Well I’m just about 95% packed for California. Got the running gear in the carry-on, the rest in my larger rolling luggage, electronics set to go, and sure enough, the lungs send me the 4-1-1 that we’re not getting enough oxygen. For those of you new to the whole Hokeyboy experience, four years ago I…
Rating: 8 / 10 There is a meticulous degree of staged composition in Nicolas Winding Refn’s utterly compelling Bronson, one which runs almost counter-intuitive to the narrative’s freewheeling nihilistic bent. This story of Britain’s most infamous prisoner, played with ridiculously brutish theatricality in a masterful performance by Tom Hardy, doesn’t really tell us a thing about…
I like being born into the last generation that was able to appreciate vinyl LPs in a non-retro, non-ironic manner. I got my first CD player in 1988 and that was just the beginning of the end of vinyl for me (and for vinyl as a whole, which gave up the ghost to CDs soon…
Hi. Friendly neighborhood Hokeydude here. So the big run at Disneyland is pretty much here! Boots, Shyla and I leave Friday morning, Virgin America direct to LAX, where we’ll be met by Ann (who WILL earn a blog nickname before next Wednesday), and then it’s 5 nights in Southern Califnornia. Hope to get in a…
Twenty years ago today, I learned how utterly powerless we insects are in the face of a planet getting totally fucking massive bugfuck pissed. I saw the Fist of God smash buildings, destroy homes, wreck ecologies, lay waste to majestic rows of organic life that had stood for centuries, and leave the allegedly most advanced…
Rating: 10 / 10 You show me a David Cronenberg movie that thematically tackles the transitory nature of the flesh, the inherently stateless class of consciousness, or the symbiotic relationship between man and technology, and I’ll expect any of a dozen movies he’s made over the course of his career. (I still think his masterful…
Muswell Hillbillies was the start of a new era for The Kinks, as they left longtime label Pye and signed with RCA. Emboldened by the commercial success of their previous album Lola v. Powerman…, they would release six albums with RCA that would go on to be commercially disappointing and critically quizzical, to say the least.…
In memory of Tony Scott, who took his own life at the age of 68 on August 19, 2012, I thought I’d revisit a write-up I did for his seminal 80s music-video turned something wholly other military manlove flick “Top Gun”. Written as a DVD review way back in 2004, I had a blast with…
So it’s Tuesday August 6th, 2002, and the phone rings. A landline phone, but with a Caller ID display. How quaint. I recognize your number and you’re maybe one of, oh, let’s say three people I’d answer readily without letting it go to voice mail. I click the Talk button. “Lees!” I try not to…
Rating: 8 / 10 The Raid: Redemption (Serbuan Maut) is a 2011 Indonesian action/martial arts epic extravaganza that seems to be a feature-length version of the last 40 minutes of John Woo’s epic Hard-Boiled. And that’s not necessarily a criticism, either. There’s no doubt that director Gareth Evans set out to produce a gritty, no-quarter-given…