In Your Eyes is interesting not just because it comes from the pen of Joss Whedon, a man who never seems to stop working, but also because of the way it has been distributed, forgoing the standard cinema release and instead going straight onto Video on Demand via Vimeo. It’s a paranormal romance that see’s Brin Hill adapting the Whedon script and stars Zoe Kazan and Michael Stahl-David.
Steel Panther – All You Can Eat
Born with the mission to remind people that the 80’s were cool once and Vince Neil wasn’t fat, Steel Panther’s rise to success has been spectacular. Going from a LA hair metal cover band to arena playing, globe trotting superstars is a remarkable achievement for a band who many assumed would fade away when the joke got old. Their third album All You Can Eat is their latest attempt to prove this is far from the case.
Locke
Locke is a film that has been badly misconstrued in some quarters. Any suggestion that it is a gripping thriller is far from the truth. In reality, director Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) has created a interesting character study, that takes place solely on the drive from Birmingham to London and stars Tom Hardy and only Tom Hardy.
Chuck Ragan – Till Midnight
Some time in the last few years it became cool for old punk rockers to ditch the band, pick up an acoustic guitar and go all folk troubadour on our asses. It’s probably not that much of a leap to believe that this trend was inspired by Chuck Ragan and the Revival Tour, his touring acoustic shows that feature everyone from punk singers to bluegrass to country. By creating a sense of community around these shows Ragan has turned a great idea into a yearly event that many look forward to. This event has also seen him releasing several acoustic records and the latest, Till Midnight, hit our shelves earlier this year.
Savage Messiah – The Fateful Dark
Some bands can be figured out by one glance at their name. Savage Messiah are one of those bands. With a name like that and an album title like The Fateful Dark, you know you’re in for old school heavy metal, widdly guitars and all. These London thrashers are now onto their fourth album and despite their ever growing success are still very much part of the metal underground.
The Amazing Spiderman 2
The Amazing Spiderman was a reboot that no one needed. While many were in the favour of Andrew Garfield pulling on the red and blue spandex, it felt too close to Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s successful (well apart from the 3rd one) go at the franchise. It was a movie that wasn’t aided by the strict nature of the spidey origin story, meaning that the whole thing was shrouded by a feeling of deja vu.
Comeback Kid – Die Knowing
Comeback Kid may have a name that makes them sound like a boy band (or is that just me?) but it hasn’t prevented the group that was originally started as a side project from releasing five albums of hardcore goodness. Album number five, Die Knowing, has recently hit the shelves and see’s this Canadian band doing what they do best.
Calvary
How do you survive in modern day, small town Ireland, as a good priest. That’s the rather simple question at the centre of Calvary. In a world where the Catholic church has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, we follow the last week of Father James Lavelle, (Brendon Gleeson) who in the opening scene of the film is told in the confessional booth that he is going to be murdered next Sunday. He knows who has made the threat, but we and the rest of the characters in the film don’t, as even in these circumstances he honours the rules of the confessional booth. As director John Michael McDonagh has said, it’s a who will do it, rather that a who done it.
I Killed the Prom Queen – Beloved
There is a moment half way through Beloved where I thought I’d made a mistake and accidentally put on shuffle. As “Kjaerlighet” slowly creeps in those not paying attention might believe that “Last Serenade” was preparing to blast through their speakers. It’s become a cliché to say that all metalcore takes it core roots from Killswitch Engage and most bands are just repeating what’s been done before, but sometimes it’s so incredibly obvious you just can’t ignore it.
Les Claypool’s Duo De Twang – Four Foot Shack
Cover albums are notoriously difficult to pull off. Releasing a collection of tracks by bands better than your own (*cough* Puddle of Mudd) that sound exactly like the originals is one of the laziest ways to finish up a record label contract and insure that the rest of the world thinks your a bit of a plank. On the other hand take an original song and make it your own (Marilyn Manson being an expert at this) and it can kick start a career. However you get the impression that Les Claypool’s Duo De Twang don’t really care about career progression or probably even what other people think about them, this is an album that feels like it was made purely for fun.
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