dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

ATP: I'll Be Your Mirror 2012 Asbury Park, New Jersey

Finally, a ray of sunshine pierces through the darkness and shines brightly upon my face. For the 5th year in a row I'll be attending All Tomorrow's Parties here in the United States of America. More bands TBA, but this is what we have to look forward to so far ...

Chosen by Greg Dulli (The Afghan Whigs):

THE AFGHAN WHIGS
LOUIS C.K.
THE ROOTS
JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ
MARK LANEGAN BAND
DIRTY THREE
THE ANTLERS
THE DIRTBOMBS performing Ultraglide In Black
SCRAWL
SHARON VAN ETTEN
EMERALDS
VETIVER
QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT
CHARLES BRADLEY AND THE EXTRAORDINAIRES
DJ QUESTLOVE
REIGNING SOUND

+ more to be confirmed

Chosen by ATP:

THE MAKE-UP
(reforming for IBYM)
HOT SNAKES
THE MAGIC BAND
AUTOLUX
THEE OH SEES
FACTORY FLOOR
DEATH GRIPS
I BREAK HORSES

+ more to be confirmed

Also returning to the festival is the Criterion Cinema Festival - where the best of what Criterion has to offer will be available for your viewing pleasure in a big auditorium where you can rest your tired bones. The films run all weekend (3 days) in a nice, quiet area - a good a place as any to gather your strength as well as your wits.

This announcement could not have come at a better time for me. These are my favorite 3 days of the entire year, every year. With the recent split of Kitty Green and I it will be good to have something pure and illuminating to look forward to. Myself and my yearly ATP crew are the stuff of legend and we'll be rocking this year harder than ever before. I love you ATP, bring it right the fuck on!

dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Admiration & Animation

Found this in my Inbox this morning:

Hey Steve,

Love Ink & Pixel man. Ive wanted a column like this to exist for so long and now I am happy one finally does where the writer does their homework! I actually print off the articles as they are published and keep them in a binder on my bookshelf. This makes it easier for me to show others who come over to watch movies.(I am known as the "animation guy" in my group of friends). Your articles often sway others to watch some of my favorite animated flicks with me and for that I cannot thank you enough.

Fellow Schmoe dankfoo

This put such a BIG smile on my face this morning. Thank man, I needed that.

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

My Golden Schmoe Picks of 2011

My picks are the following:

Favorite Movie of the Year: Drive

Worst Movie of the Year: Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part 1)

Best Director of the Year: JJ Abrams - Super 8

Best Screenplay of the Year: 50/50

Most Overrated Movie of the Year: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Most Underrated Movie of the Year: 50/50

Trippiest Movie of the Year: Sucker Punch

Best Comedy of the Year: 50/50

Best Horror Movie of the Year: Insidious

Best Animated Movie of the Year: Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn

Best Sci-Fi Movie of the Year: Super 8

Best Special Effects of the Year: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Biggest Disappointment of the Year: Cowboys & Aliens

Biggest Surprise of the Year: Warrior

Best Actor of the Year: Joseph Gordon-Levitt - 50/50

Best Actress of the Year: Viola Davis - The Help

Best Supporting Actor of the Year: Nick Nolte - Warrior

Best Supporting Actress of the Year: Elle Fanning - Super 8

Breakthrough Performance of the Year: Michael Fassbender - X-Men: First Class

Favorite Celebrity of the Year: Emma Stone

Coolest Character of the Year: The Driver - Drive

Best Music in a Movie: Drive

Favorite Movie Poster of the Year: Drive

Best Trailer of the Year (2011 releases): Drive

Best DVD of the Year: Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Extended Edition)

Best Action Sequence of the Year: Super 8 - Train crash

Most Memorable Scene in a Movie: Drive - Elevator scene

Best T&A of the Year: All the girls - Sucker Punch

Best Line of the Year: Attack the Block -- "This is too much madness to explain in one text!"

dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

And so something that was once so beautiful, must end …

And so something that was once so beautiful, must end …

It pains me to bring you all this very sad news, but Kitty Green and I have decided to part ways. Unforgivable events have taken place and have left us with no alternative but to leave the comfort of each other’s arms and souls. We both love you all very much and please ask that you respect our decision and privacy in this matter. Should any of you care to learn the story of how this event came to be you may message me privately, though understand that it may take time before I respond to you all.

Since the both of us have remained constant supporters and contributors of the MFC community we have shared much with many of you, and wish not to lose what will be most definitely be a safe haven for us both through this pained and difficult end. We will always remember the time we spent together when things were pure and want nothing more than for this transition to be as problem free as possible.

I know that you all must have questions, but please, be patient, and do your best to contact us privately in this matter. Neither of us wishes to poison this community with our now very negative reality, you’re all just too important to us for that.

My heart has been reduced to dust, I love you all, and none of this was ever supposed to happen. Should you ever enter into the equivocal realm of love, remember … honesty above all else. Without honesty there is no respect. And without any respect there is no going back.

And so something that was once so beautiful, must end …

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Films I Watched in January 2012

This is a list of all the films I watched in the month of January 2012. All ratings of movies upon another watch are subject to change around here. Cheers!

The Adventures of Tin Tin (10/10)
The Emperor’s New Groove (9.5/10)
Midnight in Paris (8.5/10)
Tamara Drewe (7/10)
Real Steel (5/10)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (8/10)
Puncture (8.5/10)
Legend of the Fist (5.5/10)
The Help (8/10)
The Secret of Nimh (8.5/10)
Redline (7/10)
First Squad: The Moment of Truth (8.5/10)
How Beer Saved the World (6.5/10)
DMT: The Spirit Molecule (8.5/10)
Fast Five (8.5/10)
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (9.5/10)
Bushwhacked (5.5/10)
GANTZ (7/10)
The Sword in the Stone (10/10)
Spirited Away (10/10)
The Rum Diary (8/10)
In Time (1.5/10)

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

My Oh My, How Kids Movies Have Changed

Just yesterday I decided to pop in the movie Bushwhacked starring Daniel Stern as the film's nitwit on the run from a shady deal gone wrong.

Imagine Marv, Stern's hapless character from the Home Alone franchise. Now that you've got that mental picture - apply that formula to him being an equally ridiculous scout leader in charge of a swarm of children. Stern leads the children into the woods seemingly as part of their planned camping weekend, though, in actuality for Stern, it's a way of running from the FEDS chasing him.

What's my point? John Polito (he was the storekeeper, Gideon, from The Crow ~ "Shit on me!") ... his character in Bushwhacked is the FED in pursuit of Stern's character, Max ...he gets peed on by a bunch of underage children.

Yes.

Okay, so at one point in the movie - Polito - exhausted from scaling the mountain side, mistakes about 5-6 small boys erratically peeing on him from an above cliff face for a sudden "sun shower".

Could you imagine if they tried to get away with something like that today?

Or how about the moments when the kids, after discovering their Scout Leader's true identity, drug him with a canteen full of allergy medicine, copious amounts of cough syrup, and 17 dead horses worth of sleeping pills.

This is a lethal combination of drugs that would kill any normal human being and we're gonna show you how to get it done, kids! Did your parents ground you for being a jerkoff during one of your classes? Wanna silence them, but good? Bushwhacked!

All of this aside the movie is really just oozing with eye rolling silliness. It's like if one half of The Wet Bandits had to live out his community service being a counselor to half the cast of The Might Ducks and the fat kid from Heavyweights. Not that fat kid, the other fat kid. Oh, never mind.

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Movies watched for the month of December 2011

This is a list of all the films I watched in the month of December 2011. All ratings of movies upon another watch are subject to change around here. Cheers!

Adventures in Babysitting (8.5/10)
A Charlie Brown Christmas (8/10)
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (9/10)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (9.5/10)
Disney’s Aladdin (8/10)
Cowboys & Aliens (6.5/10)
The Hangover Part II (6.5/10)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (9/10)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (8.5/10)
50/50 (10/10)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (7.5/10)
Rio (4.5/10)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (9/10)
Home Alone (8.5/10)
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (8/10)
Elf (6.5/10)
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (10/10)
A Christmas Story (7/10)
The Tree of Life (9/10)
Ernest Saves Christmas (6.5/10)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (9/10)

With these films I've watched a totaly of 336 films this year. Huzzah!

dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

MFC Calendar Girl Music Themes

I hope you all enjoy my contribution to the LADIES OF MFC CALENDAR.

Each lovely lady has been given a theme song based on their personalities, favorite bands, and whatever I could uncover while creeping around. Mwuahaha!

I hope you all have the best of holidays. Each one of you looks stunning in the calendar and I am very honored to have played a small role in bringing this project full circle.

Props go out to the beautiful Laksmikanti and the rockin Randychico for their efforts and dedication to bringing you all this wonderful collection.

See in you in 2012?

dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Movies watched for the month of November 2011

This is a list of all the films I watched in the month of November 2011. All ratings of movies upon another watch are subject to change around here. Cheers!

Titan A.E. (7.5/10)
Trainspotting (8/10)
Blood: The Last Vampire (10/10)
Cars 2 (8.5/10) *
Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf (8/10)
House (9.5/10)
A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (7.5/10) *
The Fist of Legend (6/10) *
The Crow (10/10)
Another Earth (9/10) * (pictured)
Conan the Barbarian (3.5/10) *
Bachelor Party (7.5/10) *
Warrior (10/10) *
The Muppets (8.5/10) *
Hugo (6.5/10) *
Warrior (10/10)
The Muppets (8.5/10)

* Indicates a First Watch

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Second Thoughts On American Horror Story

I'm all caught up on American Horror Story. The show didn't really find it's legs for me until the third episode. As soon as "sex" stopped being every other word out of each and every characters mouth it started to get pretty good.

People have been telling me that it's the scariest show ever on television. I'm not entirely sure of what their definition of scary is but I wouldn't go that far, I'd say it's more suspenseful than anything else. There have been a couple of solid surprises and the show seems to finally be keeping pace with itself, especially in the Halloween Two-Part episodes.

So yeah, I guess you can't always judge a show by it's first impression. The characters and story need to time to build and breathe, and only than can you make an informed opinion. Not always, but you know what I mean.
I think I've got a lot of what's going on in the show figured out

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Who Do You Trust?

Over the past couple of months there's been this gnawing feeling within my bones. I don't know who I can trust anymore and it's as lately everyone has been against me. I really don't know when it happened, I just know that it's blatantly apparent. I'm talking of course ... about my group of corporeal good friends.

Over the past several months I've given some of my most honored and trusted friends films that I thought were fantastic, and all I've gotten in return from each and every one of them is a resounding "Meh."

We're talking Drive, Attack the Block, Insidious, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, The Princess Bride, Trainspotting, the list goes on. Let's just skip over the whole "Everyone is entitled to their opinion" song and dance because this isn't about that. This is about MFC and just how relieving it is that you are all here.

I think I'm down to like maybe 4 people that I think I can share films with that aren't getting lazy and nit-picky about every little thing when watching them. To each is own and all that, but what's the fun in sharing movies with your friends (friends that have loved the same films with you for countless years), if the growing trend seems to be them debating you at every turn as to why is sucked?

I love a good movie debate as much as anyone else. I suppose it just saddens me that I feel like I'm losing my core audience.

For better or worse, it's nice to know that there is a community of people I can turn to for diverse opinions, critiqued criticisms, and outlandish personalities. Cheers.

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Movies watched for the month of October 2011

This is a list of all the films I watched in the month of October 2011. All ratings of movies upon another watch are subject to change around here. Cheers!

The Children (7.5/10)
The Shining (10/10)
The Thing (10/10)
Batman: Year One (9.5/10)
Horrible Bosses (3/10)
Free Enterprise (8/10)
Casper (6.5/10)
Dead Set (8.5/10)
Donnie Darko (9.5/10)
Attack the Block (9.5/10)
Winnie the Pooh (9/10)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (4/10)
Wake Wood (5/10)
Evil Dead (9.5/10)
The Secret World of Arrietty (9/10)
Cars 2 (/10)

I really slacked this month. Sometimes life takes a busy turn ... or, you know, bot Dark Souls and Batman Arkham City are released and everything else gets put on hold.

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

My NEW Blog/Podcast about all the new Comic Books!

Hey everyone! So, my friends and I have been working on putting together a blog/podcast project to coincide with the DC New 52 comic books that have recently hit the shelves.

We'll be covering all kinds of great geek stuff as well such as comics from other publishers, video games, graphic novels, ect.

So if you like comics, or just want to hear what I sound like, please come and check us out. Subscribe, Share and all that good stuff.

Understand that this is a work in progress and any feedback would be appreciated.

Site: http://talkingcomicbooks.com/

Podcast:
Episode One: Part One
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dc-comics-new-52-part-1-talking/id472131391?i=100971856
Episode One: Part Two
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dc-comics-new-52-part-2-talking/id472131391?i=100971857

dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

My Issues with American Horror Story *SPOILERS ABOUND*

First of all, it feels more like something that should be a mini-series rather than an actual show.

The distribution of the material within just the first episode was entirely too much. How many evil entities could you count during the pilot? Yeah, I didn't think you counted, because there was too damn many. You've got the dead twins, dead but still living animals, BDSM man, whore maid, Freddy Krueger's cousin, evil baby, fuck face neighbour boy, the evil crone in the basement that scratched up cliched super bitch, do I need to go on?

Now, normally this would be a good thing. Lots of evil to focus on and use throughout the show, only now we've seen so much of what the show has to offer that we can only look forward to repeat events with these baddies, therefore, the mystery is lost.

The show is confusing. This is not The Others, people who are dead walking around like people who are alive? Yawn. Unless you do something really fantastic with it ... fail. You need to set boundaries.

The lead female character - what's with her being so environment conscious? Is this character trait for the tired activist housewives that miss Nip/Tuck? It just seems really tacked on and pointless. It tells us next to nothing about her and they brought it up like 3-4 times.

The lead male character - You're a mental health doctor, dude. You also seem pretty fucking unstable yourself. How is it that within the first few days of staying in that house that you didn't notice something was amiss, pack your bags, and get the fuck out of there? Your zombie-like state isn't 24/7 - use that downtime to get your shit together.

The lead female daughter - BORING! Oh my god, if I have to suffer through another tortured teen on television I'm going to pull my hair out. They've already taken this girl way beyond what she needed to be for the first episode of this show.

The bitch at the new school - Could this character have been any more of a cliche? Seriously, have you ever gone to a new school and had someone single you out like that for smoking on school grounds? I just don't find her character to be believable in the least. She's every tired bitch character trait rolled into 10 minutes of on-screen time.

It's not scary ... at all. They've got the set up, they've got the effects and make-up ... so what's the problem?

The problem - People will watch it because there's sex, shaven man ass, masturbating maids (when really she's only diddling her withered prune puss, most likely to cough out dust each time she achieves an orgasm) and lots of uses of the words: shit, cock, balls, and whatever else. People will think they are watching something cool because it's sort of breaking the taboos of regularly scheduled programming. Much like Nip/Tuck - this show is all over the place and really just didn't know how to open it's doors.

I would have much rather seen some kind of slow burn decent into madness than all all out multi-spirit rampage. I'm not sure I can watch a show about characters who are so dismissive of their surroundings. If it were me, the moment I saw super school yard bitch get ransacked by the witch from that pit in Army of Darkness I would have bolted. The end.

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dead anchoress posted a BLOG item over 1 year ago

Movies Watched: September 2011

This is a list of all the films I watched in the month of August 2011. All ratings of movies upon another watch are subject to change around here. Cheers!

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (10/10)
Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi (8.5/10)
Hanna ( 8.5/10)*
Arthur (6.5/10)*
Critters (6.5/10)
Critters 2 (6/10)
Critters 3 ( 5/10)
Critters 4 (1.5/10)
The Princess Bride (10/10)
Attack the Block (9.5/10)
Bridesmaids (7.5/10)*
Breaking Bad: Season One*
X-Men: First Class (9/10)
Mortal Kombat (4/10)
Wanted (8/10)
Hulk vs. Thor (7/10)*
Attack the Block (9.5/10)
Breaking Bad: Season Two*
Breaking Bad: Season Three*
Eden of the East: Paradise Lost (7.5/10)*
[REC] (8.5/10)*
Thor (8/10)
Drive (9.5/10)*
Shaolin Grandma (?/10)*
The Secret of Kells (10/10)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (7.0/10)
Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones (6/10)
Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (8.5/10)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (10/10)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (10/10)
Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi (8.5/10)

* indicates a first watch