Audio

• Cradle of Filth: Cryptoriana
  I’m actually kind of glad that Filth is losing his voice. It forces him into the lower registers, where he’s more intelligible. In any case, this is their best-mixed album to date.
• Shpongle: Codex VI
  I am so pleased to have found this artist, as there are so few examples of this weird little sub-genre. The best previous album along these lines was Paul Haslinger’s “World Without Rules.”

Video

• Pal Joey
  I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief in the two women’s willingness to fight over the skinny, lunkheaded Sinatra. But Kim Novak is always a joy, even if always utterly artificial.
• Vampire Circus
  Hammer films are always at their best when at their weirdest.
• Creepshow S1E1: Gray Matter/The House of The Head
  We get it, King Clan… everything’s a metaphor for just how terrible people really are.
  Only well after watching it did I get the gag of the title “House of The Head.” It has to have been dreamed up as a writing prompt, and the story filled in later.
• Miss Saigon, 25th Anniversary
  Pure opera. Two and a half hours of sustained music with almost no recitative. Jon Jon Briones is the best Mephistophelian MC since Ben Vereen.
• Rainy Dog
  Grainy, nihilistic, ultramodern formalism for its own sake. The first film in a long time to remind me of the strange, quiet pleasures of repertory cinema.