Hello True Believers!

Welcome back to The Good News! The first bit of good news is our next show has been announced! 

Start your year off right with the unstoppable Gila Teen, Reposer, and of course us :).

Something fun to get lost in this week:

Shot towers! I visited Baltimore recently and discovered that there are four (or five) remaining Shot Towers in the country. What is a shot tower? Was the "shot" a verb or a noun first? All these questions and more await you haha.

A nice thing to listen to this week:

Nico Vega - Nico Vega (2009)

I don’t know how I’d missed this one, but all these years later, this late-2000’s indie rock bangers stands up to the test of time. In the mid-2000’s until the mid-2010’s, I spent an inordinate amount of time feverishly downloading and organizing terabytes of music from all walks of life, with a particular focus on the “indie rock” that would have absolutely encompassed a record like this. But just like the 1980’s is with wild movies you’ve never even heard of despite making your best effort (I’m lookin at you Motel Hell), the decade between 2005 and 2015 was chockablock with amazing records. If you missed this one like me, give it a shot! Not the best of the era, but one that had evaded my grasp. 

Terrific thing to watch:

The Love Witch (2016)

Bonafide classic, The Love Witch feels like if Elvira was played by Lana Del Rey in The Court Jester. That’s a lot, but I stand by it (this works even better if you’ve seen Lana’s short film Tropico). It’s campy, colorful, witty, silly, and just lovely all around. Samantha Robinson is, if you’ll forgive me, bewitching in her role as Elaine, stealing the show to the extent that I couldn’t tell you much about anyone else in the film. I’m sure they were great. Great for any night or a Sunday afternoon. 

A good read:

Visual and Other Pleasures - Laura Mulvey (1989)

If you only read the opening essay, you’re miles ahead of the curve compared to the layman. The general concept being discussed and then expanded on through this short and compelling text is that there are three perspectives/gazes to consider in every shot in a film: 1) the gazes of the characters themselves, 2) the gaze of the camera, 3) the movie viewer’s gaze. That’s the general idea, but don’t let it be forgotten that her other thesis is that often each of these gazes is steeped in societally-inherent misogyny, a thesis I find hard to refute.  

And finally, our weekly pic of the pup, Apollo:

Be nice to each other, and we'll see you next week!Best,

Luke