Come True
Reviewed By Ben Kenigsberg
On Come True (2020), the Canadian filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns is billed as the director, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor and lead member of the visual-effects team. Under the pseudonym Pilotpriest, he also shares credit for the synth-driven, ’80s-style score. He acquits himself well on all counts except maybe scripting (he wrote the story with Daniel Weissenberger). Like Our House (2018), Burns’s underseen feature debut, Come True is superior throwback horror marred mainly by familiarity and, in this case, an ending that feels like a tease.
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For Election Eve 2020, Sault’s “Scary Times”
Possessor
Reviewed by Glenn Kenny
Possessor (2020), about an assassin who works by taking over the mind and body of someone who can get close to the victim without suspicion, could have sprung from the imagination of David Cronenberg and, like his early films, Possessor is equal parts cerebral and visceral. But this film is the work of the writer-director Brandon Cronenberg, his son. It depicts horrific murders in appalling detail as it relentlessly interrogates the experience of inhabiting a foreign body. [Read more…]
Ham on Rye
Reviewed by John DeFore
Promotional materials bill Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye (2019) as a “coming-of-age comedy,” comparing it to Dazed and Confused and John Hughes films. That’s as misleading as calling Eraserhead a reluctant-groom rom-com. But what other shorthand would you use for this strange, atmospheric work, which is 100 percent not a comedy but does share a spiritual connection — refracted through art-film aesthetics and anomie — with the aforementioned landmarks? Quiet and carefully made but cryptic, it relies on the viewer to complete its metaphors. To most patient eyes, it will look like a gentle ode to those who seemed part of the crowd in high school, then simply didn’t transform into the kind of adults their peers chose to be. [Read more…]
It’s Been Going On and On and… The Devonns “Blood Red Blues (Protest Song)”
from their recent self-titled release, The Devonns
on Record Kicks
A Bullet of Exigent Thought in Sault’s “Don’t Shoot Guns Down”
From the just-released Untitled (Black Is)
on Forever Living Originals
Juneteenth in an Amerika Undone and a Nation’s Action Against a Coded Tongue
“Coded Language”
by Saul Williams
from the Amethyst Rock Star release
on American Recordings
Mind Within a Fisted Hand in “Read My Palmer, Laura”
by The Fantastic Twins
From Bongo Beats and Bankruptcy : The Sound of I’m a Cliché
Curated by Cosmo Vitelli
on I’m a Cliché [Read more…]
Blood-Borne Torpors and the Sound of Covicious Return
The “Problem of Subjectivity” Beneath Star-Shot Chimera and a Supine Sun
Slow Delivery From Viral Malaise to Vaporizing Blasts of Mind
Like Claws On The Soundboard Of Mind: Slove’s “Carte Postale”
from Le Danse
on Pschent Music
Through Thinly Flesh the Corona Invades and Not But a Flash The Body Betrays
“Primative Struggle,” or a Cough Only a Corona Mother Could Love
As Covid Spreads, So Too the Space for Covert Sound
New work from Daniel Avery & Alessandro Cortini
From Illusion Of Time
“Inside The Ruins”
on Phantasy Sound
Tony Allen, Nuanced Drummer And Creator Of The Indelible AfroBeat, Dies
Tony Oladipo Allen
Drummer of Protest, Drummer of Peace
1940 – 2020
♠
Below, from No Accommodation for Lagos
“African Message”
As Man Slips Through Volatile Lands, Feed Not On Dollars And Dow
“Oil,” by Xi
The song “Oil,” from XI, both suits and most certainly honors this day, Earth Day, when a barrel of oil arrives on the global markets utterly worthless — a negative sum that is not only ironic but undeniably apt.
To that end, Happy Earth Day everyone! Let’s take this day to commit to healing this incredible planet and, more essentially, to changing the way we live on it: lightly, with love, and with infinite respect for each other and the very terrains that give birth and lend majesty to our truly miraculous existence. C
Pre-release of “Oil” by XI
Lyrics: Reid Wilkie; Music: Eddie Hultén
Instagram: @reidwilkie | @eddie.hulten
@EarthDayNetwork
@poetsorg (Academy of American Poets)
@ThroughtheFlowerArtSpace
Artists for the Earth | Artists for the Earth Registration.
From Sonic Collage To Stepping Groove: John Tejada’s “Moving 909s”
Prince BeProud: Moodymann’s Sinuous “I’ll Provide”
from the recent Sinner release
on KDJ Records