, shocked at the level of physical gore and psychological torment.

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Film Review – Sherman’s March

Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (1986, dir. Ross McElwee)

When you think of Civil War documentaries none is more prominent than Ken Burns’ aptly titled The Civil War mega-series of the 1990s. It was an incredibly detailed and exhaustive look at an event that reshaped America and is still felt today. This is not that sort of documentary. Ross McElwee is a Southern filmmaker born into the war-haunted landscape of North Carolina. He begins the film with an honorable premise, attempting to travel the path of destruction Union General William Tecumseh Sherman left across the South. This quickly crumbles when McElwee’s girlfriend breaks up with him to go back to her ex. Suddenly, the tone of the film shifts into a bizarre examination of women in the South mixed with occasional delves into the original premise of the picture.

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Film Review – Submarine

Submarine (2010, dir. Richard Ayoade)
Starring Craig Roberts, Yasmin Page, Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine

The directorial debut of British comedic actor Richard Ayoade has drawn unfair criticism for “being too much like Rushmore or Amelie”. Its easy to see how you could mistake this film for something like that, but after viewing the film it becomes apparent Ayoade has made an homage to French New Wave cinema. Ayoade takes those hipster affectations he’d being excused of exploiting, and actually frames them in a poignant look at the hyper-urgency of the adolescent mind.

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Film Review – The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011, dir. Terence Malick)
Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn

“A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.” – Stanley Kubrick

In the first hour of Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life we see the Big Bang, the formation of galaxies, the violent volcanic upheavals of land masses on a young earth, and the evolution of animal life. This massively cosmic scope is sandwiched in the middle of an equally intimate examination of a young boy in smalltown Texas during the 1950s. Malick presents all of this in the form of a prayer, beginning with The Mother (Chastain), a red-haired aging woman who receives a letter that her son has died overseas in the Vietnam War. She must relay this news to The Father (Pitt) and the entire scene is done with as a little dialogue as possible. We also have the surviving eldest son, Jack (Penn), in present day still struggling with childhood anger towards his father and the loss of his brother. All of these plot pieces are purely interpretive though. What I stated in the most obvious, traditional narrative way of describing the film, but much more in happening underneath it all.

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Film Review – Super 8 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind


Super 8 (2011, dir. JJ Abrams)


Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, dir. Steven Spielberg)

Movie nerd confession: I had not seen Spielberg’s Close Encounters until a night ago. It was one of those films that I never felt compelled to watch as a child, and now after seeing it, I think it isn’t a movie for kids. In many ways its a fairy tale for adults. Yet, it still evokes that same sense of awe and mystery all of Spielberg’s work does. Super 8 is most definitely a massive nostalgia trip for my generation, accurately mimicking the tropes and tone of the Amblin films of my youth.

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Best Television 2011 – Jan thru June

When I’m not watching movies…I’m probably working my way through a television series. These are my favorite television programs that I have watched the first half of this year. It’s a mix of both old and new, from the States and the U.K.


Game of Thrones Season 1 (HBO)

Hands down the highest quality drama on tv the first half of the year. I remember seeing the teaser commercials for this, didn’t really know much about George RR Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series, I’m not the biggest high fantasy lit fan, so I came into it with moderate expectations. How those expectations were exceeded. This is the first drama since Lost that has gotten to me so emotionally. Martin and the people at HBO understand you have to give a damn about your characters and then the worldbuilding can happen. This series, based on the first of four books, follows the members of the Houses Stark, Lannister, and Targaryen. There’s a lot of political intrigue, espionage, a whodunit style story, and just basic character development that adds up to a television series that makes me blot out all other distractions when I watch it. HBO proves once again that, if you have a property you want to develop for television and want to have creative freedom to make it the best, you go to them. Never in a million years would the networks have the guts to take the risk on a show that is this amazing.

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Film Reviews – Amer and Sheitan


Amer (2009, dir. Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani)


Sheitan (2006, dir. Kim Chaprion)

I happened upon two very different, but equally stylish French horror films recently and these really show up the dull slasher flicks that American horror cinema has devolved into.

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