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Like a candy-colored Jack Kirby acid trip, Thor: Ragnorak bounces all over the Nine Realms – taking its hammer-wielding hero from Asgard to Earth and some truly mind-blowing places in between. Yes, the latest adventure from the comic-book blockbuster factory ticks all the customary Marvel boxes. It's a spirited adventure punctuated by heady bursts of CGI spectacle. It's got just enough fan-service cameos to delight knowing viewers. And there's at least one arguably gratuitous shirtless shot of its handsome hero (not that anyone is complaining).

But the movie (which hits...

From August 4th through August 6th, Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con took over the Windy City, and Daily Dead was on hand for all the horror-fied festivities. Throughout all three days, this writer served as one of Flashback’s co-hosts, and brought back some highlights from several of the panels held over the course of the convention.

Below is the first part of our excerpts from the panel featuring the women of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, and Ronee Blakley. The trio discussed their careers at the point of being involved with the first film in the Nightmare franchise, how the project came about, and their experiences seeing Wes Craven’s landmark film for the very first time.

Be sure to check back here on Daily Dead for more from the women of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I would love to start off by hearing...

Electronic music is an undeniably, overwhelmingly male-dominated field, with The Chicago Tribune reporting as recently as last summer that Lollapalooza’s “Perry’s Stage” featuring electronic acts only had one female DJ/producer booked for the entire weekend. And when Suzanne Ciani first became infatuated with synthesizers in the early 1970s, there were few people working in the medium, let alone women. The new documentary A Life In Waves tracks the 2017 Moog Innovation Award recipient’s career, from her beginnings composing scores and creating sound effects for film, TV, and video games—the pinball game Xenon features her work, as does Meco’s infamous Star Wars disco soundtrack—to her advertising work and later transformation into a successful New Age, jazz, and solo piano artist with 15 albums under her belt.

In the exclusive clip form A Life In Waves below, Ciani describes how she created one of advertising ...

Television stations – like distribution and production companies – can have a lot invested in their IDs. They represent the brand in the mind of the consumer. In 1972, Wgbh created a station ID with a logo sting by Gershon Kingsley. That sound has become closely associated with Wgbh, and they’ve made several updated IDs using that original Moog synthesizer sound through the years. Paul Sanni, an editor for the Creative Services department and the Masterpiece series at Wgbh has twice worked on revisions of the ID. Sanni has a background in audio and video and for the latest version […]...

Television stations – like distribution and production companies – can have a lot invested in their IDs. They represent the brand in the mind of the consumer. In 1972, Wgbh created a station ID with a logo sting by Gershon Kingsley. That sound has become closely associated with Wgbh, and they’ve made several updated IDs using that original Moog synthesizer sound through the years. Paul Sanni, an editor for the Creative Services department and the Masterpiece series at Wgbh has twice worked on revisions of the ID. Sanni has a background in audio and video and for the latest version […]...

1963

Johnny Cash: Blood, Sweat and Tears (Columbia)

Some of Cash's '60s concept albums were burdened with much too talking between tracks; here the tribute to the American working man gets to mostly stand alone on its musical merits, and shines. Notably, it incluces the top version of the traditional "John Henry"” about the most legendarily heroic working man ever, and the version of "Casey Jones" here is classic as well. Politically and psychologically, Cash was the perfect man for this job.

1968

Byrds: Notorious Byrd Brothers (Columbia)

Sometimes transitional albums, confusing listeners expecting a group's earlier style, are underrated. Not so with this classic. It's true that it didn't sell as well as earlier Byrds LPs, nor did the single from the album chart very high, but for decades Notorious Byrd Brothers has been widely revered, and not just by fans; some critics have even anointed it as the band's best album.

Five Albums You Should Be Listening to Right Now: MoogFest Hark! A vintage synthesizer, off in the distance! by Matt Hendrickson This weekend, Asheville, North Carolina, will be playing host to the third annual MoogFest, "the festival of electronic and visionary music that celebrates the innovative spirit of Robert Moog." Robert Moog, of course, invented the Moog synthesizer, the iconic instrument heard on virtually every piece of music created through the 1970s. Everyone from the Magnetic Fields to Explosions in the Sky will be present at this year's MoogFest, and to that end, we got Matt Hendrickson, Director of Marketing at AC Entertainment, to give us the rundown on the five bands who represent the cream of the crop at Moogfest. 1. Carl Craig, Sessions (2008) One of techno’s titans, Carl Craig has consistently pushed the genre’s boundaries while recording under his own name, delivering various [...]...

Long before technology enabled each of us to cram our entire record collections into digital slivers the size of cigarette cases, there were essentially two ways of storing high-fidelity recordings: big tape and vinyl. But in the 1950s, the transistor came along and changed everything. Yes, it enabled greasers to blast doo-wop hits or whatever on their pocket-size Am radios, but it also made it possible for Robert "Bob" Moog to perfect the analog synthesizer -- a development commemorated on today's Google Doodle in honor of what would have been the inventor's 78th birthday. (He died in 2005.)

If you're like most people, you're probably wondering how the heck that thing on Google.com's main page works -- and I'm not here to tell you, though I'm pretty sure you can tweak the sound that comes out of the keyboard by twiddling the various knobs. Instead, I'll just say that the...

Google is celebrating what would have been the 78th birthday of electronic music pioneer Bob Moog with an interactive doodle. The interactive synthesizer pays homage to the founder of Moog Music, who created a sound that has been described as assertive, bouncy, exotically wheezy and occasionally explosive. Moog was born and raised in New York City, and paired with composer Herbert Deutsch in the mid-1960s to develop a voltage-controlled synthesizer module. The portable, relatively easy-to-use synth yielded a range of various sounds. Other synthesizers were on the market when Moog introduced his version. However, his synthesizer was known for being small, light and versatile. Moog’s machine became so popular that [ Read More ]...

Isaac Brock, Modest Mouse front man and songwriter, will compose the score for the upcoming feature film Queens of Country.

Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke, the writing and directing team behind the film, are best known for their music documentaries including Blood Into Wine, The Heart Is A Drum Machine and Moog. The pair have placed an equal amount of importance on the scores to their films with both The Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd (The Heart Is A Drum Machine) and Maynard James Keenan's Puscifer (Blood Into Wine) having contributed to their films.

Queens of Country stars Lizzy Caplan and Ron Livingston with supporting actors Joe Lo Truglio and Maynard James Keenan. The film centers on Lizzy Caplan's character Jolene and a lost iPod, which the obsessed country music fan is convinced belongs to her soul mate. Jolene quickly finds herself in a hilarious adventure of mistaken identities,...

Lizzy Caplan stars in the upcoming comedy The Twinkle Cash Company announced today that principal photography on Queens of Country, a quirky comedy set in a rural southwestern town starring Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls, Hot Tub Time Machine, True Blood) and Ron Livingston (Office Space, Band of Brothers, Sex and the City), begins on May 3 under the direction of well-known music documentarians Christopher Pomerenke and Ryan Page (Blood Into Wine, Moog, The Heart Is A Drum Machine).

Queens of Country centers around beauty queen and line dancing champion Jolene Gillis (Lizzy Caplan) who stumbles upon an iPod filled with her favorite country songstresses in a local truck stop bathroom. Convinced the owner, who has strikingly similar taste in country music, is her soulmate, Jolene upends her world to track down the man of her dreams.

The film's cast is rounded out by Joe Lo Truglio (Superbad, Role Models), Matt Walsh (The Hangover,...

Blood Into Wine, the documentary about Maynard James Keenan (front man for Tool, Puscifer and A Perfect Circle) and vineyard partEric Glomski's mission to bring notoriety and credibility to Northern Arizona's burgeoning wine industry, continues to expand to more U.S. cities.

Blood Into Wine was co-directed by Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke, the team behind critically acclaimed documentaries Moog and The Heart Is a Drum Machine). FilmCritic.com called the film: "a rock 'n roll version of Sideways," the Los Angeles Times said "The frisson between his [Keenan] well-crafted personal mystique and the way the film presents him as a dedicated new winemaker learning his craft is intriguing" and the San Diego CityBeat added: "It's a behind-the-curtain peek at a notoriously publicity-shy celebrity, but more than that, it's a fascinating look at pioneers braving the Arizona elements to create drinkable art."

Upcoming Screenings

Az - Flagstaff - May 22 - Orpheum TheatreAZ - Tempe - Mar.

Director(s): Ryan Page & Christopher Pomerenke Writer(s): Maynard James Keenan, Ryan Page, Christopher Pomerenke Starring: Maynard James Keenan, Eric Glomski, Milla Jovovich, Patton Oswalt, Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, Tim Alexander, Bob Odenkirk Before I get started, I should probably set the record straight; I had no idea who Maynard James Keenan was prior to watching Blood Into Wine. So for the other Tool-deprived souls out there, allow me to summarize: Maynard James Keenan fronts Tool, a multi-platinum metal (a term I am using very loosely) band that formed in 1990. Tool has released four studio albums since its 1993 debut, Undertow. Keenan also fronts the supergroup A Perfect Circle (which has released three albums to date) and Puscifer (a side project, which released its first studio album in October 2007). Keenan is also a winemaker, former Army cadet, comedian (he is featured in a couple Mr. Show cameos – the...