Authors: Alexander Ortega
Bubblegum Thunderstorm: Spell Talk Crackles and Booms
I barely beat the rain as I roll into an open garage where drummer Sammy Harper of Spell Talk shoots a game of pool on a worn down table. Bassist Jared Phelps shuffles about while guitarist Andrew Milne lounges on a couch next to new member and rhythm guitarist Elle Rasmussen, who quietly smokes a cigarette. The quartet is like a calm set of siblings on another stormy day, but they keep a loud secret in their pockets: a physically engaging album that will have you ready to stomp your feet and holler along with the band’s newborn thunder. … read more
Tooth Fractal Psychedelia: Tyler Densley’s Acid Math
“Growing up Mormon and being straight edge most of my life, I had these weird inklings to do hallucinogens,” says Tyler Densley. “I always, in the back of my mind, thought that I would like to hallucinate—be able to see outside of what I know, be able to see a cartoon in my head.” When Densley followed this desire, he found commonalities between what he liked about American traditional tattooing, his fondness for cartoons and his psychedelic experiences. … read more
Cat Power and Nico Turner Live @ The Depot 11.25
It wasn’t utterly packed—just full. Cat Power draws an interestingly eclectic crowd: professors, obligatory hippies, hipsters and maybe a vegan–straight edge kid, too. After the release of her electronica album, Sun, it seemed that there was a yearning for the older, more classic styling of Chan Marshall, and there was no better way to realize that desire than an intimate, seated setting where she would perform solo. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Vanishing Pearls
Vanishing Pearls zones in on the small bayou fishing town of Point à la Hache where catching clam was the chief industry, with protagonist Byron Encalade serving as the representative of bayou fishermen affected by the BP oil spill. Vanishing Pearls analyzes key points at which BP skirted resolution of the problem and reveals BP’s nefarious actions to cheat this small community—and others—out of their due reparations. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Love Steaks
Love Steaks finds the timid and awkward Clemens (Franz Rogowski) starting a new job as a massage therapist and reiki trainee at a luxury hotel in a German-speaking country. While he learns the ropes amid the stringent attitude of the hotel, Lara (Lana Cooper), a blonde host mess who works in the kitchens, begins to crush on him amid her alcoholism, and when he finds her passed out on a beach and massages her gluts, the two initiate a clandestine but reckless romance. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Rover (or Beyond Human: the Venusian Future...
David (Liam Torres) leads a group of five (later four) followers of a cult that is hilariously secretive about their beliefs. They live in an old church with odd symbols drawn on chalkboards and the pews removed, and the film opens as he explains a “vision” to his glum followers: that the mysterious Randall wishes for them to make a movie about him. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Huntington’s Dance
Chris Furbee began video recording his journey back to West Virginia as he caught wind of his mom’s worsening battle with Huntington’s Disease 18 years ago. With the backdrop of his home state’s tradition of independence, the Southern laurels of self reliance dissipate as Furbee watched his grandfather battle Huntington’s as a young child, and now his mother, Rosemary Shockey. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: My Blind Heart
Plain and simple, My Blind Heart is a gorgeous film set in Vienna (spoken in German). Kurt (Christos Haas) lives with a rare condition, Marfan Syndrome, from which he is nearly blind. After he kills his mother, he misbehaves to the point of his caretaker’s frustration while living in a home with others with handicaps, playing the part of both a victim of his disease and troubled kid abreacting to his undesirable situation. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Goldberg & Eisenberg
A single, typical “liberal” computer programmer in Tel-Aviv, named Goldberg (Yitzhak Laor) invests a lot of time meeting women to date online and walking his dog as an extension of his romantic pursuits. Unfortunately for him, he encounters Eisenberg (Yahav Gal), who attempts to make (read: tries to force) Goldberg to be his friend, who demands money and blow jobs from Goldberg—getting under his skin and fomenting dastardly outcomes. … read more
Slamdance Film Review: Kinderwald
John (Frank Brückner) and Flora Linden (Emily Behr) are raising their two children, Caspar and Georgie (Leopold and Ludwig Fischer Pasternak) while John works in a coal mine in Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s. (Their names, along with the word “kinder,” are half the lines of the film.) When the two boys go missing, the couple entreats the surrounding community to help find them to no avail, which brings them some unwanted attention. … read more