31 Days of Scream-O-Ween! - Deadly Blessing

by Garon Cockrell

Before Wes Craven unleashed Freddy Krueger upon the world he gave us the story of vengeful amish/Mennonites in the super creepy, super shocking, Deadly Blessing.  Ernest Borgnine is worth the price alone.

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BLOG ZINE! We Gotcher Queeah Heeyah!

by Kari Tervo

Hola Ziney Beasters! It's time for some zining!

If you want to know what this is all about, take a look at the FAQ!

Just one review this week: Queer & Trans Youth Visibility in Riverside, California.

Here's my rating system:

Here’s my Rating System:
Recommended: !
It’s Aiight: .
Maybe If You’re Into That Sort of Thing: ? - See more at: http://www.popculturebeast.com/2013/10/blog-zine-weekly-online-zine-reviews.html#sthash.cA4OZmLZ.dpuf

Recommended: !
It’s Aiight: .
Maybe If You’re Into That Sort of Thing: ? - See more at: http://www.popculturebeast.com/2013/10/blog-zine-weekly-online-zine-reviews.html#sthash.cA4OZmLZ.dpuf

Recommended: !

It's Aiight: .

Maybe If You're Into That Sort of Thing:  ?

Queer & Trans Youth Visibility in Riverside, California
Rating: !.
Price: Not listed
Inland Empire Queer and Trans Youth Visibility Project
facebook.com/IEQTYVP
IEQTYVP@gmail.com

CLICK RAWR FOR THE REVIEW!

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Video Game Review: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (reviewed), and PC

You really do have to feel for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It suffered through such a tumultuous development, that it’s almost amazing it made it into the wild at all. Chris Plante over at Polygon wrote a really interesting article about how it came to be in the shape it is today. Seeing the initial idea change to what is today was affected by changing of hands and the surprising success of last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown. If you’re interested in that, please do give it a read. Alas, I’m not here to talk about the game this started out being or even what the game might have been. I’m here to talk about what The Bureau actually is.

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DVD Review: The Neighbors, Complete First Season

A family from New Jersey moves into a neighborhood populated by undercover aliens. What could possibly go wrong?

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TV Review: Glee - The Quarterback

I was hesitant to write a review or anything on this at all for fear that some might think I was attempting to capitalize off the attention the episode was receiving. In fact, even as I am writing I'm considering abandoning it all together. So I guess if you are reading this that means I wrote the entire thing and hit that publish button.

This review isn't being done as a blogger or a journalist or whatever category someone like me fits into. It's being done as a fan of Glee since the beginning. I'm writing as someone who has the music, has the blu-rays, watches every week, and someone who has enjoyed these characters for five years.   It's pretty safe to say that I am invested.

I'm can also easily admit to the fact that Glee has never been as good as it was when it first started.  I still enjoy it and it still has moments of greatness but it's just never hit the highs of that first season.

You can see that encapsulated perfectly in last night's episode.

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31 Days of Scream-O-Ween! - The Town That Dreaded Sundown

By David Massey

 

 

Today we have a fairly exciting edition to Scream Factory’s line of gussied-up cult horror masterpieces. ‘The Town That Dreaded Sundown’ has gotten the cold shoulder from video and DVD releases over the last few decades but, finally, we’re given a beautiful copy of this genre-defining horror classic.

 

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Blu-Ray Review: "The Little Mermaid" Diamond Edition

"The Little Mermaid" is without a doubt one of best jewels in Disney's animated crown.  Almost a quarter century after its original theatrical release and "The Little Mermaid" still holds up, and surpasses, other Disney classics such as "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty" and even "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Reviewing this film is almost like reviewing a chocolate chip cookie because I don't anyone who doesn't like this film.

The new Diamond Edition Blu-Ray has one of the best animated transfers I have ever seen and even my 12 year-old remarked how amazing the picture looked.  The re-release is jam packed with over 3 hours of bonus material including a Carly Rae Jepsen music video for the song "Part Of Your World," a Crab-E-OKE sing-along, a never before seen deleted character - Harold The Merman  and much, much more.

With so many children's videos flooding (pun intended) the home video market, "The Little Mermaid" is a must own because kids will want to watch it over and over again.


Drumroll please...

10 out of 10 seashells!!!

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Music: Here's A New Song From Sarah MCLachlan! On The Uke!

Loving it!

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31 Days of Scream-O-Ween! - The Fog

By Adam Ruhl

If you’re under a certain age you may only know The Fog from the abysmal 2005 remake. Surprise, the real The Fog is a 1980 classic horror film from John Carpenter. This film has been hard to come by until Scream Factory’s Collector’s Edition of The Fog finally brought it to Blu-ray. It is one of the finest collector’s editions they’ve put out, chock full of extras and some very choice interviews. The sticker on the front of the slip cover declares the movie “John Carpenter’s classic” and this is an important qualification. While it has become a valued member of Carpenter’s body of work and it is enjoyable to watch time and again; The Fog is far from a masterpiece and Carpenter’s sophomore horror effort after Halloween exists as something of a wonderful failure.

 

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Royals by Lorde is NOT Racist

by Kari Tervo

Some chick (who I'm not going to name-check) wrote this utter piece of crap, "Wow, That Lorde Song Royals Is Racist" (link redacted because, in her follow-up, she seems to equate page hits with agreement). In her opinion, a song dashed out in 20 minutes by a 16-year old working class girl from New Zealand is inherently racist because--get this--she's "shitting on rappers."

Why does she think this? Because in the song's lyrics, Lorde discusses the culture of excess she hears in popular music and says she's not "caught up in [that] love affair." According to this person who definitely should not be allowed to say things on the internet, "I don’t have to explain why wealth operates differently among folks who’ve grown up struggling because this shit has been explained already: If you grew up with holes in your zapatos you’d celebrate the minute you was having dough."

There are just so many things wrong with what she has published. I am tired of entertaining this woman's pseudo-intellectual identity politics, so I'll just cover a few of them.

BLING RAP IS A PRODUCT OF 1% IDEALS

First of all, bling rap is itself oppressive. You can say all you want that every poor person would write obnoxious shit about consumer items, but that itself is bullshit identity politics. I grew up in a trailer (yep, had some holes in my blue KMart zapatos--wait, was I not poor enough? Or was I too white to really suffer?). I rap, and I write rap. I know for a fact that if I ever hit it big in rap, I most certainly would not be writing about expensive consumer crap, because I have more important things to say. I'm sure that chick would say, "Well, then, the brown people would be shouting it from the rooftops," but that itself is also racist, bullshit identity politics. Okay, so you have to admit you can't speak for every poor person. What, so now you speak for every brown person?

CLICK RAWR FOR  A REALITY CHECK!

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PCB DVD Review: Todd & the Book of Pure Evil

Take Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cross it with Saved by the Bell, center it around a bit of H.P. Lovecraft and heavy metal, and you pretty much have Todd & the Book of Pure Evil. Is that good? Depends on your definition.

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#GTAV Blasts Into Guinness Book of World Records

SEVEN TIMES.

Rockstar's epic Grand Theft Auto V has broken seven world records in its quest to be in every household in the entire world.

The excellent sure to be Game of the Year winner raked in the following records:

Best-selling video game in 24 hours.
Fastest Entertainment Property to gross $1 BILLION.
Best-selling action-adventure game in 24 hours.
Fastest video game to gross $1 BILLION.
Most viewed trailer for an action-adventure video game
Highest grossing video game in 24 hours
Highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours.

That is pretty amazing stuff right there.  But, the game is damn good so it's deserved.  

GTAV is out now on PS3 and Xbox 360!

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31 Days of Scream-O-Ween! - The Vampire Lovers

by Garon Cockrell

If you dare…taste the deadly passion of the blood-nymphs!  Or if you prefer, lesbian vampires.   Also Hammer.  So I’m pretty sure you’ve stopped reading this already.

 

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Music Review: Patty Griffin - Silver Bell

The only thing better than one brilliant Patty Griffin album this year (her stunning American Kid) is two brilliant Patty Griffin albums.   Today marks the released of the long-awaited (over a decade), much desired Silver Bell album.  

Originally slated to be the follow up to her wonderful Flaming Red album, Silver Bell instead got shelved during the record label shake ups of the early 00s.   It's been a holy grail of Patty Griffin fans for the last 13 years.

Now, finally, it's being released and we can finally complete our Patty Griffin discography.  Not only that, but it was worth the wait.

Click the RAWR for more gushing praise.

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31 Days of Scream-O-Ween! - TerrorVision / Video Dead Double Feature

By David Massey

 

Often, when I see double-feature releases on Blu-Ray, my knee-jerk reaction is that I’m scraping the bottom of the bargain bin. Having only seen bits and pieces of ‘TerrorVision’ as a kid and never having heard of ‘The Video Dead’, I assumed that I was in for a few hours of drudgery. That couldn’t have been further from the truth; ‘TerrorVision’ is a camp classic, oozing with 1980’s kitsch, and ‘The Video Dead’, as shoe-string as it is, wound up being quite a fun little ride. Together, Scream Factory has given us a polished version of the often-hard-to-find gem that is Terror Vision with a bit of a forgotten bonus in The Video Dead and made the package well worth a buy.

 

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