DVD | BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
Guy Maddin / Criterion
Maddin is a strange one, an odd man out even within the rarefied company of the arthouse crowd. He’s purposefully anachronistic, casting his dark dreams and nightmarish visions into the tropes of the silent film. Often, his works seem like a particularly brilliant student film gone horribly awry; incredible, gothic-cum-steampunk imagery clashes violently with Cronenbergian perturbations, exploding and then imploding entire histories of visual manipulation. In other words: the man is freakin’ brilliant, his artless idiosyncrasy belying a truly boundless imagination, steeped deep within the common anxieties of the 20th century. His “97% true” semi-bio-doc is one of the most striking films released in the new millennium, and well worth every penny.

DVD | SOPHIA LOREN 4-FILM COLLECTION
Various / Lion’s Gate
Oh, where have all our beauties gone? It seems like Hollywood’s brothel has produced nothing but plasticine atrocities and bubble-headed bints based on the same three archetypes we’ve long since grown weary of. Where are our Hepburns, our Sebergs, our Lorens? Watch this collection and despair, all ye faithful, and realize we’ve now entered a clime where coquettish whorishness has utterly displaced charm, class and subtle grace. They don’t make ‘em like Loren anymore, and we’re all the poorer for it.

BOOK | CHASING LOLITA: HOW POPULAR CULTURE CORRUPTED NABOKOV’S LITTLE GIRL ALL OVER AGAIN
Graham Vickers / Chicago Review Press
There is, perhaps, nothing more tedious than a book about a book. However, Vickers manages to sidestep the crushing dreariness of a standard literary critique by evaluating why Nabokov’s little tartlet remains so fascinating after so many years, charting a fascinating course over our cultural tendency toward moral schizophrenia. The best part is when he essentially admits that the Japanese are beyond the point of no return. Truer words were never written, friends.

CD | MISTER LONELY: MUSIC FROM A FILM BY
HARMONY KORINE
J. Spaceman and Sun City Girls / Drag City
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Spaceman! How could you fuck up a collab with Sun City Girls? This should have been perfect for you! All you needed to do was produce an ambient, pop-drizzled soundtrack to a suitably surreal movie. You had help. They probably paid you in drugs. And you’re still too busy jizzing over your gospel collection to realize that you’re NO LONGER RELEVANT! Ground control to Major Pierce: you’re better than this. Come back to us, Spaceman.

CD | FASCIINATIION
The Faint / blank.wav
Mark this day, folks—because lo and behold, the Faint has finally solved exactly how long it takes to perfect the platonic ideal of pure suck. Four years later and they still sound like the mutant lovechild of Erasure and Fischerspooner, mixing the worst melodramatics of ’80s New Wave with the sheer ear-fucking gall of half-assed Electroclash. You ever wondered what sticking yer dick in a blender would sound like? Well here it is. Have at it, all you sadomasochists.