There have been a number of Christmas-themed horror movies over the years, such as 1974's Black Christmas (which was remade in 2006 with some liberties taken) and the quintessential "killer Santa" movie Silent Night, Deadly Night from 1984, which caused such an outrage from the public that it was pulled from theatrical release despite doing respectable box office numbers. Being that Christmas is a traditionally happy and festive holiday, I've perversely enjoyed attempts to show the dark side of it.

"Bloody Christmas" follows mostly in the spirit of those before it. A direct-to-DVD production rather than a theatrical movie, and shot on video (but I will largely refer to it here as a "movie" anyways for simplicity's sake), it attempts to present its own "Killer Sa...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
All-porn star rock band mockumentary

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good mockumentaries
Likes: Adult movies
Dislikes: Poor acting
Hates: Reality TV

The Show
Mockumentaries are much harder to get right than they seem. After all, you've got to have a really good team to make fiction seem like reality, especially when it comes to the acting. Of course, you could just say "Fudge it," and shoot a feature-length episode of reality television instead, full of all the manufactured scenarios, drama and women yelling that make me avoid that genre like the plague. That certainly seems to be the tactic chosen by the makers of Tight, the story of the first all-female, all-porn star rock band and thei...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Sexual politics turn ugly in Cherry, a movie about shallow people doing horrible things to each other all in the name of love or what passes for it in their world. Despite the film not possessing a single character worth caring about, it remains watchable thanks to some occasionally sharp writing by writer / director Quinn Saunders and co-writer / star David Crane and a finale that goes heavy on the shock value.

Brian Cherry (David Crane) is a sad and lonely man. This isn't immediately apparent because the film opens with him having a boozy night out with his best friend, Sam (Rey Valentin). Unfortunately, Sam is a brash, misogynistic alpha-male who keeps Cherry around just so he can feel better about himself. Even his offer to chat up a girl on Cherry's behalf comes with the warning that if Cherry doesn't put the moves on her, then Sam will...what a pal. I...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Many people are aware of the relationship that Ike and Tina Turner had through the excellent film What's Love Got To Do With It, based on Tina's memoir and recounted their relationship and Ike's years of physical and emotional abuse of Tina and her eventual career resurgence. And while this may be the prism that most people identified, not many knew or were aware of the dynamic between the two behind those scenes. And with Ike & Tina On The Road, the attempt to shed some light on this lesser known dynamic is made.

The film is home video footage that was shot by Bob Gruen, a longtime rock photographer (whose picture of John Lennon in a New York City t-shirt remains an iconic photo) and Gruen's wife Nadya. The couple was brought into the fold after Ike had seen some of Gruen's photos and asked that he film the pair and the rest of the band as they toured No...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The 1971 animated special The Point was based on an album by singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson. The record told the same basic outline that became the movie, a concept that Nilsson allegedly concocted on acid, and in the original recorded version, he sang all the songs and laid down spoken word bits over music to relay the story. For the cartoon version, actors were brought in to cover the different parts, and extended dialogue sequences and a framing device were written to flesh out the material. The Point was directed by Fred Wolf and animated by the Murakami-Wolf production company, a regular mainstay of Saturday morning cartoons and also the team that would later adapt Peter, Paul & Mary's "Puff the Magic Dragon" in much the same w...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Zombie movies are dime a gross these days, and smart filmmakers try to find a unique angle or fresh take to make the mostly tired genre interesting and fun. Unfortunately, the producers of British indie Zombie Undead present little new material, though they do show a few flashes of near brilliance.

The body of the film takes place almost entirely in a hospital. Some sort of terrorist attack, using a backpack bomb, releases radiation or a gas or something that causes people to bleed out, die and rise again as zombies, though the actual word is never spoken in the film. Sarah (Ruth King) serves as the protagonist. She rushes her father to the hospital with Steve (Barry Thomas), an EMT, but she faints when her father collapses to the hospital floor and begins coughing up blood. When she awakes in a side room, the hospital has already been overrun by the undead.

She is det...Read the entire review

The Concert:

The stigma of being a perceived one-hit wonder can seemingly be a blessing or a curse, depending on what type of performer or group you may be. Or in the case of Dinosaur Jr., you can put your head down and keep on performing, regardless of what the newfound fame and celebrity might have gotten you. The band had a mainstream hit on radio and video via "Feel the Pain," a single from their 1994 album "Without A Sound," with the video being directed by a young up and coming auteur named Spike Jonze. However, the album was the band's sixth at the time, and they have made three more albums since.

However, things have never been milk and honey for the three-member band that came from Massachusetts. The band's frontman and guitarist J Mascis was bringing in new band members as quickly as he was kicking them out, and the oft-played 'Pain' was a song that lacked the band's origin...Read the entire review

Left & Loose in The Lot:
Even with the internationally famous comedy duo Cheech and Chong forming the mighty trunk of this family tree, the Pot-Com is a movie genre in pretty short supply. Sure, you can argue with me, but just step into your local rental store (if such things still exist) and ask for some Rom-Com recommendations, wait for a half hour as the clerk rattles off a list, then ask for some Pot-Com recommendations. You'll get a list of about nine titles. But now you can add to that list Left & Loose in The Lot, a movie about a hapless pair of security guards with a little bit too much love for the herb. Whether you have much love for this movie might depend on your relationship with that same plant, but even garden-variety squares will find plenty of laughs in this middle of the road Pot-Com. (If the cops come knocking, just don't answer the door!)

Left (Demetrius D...Read the entire review

Rock and roll doesn't always treat its trendsetting ancestors with the respect deserved, and sometimes those very same overlooked trendsetters burn white-hot before disintegrating into a million pieces, remembered only by the yet-to-be-formed bands they influenced and an even smaller circle of fans who know the truth.

The New York Dolls - existing briefly as one singular core unit - took the glam rock movement of the early 1970s and twisted its axis, reshaping the meaning of rock-and-roll androgyny into not only something visually daring, but most importantly cementing themselves as cross-dressing trailblazers with a couple of highly influential albums. There's no question The Dolls laid the foundation for the punk movement, and if there was ever any doubt about that just take a peek at this 70-minute film from Nadya and Bob Gruen which captures David Johansen, Arthur Kane, Jerry Nolan, Sylvain...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

You know what Duke Ellington: Reminiscing in Tempo could use? A good editor. This free-form documentary portrait is basically two different films fighting for screen time: one good, a compilation of performance clips and home movies from Ellington's 1968 tour of Mexico, and one bad, a recent gathering of friends, family, and admirers in celebration of the late jazzman's birthday. The first film is fascinating, handsome, and enjoyable; the second amounts to a home movie, with both the production value and outside interest that such a phrase brings to mind.

To his credit, director Gary Keys does not construct Reminiscing in Tempo as a straight-up biographical film; it is more impressionistic, flitting from one theme to the next (religion, civil rights, musicianship, image). The group of fans and collaborators, assembled by Ellington's sister Ruth Ellington Boa...Read the entire review

REVIEW
This umpteenth reworking of the Frankenstein mythos - dosed pleasurably with plenty of appropriate Shelley nods - comes from the redundantly named writer/director/musician Creep Creepersin. While the world was hardly clamoring for another stab at the whole man-plays-god bit Creepersin somehow succeeds with an openly low-budget short film (it barely hits the 60-minute mark) that manages to be clever, disturbing, funny and even a little bittersweet at times. It's not the most polished film ever made, but Creep Creepersin's Frankenstein shows the director's obvious love of the genre while still allowing him to put an alternate spin on a familiar plotline.

That's good news for horror fans, because this film - even with its budgetary/production limitations - is definitely worth checking out.

In Creepersin's world, the character of Frankenstein is the pet rat of simple...Read the entire review

The Product:
It's a sad story, one made even more melancholy by the subject of the tale. His name is Larry Fischer, and while few outside the fringe know of him, he imagines himself the biggest rock star in the world. He also envisions a society which persecutes and prohibits him from reaching his full music god potential. "Discovered" (and in his mentally ill mind, destroyed) by Frank Zappa and nurtured as part of the late '60s freak scene, the newly dubbed "Wild Man" hoped his simplistic, sing-along tunes would catch on with a jaded hippy demographic. A few years later, he was more or less homeless, panhandling on the streets near Rhino Records. From there, he experienced another renaissance, another series of disappointments, a remarkable collaboration with Barnes and Barnes, and a continuing concern over his schizophrenic, bi-polar personality. As of 2005, the year in which the fine docu...Read the entire review

REVIEW
When I think back to my post-punk days of the early days of the 1980s, when things went electronic and dance music made its synth-driven return Heaven 17 was one of my go-to bands. Their first two albums - Penthouse & Pavement (1981) and The Luxury Gap (1983) were the stuff of hipster cool at the time, and I'm not ashamed to say tracks like (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thing and Let Me Go have remained family favorites over the years, still enjoying prominence in my iTunes library.

Damn - those are great songs. Really.

For the uninformed, Heaven 17 is three guys (Ian Craig Marsh, Martyn Ware, Glenn Gregory) who were pioneers in the whole Sheffield electronic music movement of the late 1970s, two of which (Marsh and Ware) were founding members of The Human League. While Heaven 17 now is essentially disbanded, basically relegated to r...Read the entire review

THE SHOW:

Pretty female voices against a dreamy ambient soundscape. This is what a lot of people associate with the musical act Delerium and this is what Epiphany, their concert DVD, delivers. The band started as an offshoot of Front Line Assembly, an industrial act spearheaded by Bill Leeb. Since its inception in 1987, Delerium's music has involved elements ranging from dark ambient to electronic pop with world music flourishes. Epiphany skews towards the band's later years by focusing on lush and ethereal atmospherics built around the angelic vocals of Kristy Thirsk and Leigh Nash. If Nash's name sounds familiar it's because she is also the lead singer of Sixpence None the Richer. Leigh and Kristy are backed by the rest of Leeb's touring band which includes Sean Ashby (Guitar), Ashwin Sood (Drums) and Brian Minato (Bass).

This release fe...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

I really didn't know what to expect from Keith Moon - Final 24: His Final Hours. That awkwardly worded "if it bleeds, it leads" title and the insensitive "shocker" cover were enough to give me pause, but I really started to get worried when I saw the guy on the cover and in all the artwork wasn't actually the Who drummer but the actor who plays him in the documentary's re-enactments. What kind of crass grave robbing was this going to be?

Thankfully, these macabre P.T. Barnum tactics are largely a ruse. Keith Moon - Final 24: His Final Hours is part of a series of "last day" programs produced for cable television in 2006 and 2007--hence, the fade-outs where commercials would go and the multiple recaps mid-program. (Someone should tell whoe...Read the entire review

The Movie:

To the layman like myself, Jeff Healey was known primarily as a blues guitarist. He grew up in Toronto and was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, and had his eyes surgically removed before his first birthday. Despite this, he managed to carve out a niche for himself in blues, and even helped parlay the praise of his debut album "See the Light" into a speaking role in the 1989 cult classic Road House. But there was far more substance to Healey's music and passion for it than many of us realize.

First and foremost, while he was primarily a blues musician, he was not exclusively one. A little more than a decade after reaching the peak of his success, he had switched over to making jazz records, playing guitar and trumpet on many of the songs and the type of jazz he was playing had a lot of Dixieland ele...Read the entire review

THE SHOW:

Band reunions are a tricky thing. Let's face it, it's never quite the same, and the older a band gets, the less likely that all the original members are going to be around and the magic is going to be far more elusive. Even when the band is sincere, when they aren't just cashing in, something is not quite right about seeing men in their fifties or sixties singing songs they wrote in their twenties. Not that I blame them for wanting to. If your dream was to make music, then who am I to cut off that lifeline? Audiences don't make it particularly easy for rock 'n' roll musicians to evolve, either. Too many people want it the way it was the first time, a distant past they can barely remember themselves--if they were even there the first time. I'll never fo...Read the entire review

Wesley Willis (1963 - 2003) was a Chicago artist and musician who enjoyed a short but significant burst of fame in the mid-to-late 1990s, when his band, the Wesley Willis Fiasco, toured widely. Willis suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, which appears to have had its onset following a knife attack that left him with a long, scaly scar down the right side of his face. Despite his premature death from leukemia at age 40, Willis left behind a huge body of work. His simple, repetitive, hilarious, and often profane songs number in the hundreds (he recorded about 50 albums), and his innumerable ballpoint and marker drawings of the Dan Ryan Expressway and other cityscapes represent a significant contribution to the art of Chicago.

Chris Bagley and Kim Shively...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Lech Kowalski interviewed Douglas Colvin, better known to the world as Dee Dee Ramone in 1992 to discuss his relationship with the late Johnny Thunders for his, at the time, in progress documentary, Born To Lose (The Last Rock And Roll Movie). With that in mind, it's not surprising (though it is slightly disappointing) that Dee Dee spends the vast majority of this hour-long interview talking more about his relationship with Thunders than his work with Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees, The Ramones.

That's not to say, however, that this isn't worth watching. There are some really interesting stories told over the documentary's hour and three minute running time, as Dee Dee talks about his problems with drug addiction and how he (at the time) overcame them, made all the more tragic by the fact that one June 5, 2002 he died or a heroin overdose at the age of fifty....Read the entire review

Points on a Space Age is a niche project: a documentary about the Sun Ra Arkestra, an experimental 1950's band formed around an obscure philosophy created by a man of the same name. Unfortunately, the documentary fails to open the concepts up to a broader audience; the project seems aimed at existing fans and existing fans alone, and there's a terrible typo on the DVD case sure to leave any consumer feeling ripped off.

The film, directed by Ephraim Asili, takes a look at the Arkestra both then and now, with tastes of the band performing and including some vintage space program footage of rockets taking off and flying to the moon. The DVD case informs me that Sun Ra was sent to Earth to "prepare human beings for a future centered around space travel". Unforunately, while the documentary makes some attempts, with bold motion text, to explain some of the philosophies of Sun Ra, I learned more by ...Read the entire review

Gunheavy:
It certainly takes something heavy to claim your movie has 'more firepower than any other film in history' while naming it Gunheavy. When you're operating on a budget so micro your cast of extra enemy combatants numbers two, you need to pull out all the stops. With the aid of some nice locations, devilish trickery and a style-over-story aesthetic, Gunheavy comes out blazing. While it's no action-packed sci-war masterpiece, Gunheavy cranks up some serious post-apocalyptic atmosphere for truly enjoyable ride.

Plot is near boilerplate: civilization collapses, a machine-obsessed military junta manages to take over the world, while a small band of insurgents fight back. They've got a hugely uphill battle, and only 65 minutes of screen time to fight it.

Right off the bat, Gunheavy smoothly subverts expectations. Of course the problem in reviewing movies like Gunheavy is finding that ...Read the entire review