Over the years, we’ve become increasingly fond of TV shows for a few reasons. One of which is pretty obvious: we get more time with characters we love. Their arc can be spaced out as the story tops and tails. But another more satisfying reason is that the music can get the same amount of space. Many times, it can find room to evolve and change with the narrative. So let’s look at one such property where the music played an incredibly important role in the production. The Queen’s Gambit was a captivating series whereby the lush musical score captured our imagination, got the heart racing and made chess pretty…
-
-
Interview…Nina Conti and Shenoah Allen on the Monkey Business of ‘Sunlight’
After delighting audiences on stage and on screen for more than twenty years, acclaimed British actress, comedian, and ventriloquist Nina Conti gives the world her feature film debut. Presented by Christopher Guest, Sunlight re-imagines “Monkey” – Conti’s most iconic character – as the human-sized alter ego of a woman on the run from a toxic relationship. Conti stars alongside her longtime creative collaborator Shenoah Allen, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Allen, a Barry Award-winning comedian and one half of the cult comedy duo Pajama Men, plays Roy, a suicidal radio host who becomes Jane’s unlikely companion. Conti, who began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company before becoming an inventive comedy…
-
Interview…Scary Good Fun Talking with Brett Simmons
When film fans get to talking about what we like, time can quickly get away from us. As such, we had a fun-filled chat catching up with our good buddy, filmmaker Brett Simmons. And isn’t that a cool name? If he wasn’t making films, he could very well be a pro wrestler or something else in show business. Anyway, we spent about an hour talking about new projects on his plate and things he’s trying to get off the ground. Right now, he’s writing another fun slasher movie – his cult hit You Might Be the Killer is evidence he knows what he’s doing. Brett also has an awesome…
-
Interview…Ernesto Dìaz Espinoza On Directing Fights and Delights in ‘Diablo’
Genre filmmakers speak to us on a level like no other storytellers. They, most times with a shoe-string budget, show that art through adversity is a cinematic technique that will always gain fans. One such filmmaker is Chilean-born Ernesto Dìaz Espinoza. We first came to know the work of Espinoza while covering Fantastic Fest. It was there in Austin where we were treated to the passion and the precision he brought to Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman (yes, that is a real title). We were hooked and, since then, have followed his career with great interest. This year, he gives us another vigilante-esqe story led by regular…
-
G-S-T Review…Scott Adkins Dances With the Devil in ‘Diablo’
Although we’re a couple weeks away from F1: The Movie screaming into theaters, if you want white-knuckle excitement, we’re gonna highly recommend Diablo as one of the best films of the year. It sure is tops in our book. From Chilean director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza comes another gritty action-packed feature full of flying fists and high kicks. Herein, he re-teams with martial arts master and genre phenomenon Marko Zaror (marking their sixth picture together). But when you throw in the absolute adrenaline machine that is Scott Adkins, you get nothing short of fireworks. Whether seen as a genre film or not, Diablo is just an incredible picture. It’s trope heavy,…
-
Podcast Review: ‘Black Mirror’ Season Seven
Charlie Brooker is a social critic and storytelling dynamo who, time and again, has given us harrowing visions of the near-future, and glimpses into multiple worlds where we are overcome by the trials and terrors of technology. Whew, that sentence was almost as exhausting as any of his episodes of Black Mirror. In his phenomenally prophetic and sensationally bleak show, he takes society to the brink of madness and/or destruction in small-scale stories about how the tech in our lives ultimately becomes our undoing. The series is impossibly grim, however, Brooker is our modern-day Paul Revere. His message is jaw-dropping, thought-provoking, and highly entertaining as it sports stylized and inventive…
-
Music Review…’Cabinet of Curiosities’ and ‘The Rise of the Synths’ are Perfect For Dark Room Listening
We’re quite a number of months away from Halloween season and spooky, pensive and driving sounds that go along with it. But as we approach the hot Texas Summer (and 100 degrees this coming Wednesday!) we put our minds to cooler places. One of the best is the dark of a theater. Or a theater room. Either will do. One of the most enchanting parts of dark room entertainment is being enveloped by the soundscape, and we’re suckers for symphonic elegance and moody synthesizers. As such, today we have just what the doctor ordered by way of Lakeshore Records. Now let’s get this out of the way up front. These…
-
Interview…Griff and Nathan Furst on ‘A Breed Apart’
From Lionsgate and The Furst Brothers comes a daytime horror film in the tradition of Cujo, Midsommar, Sharknado and Cheech and Chong’s Things Are Tough All Over. Their latest, A Breed Apart, is the spirit animal sequel to 2006’s The Breed. The team of Griff and Nathan Furst are writers/directors from a famous filmmaking household – one I can only assume their motto is “Family Furst“? Their father famously played ‘Flounder’ in Animal House, and was in The Dream Team with Michael Keaton (among many other projects in his decades long career), so cinema is certainly in their blood. We got to sit with them to talk about the absurd…
-
Interview…Trenton Judson and Lizbeth Cazares on ‘Bad Bitch’
Speed and efficiency can be powerful tools when you’re trying to create something. Knowing your resources, staying in your lane, and finishing when promised all sound easy to do but take a lot of work to execute. Take for example a two-plus hour feature length film being shot in just seven days. Seven. Such is the case for Trenton McKay Judson‘s 2025 film. Shot in Mineola, TX, it is structured like a Western and Judson (who wrote, directs, and stars in the film) plays the town bully. The rub is that he and his goons have pissed off the wrong townie. But that should not be a surprise as the…
-
Interview…Anthony J Agnello on Video Games, Soundtracks, Vinyl and Writing For the Love of It
The best part of running this site, contrary to what you may think, isn’t getting bucket list interviews. Nor is it getting to see movies way before they are released. Those are perks -which we do love – but what we strive for beyond that is value. To that point, what we value most is connecting with people about the things we love and having great conversations. Our most recent guest is a true renaissance man in that he’s been writing on the web since the renaissance. We say that in jest, but Anthony J. Agnello is an internet veteran who has made a career hammering out excellent material on…
