Blogcritics Author: Bill Sherman

Book Review: "The Workshop of Filthy Creation" - The Art of Johnny Ace and Kali Verra

Bill Sherman — Sun, 7 Sep 2008 21:25:29 EDT

A new hardbound collection pays tribute to the Kustom Kulture art of Johnny "Childish" Ace.
Even if you aren't familiar with the artist, one glace at the cover of "The Workshop of Filthy Creation": The Art of Johnny Ace and Kali Verra (Dark Horse Books) would tell you this is no collection of highbrow art. Featuring a large leering cartoon rodent bidding us to enter his lair, a barely seen hot rod is in the background....

Music Review: Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby

Bill Sherman — Sat, 6 Sep 2008 14:05:47 EDT

An engaging collaboration between the Britpop paranoid and his equally sharp spouse.
Of all the musical smarties and entertaining eccentrics to debut on the Stiff Records label, none blended youth and identifiable paranoia as well as Eric Goulden, a.k.a. Wreckless Eric. With his mewling whine of a voice, knack for crafting memorable pop-rock hooks and well-earned suspicious world-view, the young singer/songwriter may not have...

DVD Review: Intelligence - Season One

Bill Sherman — Fri, 5 Sep 2008 14:57:07 EDT

The creator of Da Vinci's Inquest follows up with a complex undercover crime drama.
With Intelligence, writer/director Chris Haddock takes a theme that was always a part of his early Canadian procedural Da Vinci's Inquest - the political use and misuse of information - and makes it the central concern of his story. Divided between two struggling leaders, Vancouver crime boss Jimmy Reardon (Inquest's Ian Tracey) and police...

Graphic Novel Review: Zot!: The Complete Black And White Collection by Scott McCloud

Bill Sherman — Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:32:55 EDT

Scott McCloud's groundbreaking superhero comic gets a hefty trade paperback repackaging.
Though years of manga-influenced Western artists and small-press hero titles have lessened its shock of the new, Scott McCloud's '80s era comics series Zot! remains a unique storytelling experience. Originally debuting as a color comic on the now-defunct Eclipse Comics line in 1984 -- two years before The Dark Night Returns and Watchmen,...

Music Review: Apples in Stereo - Electronic Projects for Musicians

Bill Sherman — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:13:50 EDT

The alt power-poppers release an engaging set of B-Sides and Rarities.
"Rarities and B-Sides" sets can be risky propositions: there's often a good reason, after all, why these tracks weren't included in the artist's A-Side repertoire. And when the artist shows a tendency for inserting odd little proto-psychedelic instrumentals into the body of their official releases - much as Apples in Stereo...

Graphic Fiction Review: How to Love by the Actus Comics Collective

Bill Sherman — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:39:12 EDT

The Israeli alt comics collective produces a new anthology of "graphic novellas" about love and its pursuit.
The first collection in three years by the Israeli alternative comics collective, Actus, How to Love (distributed in the U.S. by Top Shelf) is a handsomely packaged hardcover anthology of six "graphic novellas" centered on the title theme. In the years since Actus' last group production, 2005's Dead Herring Comics, one member of...

DVD Review: Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers

Bill Sherman — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:34:55 EDT

Fred Olen Ray's bloody low-rent horror hit gets a 20th anniversary repackaging.
Look at a title like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and you pretty much know what you're gonna get: buxom starlets, severed limbs, a shoestring budget and plenty of intentional and/or unintentional camp. The creation of fecund exploitation moviemaker wrestler Fred Olen Ray, Hookers has recently been released in a snappy new 20th anniversary...

Music Review: The Very Best of Little Richard

Bill Sherman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:17:00 EDT

For all you flat-top cats and dungaree dolls: an ace collection of Little Richard's great early tracks.
Let's start with this uncontroversial pronouncement: if you care anything at all about the power and splendor of early rock 'n' roll, you need to have some Little Richard in your collection. A true musical wild man, Richard Penniman opened up the music in ways that were essential for pop's evolution. In a world of blues shouters,...

Graphic Novel Review: Too Cool to Be Forgotten by Alex Robinson

Bill Sherman — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:34:20 EDT

Alex Robinson's newest graphic novel transcends a gimmicky time-traveling premise with well-honed characterization.
When we first see Andy Wicks, the middle-aged middle-management protagonist of Alex Robinson's Too Cool to Be Forgotten (Top Shelf), he's standing in the dark, smoking what he hopes will be his last cigarette. Accompanied by his wife Lynn, Andy has come to a holistic medical center to be hypnotized out of his nicotine addiction. But once...

Music Review: The Residents - Duck Stab

Bill Sherman — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:56:57 EDT

A classic slab of avant-garde weirdness from the late seventies gets a spiffy new reissue.
Even a hard-core pop-rock junkie can occasionally feel the urge for some bracingly ugly music: in the late sixties, that need was best met by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention; in the late seventies, it was a group of anonymous wise asses named the Residents. Through a series of albums which simultaneously built upon and deconstructed Top...