Los Angeles
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On review - small fry with a big heartFriday, 17 February 2023
Marcel the Shell the Shoes On tells the story of a one-eyed little shell who lives with his grandmother Connie in a house that became an Airbnb after its former occupants divorced. The man inadvertently carried away Marcel’s extended family in a... Read more... |
Album: Skrillex - Quest for FireFriday, 17 February 2023
Ageing boppers may bristle at the idea of a dance album where the average track length is three minutes. Yet this, Sonny “Skrillex” Moore’s first solo album since his debut nine years ago, is the most groove-based thing he’s done. It’s certainly a... Read more... |
Marina Allen, Cafe Oto Review - east London substitutes for 1970s Los AngelesThursday, 16 February 2023
When Marina Allen’s second album Centrifics came out last autumn, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter said her voice was the only instrument on the record. She writes on guitar and piano but beyond what she sang, everything else was played by... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Reservoir DogsTuesday, 17 January 2023
Quentin Tarantino’s is the first voice you hear in Reservoir Dogs (1992), riffing on Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. The gang of fellow robbers we see gathered round his character all talk like versions of the obsessive ex-video store clerk at times... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Something in the DirtTuesday, 27 December 2022
Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson deal in the modern eerie and truly weird, placing relationships under supernatural pressure with unsettling empathy. Where genre-schooled peers such as Ti West and Adam Wingard splice post-slacker, naturalistic... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Count Yorga CollectionWednesday, 02 November 2022
In 1970, the coffin of America’s new vampire count travels to his lair in the hills of LA on a pickup truck. A giant billboard for John Wayne in True Grit observes his passage through Hollywood’s urban bustle, as this Gothic monster enters the then... Read more... |
Album: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Return of the Dream CanteenSaturday, 15 October 2022
Does the world need to hear more from Red Hot Chili Peppers? Outside the bouncin’ bro’ fanbase, a regular consensus is that, despite being one of the biggest bands in the world, doing their global stadium rock thing – with free added funk! –... Read more... |
Album: Gabriels - Angels & Queens, Part ISaturday, 24 September 2022
Lauded by Elton John (who called their 2020 debut EP Love and Hate in a Different Time “probably one of the most seminal records I've heard in the last 10 years”), a show-stealing performance on Later… With Jools Holland in 2021, fêted at this year’... Read more... |
Album: Marina Allen - CentrificsThursday, 15 September 2022
Marina Allen’s singing voice fluctuates between the conversational and the flutingly melodic. In one song, she can be asking “Why do I sing my song for you” in a no-nonsense Randy Newman manner and then shift into a series of spiralling, ascending... Read more... |
Album: Demi Lovato - Holy FvckFriday, 19 August 2022
Demi Lovato doesn’t do things by halves. She has one of the most powerful voices around, as suited to the yang of punchy hard rock as it is to the sensual yin of R&B or or the contagious sweetness of girly pop.Self-professed gender fluid, her... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Double IndemnityMonday, 20 June 2022
His car skids through an LA stoplight, then Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) enters his insurance office in the small hours, taking a lift as if to the scaffold, coat hanging like a cloak, a dark stain on his shoulder. From his upstairs office, the... Read more... |
Pleasure review - that Eve Harrington syndrome againFriday, 17 June 2022
The film title Pleasure begs the question, whose pleasure? Since first-time feature director Ninja Thyberg’s cautionary drama depicts the journey of a newcomer intent on becoming the Los Angeles adult film business's top female performer, the... Read more... |
