Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
A group of friends and a resort so remote that when you arrive your car is running on fumes. It’s a movie set-up that means you can almost hear the machete being sharpened. And yet, Don’t Blink is not a slasher. No one gets decapitated, and the masked stranger stalking the woods is on holiday. Instead, this group of friends begins to slowly disappear. The second you take your eyes off someone they blink out of existence. Why? No one knows.
As the clock ticks ever onwards towards oblivion, the world’s musical taste seems to reflect the times. It was only twenty-five years ago that Nirvana became the biggest band in the world, and yet since then the mainstream musical world has changed into something nearly unrecognisable. Despite that, groups made up of white boys with guitars and a set of heartfelt lyrics will never truly die.
As promised at the end of my review of the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera I have since gone back and watched Universal’s first attempt at this particular ‘monster.’ Released in 1925, this is a silent film and sees Lon Chaney step into the mask of the Phantom.
Halloween is approaching, and it seems as good a time as any to re-explore the world of the Universal Monsters. However, while Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy have become synonymous with that term, it’s not one that many will associate with the Phantom of the Opera. More commonly known as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, the Phantom was part of Universal’s pantheon with them releasing both a silent version in 1925 and this version in 1943, the only Universal Monster picture to win an Oscar.
A rapist being force-fed his genitals adorns the cover of Animus, the first full-length album from Venom Prison. You can probably tell from that sentence whether this album is for you or not.
This review is the start of a change for Ramblings About… It will see us moving away from keeping up with the newest releases and instead focusing on writing about cool things. While we are not completely ditching the new (I’ll probably still get excited about Star Wars’ films and try and write about the things that don’t get as much attention) it will serve as a template for what I look at going forward. Enjoy!
‘You know how people like zombies?’
‘Yea.’
‘And that whole found footage thing is big too?’
‘Damn right it is.’
‘Well – and this will blow your mind – why don’t we meld the two together?’
‘Give this man some money.’
It would be so easy to believe that was the conversation that led to [REC] and its subsequent sequels. Taking two popular things and melding them together is money making 101. Which is why [REC] is so refreshing, because it’s not that. In fact, it could hardly be further from that.
Back in the mists of time, I vowed to do a weekly playlist on Ramblings About. However, as these plans tend to do, it fell by the wayside and quite frankly I forgot about it. Until today! Because starting now every Wednesday is going to see me post a Spotify playlist put together by yours truly. It will be a collection of songs old and new that for whatever reason are on my mind that week. For example, this week we have the new single from Creeper alongside the brilliant Kerbdog who couldn’t be left out after their cracking show last week.
Enjoy!
Kerbdog should have been huge. A storm of record label shit housing and general cuntery prevented that however and right now they are embarking on their final UK tour nineteen years after the release of the brilliant On The Turn. Any chance of global domination may be long gone, but those songs still slam, and for one night in Glasgow, we can almost pretend that the world was a fair place.
Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Potter career has been a brilliant example of how to do it. While he obviously has a comfort blanket lined with money to take the pressure off his shoulders, you still have to step back and admire a man who is willing to take the risks he has, which leads us to Swiss Army Man in which he plays a farting corpse.
Having a band member leave is never a good situation. Having your lead singer drop out just before you release your second album (and your first with her in the band) is probably worse than most. That’s the situation Hey! Hello! found themselves in earlier this year when Hollis Mahady left the band to focus on Love Zombies.
Ramblings About Wrestling 