No alligators, no Phantoms, no Morlocks, but still pretty cool: Slate’s Rose George takes a trip deep into London’s 30,000 mile-strong sewer system.

Also at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum, whom I’ve kicked around a bit here before, writes about the new 9/11 docudrama United 93 in part through the lens of George Romero’s Dead films, specifically likening terrorists to zombies and the world that terrorists would like to usher in to the world of the Dead. This is the sort of thing that’s gotten me into hot water in the past, so I won’t do the same; I will say that to me, part of the appeal of the zombie genre is zombies reflect in symbolic form the aspects of human nature that terrorists embody in actual form.

Jason Adams of My New Plaid Pants waxes rhapsodic on Michelle Pfeiffer, specifically Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. Pfeiffer is a person who seems to just keep getting better and better looking, to the point where I think in a few years she’ll turn invisible, like a dog whistle blowing in a register human ears can’t pick up.

Jog the Blog has posted an index for his reviews of all 29 issues now available of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers project. Seven Soldiers is easily the most ambitious superhero comics project in recent memory and well worth your time to investigate; so too is Jog’s writing.

Jason Bell at One Louder sings the praises of Jonathan Demme’s beautiful and riveting video for New Order’s “Perfect Kiss,” one of my all-time favorite music videos. I love the contrast between the emotional urgency of the music and lyrics and the understated simplicity of the performance and cinematography. I just made it sound a lot more boring than it really is, though–click on the link and check out the clip from the video. And watch VH1 Classic’s The Alternative regularly–they show the video at least once every two or three weeks.

Finally–and there’s just no way to transition to this appropriately–terrible news: I was stunned to read today that the wife of Matt Zoller Seitz, the blogger and film critic whose writings on The Sopranos I’ve come to absolutely love, has died suddenly at age 35. Please go and offer Matt and his young children your condolences; information on where cards can be sent and donations can be made may be found there as well.

About a week ago I somehow decided to look up yourethemannowdog.com on wikipedia. The pertinent pages were the most fascinating things I’d read in months.

And thus a YTMND devotee was born. Here are some YTMND.com sites I created myself. (While a familiarity with YTMND fads and in-jokes might enhance your enjoyment of my little creations, it is by no means a requirement.)

Bill Cosby is sending the wrong kind of message.

Tyra Banks has some problems.

Robocop has one weakness.

Technology breeds harmony.

Nancy Kerrigan is emo.

And oh my goodness folks, I sure get the feeling that there will be more where that came from.

The problem isn’t necessarily THE SOPRANOS but the pop culture template it fills (and sometimes subverts). You cannot, repeat cannot, watch these murderous thugs week after week without getting comfortable with them, and I think the very fact that it’s been on the air for seven years does in fact invite us to get comfortable with them. Yes, they are living in constrained circumstances — I’ve mentioned that in my posts, and in Star-Ledger articles over the years — but there is still a strong power fantasy aspect to the show’s appeal, and it is not always as complex, subtle or challenging as the shows most vocal defenders (myself included) sometimes insist. Trust me, I have to read the mail each week from people who are complaining that there haven’t been enough beatings, shootings or trips to the Bada-Bing. To them, the dream sequences, therapy scenes, quiet character moments and moral/ethical/spiritual questions are the price they have to pay for the chance to see Paulie Walnuts waste some Dominicans and then get kicked in the balls. You can’t tell me that Chase and company aren’t aware that the show is a hit mainly because of those elements rather than for the qualities we pore over in the comments thread of this site. You could say that Chase isn’t to blame for the ignorance of the show’s yahoo fan contingent, but that would be letting him off the hook.

[…]

…from a purely personal, subjective, probably indefensible and unexplainable standpoint, I would like to see Tony suffer, or at least experience truly profound and lasting changes as a result of what he’s been through over six seasons. Because if he doesn’t, then we really have been asked to spend an hour a week in the company of an evil man who does evil things. Drama should lead to insight and the decision to change or not change; if it’s just a series of situations and events that are thrown onscreen to keep us interested, it’s not really drama, it’s just escapism. To intentionally mangle the cable channel’s slogan, if that happens, I will feel that what I’ve spent seven years watching isn’t HBO, but television.

—Matt Zoller Seitz on The Sopranos, specifically what must be done to justify creating and viewing an ongoing television series that centers around criminals. Do you agree?

Good Lord, there’s so much more in this post to read and ponder–go and do so. It’s in the comment thread.

Whatever god smiles upon the fortunes of people who love water monsters sure as shit smiled upon me today. (Hat tip: Jason Adams.)

Speaking of Jason, he’s certainly invented a novel game as a guest-blogger at Film Experience: Six degrees of…Paperhouse? Hey, why not?

Sylvian L. of Killing in Style writes on The New York Ripper, a film infamous for its exploitative content even within the outr

I don’t have a clue what my reader demographics are these days. I’ve been a more or less constant horror blogger for a while now, but before that I was a comics blogger, and I still read a lot of comics blogs myself. So consider this a little bit of ADDTF ecumenicism: One of the two best comics bloggers alive, Jog of Jog the Blog, has posted lengthy reviews of two recent zombie comics, Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead progenitor John Russo’s Escape of the Living Dead and semi-superhero impresario Warren Ellis’s Blackgas. Fine writing on genre from a blogger some of you horror folks might not be familiar with. Go and enjoy!

(WARNING: SPOILERS ahead, sorta, for Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. I don’t name names, but I do give away what happens and who makes it happen, in broad strokes at least.) Speaking of comics bloggers gone all horror-like, a while back I noted that semi-comics blog Ringwood’s Ken Lowery (now of Dark But Shining infamy) wrote a comparison between Woody Allen’s two musings on infidelity, murder, and guilt, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. Ken’s thesis is that insofar as C&M‘s protagonist was fairly tortured about his decision to kill whereas MP seemed to dive right in, C&M is the more optimistic movie. I disagree, strongly in fact, both because I don’t buy Ken’s reading of the protagonist of MP (who seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown during the entire day of the killing, both before and after), and because, as Ken actually points out, C&M‘s protagonist eventually forgives himself for his unforgiveable act; he no longer feels any guilt for his crime. MP leaves us with a lingering close-up on the killer’s face as he sits separated from the ideal family his murder has enabled him to maintain; Allen’s implication is that he will never be able to be happy with the fruits of his crime, which to me is actually an optimistic view of human nature. The fact that Crimes & Misdemeanors‘s murderer is able to smile and smile and be a villain, guilt-free, absolving himself of a wrongdoing it should not be up to him to absolve himself from–that is what makes that film one of the most haunting and disturbing and pessimistic movies this horror fan has ever seen.

Speaking of disturbing non-horror movies (and comics, for that matter), Fluxblog’s Matthew Perpetua reviews Dan Clowes & Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential. I saw a sneak preview of this movie a while back, and it gets a big ADDTF thumbs up–hilarious and black, black, black. As I’m sure you’ll hear a million times, if you have any experience at all with art school or the art world, it is an absolute must-see.

Shifting gears down to the lowbrow for a moment, Final Girl’s Stacie Ponder posts a teaser poster for an upcoming film called Hatchet. The tagline: “It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequel. And it’s not based on a Japanese one. Hatchet: Old-school American horror.” Stacie’s verdict: “Sold!” My verdict: slow down. There’s obviously a good deal to complain about when it comes to remakes and sequels and now-quotidian American revamps of Asian horror films, but I’m always wary of any work of art that makes the equivalent of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll” its mission statement. I don’t think the answer to a surplus of retreads is just a retread of a different color.

Finally, my water-monster-loving self was thrilled to receive word from my ATF compadre Ken Bromberg that Nahuelito, the lake monster of Argentina’s Lake Naheul Huapi, has been “photographed.” The original report is here, and famed cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has the pictures here. Looks like another case of FBA: Fake, but AWESOME!

Souls first, shall we?

Cartoonist and my one-time Comics Journal message board running buddy Jesse Hamm emails re: Ravenous:

My big beef with the film is that the intensity diminishes to a simmer in the latter half. After the delicious shock and horror of Colqhoun’s betrayal in the woods, the characters’ (admittedly chilling) stand-off back at the camp just can’t measure up.

True, but now that I think of it, I liked that aspect of the film. Keeping it at the same level of bloody action mayhem that the cave-side massacre saw would have made the film a very different beast–it would have gone from primarily a battle of conscience or character to a far more traditional battle. (Which is not to say that the traditional battles were lacking, just that they illustrated the mental and moral conflict rather than supplanted it.) Jesse also points out that Ravenous actor Robert Carlyle and director Antonia Bird are teaming up once again for another tale of serial murder in the 1800s, The Meat Trade.

On a not-unrelated note, Jesse’s blog features a short but compelling post on several storytelling obstacles he feels are inherent to the horror genre, and the “pat solutions” adopted by horror creators as a way to overcome them. Success in the genre is difficult to achieve, Jesse argues, because “the high intensity panic which horror films aim to cultivate is, in real life instances, only momentary. Sustaining that emotion for the better part of 90 minutes is a herculean task — no wonder filmmakers shy away from it!” Thought-provoking stuff for students of the genre.

Slowly seguing into less horrific territory, the Sicilian mafia’s boss of all bosses, Bernardo Provenzano, has been arrested after 43 years of life on the run as a Bin Laden-like fugitive warlord. Like Bin Laden, his underground existence purportedly benefited from a sympathetic rural populace and a government he could bribe or blackmail into looking the other way. During his captaincy of Sicilian OC, Provenzano morphed the ultraviolent, terroristic organization into a low-key and therefore vastly successful criminal enterprise–much like that run in the good old days by The Godfather‘s mythical mob kingpin Vito Corleone, whose namesake hometown of Corleone, Sicily is the place where real-life don Provenzano hailed from.

And now for something completely different: Former Pitchfork contributor and Village Voice bullshit artist Nick Sylvester has posted a pretty terrific interview with the pretty terrific dance musician known as the Juan Maclean, asking him to comment on various specific songs and letting him run with it from there. The meatiest stuff can be found in discussions of the racial and sexual politics of disco, especially its current avant-garde revival, and in Juan’s thoughts on the songs that he himself created. And the interview comes from late 2005, before Sylvester decided he was badass enough to simply make shit up, so you probably don’t have to feel bad reading it the way you might in picking up the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin book or Ben Domenech, uh, whatever Ben Domenech is doing these days. (Found via Fluxblog.)

Another post by another Pitchfork alum: Chris Ott talks about Jane’s Addiction–how the first Lollapalooza stunk, how Jane’s allowed music execs to feel “in” whereas Nirvana didn’t, how the band’s various reunion projects should be viewed more or less favorably than they have been, and more. If you like the band, you’ll like this post, even when you’re disagreeing with it. (Link courtesy of “http://www.oneloudernyc.com/2006/04/friday-shorts.html”>One Louder.)

Finally, also via One Louder’s Rajeev Muttreja: Beck’s legendarily whacked-out 120 Minutes interview from way back when, conducted by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. I remember seeing this as it happened and being flabbergasted. Shoe-throwing as question-answering–now that’s our “Loser”!

Just last week I saw Ravenous for the first time. It took until about five minutes after it ended for me to realize that I loved it. Beautifully shot and edited, so thoughtful, so moving, so revolting–a horror film about giving and taking and all they entail, held down by tremendous performances by Robert Carlyle and (playing his character as Carlyle’s antithesis in a bravely charisma-free move) Guy Pearce. And lo and behold, new kid on the Dark But Shining block Ken Lowery has just blogged a paean to the movie, specifically to Carlyle’s character. I can totally see what Ken says about Ravenous being a cult movie’s cult movie; any film that centers around a character whose name is spelled Colqhuon is going to have a damn hard time finding an audience. I’m not quite as sold on the score as everyone else seems to be–perhaps it’s my leftover disillusionment with co-writer Damon Albarn’s Blur work of late, but at times it was either maddeningly repetitive (and hey, I like Steve Reich, so this really must be something) or wildly inappropriate for the moment–but I agree with most everything else this film’s fans have said about it. Highly recommended, fright fans.

On the water monster beat:

Bloody Disgusting has the scoop on The Host, the upcoming Korean horror film advertised in the above poster. Apparently, the monster glimpsed therein is co-designed by Watcher in the Water maestros Weta. Rad.

Meanwhile, this sounds vaguely familiar but I can’t remember consciously thinking about it until reading this item, also from BD: Apparently a “reimagining” of the Friday the 13th franchise is in the offing in the form of a film that will incorporate elements from throughout the series’ mythos. I’ve yet to see a single Friday, but I’ve always found it so fascinating that it took until the third installment for the series as it’s commonly thought of, i.e. an unstoppable hockey-masked killer named Jason runs around murdering horny stoned teenagers, to take shape. (Something slightly similar happened with the Hellraiser series, in the first two installments of which the intended antagonist was the black-widow figure, Julia, and not the regal prince of Hell and instant horror icon, Pinhead.) Apparently this remake/revamp/whatever will feature both Jason (whose first turn as the killer in Part 2 saw him sporting a burlap bag on his head) and his murderous mother (the villain of the first installment).

And now for something completely different: Scrubs, the best comedy on television, is apparently doing quite well this season. The suggested reason? It’s stopped trying to please a wide audience and started catering to its cult following, yours truly included. Unlikely recipes for success are always the best kind.

For serious, my lackadaisacal XML syndication feed is right as rain at this point. Go and subscribe to it!

Speaking of new things you should see and do, go give a housewarming hello to the Dark But Shining boys as they move into their fancy new digs at DarkButShining.com and welcome new members Ken Lowery and Daniel Laloggia! Founding member Kevin Melrose will be missed, but he’s moved on to the greener pastures of his two new(ish) blogs Supernaturally and Comics, Covered. So it’s a good deal all around.

Another good deal: Bloody Disgusting has the specs for this summer’s Anchor Bay DVD release of Cemetery Man! Before you ask, the answer is no, I couldn’t be more excited. (For some reasons why, click here.)

B.D. also links to the posters for the upcoming video game-horror film adaptation Silent Hill. The last time I saw someone crib this liberally from Clive Barker I was watching Dark City, but hey, if you’re gonna crib from anyone…

King Kong has been out on DVD for a week or so now, which has occasioned a few pieces commemorating its “bomb” status. One that I noted is Stephen Metcalf’s bipolar Slate.com piece, which begins by arguing that the movie did poorly because it wasn’t childlike enough and ends by arguing that it did poorly because it didn’t have enough of an easily visible race-mixing sexual-terror subtext. Choose your own adventure! Anyway, the Kong DVD sold more copies in its first week than any DVD in Universal’s history, so I guess some kids liked it and/or some white grown-ups were disgusted/aroused by it (take your pick).

Finally, a return to the MMORPG world, just a few days after the in-game crucifixion for meta-game malfeasance I reported on the other day reminded me how much I love it when the wall between the real and the virtual collapses. It seems that a World of Warcraft player died in real life, and some of that player’s friends thought it would be nice to pay their respects by hosting an in-game memorial service. They logged into the player’s account and brought the character to a secluded lake, then gathered together in their dozens to say goodbye. Their one mistake? Doing it all on a PvP server. This hilariously mean-spirited video captures the entire debacle, as a guild of malicious players storms over a hillside and ambushes the funeral, killing nearly all the characters in attendance (including that of the late player). Full details here. Call it “griefers vs. grievers.” (Hat tip: Jesse Thompson.)

From the equal time department: Pete Mesling of Fearfodder waxes rhapsodic on John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns as part of a “midstream assessment” of the Masters of Horror series. I, uh, felt differently about the film, and praise of Pete’s sort (Cigarette Burns is emblematic of the overall quality of the series) makes me less than enthusiastic about catching up with the other episodes. Am I gravely mistaken? You’re welcome to let me know…

Switching gears, I’ve seen several items of interest to horror fans on the big news sites lately. First up, on CNN.com, is a post-“Basic Instinct 2 bombs” piece on the dearth of the erotic thriller, which filmmakers Paul Verhoeven and Nicholas Meyer blame on a McCarthyite purge of sexual content from the American public sphere. I suppose it’s easier to completely completely ignore the increased prominence and availability of porn, lad mags, and racy-yet-high-quality premium-cable drams as competition and blame it all on politics than it is to admit that most of your movies suck, huh? Jim Treacher makes that very point in his own inimitable fashion by way of rebuttal. Still and all, I’m too big a Body Double fan not to wish there were a viable critical and popular market for such movies; in light of Unfaithful and Femme Fatale and even A History of Violence and Match Point, I’m not convinced there isn’t–I just don’t think that the Joe Ezsterhas crowd is a part of it.

Next up is this MSNBC.com/Newsweek piece on Sebastian Junger’s A Death in Belmont, the new book in which the superstar journalist relates the story of how Albert “The Boston Strangler” DeSalvo worked as a carpenter in the Junger household when Sebastian was a baby, and how a murder committed in the area at that time was instead pinned on a black man who may not (but may) have been guilty of the crime. It’s an intriguing story for me for several reasons: 1) I’m always stunned when people have multiple experiences with fame or infamy–a good example in light of Junger’s situation is how famous true-crime author Ann Rule was actually a co-worker and friend of famous true-crime perpetrator Ted Bundy. I’m just stunned that lightning strikes twice for some people, even if one of the strikes is horrible. 2) It seems like the book was originally conceived of to do one thing–exonerate Roy Smith, the man convicted of the murder DeSalvo may have committed–and ended up doing something else–become a meditation on whether we can really ever be sure of anything. I am fascinated by projects that get away from their creators–again, a good example in light of Junger’s situation would be how Errol Morris set out to do a documentary on the infamous witness-for-the-prosecution psychiatrist nicknamed “Dr. Death” and ended up focusing on one of the cases the good Doctor was involved in instead, thus coming up with The Thin Blue Line. 3) DeSalvo is already so shrouded in mystery and unknowables, what with his confessions and retractions and possible co-killers and on and on, that his case seems practically tailor-made for examinations such as these.

Also at MSNBC/Newsweek, critic David Ansen does a sort of Chin-Scratching Examinations of the Cultural Relevance of Horror Movies for Dummies workshop. If you’re interested in awestruck praise for Joe Dante’s dopey zombie-movie Masters of Horror episode depicting some alternate reality in which the Iraq War’s soldiers oppose the Iraq War, or sentences like “These are the horror movies that self-consciously act out our societal traumas in lurid allegories,” or a reiteration of the old saw (no pun intended) that “great horror movies leave the scares to the imagination,” then it’s the article for you, I suppose.

That link came courtesy of Matt Zoller Seitz, in the comment thread for his reader-participation dialogue with Christopher Kelly over the value of the current torture-horror cycle. Seriously, if you’re interested in this genre at all (and if you’re not, why are you reading this?), you should click on over.

Seitz has also posted his latest excellent Sopranos episode review; spoilers, and insights, abound.

While we’re on the mob beat, Slate reporter Dan Ackman has returned with another glimpse into the chillingly blas

WARNING: This post on John Carpenter’s Masters of Horror installment Cigarette Burns contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen it, you probably shouldn’t read it.

With the Missus out of the house doing bridal-showery things, I’ve spent most of the day playing catch-up with movies I’ve TiVo’d that she wouldn’t wanna watch. I’ve been mightily entertained (by Master of the Flying Guillotine–now I know where Dhalsim from the Street Fighter video game got his mojo!), so I guess it’s only fitting that I’d be mightily disappointed as well.

The responsible party is Cigarette Burns, the lone episode of Showtime’s well-received horror anthology series Masters of Horror I managed to successfully TiVo. (The Clive Barker-penned Haeckel’s Tale got erased to make room for more Judge Judy episodes, I believe.) Though I can’t for the life of me find them now, I know I read many a favorable review of this short film, and indeed I recall it being billed as the best of the show’s first season. My reaction upon finally seeing it? A deep-seated “eh.” There’s certainly something to be said for the movie’s general ambiance, which is like nothing so much as the initiation narratives of early Clive Barker crossed with the viral-media metaphors of The Ring, but I assure you the execution isn’t anywhere near as interesting as that comparison would indicate.

Problem number one is leading man Norman Reedus. Reedus plays Kirby, a down-on-his-luck arthouse theatre owner who’s hired by a degenerate European businessman to track down a print of an ultra-underground film called Le Fin Absolue du Monde. Conventional wisdom among cineastes has it that after its disastrous initial screening, during which the entire audience went mad and began slaughtering one another, the only existing copy of the movie was destroyed; the businessman (played exactly how you’d imagine by Udo Kier) has heard differently, and sends Kirby on his way to find this film of extreme power. Would that Reedus’s performance contained power of any kind. He’s got the right physique and face for it–the same sort of gone-to-seed late-20s sad sack presence projected by Jeremy Renner in the excellent biopic Dahmer–but his line readings are stilted and flat, sometimes almost laughably so. It’s a little like watching a performance by a guy from the high school football team who tried out for the school play because he had the hots for the drama club president.

But to be fair, more than half the blame for Reedus’s weakness has got to go to writers Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, who stuff into Kirby’s mouth some of the most wildly implausible reactions to horrific situations you’re likely to hear in a film this year. His confrontation with the father of his suicided heroin-addict girlfriend, who is also the bankroller of Kirby’s theatre, is played like just another nasty financial dispute with a brusque John Carpenter-movie suit, and a badly thought-out one at that; I don’t care how much you don’t like this guy, but getting self-righteous about how his presence makes you see your dead girlfriend’s face (his dead daughter’s, need I remind you) is pretty much the last thing you’d do when he’s threatening to close your beloved place of business down. Then there’s the moment when another Eurotrash film freak hacks a woman’s head off in front of a bound and gagged Kirby and a rolling camera in order to make some point about the power of film. When the dude removes Kirby’s muffle, rather than scream for help or plead for his life or, y’know, vomit, he instead chooses to angrily refute the guy’s film theory. “It’s not revealing some hidden truth! It’s fucking murder!” he yells at the machete-wielding brute walking toward him, blood-covered blade in hand. Uh, fellas, are you kidding?

Sadly, the film is lousy with those kind of poor decisions. To stay with the scene I was just talking about, there’s the outrageously gratuitous nature of the violence toward the slain woman. She was Kirby’s cab driver, and the second she came on screen I thought to myself “they cast a woman as a cab driver? And it’s not even a speaking role? Gee, I wonder where this is going.” Horrific? Very, but just as amateurish.

Then there’s the big reveal, which unbelievably comes at the beginning of the film. Turns out that Bakjavic, the mysterious director of Le Fin Absolue du Monde, mutilated an actual angel for the movie’s set piece. But we find this out during Kirby’s first meeting with his European benefactor Bellinger–because Bellinger has that same mutilated angel chained up in his mansion! Now, wouldn’t having the actual supernatural being be more interesting to both Bellinger and Kirby than tracking down footage of it instead? Bellinger acts like it’s no more interesting than owning the movie’s one-sheet, while Kirby spends the rest of the episode without mentioning it at all. I suppose you could read something into this along the lines of “to a film obsessive, the film is even better than the real thing,” but this is a movie never implied what it could state outright in the most obvious way possible, and that particular idea is never brought up in any way.

So rather than peripatetically work our way toward the reveal of the angel, our journey with Kirby culminates in a screening of Le Fin. After hearing about how the movie was designed to utterly destroy anyone who sees it, how it’s the most extreme vision ever committed to film, what we get–essentially, a Sisters of Mercy video–is a letdown, to put it very mildly. (Note: my TiVo froze during this climactic screening, so I missed about fifteen seconds’ worth of the images; if there’s something there to rival the scary Shining girls or the skull-face in The Exorcist or the meathook scene in Texas Chain Saw, well then, I take it all back.) Not only does it compare unfavorably to whatever you’ve conjured up in your head–or for that matter to some of Cigarette Burns‘s earlier gore effects, which are admittedly very powerful–it fails to equal the creepiness or the beauty of the similarly cursed video footage in The Ring, and that stuff took seven days to kill you, rather than taking effect instantaneously.

I could go on, about many things (right now the thing that’s rankling with me the most is the late girlfriend’s dad, straight outta the “I’m an over-the-top dickhead all the time for no good reason” school of stock Carpenter antagonists), but I’ve got more movies to watch. Oddly, though, I’m not regretting having watched this one. As I mentioned up top, there’s something there–something in that blend of Hellraiser-esque pursuit of forbidden knowledge and mutilated angels with J-horror “to see is to be corrupted” art as disease. Maybe this horror just needs someone else to master it.

Thanks to the stalwart AllTooFlat tech support team, I’m happy to announce that my heretofore moribund XML feed is working once again. Please adjust your aggregators accordingly!

Also, I forgot to mention that audience participation is invited via the comment threads at that horror-movie debate on Matt Zoller Seitz’s blog. I’ve chimed in; what are you waiting for?

I don’t do as much musicblogging as I expected to when I restarted ADDTF; I suppose that’s because I find it difficult to be pithy when talking about music. (Seriously, get me started on “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads someday. Make sure you have an hour or to kill first, though.) But the glorious synchronicity engine that is the Internet conspired to place three interesting articles in my path over the past few days, so I’m passing them on to you.

First, One Louder does one of its periodic YouTube music video roundups by gathering together a whole bunch of Cocteau Twins clips. The day before I read this post I watched the video for the Twins’ “Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops” on The Alternative, VH1 Classic’s indispensable punk-new wave-indie-altrock video show; damn, was I ever moved by the late-afternoon melancholy and England-in-the-’80s ambiance of that song and that video. I find that songs from that general era and nation fill me with nostalgia for a time and place I never experienced. Honestly, listen to (say) “West End Girls” and tell me that you aren’t suddenly in a flat in London at 4 o’clock in the morning, finishing off a bottle of something and chainsmoking as your makeup runs off. (Yes, I’m a woman in these pangs of nostalgia.) Maybe it’s from my repeated exposure to Hellraiser and the comics of Alan Moore, I don’t know. Anyway, go watch some videos and enjoy some Liz Fraser. (“Song to the Siren”‘s in there too.)

Next is a compelling piece by Willing Davidson of Slate on Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and what it means to have black performers on stage in front of a black audience when their usual audience is predominantly white, and when they’ve been eclipsed in popularity in both communities by unapologetically commercial acts. I’ve thought a lot about hip hop in these terms lately. When I was in college (1996-2000), “good hip hop” was the musical lingua franca, something everyone could agree on. I wouldn’t say I listened to a lot of “conscious” hip hop at that time, to use the term preferred by Davidson, nor was I a backpacker per se, but a steady diet of the Wu Tang Clan and all its solo offshoots, Gravediggaz, Prince Paul, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Dr. Octagon, Kool Keith, the Automator, the Fugees, Lauryn Hill, the Beastie Boys, DJ Shadow, UNKLE, A Tribe Called Quest, Cypress Hill, Tricky, Public Enemy, Massive Attack, Outkast, Portishead, and so forth sustained me and pretty much everybody I knew; few of us felt any motivation to get any more mainstream than The Chronic, Doggystle, and Ready to Die. These days nearly all of those acts and their brethren in the conscious and backpacker schools are relegated to the dustbin of history, and critics devote column after column to Lil’ Jon. I think it’s tough to overestimate the influence that talented and commercial producers like Timbaland and Missy Elliot (brilliant), and Dre and the Neptunes (brilliant about 50% of the time), had in creating that state of affairs, but I find that I barely relate, or listen, to contemporary hip hop at all anymore. Is this just a case of “in my day we listened to real music, not this noise!“? I guess that’s possible. But the thing is, I find that I don’t care, and I also find that that is not an acceptable viewpoint to have in critics’ circles these days. After all (the theory goes), one must be interested in what is popular and therefore relevant. (You see similar arguments being made against comics readers who don’t read a lot of manga, incidentally.) My question is, what is it about hip hop (and manga, I guess) that has enabled popularity to replace quality in terms of the reason why a listener/reader/critic should or should not get into a particular work? Of course the two are not mutually exclusive, but the popularity barometer seems to come up a lot more often than you’ll see someone say “No, seriously, ‘Laffy Taffy’ is every bit as good as ‘Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos.'” And it really is endemic to hip hop fandom and criticism more than anything else–I mean, very rarely do you see any film critics of merit say “Man, quit wasting your time with Cronenberg–Michael Bay’s who the kids are into these days!” Why the condescension toward Dave Chappelle for still really, really liking the first Fugees record, then? (See this comment by Matthew “Fluxblog” Perpetua for a more forceful statement of that same sentiment.)

Finally, here’s something I didn’t expect: Rich Juziak, whose FourFour blog is best known (to me, at least) for its fabulously bitchy weekly recaps of America’s Next Top Model, posted the best thing I’ve ever read about Mariah Carey. She’s an artist about whom I have no feelings to speak of, really, save pity for what the pressures of fame have done to her instrument (why doesn’t anyone notice she can’t sing anymore?) and her dignity (I once remarked that as long as she was married to Tommy Mottola she’d never take her clothes off in her videos; then came the divorce, and bang, the clip for “Honey” made my point better than I ever could). But man, this piece manages to be insightful about her, her work, and the entire music industry in any number of ways. Highly recommended.

Talk about your Must Read Blogging!

This weekend and this weekend only, Matt Zoller Seitz, the Newark Star-Ledger critic who’s been posting a killer series of Sopranos Season Six episode critiques, is hosting a horror-themed debate. His opponent is Christopher Kelly, a Fort Worth Star-Telegram critic who recently wrote a lengthy and impassioned piece praising the current cycle of torture-horror movies as not only politically resonant cultural documents, but brilliantly made films as well. Seitz, it seems, disagrees.

As you might have guessed, this is a debate I’ll be following quite closely; I suggest that if you’re at all interested in this genre, you do the same. Grab some popcorn and enjoy!

When Clive Barker talks, ADDTF listens. (No kidding.–Ed.) And in this massive interview at Barker fansite Revelations, the author-painter-producer-director-etcetera talks about a great many things: the physicality of his paintings, the status of several of his film and television projects (The Midnight Meat Train has been cast; his installment for season two of Masters of Horror is ready to roll), the page count for his “farewell to Pinhead” novel The Scarlet Gospels (3,000 or so), his current comics projects with publisher IDW, the inspiration he’s drawn from Alan Moore and Dave Sim, and the future of his all-ages fantasy series Abarat, which include a Barker-designed tarot deck and a previously unannounced fifth volume. I’m delighted, needless to say. (Link courtesy of Fearfodder.)

Critic Matt Zoller Seitz has posted his analysis of the third episode in season six of The Sopranos, and it’s as good as I’ve already come to expect.

Over on the blog for Anderson Cooper’s CNN show, there’s a post on Bob Larson, an evangelical exorcist. What made me scratch my head about the story is how quickly the term “snake-oil salesman” sprang to mind; would it have if he were a Catholic clergyman?

Speaking of tough questions, why is there a V for Vendetta novelization?

Finally, I’m having trouble getting this link to work, but the water-monster lover in me simply cannot let this go unlinked: Reports indicate that the giant 6 1/2-foot freshwater turtle of Hoan Kiem Lake in Vietnam, a creature believed to be a legend up until the last decade or so and now believed to be the last of its kind, may have been injured. As this primer on the reptile and the legend surrounding it indicates, this is a bit like finding out the Loch Ness Monster is real, alone, and ill. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, big guy. (Hat tip: Justin Aclin.)

A man wielding a shotgun killed six people at a zombie-themed rave called “Better Off Undead” before killing himself when confronted by police. Seattle authorities say this is the worst mass murder the city has seen in 23 years.

Attendees at the rave were made up to look like zombies. No motive for the killings is known beyond the word “NOW,” which the killer spray-painted three times on the sidewalk and a neighbor’s stoop while walking back to the party from his van, gun in hand.

The only thing more wonderful than the fact that someone built a nuclear bunker inside the Brooklyn Bridge is that no one seems to know who did it. It’s like “Ozymandias” for the Sputnik set.

It was a good week for news of the real-life creepy: Jason Alexander at Infocult also brings word that a flock of crows is attacking people Birds-style in England.

Speaking of The Birds, we can’t be more than a few months away from an announcement that that film is being remade, can we?

***UPDATE*** It’s already begun! (Link courtesy of Steve from The House of Irony.)

Finally, this Bloody Disgusting post about actor Michael Biehn’s involvement in the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez horror project Grind House is the first I’ve read that Rodriguez’ half of the two-for-one film will be a zombie movie. Could be interesting, could be not so much.

(SPOILER WARNING: Since I am incredibly sensitive to anything that could possibly be construed as a spoiler for The Sopranos, I’m going to assume you are too and warn you that you should probably NOT read this post if you haven’t already seen the first two episodes of the show’s new season.)

My bleg for substantive ongoing discussions of The Sopranos has turned up somethin’ good, much to my delight. The great Bill Sherman of Pop Culture Gadabout has directed my attention to the blog of Newark Star-Ledger writer Matt Zoller Seitz, who will be tackling the new season episode by episode. (ANOTHER SPOILER WARNING: Seitz’s post on Episode Two contains a spoiler regarding whether or not we will return to the alternate-Tony “Coma World” in future episodes, so be warned.)

Judging from the first two installments, both the posts themselves and the comment threads appended to them will yield impassioned insights into the series, which is without doubt one of the richest texts in television history, despite tedious reverse-snob claims to the contrary. Seitz makes some points with which I disagree (that the show could have-cum-should have ended after its second season; that the pacing of this season’s debut episode’s climactic sequence was botched) and many others I with which I couldn’t agree more (the distinction without a difference that is the split between dreams and Purgatory; the worth of interpreting art, and of art that requires interpretation).

So by all means, check it out. And while you’re at it, take a look at this exhaustive episode guide for The Sopranos‘ first five seasons, written by Seitz’s Star-Ledger colleague Alan Sepinwall. It’s hand both for logistical purposes and for reminding you of why you love this show so much in the first place.

Yikes:

From Turkey comes news of five inbred Kurdish siblings who walk on all fours due to a genetic condition which scientists say may replicate the movement patterns of early Man. The subject of a BBC2 documentary that aired this past Friday, the siblings are theorized by some scientists to be a case of “backward evolution.” (Hat tip: the Missus.)

Eve Tushnet has got to be one of the least-frequent comicsbloggers around (I’m also looking at you, Jim Henley), but when she does write about the medium, she writes quite well. Witness her discussion of Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev’s masterfully unsettling horror comic Daredevil: Decalogue, one of the overlooked comics pleasures (hell, treasures) of 2005.

Remake fever: Catch it! It appears that with Asian horror and ’70s indie horror all but exhausted, at least one studio is turning back to the classics. According to Bloody Disgusting, classic horror hotbed Universal has added a remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon to what I imagine will be a slate of updated versions of its seminal black-and-white monster movies, a slate which already includes the Benicio Del Toro-starring revamp of The Wolf Man I mentioned the other day. Needless to say the success of these remakes is dependent on the budget and talent the studio is willing to commit, and like as not they’re simply an attempt to goose amusement-park revenues a la The Pirates of the Carribean (which I understand is pretty good) or The Haunted Mansion and The Country Bears (which I understand aren’t). Still, I feel like these stories, or perhaps more accurately these creatures, have a great deal of potential that a smart movie could easily tap into for a modern audience. King Kong did an excellent job of showing that there’s life in the “monster run amok” genre, a fact that decades of slashers and Satan and torture and rednecks and haunted appliances and dead girls with long black hair might have obscured.

Finally, in honor of The Sopranos 6.2 tonight, here’s an article by Dan Ackman at Slate about Burton Kaplan, the star stoolpigeon at the trial of “mob cops” Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa. As far as illustrations of the workaday sociopathy of the common gangster go, it’s tough to beat.

As you might have heard, The Sopranos is back on the air. Unfortunately, Slate does not appear to be conducting one of its engrossing round-table discussions of the show this time around. Since this is my favorite television series, well, ever (possible exception: Python), I’m wondering: Has anyone seen any strong reviews, critiques, discussions, what-have-yous online about this season’s first episode, especially ones that appear like they might be ongoing as the season progresses? Please email me and let me know. Thank you!

Like some nightmare amalgamation of 28 Days Later and Stephen King’s novella The Mist, Richard Fernandez’s brief, chilling look at a lethal bout of London Fog that killed thousands of Londoners in 1952 is probably just what you need to bring a taste of all-too-real horror to this otherwise lovely St. Patrick’s Day.