Yeah, not sure Shirley Jackson v. Wes Craven is the most apt comparison to make. You don't have to look far in horror fiction to find plenty of male writers who are not interested in destroying things and tearing shit down.

My most-listened to new metal for the month is Dead Roots Stirring, by Elder. I'm as sick of stoner doom as the next guy, but this album rules. It's heavy with a touch of psych, and surprisingly catchy. The Sleep influence is obvious, but Elder has hooks that Sleep lacks.

Agreed. Blackened Jesus Lizard, Albini, the gut bucket stuff… That write-up reads like it was crafted specifically to make me buy without thinking. The title "Madonna was a Whore," though, leaves me a bit flat.

It's got a super rad cover. More than that I will not say.

Let them do their own work!

Kids who think b-minuses are good grades better get ready for an online college.

Obviously, having an album like Crack the Skye out before this is going to insulate The Hunter from haters to some degree; haters should know to expect something other than metal from Mastodon at this point. Personally, I think sounding like Alice in Chains and Foo Fighters is a rather terrible thing to say about a…

I'm much less likely to criticize a person's rationale when their policy positions are in close alignment to my own. Shocking, I know. I'm basically an ends guy, and I'll worry about the means only when they get in the way of the ends I want, which is why, for me at least, the frustration with religious people reduces…

As a atheist, the reason I give a shit about what religious people believe is because they keep trying to impose their beliefs in the form of public policy. Very few atheists would care about religious people if they kept their obsessions and hangups to themselves and stopped trying to use them as arguments in support…

I was also considering the Hip. The AV Club should have made two lists: obscure bands that should be bigger and bands that are huge somewhere else but should be bigger in the US.

Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't recall that European Vacation was pg-13. I do miss boobs in pg movies, though. I remember seeing Airplane! when I was young and feeling convinced that the breasts in that movie must be fake, because who would just show their breasts like that?

Agreed on the I and "I" stuff. Part of Cocker's appeal is how he successfully wraps up characters and himself, possible bullshit and obvious sentiment in such a rich mix. It's a cake-and-eating-it-too achievement. Morrissey comes to mind as another master practitioner of this type of writing.

Yeah, I liked Calvaire quite a bit, too. Definitely not lame; I found it more emotionally resonant than a lot of the films under discussion here.

Speed of Cattle
I don't think anyone has mentioned that Speed of Cattle has almost all of the other early singles that are in the reissue (minus the songs from Vs. the Greast of All Time, of course, and minus "Power Walker," which is not a particularly good song, anyway). There are a lot of great tracks there, and I…

Nostalgia!
I feel like Archers provided the foundation for the soundtrack to my college years. Vs. the Greatest of All Time is their greatest recording and I still listen to it regularly. Seeing them live in those years was amazing.

Moe: glad someone mentioned it. That scene was chilling. I agree with you and others that it has stayed with me more than any other in the movie, and I'm surprised it didn't get a mention in the post.

Don't forget Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

dungeon crawls
To be fair, there have been a good number of nice dungeon crawls since Wizardry. The past few years have seen some excellent choices for the DS, for example. Etrian Odyssey and Dark Spire, to name two.

rerelease?
Did Criterion lose the rights to this at some point? I have a Criterion edition of Solaris on dvd from about 10 years ago. It would be nice to know if there are any differences in presentation or extras.

As for Simple Plan: I think the movie wisely left out some action at the end of the book that I found over-the-top. I liked the movie Simple Plan more the the movie Ruins, but I liked the book Ruins more than the book Simple Plan.