Miami Film Fest/Record Store Day/Free Comic Book Day’24 recaps (no.12)
Films, floppies, and platters galore!
Ayo it’s your boy Skinny Rent’s Due coming at ‘cha with another piece this week. This one’s more of an overview/extended list of recc’s from my time at Miami’s spring festival season/corpo consoomer holidays. Maybe there’s something cool here that you’d like to check out, or maybe I just have bad taste! Anyways read on give a subscribe fuck The 6 and hope y’all enjoy!
If you’re like me, a mid-20s guy in South Florida who likes to go out and socialize with people who enjoy the same things you do, and also likes to watch a lot of indie movies/collect records/shamelessly read comic books, then you might know that the months of March-May are some of the busiest of the year. It’s one thing when you’re following the film festival circuit (which domestically picks up a lot during spring and winter), but it’s another thing when somewhat-official holidays of other things you like happen to occur in the midst of festival season. It can be a pain in the ass to your gas tank, but the good times you have with peers and the (hopefully) good things you check out make up for it imo. Don’t really know how to end this opener right now, so I’ll just cut the preamble here and get started.
miami film fest
For those of you who haven’t been to Miami Film Festival before, the best way I can describe it is what you’d get when you cross a localized Sundance lineup with a scavenger hunt of various after-parties and Q&As that span all across the city for at least two straight weeks. I might’ve gotten some things wrong with that interpretation, but it definitely feels like that. MFF is an exciting time for both cinephiles and people working in the industry, moreso for locals like me and surprisingly for people outside Miami.
Personally, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that notion as the festival scene here has gotten a little bigger recently, but it I was still confounded by the “outsiders” who actually showed up to promote their films1. I got to chat with Greg Kwedar, the director of Sing Sing (an instant crowdpleaser from Sundance and here, and a strong early contender come awards season), and that was neat! As someone who works with organizations that help people who are incarcerated through the arts, it was nice to have a brief conversation with someone who understands how difficult it is to navigate those waters, and how rewarding it can be when you see the positive effects it has on them. A friend of mine gave him his tech-deck as a gesture, and that was also neat!
Aside from the after-parties and networking events, I was lucky enough to check out some films that were pretty good! I won’t talk too much about Sing Sing (A24, []), but I do want to highlight two other films that I think will get lost in the conversation: Ibelin and The Concierge. Ibelin (Netflix, dir. Benjamin Ree), or I guess The Remarkable Life of Ibelin as it's now called on Letterboxd, is a documentary on the life of Mats Steen, a Norwegian boy who died young from a degenerative muscular disease. Despite how sad it gets (and believe me it gets very sad), it’s also a celebration of the life he lived on the digital space via his World of Warcraft avatar, and the lives Mats was able to help and influence in the most thoughtful ways. What I loved so much about this doc was its presentation, as it shows of mix of real-life footage whenever it focuses on Mats IRL and a blend of in-engine WoW cutscenes to tell the stories of his life as his OC Ibelin. It’s a rarity to see a documentary that wants to talk about the good things that games and the internet can do for people, and it’s well worth seeking out if you have an acute taste for WoW. There isn’t a lot I want to say about The Concierge (Production I.G/Crunchyroll, dir. Yoshimi Itazu) in risk of spoiling what it’s *actually* about, but I found it to be an enjoyable film with beautiful visuals that I think all audiences can enjoy (Unless you’re an actually concierge. That shit must be stressful). Be on the lookout for these by at least later this summer.
Other recc’s: The Contestant (Available now on Hulu, dir. Clair Titley), Ghostlight (IFC Films, dir. Alex Thompson & Kelly O’Sullivan)
record store day
This was the first time I took part in Record Store Day, which conveniently happens every 4/20, a day where other things happen! I’ve been collecting records for some time before it had the huge resurgence it’s going through now, with some film soundtracks and some secondhand classical concerts being added to my collection here and there. What I find really interesting about RSD (and pretty obvious in hindsight), is that, despite the stores selling a lot of reissues and albums that would be readily available on streaming, a good chunk of them actually aren’t! Out of the five albums I was able to buy from my own wishlist (the only ones I could get were Vince Guaraldi’s Short Summer, Charlie Brown, Meat Puppets: Live in Montana, and Joe fuckin’ Pesci’s solo album Little Joe Sure Can Sing!), only two are currently online to listen to (a reissue of Daft Punk’s Something About Us I and Paramore’s cover of Burning Down the House with David Byrne’s cover of Hard Times as the B-side. Guess which ones were super hard to find???). The rarity of these records, as silly as that sounds in our current internet age, for some reason made my journey across three record stores2 both urgent and fun. But enough about me, let’s get to these tunes.
I bought Joe Pesci’s debut solo album partly as a goof , but came away enjoying the cheesy swoonieness of it. Little Joe has some tracks that are definitely in line with his 60s jazzy Sinatra contemporaries, with a unique tenor voice that almost feels kinda rock n’roll-ish, like if Brian Wilson worked for Motown. It’s kinda nuts that the character actor from Goodfellas can sing really well. Got To Get You Into My Life is such an upbeat banger, with the trumpets and bass playing like they’ve sprung to life and started doing the Carlton, and No More (In Life) is another highlight with lyrics that probably would work well today with someone like an Adele or Mary Jane from Spider-Man 3. Pesci also loves to flex his wide range throughout most of the album, which is appropriate for any tenor worth their salt. Again it’s crazy how much I enjoyed this.
Second album I listened to was Guaraldi’s It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown, which apparently was never released before, unless I’m wrong and stupid. It’s pretty much what you can expect from his classic Peanuts oeuvre, albeit with different renditions that feel I’m sure would make the TV special more uh, special ig. I love Vince Guaraldi. The man made music that’s comforted my wellbeing since before I was conceived, but I strangely don’t have much to add about this album after listening to it. I love the big band take he spins on Linus and Lucy that sounds like an ending to an SNL episode, and Love Will Come (Nova Bossa) is a fittingly melancholic track for a Literally Me character like Charlie Brown. It’s Vince Guaraldi; maybe not his best work but Vince Guaraldi nonetheless. Maybe his music will be the subject for another article.
Last on the queue are Meat Puppets: Live in Montana, which upon instantly listening made me wish I was into them earlier in life. The only thing I really knew about Meat Puppets was their appearance in Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York (my favorite album ever with a bullet), which always made me think they were as grungy as them. I’m so fucking glad to be wrong. Hearing them live, they play like a mixture of Primus if they were managed by T Bone Burnett; this fast-paced, nasally folksy 70s throwback act that comes off as perfectly messy. Touchdown King was my favorite song from the album, but their renditions of Plateau and Lake of Fire are so fast and Coens-esque that I think they’re better than Nirvana’s covers lmfao?? I need to give it another listen or five to make a sound conclusion, but man, these dudes have the goods.
Overall, some really good records despite not being able to get that Paramore record. I also got a ‘45 of Pay to Cum! by Bad Brains and a new record needle, so I guess I can’t complain when I left three stores with a bunch of new and different music.
Well, maybe I can complain a little bit.
free comic book day
Compared to Record Store Day, the only complaint I’d have with Free Comic Book Day this year, where people come out in droves to grab free comics and discounted books3, is the same one I have every year: that there are very few comic book shops around me. You’ve got Knowhere and Tate’s, which are both pretty far from where I live, which leaves me with the Korka Comics location that’s in the local university village. I like Korka a lot, but I usually try to find another spot to avoid the chances of spotting people I knew from high school4. But since it was FCBD, and understood from years of experience that regulars will take *anything* that’s available in bulk so they can resell it on the speculator market (why ask pay for a book online that’s FREE?), I was left with no other choice than to go to Korka earlier than usual to get the books I wanted.
To my surprise, I walked inside Korka to find it completely packed, and had to wait give-or-take 20 minutes to get a max of three free books that day. To any person who doesn’t understand the comic industry, this would sound egregious, but my Dear Reader, this was a move forward I thought I’d never see in any of my local shops. Usually when I’d go to a shop for FCBD the owners would just let their offerings be a free-for-all and any crazy reseller would nab all the books before others would get a chance to. To limit our choices to just three meant that these people knew these would be books that would drive potential sales from more than just regulars, and that seemed to be that case with the quality of books available this year. I saw people of all ages, younger and older wanting books like Robert Kirkman’s Energon Universe and whatever the preview for the new Ultimates book would be, and buying anything else that was on sale just out of curiosity. In a time where stores have suffered a rough ordeal in the years since COVID, this felt like the first time I saw a comic shop bounce back with such energy and care for every kind of reader. Granted, I went to just one, but my sentiment still stands.
For this year’s books, I went with Energon, Spider-Man/Ultimate Universe, and Eye Lie Popeye, this manga-inspired take on the classic sailor from Massive Publishing. I was already following some of the books from Kirkman’s reimagining of Transformers and G.I. Joe (with Transformers by Daniel Warren Johnson being the standout), so this was both necessary reading for me to get what’s the deal with Megatron in this universe as well as a good reminder for me to check out Void Rivals, the semi-original book that Kirkman’s got writing duties on. I thought that story was good despite the fact that I mostly didn’t know what was going on, but it was really the Joe and Megatron stories that were well worth grabbing this. I won’t spoil anything about the Joe backup, but I will say that the Megatron flashback story (pictured above, written by Johnson and drawn by the legendary Ryan Ottley) gave a lot of satisfying answers while also serving as a great starting place for new readers. Out of all the three books that I read, this was easily the one that has the most bang for your buck.
Spider-Man/Ultimates came second solely for the Ultimates backup, but I might as well get the other stuff out of the way first. Spidey had some great art and funny quips for a book I don’t follow anymore5, and there was an interesting Venom War teaser that reminded me of more cosmic X-Men capeshit, which I support wholeheartedly. But hoo boy those Ultimates. The New (Nu?) Ultimate Universe imprint has genuinely been my favorite thing from Marvel in years, allowing creators like Jonathan Hickman, Bryan Hill and Peach Momoko to craft their own unique take on the modern mythos while subtly building up to whatever long-form narratives are supposed to occur from the events of Ultimate Invasion. This new take on their universe’s Avengers (written by Deniz Camp with art by Juan Frigeri) see the team as mislabeled terrorists by the evil forces that have warped the world in the image of their leader, The Maker.6 Consisting of Iron Lad (Tony Stark), Doctor Doom (a good Reed Richards with severe PTSD) and a freshly out-of-time Captain America, the team aim to work from the shadows in an effort to bring back the heroes of this lost world, leading to a sweet final page that would make any fan excited to see where this weird new world is going. Where the Ultimates books of old were partly about grounding the characters and world in realism, this new version seeks to invert that idea to attempt something that’s been sorely missed from books like these: a re-embrace of classical superheroism in a modern era. The first issue for this book drops next month, and I for one cannot wait to read more.
The last book I’ll mention is Eye Lie Popeye, which was more of an extended preview for the first issue out in July. The writing and art by Marcus Williams is so damn good (literally DBZ or OPM inspired Popeye), but reading it physically brought out something I thought I’d never consider when reading a comic: the art of actually lettering your comic. Tbf, I read most of my books on an iPad now, which is easy on my eyes whenever I need to zoom in on something. *Reading* this, however, hurt my eyes considering how much text was placed in most of these bubbles. It made for a surprisingly dense read (with that sailor-man’s signature idiolect in tact), but not entirely for the best when I had squint my eyes for most of it. I’m sure that problem doesn’t translate when reading it digitally, but it was something interesting that I wanted to say here.
Speaking of which, I’ve said a lot. Bye for now.
I should probably disclose that part of why I was at the festival was because myself and other were promoting Fallen Fruit (dir. Chris Molina), a film I worked partially on last year. If you happen to see it on your festival schedule or wherever it’ll be digitally available, check it out! Chris is a very kind and insightful person and I wish him nothing but the best (and if you’re seeing this, Chris: congrats again! I’ll link your Substack here for people to follow)
Shout-out to Lucky Records, Technique and Yesterday & Today Records. Great stores to visit if you like da music.
* FUNKO! Pops.
* People I don’t like. At all lol.
Another gentle reminder to start reading Ultimate Spider-Man (2024).
Evil version of Reed Richards from the old ultimate universe. Comics (it’s good tho)!