Review: 'Star Trek: Year Five: The Wine-Dark Deep'

One of the great pleasures of the first three issues of Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly’s Star Trek: Year Five is the comic series’ faithfulness to Gene Roddenberry’s original TV show. Artists and writers alike rendered characters with perfect fidelity to Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Bones, and the rest. The stories could have been adapted to actual episodes of the original TV series due to a simplicity and clarity in line with what could be brought to the small screen in the late sixties.

Details About Lost Monkees Compilation Emerge

In 1969, The Monkees released their first official compilation album on Colgems Records, The Monkees Greatest Hits. The record featured all of the group's top-ten singles and tracks from their first five albums, all released before The Monkees took a commercial nose-dive in 1968 with the cancellation of their TV series and the release of the avant garde flop Head. Aside from some curious omissions—such as the top-twenty hit "D.W. Washburn", the high-charting B-sides "Words" and "Tapioca Tundra", and the ever-popular TV theme song—The Monkees Greatest Hits largely played it safe, while its photo-devoid cover was downright unimaginative.

Review: 'Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema'

Like Karloff and Lugosi, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee partnered in several beloved horror movies that are all the more loved because these two particular actors appeared in them together. Unlike Karloff and Lugosi, Cushing and Lee’s partnership extended beyond the screen. They were close friends who spoke of each other in only the most rapturous tones. That friendship also affected their work, as when Lee prevented Cushing from deserting the Horror Express production by gently reminding him of the good times they had together.

Review: 'Original Music from The Addams Family'

Along with its sister-series The Munsters, The Addams Family brought a celebration of weirdness to weirdly status-quo sixties TV. It also brought along some very memorable music, not just with its cool, finger-snapping theme tune, but also its zesty incidental themes. A couple of years before it became de rigueur in the pop tunes of everyone from The Beatles to the Stones to The Left Banke, harpsichord was an essential element of Vic Mizzy’s Addams Family score. Could Lurch’s love of the baroque keyboard inspired the arrangements of “Fixing a Hole”, “Lady Jane”, and “Walk Away Renee”?

Watch New Edit of David Lynch's "Rabbits"

A few weeks after releasing the haunting short film "Fire (Pozar)", David Lynch's You Tube channel continues to host interesting content. Today, Lynch has unveiled a new edit of his bizarre-even-for-Lynch Internet series "Rabbits". 

"Rabbits" originally appeared on the long-defunct website DavidLynch.com. Each episode consists of Mulholland Dr. stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, and Scott Coffey having non-sequitur conversations to the delight of a sitcom laugh track. Plus, they were dressed like giant, feature-less rabbits.

"Rabbits" found a more formal and permanent home scattered among the disturbing debris in Lynch's most recent feature film (assuming you don't subscribe to the theory that Twin Peaks: The Return is an 18-hour film), 2006's INLAND EMPIRE. This latest edit is titled "Rabbits 1", which implies that additional installments will follow. Watch it here:

6/26/20 Update: Part 2 is now up:

And Now for No Other Reason Than It's Timely, Here's Otis Redding Singing "A Change Is Gonna Come"

My favorite version of Sam Cooke's proto-Black Lives Matter classic...

Review: 'The Greatest Cult Television Shows of All Time'

Regardless of quality, nearly every TV show develops some sort of following. But earning the classification “cult television show” requires more than a following. By definition, cultists must be relatively few in number but legion in devotion. They stage conventions in honor of their favorite shows. They dress up as their favorite characters. They communicate in a secret language of quotes and catch phrases. They organize fervent letter-writing campaigns when their favorite shows risk cancellation.

Watch David Lynch's "Fire (Prozar)"

David Lynch always said that his main impetus for transitioning from fine artist to filmmaker was the desire to see his paintings and illustrations move. While he has certainly made his share of moving (in all senses of the word) art, an animated short he made in 2015 is Lynch's film that comes closest to fulfilling his original wish. "Fire (Prozar)" essentially looks like one of David Lynch's charcoal illustrations twitching and vibrating to life (with much assistance from animator Noriko Miyakawa). 

With its images of flames, theaters, isolated houses, and elongated deers that look like they just danced off the stage of Industrial Symphony No. 1, "Fire (Prozar)" is very recognizably Lynch. The string score by Marek Zebrowski (who worked as a Polish-to-English translator on INLAND EMPIRE) is highly reminiscent of the late Krzysztof Penderecki, whose work Lynch used to unforgettable effect in INLAND EMPIRE and "Part 8" of Twin Peaks: The Return. In fact, Zebrowski actually wrote it for the Penderecki String Quartet. All of these elements coalesce in what is likely Lynch's best animated work since 1968's "The Alphabet" (sorry, "Dumbland" fans). 

Lynch just released "Fire (Prozar)" on YouTube. See it here:

Farewell, Phil May

Phil May was the face and voice of one of the most raucous British R&B bands. He then led The Pretty Things down a far more creative path when his short story about the life and death of a WWI vet became the basis of the first full-length--and as far as I'm concerned, best--rock opera: S.F. Sorrow. 

The Pretty Things never achieved the fame of The Rolling Stones or The Who, but they were arguably as fierce as the former and as creative as the latter. With his unusually long hair, sinister whisper-to-a-scream voice, and rule-redefining creativity, Phil May was a huge part of what made The Pretty Things distinctive and great. 

Sadly, I just learned that May died nearly a week ago on May 15 of complications resulting from a bicycling accident. He was 75.

Farewell, Little Richard

Chuck Berry brought the wit, Buddy Holly brought the melodism, and Bo Diddley brought the rhythm, but no one did more for making Rock & Roll wild, cathartic, and outright crazy than Little Richard. 

With his ten-story tall pompadour and airplane-engine shriek, there was nothing little about Little Richard. He could turn a tumble of gobbledygook like "Tutti Frutti" into an ode to fucking as terrifying (to parents) as it was exhilarating (to kids). Without the voice that screamed "Long Tall Sally", "The Girl Can't Help It", "Lucille", "Rip It Up", "Good Golly Miss Molly", "Heeby-Jeebies", "Jenny Jenny", and Psychobabble's selection for best song of the 1950s, "Keep a Knockin'", Rock and Roll would be missing as essential an element as if the letter "E" had been stripped out of the alphabet. Today we lost the man. Richard Penniman died at the age of 87 of unknown causes. The voice never will.