Movie Review: The Best of 2020

This week on End Credits it’s the end… of the year! Maybe we shouldn’t joke about that. You know what else is not joke? The quality of the movies released in 2020! There was a lot of quality in terms of the new films released in the last calendar year, even though we say most of them on our TVs, tablets, laptops, and phones. As usual at this time of year, we will check our lists, check them twice, and give you our Top 5 of the Year!!

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Movie Review: The Christmas Chronicles 2

This week on End Credits, get some corn for popping and tune in to CFRU for a Christmas-themed review. In this edition, we’re going to (maybe) celebrate the return of Cool Santa in The Christmas Chronicles 2, and in our decidedly not Christmas-related pre-game, we will run the series on a filmmaker we don’t talk about, and that’s the first and second rule!

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Movie Review: The Craft: Legacy

This week on End Credits we’ve got politics and magic! As the United States recovers from their election, we will take a look at the pop culture presidents we wish we had and the ones we’re glad we didn’t have. For the magic, we’ll be reviewing the new legacy sequel of a 90s classic about the self-described weirdos who made spells in school cool before Harry Potter.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

A letter written on a cold dreary day

Why do we read? To get away, to learn, to watch other people without guilt. Why do we write?

Let's be honest, Steph and Candice come to no conclusions about these existential questions, but they try.

Books

The Stand, The Green Mile, Needful Things, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, Cell by Stephen King

Links

Stephen King's accidental blindness on race - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/28/stephen-king-says-oscars-are-rigged-in-favor-of-the-white-folks-washington-post

Timestamps

02:15 - What's NaNoWriMo?

07:00 - revisiting stories you already know

10:00 - taking time to think about what you are reading and watching

11:00 - The Stephen King Project

15:00 - Stephen King and the myth of meritocracy

22:00 - How our lifestyles have changed with Covid

26:00 - Where everyone wonders "What does epistolary mean?"

29:00 - The pain of group chats

30:45 - The real reason why Steph doesn't journal

34:00 - Students writing letters to elected officials and why you should too

42:00 Back to The Stand

 

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Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village

Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.

Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter. 

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This month's episode of The Village Podcast

Movie Review: Vampires Vs The Bronx

This week on End Credits it’s Halloween week! Yes, the day itself is on Saturday, but it’s also Halloween week in show as we appropriately run the series on the movie series of the same name. Also, just in time for Halloween, we have an all-new horror-comedy to review that finally brings vampires, and the people of the Bronx, together in one film.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Spooktober

Halloween time has come around again... Steph and Candice take full advantage by chatting about spooky books and spooky tv shows.

We also discuss whether or not people should be reading stories about the downfall of humanity, whether it be from viruses or robots.

Books, television and other links

Outer Limits - the 90s reboot of the 60s television show

The Stand by Stephen King - the study described by the sociologist in the book, Glenn Bateman, is entirely fiction. 

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the genre or rewriting classics with supernatural elements.

End Credits Radio, CFRU's movie review program.

Lindy West, columnist

Genre bending novels and novelists

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Ted Chiang

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Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village

Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.

Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter. 

Send us an email at podcast@bookshelf.ca

Theme music from the Free Music Archive, by The Underscore Orkestra

 

 

This month's episode of The Village Podcast

Movie Review: The Babysitter: Killer Queen

This week on End Credits we’re going to blind you with science, and then blind you with Satan! In terms of the former, we’re going to talk to a U of G professor with some expertise in the subject matter of the documentary we reviewed last week, and then, in this week’s review, we cross streams again with another horror comedy that features a Satanic cult.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Movie Review: Bill and Ted Face The Music

This week on End Credits, we have to face the music. Make that Bill and Ted Face the Music. The sequel almost 30 years in the making is the movie we’re reviewing this week, and we’ll see if it’s nostalgia or innovation for the win. Speaking of nostalgia, we will start a whole new series of listicles that will rank the entries in some of the greatest (?) franchises of all time.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

We're baaaaaaaack!

After an accidental summer off from recording Steph and Candice are back, much like school and in-store shopping at The Bookshelf!

That's right the bookstore is open to the public 7 days a week from 11am - 6pm. But not to worry, they are still offering delivery, and if you know exactly what you want please consider ordering online for either delivery or pick-up and limiting the number of people browsing the stacks.

We are all in this together and doing what we can to support each other!

Books

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

The Dark Half by Stephen King

The Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

The Stand by Stephen King

Well Read Black Girl by Glory Edim

Also follow the online book club Well Read Black Girl

Note - Candice is ashamed to have not been able to come up with the name of Maya Angelou on the spot while trying to remember who said "When you know better, you do better."

In consideration - the return of the Non-Fiction Book Club with a focus on relearning Canadian History.

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Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village

Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.

Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter. 

Send us an email at podcast@bookshelf.ca

Theme music from the Free Music Archive, by The Underscore Orkestra

This month's episode of The Village Podcast

Movie Review: Almost Love

This week on End Credits, we’re in the mood for love. For our review this week, we’ve got a New York flavoured rom-com the makes you forget that there’s a pandemic outside and that living in Manhattan is expensive, and it’s called Almost Love. In the first half of the show though we will deal with the harsh realities of living in a pandemic and its effects on pop culture.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Movie Review - Relic

Another week another appearance on End Credits Radio. This week we watched and reviewed Relic - a body horror / family horror film about three generations of women dealing with the dementia of the matriarch and the house which seems to be crumbling along with her mind.

Listen to the full review of Relic at End Credits Radio.

Podcast Appearance - 100 Greatest Albums: Horse by Patti Smith

 I had the honour of stepping in as host on In Your Earholes Podcast's 100 Greatest Albums project, to cover the album Horses by Patti Smith.

I have previously joined Jasen Buch on the project to cover The Who's Tommy, Carole King's Tapestry, and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.

This episode rather than taking the guest duties, I was asked to take the host duties as Jasen usually allows his guests to choose a record, but he really wanted to choose Horses for himself. It's really just a formality, a funny little quirk added to the show. I had no real duties ;-)

Either way, I enjoyed diving into this historic record I had never spent any time with.

I hope you enjoy it too!

Listen to the episode here.

Movie Review - Scare Package

This week's episode of End Credits Radio Adam and I review Shudder's new horror anthology Scare Package.

Does the horror comedy anthology go too meta, or just enough meta? Guess it depends on what you want out of your horror films!

Listen to the full episode at the End Credits Radio page.

Movie Review: The Decline

This week on End Credits, we’re kind of in a celebratory mood despite the pandemic. This week, we’re delivering our 150th episode, and we’re unofficially kicking off season four of the show. For this timely occasion, we have a timely movie, and it’s French-Canadian too. On this show, we’re going to review The Decline, and we’re also going to talk about what we’ve learned from the first 150 episodes of the show.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Cli-fi is a genre now?

Steph and Candice check in again on how life, work and entertainment is going during work from home times.

Hint, it's a lot of television watching, way more than usual

Listen along to hear what they've been watching, reading and maybe eating!

Books

The Flooded Earth by Mardi McConnochie

American War by Omar El Akkad

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Misery by Stephen King

Tommyknockers by Stephen King

A Matter of Taste by Rebecca Tucker

Links

Movie commentary with friends from Candice's podcast, 100% Candice

What is Cli-Fi? 

Read what Stephen King thought of Annie Wilkes, villain of Misery. 

Timestamps

00:33 Intro

01:30 Missing movies with friends

05:50 Choosing what movies to watch

06:50 The Outer Limits reboot of the 90s

09:10 The X-Files conspiracy theory

10:16 Telling stories through years long series

14:30 Role playing games and playing characters outside yourself

19:03 How we communicate in audio without visual cues

22:00 How our reality is different from the tropes of sci fi

24:00 Giving people the nod while out for a walk

26:17 Reading updates

30:50 The Stephen King update

39:10 Steph realizes keeping a journal might be a positive thing, again.

43:45 Candice's accidental food industry book club 

48:50 Plea to support local businesses

49:46 What do live events and celebrations look like now?

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Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village

Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.

Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter. 

Send us an email at podcast@bookshelf.ca

Theme music from the Free Music Archive, by The Underscore Orkestra

This month's episode of The Village Podcast

Movie Review: Blood Quantum

This week on End Credits, it’s time to get dead again! Just in time for the unofficial start of summer, we’ll review the new socially conscious zombie hit Blood Quantum, and, before that, we’ll finish up the list of the Top 40 Comic Book Movies of the Last 40 Years. Yup, this one’s going to be a nerdy episode.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Canned Con Cast 34 - Northern AM Gold

There is a new episode of the podcast I co-host with Anthony Marco, Canned Con Cast, available to stream or download.

It's been roughly 8 months since our last episode, because life happens. But we really reflect on why we started this podcast in the first place in this episode.

Also, note, I suggest to Anthony that he should listen to a specific song by the band Skylark, but I gave him the wrong song title. This is the one he and you should listen to (after listening to our episode!)

Mother's Day in Absentia

It will be a Mother's Day weekend to remember, and it's not because of the snow predicted to land in Southern Ontario over the weekend!
You can't take your mom out for dinner or to see a movie this year, but you can treat your mom to puzzles, games, books, and wine! Or a Psycho movie marathon if you've got that type of mom (Candice does!)

Books

Misery by Stephen King
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix
My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers by Sady Doyle
Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
The Wall Will Tell You: The Forensics of Screenwriting by Hampton Fancher
Camp Murderface by Josh Berk and Saundra Mitchell
The Mutant Mushroom Takeover by Summer Rachel Short
Clan by Sigmund Brouwer

Movies

Maniac - 70s serial killer exploitation film
American Psycho directed by Mary Harron as a satire!
The Booksellers streaming from the Cinema in partnership with Blue Ice Docs
This Is Not A Movie streaming from the Cinema in partnership with Blue Ice Docs
Kedi streaming from the Cinema in partnership with Blue Ice Docs
Jerry Maguire - Steph's favourite buddy film?
The Object of My Affection - Candice favourite film to press stop at 5 minutes before the end.

Links

Candice's episode of End Credits Radio covering Grady Hendrix written horror comedy film, Satanic Panic
My Favourite Murder Podcast
Bookshelf Cinema's streaming movies
Bookshelf delivers wine with books!
The Dana Buckler Show Terminator retrospectives

Timestamps

01:00 Mother's Day ideas and plans
07:10 How does the book look?
08:00 - 08:10 Special guest makes an appearance!
09:38 Check in on Candice's reading
11:00 We go deep on Grady Hendrix
13:15 Chatting women's obsession with true crime and horror
18:30 The villain in horror films aren't meant to be redeemed
22:20 Bookshelf Cinema brings you streaming films!
31:30 Steph's reading update
34:00 Practice exploring what wasn't in the story - basically Fan Fic
38:00 Send your best alternate parts of a story to Steph at podcast@bookshelf.ca
39:45 Kids books Steph has been reading with her kids
---
Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village
Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.
Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter.
Send us an email at podcast@bookshelf.ca
Theme music from the Free Music Archive, by The Underscore Orkestra

This month's episode of The Village Podcast

100% Sabrina

Satanism or the Patriarchy? Is there really a difference?

Not according to the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina!

Stephanie and I revisit the first episode of the Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa Netflix original series and dive into hairstyles, familiars, scarecrows and spiders. Cue up the first episode and watch along with us!

Thanks for listening!

Follow me on Twitter at Cinn48 or at CircleOfMedia.

Listen to my other shows The Village Podcast by The Bookshelf or every third week, give or take, on End Credits Radio.

Theme music by Aaron Soch of Pluvonics.

There's a new episode of 100% Candice!

Movie Review: Satanic Panic

This week on End Credits, we’re going to engage in some light Satanism, and by light we mean “lighthearted” because the first name in comedy everyone thinks of is the Devil. So we’re going to check out Satanic Panic, which is now streaming on Shudder, and we’re also going to kick off a new multi-part list that will keep you coming back for more (hopefully).

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

The Socially Distant Episode

Hey everyone, we are back! If you thought the store closed to the public and working from home would keep us from recording, you were almost right.

It took us a bit longer to find the time we could connect but here we are.

We check in with each other, chat about popular reads for strange times, and coping mechanisms.

Now that we are all staying home all the time, we want to know either what you miss most or what you have found you don't miss at all.

Let us know by email at podcast@bookshelf.ca

Books

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl is back on The Bookshelf's best seller list! First published in 1959

The Lost Puzzler by Eyal Kless

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

It by Stephen King

Links

Watch Fierce's live DJs

Timestamps

5:00 How are things at the Bookshelf?

10:00 Personal check in on how Candice and Steph are doing

18:30 What's selling at The Bookshelf?

23:00 How has the pandemic affect music and live events?

27:15 What happens to the third place when we can go back?

31:30 Update on what we're reading

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Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village

Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.

Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter.

Send us an email at podcast@bookshelf.ca

Theme music from the Free Music Archive, by The Underscore Orkestra

Movie Review: All the Bright Places

This week on End Credits, we’re going to fire up the Netflix machine and press play on a movie that might have missed our attention if the movie theatres were still open. This week, we’re going to get into the teen drama (and COVID-free) All the Bright Places, and we’re going to do a run down of where all your most-anticipated movies have moved on the release calendar.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Check-In at the End of Week 3

Time for a check-in. How is everyone doing?

My work is steady, busy and somewhat stressful, but I'm grateful to have it. Have a listen to where I am at the end of Week 3 of #stayhome 

Thanks for listening!

Follow me on Twitter at Cinn48 or at CircleOfMedia.

Listen to my other shows The Village Podcast by The Bookshelf or every third week, give or take, on End Credits Radio.

Theme music by Aaron Soch of Pluvonics.

Alright by Supergrass from the Clueless Soundtrack. Buy it on  iTunes or Google Play Music

There's a new episode of 100% Candice!

Movie Review: First pandemic watch update

Welcome back, everyone! We know that you haven’t gone anywhere, but we sure did. After a self-imposed self-isolation, End Credits is back on the air with a brand new episode in our pre-post-pandemic era. In a rare appearance by all the panelists on the same show, we’re going to recap our own independent watchlists in our own private theatres at home.

Read more and listend to the episode at End Credits Radio.

33.3% Candice

Welcome to the experiment! Results were positive.

I grabbed a couple of friends, Brandy and Steph, to watch a movie together and chat through.
In these times of spending way more time home alone than usual, it's nice to sit with friends and laugh over an old favourite movie.

Cue up Amy Herckerling's Clueless and watch along with us!

Thanks for listening!

Follow me on Twitter at Cinn48 or at CircleOfMedia.

Listen to my other shows The Village Podcast by The Bookshelf or every third week, give or take, on End Credits Radio.

Theme music by Aaron Soch of Pluvonics.

Alright by Supergrass from the Clueless Soundtrack. Buy it on  iTunes or Google Play Music

There's a new episode of 100% Candice!

Pandemic Gear Test

Surprise! 

Passing the time and testing a new microphone set up... I'm not sold on the experience, or the result, but it's not the worst, like my morning nut butter problem is.

Thanks for listening!

Follow me on Twitter at Cinn48 or at CircleOfMedia.

Listen to my other shows The Village Podcast by The Bookshelf or every third week, give or take, on End Credits Radio.

Theme music by Aaron Soch of Pluvonics.

There's a new episode of 100% Candice!

Movie Review: The Way Back

This week on End Credits, we’re going to discuss the healing power of basketball in the new drama The Way Back. In the news, things are much spicier with discussion about pandemics, representation, and why the Rob Ford movie might not be able live up to reality. Somewhere in between, we’re going to talk about porno! So now that we have your attention…

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Movie Review: Birds of Prey

This week End Credits is golden because we’re deconstructing Oscar night, which was full of surprises just not necessarily on the basis of who was going to win the awards. We’re also going to talk about some new trailers, and the passing of Kirk Douglas, and for our movie review this week, it’s a gloriously fun flick with a horribly long and exaggerated title.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

Movie Review: Just Mercy

This week on End Credits, we shift from a star war in a galaxy far, far away to something a little more close to home. Grab a kleenex, or 10, and get ready to for a review of the based on a true story Just Mercy. We’re also going to have issues of our own with awards, A.I., Star Wars outrage, and why we might finally be reaching “peak franchises” (or not).

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.

The Post about Twin Peaks

On the second to last day of 2019 I decided to press play on a 30 year old television show, Twin Peaks.

I wasn't able to watch the show during it's initial airing in 1990 - 1991. I think I saw a few episodes with my parents, but I remember my Dad thinking the show was just to weird to watch.

Along with all of my friends, I read the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, borrowed from the library across the school from our high school, during my 9th and 10th grade, and bought a copy removed from distribution from the library (probably because it was so beat up by us all reading it so much). I finally let go of that book in the last few years as I've been purging my book collection.

I did finally get to watch the show more regularly when it aired again on Bravo a few years later. By then I also had my own VCR and television and was able to tape the episodes. I watched the first season and up to the discovery of Laura Palmer's murder in the second season, but for some reason I didn't keep watching after that. I couldn't tell you why, but I'll chalk it up to watching Northern Exposure and I guess I only had enough room for one quirky small town in the North West of the United States (the extreme North West in the case of Northern Exposure)

Not only did I watch that firs season and half when it was re-aired on Bravo, I watched my recordings of it and even went so far as to do a media studies project on the show in 1996. Those first 16 episodes are like an old sweater I forgot I had.

I tore through Season One and the first part of Season Two in a few days and then I got to the episodes I'd never seen. How exciting to spend time discovering more stories with characters I knew as a teenager! I went through the last dozen or so episodes even faster than I'd gone through the ones I knew so well.

My goal with re-watching the original series was planned to culminate with watching the special limited series which was released a couple of years ago. Back then I had wanted to do an original series re-watch, but I didn't have legal access to the episodes then. It wasn't streaming on Netflix, I had no other service I paid for. As it turned out I couldn't watch the new season then either because it aired on CBS All Access which I wasn't prepared to pay for.

But now, thanks to Veronica Mars Season 4, I am a subscriber of Crave. You can blame a lot of things in my life on my love of Kristen Bell and Veronica Mars.

So there I was over the holiday season with a lot of time on my hands and three seasons of what I know to be amazing television.

But something surprising happened when I finished Season Two of Twin Peaks. I was not ready to move on. I was not as excited about plowing forward with the new limited series.

I've been listening to Damn Fine Podcast during the days and watching episodes in the evenings so I thought maybe I just needed some time to catch up on the second season companion podcast episodes before moving on.

I moved through listening to 12 or 13 hours of podcasts and decided to throw on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me the next evening to pass the time. Until listening to the companion podcast I hadn't planned to watch the movie but plans can change.

Two days after being without any new Twin Peaks to watch I turned on Fire Walk With Me. I wish I hadn't.

I wish I hadn't because I recognize that there is good in the film, but I struggled to enjoy it. I was not prepared to go back to the Laura Palmer story. I was finished with the Laura Palmer story. What I wasn't finished with was all of the rest of season two.

Fire Walk With Me came out almost a year and a half after the end of Twin Peaks. A year and a half later, fans of the show wanted anything, any crumb. And I suspect that every fan was happy to see an Agent Cooper in Fire Walk With Me who was an Agent Cooper from before the events of the series finale. But just a day after the series finale, it was not the story I wanted to go back to.

So here I am, only a few days after finishing watching the last half of season two of Twin Peaks, watching it again.

Who knows when I'll be ready to move forward into the 2017 limited series?

The Village Podcast Episode "Resolutions Time - Moar Books!"

Resolutions! What are yours? Steph and Candice chat about theirs, including learning new skills, maintaining course and doing the boring duties of being an adult. Our wish for you - do the things you want to do with your free time.
And always, more books, more movies, and more music!

Books

Paradise Lost by John Milton
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett
Penguin's Little Black Classics
A Different Kind of Christmas by Alex Haley
Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson
In The House In the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
In The Night Wood by Dale Bailey
The Invited by Jennifer McMahon
Little Darlings by Melanie Golding
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Me by Elton John
Face It by Debbie Harry
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Minstry
Candice's Stephen King Project update:
Finished Eyes of the Dragon in December and IT begun!

Links

It's an Imagine Dragon decade! Billboard's Rock Songs of the Decade
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Find all of our past episodes at Stories From The Village
Please leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.
Follow the Bookshelf on Twitter and Facebook and now Tumblr!! Stay up to date on what's happening around the store at http://bookshelf.ca and join the weekly newsletter.
Send us an email at podcast@bookshelf.ca

Theme music from the Free Music Archive, by The Underscore Orkestra

Movie Review: Worst of 2019 & Most Anticipated of 2020

This week on End Credits we welcome the new year with one last look at the last one, and a look ahead to what 2020 has in store. On our second of two annual holiday shows this week, we’ll spend the first half looking at the baddest of the bad from 2019, and what we hope will be the bestest of the best in 2020.

Read more and listen to the episode at End Credits Radio.