movies

Well, was anybody shocked? Remember, when I was setting up this series — back with Day 1′s write-up of May — I warned you that the actual holiday’s corresponding movie was going to be a predictable choice. Given that John Car…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 30: Trick r Treat

Drew October 30, 2012

1 Min Read

There are a lot of great horror movies out there. I mean, I wouldn’t be writing this series if I didn’t legitimately believe that: but I believe in the simple, glorious pleasures of this genre enough to commit to writing a month-long dai…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 29: The House of the Devil

Drew October 29, 2012

1 Min Read

Ti West’s The House of the Devil is a peculiar, unassuming little film. It’s an ’80s horror movie created in 2009, filmed with the unmistakable grit and style of the era, but without any of the bells and whistles and camp of its t…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 25: The Nightmare Before Christmas

Drew October 25, 2012

1 Min Read

So here we are: the final week of the Halloween season. It’s almost bittersweet — and in this, our last seven days together, it’s time to bring the Halloween goodies fast and furious. We’re gonna get real scary over the next …

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Days 23-24: Splinter & The Host

Drew October 24, 2012

1 Min Read

Yesterday, we discussed — among other films — Frank Darabont’s The Mist, which examined what happens when groups of people in extreme danger start to turn on each other. One of today’s films, Toby Wilkins’ Splinter, ta…

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The Viewfinder: RZA & The Black Keys, ”The Baddest Man Alive”

Blerd Staff October 23, 2012

1 Min Read

RZA? The Black Keys? What’s not to love?

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The 31 Days of Horror, Days 20-22: A Stephen King Mini-Marathon (The Mist, The Shining, & Silver Bullet)

Drew October 22, 2012

1 Min Read

Nearing the home stretch of this list, I’m aware that we’ve doubled up before: the weekend of October 6th we looked at George Romero’s first two Living Dead movies, and I got vocal about small but wonderful stretches of the other…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 19: Sleepaway Camp

Drew October 19, 2012

1 Min Read

We discussed, way back on day 4 of this shindig, the intangible sense of pleasure a cheesy ’80s horror movie has to offer; while that entry, Night of the Demons , makes its mark with irrepressible atmosphere and delightfully low-rent ’…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 17: Black Sabbath

Drew October 17, 2012

1 Min Read

There’s something about a horror anthology that has always sucked me in. I remember distinctly my fourth-grade teacher reading aloud Alvin Schwartz’s immortal compendium of terrifying tales, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It was a m…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 15: Deep Red

Drew October 15, 2012

1 Min Read

Regardless of what legendary giallo pioneer Dario Argento’s finest film is — I wager that most would say Suspiria, but Inferno gets a lot of love too — it’s hard to deny that his lurid, grotesque murder mystery Deep Red is am…

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The Viewfinder: Anthony Hopkins Gets Hitched

Mike D. October 12, 2012

1 Min Read

Next month’s new Alfred Hitchcock biopic looks to be a good evening, if this trailer is any indication.

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 12: The Orphanage

Drew October 12, 2012

1 Min Read

We hear a lot about being haunted around Halloween. It’s a word often used to reference ghosts, and what they do when they’re stuck between planes of existence; it’s also how certain movies make us feel, especially when their spect…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 11: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Drew October 11, 2012

1 Min Read

Yesterday, I made the case for two less-than-stellar films ( When a Stranger Calls and Amusement ) that nevertheless contained standalone sequences amounting to miniature genre essentials. As atonement for directing you towards two films so hit-and…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 10: When a Stranger Calls // Amusement

Drew October 10, 2012

1 Min Read

It often seems as though each modern horror movie can at least muster up one virtuoso sequence, something better than the sum of its parts. Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors is often staid and unremarkable, but there’s a moment in there where Amy …

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 9: A Tale of Two Sisters

Drew October 9, 2012

1 Min Read

The appeal of horror cinema is often ephemeral. The pleasures of the genre aren’t always fleeting, of course — what horror fan can’t remember the first time they fell in love with the feeling of being scared? — but I’d …

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 8: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Drew October 8, 2012

1 Min Read

As with a full-fledged horror movie, a horror-based comedy doesn’t quite need to reinvent the wheel. It merely needs to appeal to horror nerds and comedy fans alike — a shockingly delicate balancing act to maintain. Look at perhaps the m…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Days 6 & 7: Night of the Living Dead // Dawn of the Dead

Drew October 7, 2012

1 Min Read

First things first: I apologize deeply to the ten or so horror-starved souls out there who went unfulfilled yesterday. It won’t happen again, and today, we have a delightful Halloween twofer for you to make up for it. Zombies are fashionable. …

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 5: Them

Drew October 5, 2012

1 Min Read

Against all odds, it seems as though modern-day French horror has a keen grip on what is truly frightening. It can be intense — Pascal Laugier’s eviscerating Martyrs taps into difficult notions of pain and existentialism, while Alexandre…

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The Singles Bar: Adele, ”Skyfall”

Mike D. October 5, 2012

1 Min Read

Man, what can’t Adele do? 2011 saw the British soulstress release her sophomore album, 21, winning six Grammys, spending 79 weeks in Billboard‘s Top 10 (24 of them at No. 1) and selling nine million copies in the U.S. (an unheard of …

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00Single Review: Adele, “Skyfall”

Bob Cashill October 5, 2012

2 Min Read

She’s rolling in the deep with 007.

Music, Single Reviews

The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 4: Night of the Demons

Drew October 4, 2012

1 Min Read

As I sit down to sell you on Kevin Tenney’s little-respected Night of the Demons, I find it important to reiterate once again that this series is not designed as a treatise on the best horror films of all time. There’s going to be some o…

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 3: The Descent

Drew October 3, 2012

1 Min Read

For the third day of Halloween, we take a look at crippling fear and claustrophobia in Neil Marshall’s UK nail-biter “The Descent”.

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The 31 Days of Halloween, Day 2: The Night of the Hunter

Drew October 2, 2012

1 Min Read

For the second of Popblerd’s 31 Days of Halloween, we look at Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter”, a Gothic, deep-south potboiler starring Robert Mitchum.

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