Home Blog
‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Blu-ray Giveaway!
I’m very excited to announce that I have Five (5) Blu-rays of Sonic The Hedgehog up for grabs. The discs, all of which are sealed, also come with the Digital Code and the DVD! Entry details are below!
Matilda Lutz Talks Spider Horror And “Level Of Fear” Behind ‘Crawlers’
Giant spiders are enough to give plenty of moviegoers nightmares. For Matilda Lutz (Revenge), making Crawlers (now playing in theaters) meant figuring out how to make each frightening encounter feel different. Playing scared was part of the job, but repeating the same reaction was something she wanted to avoid. Check out our full interview with Lutz below!
Read more: Matilda Lutz Talks Spider Horror And “Level Of Fear” Behind ‘Crawlers’
Directed by Ángel Gómez Hernández, Crawlers centers on Serena (Matilda Lutz), an overwhelmed building manager whose responsibilities skyrocket after a spider infestation in the apartment complex. The building, which is under a police-mandated quarantine, has several residents who are trying to survive this spider outbreak, and Serena may be the only hope for getting these people out alive!
Lutz discussed the challenge of giving her character Serena an extra layer of depth amidst the chaos and horror. Each scene needed its own approach, even when the source of the terror had eight legs.
“The level of fear had to be different in every scene, and different and nuanced,” said Lutz. “So for me, that was very challenging, because I didn’t want her to have just one note.”
That distinction gave Lutz something specific to work toward throughout the movie. Serena’s reactions needed to reflect what she was experiencing at that particular moment, with the terror building as the story progressed.
“I had to find different things that would make her very specific with every spider,” she said. “And as the movie evolves, the level of fear is growing as well.”
Preparing for Crawlers also introduced Lutz to some unsettling information about the creatures themselves. Growing up in Italy, her experiences with spiders were uneventful. I mentioned my own spider attack at the beginning of the interview, and thankfully that was not a mutual experience!
“I grew up in Italy, and there’s little spiders and not very scary spiders,” said Lutz. “So I haven’t had encounters like that. But I started researching for the role and the film, and I started realizing how many crazy huge spiders there are in the world, and deadly venomous spiders. And it’s scary.”
Check out my review (and recommendation) of Crawlers on CinemAddicts:
A big part of movies is illusion, and the idea of it being a glitzy and glamorous profession is not too acccurate. Spiders one thing, but the reality of acting does have its challenges. “It does seem like it’s all beautiful and glamorous and a lot of the acting (profession) is you’re travelling,” said Lutz. “You’re far away from family (and) friends. (Plus) you’re having to adapt to a different city, a different country, and different people. So sometimes it does get very lonely. That’s the one thing I think people don’t see about (acting) from the outside.”
Watch our interview with Matilda Lutz below as she discusses Crawlers, researching spiders, and her approach to acting.
Crawlers is now playing in theaters.
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
Spencer Boldman, Cameron Inman & Kristos Andrews Bring ‘A’ Game To Horror Indie ‘You Can’t Leave’
Shooting nine pages a day and sometimes having just one or two takes to get a scene right is obviously a challenge. For You Can’t Leave actors Spencer Boldman, Kristos Andrews, and Cameron Inman, that was part of bringing an ambitious independent horror movie to life. Written and directed by Scott Windhauser, the supernatural feature, which for me felt like a satisfying puzzle box, is now playing in theaters. Check out my video interview with the actors below!
Read more: Spencer Boldman, Cameron Inman & Kristos Andrews Bring ‘A’ Game To Horror Indie ‘You Can’t Leave’
You Can’t Leave centers on an understandably worried young man named James (Spencer Boldman). In search of his missing sister Gabby (Cameron Inman) with the help of his friends (Paola Andino, Thomas Bauer) and Gabby’s ex-boyfriend (Kristos Andrews), James uncovers a supernatural nightmare. What happens if one travels through the depths of the forest only to return back to the same isolated, and possibly haunted cabin?
Boldman discussed the production’s limited resources and the pace everyone had to maintain. “When you’re an independent movie, you have a very small budget,” said the actor, who starred in the 2018 feature Cruise. “Whenever you’re up against those kinds of challenges and logistic issues and weather issues and all that, you’re given one, maybe two takes of each scene. We were doing nine pages a day, which is very aggressive, and I am so proud of the movie that we made.”
For Kristos Andrews, who also has experience as a filmmaker, the circumstances made everyone’s contribution especially important. Arriving prepared was essential, and he appreciated how his collaborators responded.
“Everyone had to be on their ‘A’ game to pull this off the right way,” said Andrews. “The stakes are higher in real life to get this, to turn out the right results that really hit, and I felt like they really hit. So I’m really proud of everybody. Everyone brought their best. Everyone put their heart into it.”
That dedication also meant being there for one another throughout production. Cameron Inman, whose character has a standout sequence in the film’s opening, highlighted the time actors put into their craft. “We are very dedicated and work really hard,” she added. “I’ve been doing stuff with Spencer since we were teenagers. … It takes a lot of hard work.”
***Check out my review (and recommendation) of You Can’t Leave on CinemAddicts:
Ultimately, Boldman hopes that collective effort translates into an enjoyable theatrical experience.
“We were just trying to create a really entertaining movie for people to go to the theater and enjoy before Halloween,” he said. “And I think we did that.”
Full interview with Spencer Boldman, Cameron Inman and Kristos Andrews:
You Can’t Leave is now playing in theaters.
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Ryan’s Daughter,’ ‘Forbidden Planet,’ ‘Deathday’ (PM Weekly Issue #15)
Tomorrow, video stores in four countries will sell tapes and discs that exist nowhere else. The day they are doing it on was invented by one Toronto shopkeeper on the wrong Saturday.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Ryan’s Daughter,’ ‘Forbidden Planet,’ ‘Deathday’ (PM Weekly Issue #15)Daniel Hanna’s shop was then at 801 Queen Street West, directly above Rotate This. He has told the story in one sentence, in capitals, to That Shelf: “I JUST LISTENED FROM UP HERE ON RECORD STORE DAY TO WHAT THEY WERE DOING DOWNSTAIRS.” On how it got organized, to CBC: “So we set a date and just did it.” It was never only Canadian either. Hanna says year one ran in Canada, the United States, Switzerland and the UK. That year was 2011, not 2010, which is the year this column printed last week and corrects at the bottom of this issue.
Sixteen editions on, by this desk’s own count of the official directory this morning, there are 70 shops listed: fifty-nine in the United States, eight in Canada, two in Finland, one in Germany. That is our count off a live page rather than an announced figure, and it will have moved by the time you read it.
And it is worth knowing what that list actually is, because this column got burned on it two weeks ago and so has nearly everyone who has cited it. Every record carries a participation flag, and 53 of the 70 are set to false. It is a store directory with a Video Store Day flag laid over the top, not a roster of shops doing something tomorrow. This journal has now profiled fifteen stores, one an issue. Seven are in that directory. Three are flagged as taking part: Videodrome from the first issue, Night Owl Video from the eighth, and the shop in tomorrow’s Store of the Week. Scarecrow Video, CineFile Video, We Luv Video and Orbit DVD are all listed and all flagged false.
There are twelve exclusive titles tomorrow, which the official site and Eyesore’s own poster independently confirm, and exactly one of them carries a published quantity: Parasite on VHS, which the official site says is limited to a thousand copies and MVD’s own sell sheet to retailers says is seven hundred. Both of those are primary documents and they disagree.
Which is the shape of the whole thing. A sixteen-year-old international event, started by one shopkeeper on a whim, now has a store list that mostly is not a store list, a print run that is two different numbers depending on which primary document you hold, and until this week a founding year nobody had checked, including us. The day is real and it is growing. Almost everything published about it is approximate.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Maniac (2012), two-disc 4K UHD with limited slipcover, Severin
- The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), two-disc 4K UHD with rigid slipcase, Severin
- The Black Cat (1981), three-disc 4K UHD, Severin, with a Blu-ray edition the same day
- Ryan’s Daughter (1970), 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo, Warner Archive
- The Shout (1978), Blu-ray, Criterion
- Eclipse Series 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller, two-disc Blu-ray, Criterion
- The Last Boy Scout (1991), Limited Edition 4K UHD, Arrow, with a Limited Edition Blu-ray
- Hostel Parts I and II 20th Anniversary, five-disc 4K SteelBook collection, Shout
- The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary, DVD only, Shout
- Frankenhooker (1990), 4K UHD, Synapse, with a Blu-ray
- Rollercoaster (1977), 4K UHD, Kino Lorber
- Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), 4K SteelBook, Lionsgate Limited
- This Old Man and The Inner Voice, Remastered Collector’s Editions on Blu-ray and CD, Ruby Max via MVD
Ryan’s Daughter is the week’s event: a new 4K HDR master struck from 8K scans of the original 65mm camera negative, at 2.20:1, with a 2026 five-channel remaster alongside a five-channel restoration of the original 1970 70mm theatrical audio. It is a combo pack only. There is no standalone Blu-ray, whatever you have read, and that is our error from last week as much as anyone’s. The Transformers: The Movie turns forty and gets a DVD, which is a comment on anniversary editions all by itself. And the week’s most useful ninety seconds were spent on Criterion’s own store, which marks The Shout and the Fuller set “Released Oct 13″ while everything dated the 20th still reads “Available.”
Next Tuesday, the 20th, is the heavy one: Criterion’s thirty-disc Complete Kubrick and The Silence of the Lambs on 4K, plus Christiane F., Severin’s What Have You Done to Solange?, and Arrow’s Futureworld.)
MARKET SIGNAL
The best selling 4K disc in America two weeks ago was a film from 1956, released by a British boutique label licensing somebody else’s library.
Circana’s chart for the week ended October 3, published Wednesday, puts Arrow Video’s Forbidden Planet at number one on 4K UHD. Mrs. Doubtfire is second, Godzilla Minus One third, Dead Poets Society fourth, and Arrow’s Go, from 1999, is fifth. Not one title in that top five is a new theatrical release, and Arrow holds two of the five. Both of Arrow’s streeted in the United States on September 29, per Arrow’s own September announcement, so both were logging their first full week.
The week before, Arrow is nowhere in the 4K top twenty, which was Toy Story 5, Interview With the Vampire and Evil Dead Burn. A week after that, Toy Story 5 is out of the 4K top thirty altogether. And Circana credits the number one title to “Arrow Video/Warner,” which is the part worth sitting with: a licensee is taking Warner-held catalogue, restoring it, packaging it, and outselling the studio’s own 4K output with it.
Now the fence, because this journal has been round this particular course before. These are not units. Media Play News, which publishes the chart, defines its Index column as units sold compared to the number one title, so the ratios are sound and the magnitudes are unknowable. Forbidden Planet at 100 and Go at 54.16 tells you Go sold a bit over half what Forbidden Planet did. It tells you nothing whatsoever about how many copies either sold, and anybody who converts an index into a sales figure is making it up. The underlying data is licensed Circana VideoScan, and Circana’s public page gives ranks with no units, no dollars and no stated methodology, so there is no way to check it from outside. The same Media Play News page also carries per-title share percentages that contradict its own prose on Toy Story 5, which is why none of those numbers appear here.
What survives all that is a rank order, and a rank order is enough. The studios have spent three years explaining that catalogue on disc is a declining business for which boutique licensing is the responsible exit. Two weeks ago the exit outsold the business.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Eyesore Cinema, 1176 Bloor Street West, Toronto.
The shop that started tomorrow is still open, still renting, and currently raising money to fix its window.
Hanna opened Eyesore in 2008, moved it to Bloordale in 2016, and still owns it. It rents: catalogue titles are $3.50 for a week, new releases $4.50 for two nights, with series and box sets priced separately. It does not rent Blu-rays and it will tell you so. The rentals page refers only to DVD rental titles, and Hanna put it plainly to West End Phoenix: “We don’t rent Blu-rays.” It sells them, though, along with 4K and VHS, and all three are on tomorrow’s slate.
Ask how big the collection is and you get an honest problem instead of a number. Nobody has published a figure. The rentals page sends you instead to the shop’s Letterboxd profile, which is where it keeps what it calls a complete list of all our available DVD rental titles, and counted page by page yesterday that comes to 8,328 films. Which is Letterboxd’s films-watched counter being used by a video store as its card catalogue. So the accurate thing to say is roughly 8,300 DVD titles on the profile the shop points renters to, and the inaccurate thing to say is 8,328 films in the collection.
What is in there is cult, giallo, Cannes selections, Criterion, limited-run anime, Canadian exploitation and hard-to-find foreign film, and what is deliberately not in there is current Marvel. The recommendations are handwritten on Post-its. There is a Yor: The Hunter from the Future poster on the wall. It is a working microcinema as well as a shop, and it hosted five days of the Toronto Indie Horror Fest this month. The site’s own line is “Death To Mediocrity! Long live the Video Store!” The Letterboxd bio is better: “Toronto’s greatest video store in the history of the universe, and birthplace of Video Store Day.”
Hanna is one of the most quotable people on this beat and he has been at it long enough to have a record. To West End Phoenix in May 2024: “I don’t want to live in a world without video stores.” And, on the man who told him he would last a year, “I wish I had his phone number. Hey, it’s been 16 years, buddy.” And the one that explains why the shop is still there: “Teenagers and people in their 20s saying, Wow, a real video store, my dad told me about this. And the next week they come back with five of their friends.” To That Shelf in 2013, in capitals: “Indie video stores STARTED this business and we’re going to finish it.” To the Globe and Mail in 2015, which is the line this journal thinks about most: “It’s extremely depressing that the only time we get any attention is when we’re closing.” To CJRU in 2021, on what streaming actually holds: “maybe 10 per cent of what you will find in a well-stocked movie store.”
The shop’s own postcard for tomorrow calls it the 16th Annual International Independent Video Store Day and gives the hours as noon to midnight, with twelve exclusive hard media releases across VHS, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, local zines, t-shirts and prizes, and the instruction “JOIN US WHERE IT ALL BEGAN!” Horror Express screens on Sunday.
Also launching tomorrow is the 2027 Pin-Up Calendar, featuring, in the shop’s words, local members of the community. It is thirty Canadian dollars, or two for fifty, cash or e-transfer, and the listing on Eyesore’s own storefront says what it is for in one flat sentence: “This is a fundraiser to fix our front window.” That is the only sign of difficulty anywhere in the file on this store, and it is worth saying out loud. The shop that invented the day the industry now uses to celebrate independent video retail is fixing its front window with a community pin-up calendar.
(Next week: Traumathek in Cologne, renting films since 1994, with a café at the front and a 25-seat cinema at the back. The first time this column has left North America, and the only German shop in the Video Store Day directory.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Deathday (2017).
Format: DVD, ITN Distribution, Region 1 NTSC, 2.35:1 widescreen, Dolby Digital, not rated. The back cover reads “Approx. Runtime: 1 Hours 25 Minutes,” typo and all, under a 2017 Gas Money Pictures copyright.
Bonus Features: None. Not a menu, not a trailer, nothing.
Disclosure first, because this journal does not get to make exceptions for itself: I produced this film. My name is on the back of the case, fourth in the producer block, after Joe Bartone, James L. Bills and Kacper Skowron. Everything below that can be checked has been checked against something other than my memory, and the disc in my hand is doing more of the work than my recollection is.
It premiered in Hollywood on January 26, 2018, at the Arena Cinelounge, and it was called The Campus. The Hollywood Reporter reviewed it under that name. So did the Los Angeles Times. Neither was kind. Frank Scheck’s line in THR was that the film showed “energetic enthusiasm rather than real finesse,” which is a sentence I have thought about more than once since.
By the time it reached a disc it was called Deathday. Nothing in the film changed.
Culture Crypt, reviewing it, wrote that the film “was marketed as a ‘mockbuster’ of Happy Death Day,” and I understand completely why anyone would read it that way. The sequence is the wrong way round, though, and because I was there I am going to say so and then hand you the dates to check me with.
We shot in April and May of 2017, nights, twenty-two days, on an office location in Burbank with a cave built inside it. Dread Central came out on the twenty-first night, the last one, and ran its report on June 8. Blumhouse had announced its film the previous October, but the first trailer did not arrive until the middle of June, a week after that piece ran, and the film did not open until October 13. We were not making a response to it. We were making something called 5 Sins, after an idea Horton had found in Aztec culture that the soul comes in five pieces, which is also why the Polish release is called Diabeł zabija pięć razy, the Devil kills five times. The picture was finished before we knew the other one existed.
The re-title came afterwards and it did not come from us. It was ITN’s suggestion, and the reason was Walmart. A title that reads on a shelf beside a title people have already heard of is a title that gets stocked, and getting stocked is the entire game for a film at this level. So the name on the case is not an artistic decision and it is not really even a marketing one. It is a shelf decision, taken by a distributor, about a retailer. You are holding a piece of American retail logic with a movie attached to it.
Which is the part that makes this a column rather than an anecdote, because streaming still calls it The Campus. Tubi has it free, Amazon and Apple rent it, and all three use the premiere title. The shelf decision, the thing that actually determined what this film was called for most of the people who have ever seen it, survives in exactly one place. Take the disc down and you are holding the only copy that remembers what Walmart needed it to be. Stream it and the record is tidy again.
And there is one more disc, which I did not expect to be writing about. The only Blu-ray of this film in the world is German. Lighthouse Entertainment released both a DVD and a Blu-ray on June 21, 2019, under the title Deathday: Make a Wish… to Survive, with the original title listed as The Campus, so the German edition carries both names at once. The Blu-ray has an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, which makes it fully usable for anyone reading this. A US Blu-ray was announced in the trade press in January 2018, first for March and then for April, and was never pressed. So the best-looking and best-sounding edition of an American film that opened in Hollywood is an import, and it is the only one that exists.
The runtimes are a mess and the mess is instructive: 82 minutes on the German DVD, 86 on the German Blu-ray, 84 in every database, 85 on my case, 90 in THR’s credits block. There is no alternate cut. The German DVD is PAL, and 82 minutes at 25 frames against 24 is 85 and a half, which is the disc in my hand. Not two versions of a film. One film and two electrical standards.
Rotten Tomatoes has two critics on it, which is below the five it needs to calculate anything, so there is no score. Metacritic has no Metascore. Letterboxd says there are not enough ratings to compute an average. Horton’s own interviews now date his career from Craving in 2023 and do not mention this one at all. A film can get a theatrical premiere, an LA Times review, a German Blu-ray and three names, and leave no measurable trace whatsoever.
It is still on Tubi tonight, for free, under the name it had before anybody tried.
THE CORRECTIONS DESK
We printed the wrong founding year for Video Store Day, in a sentence that contradicted itself. Last week this column closed Store of the Week with “where Daniel Hanna invented Video Store Day in 2010, the day before its sixteenth edition.” Sixteen editions from 2010 would make tomorrow the seventeenth. The year is 2011, and the first Video Store Day was Saturday, October 15, 2011.
The cleanest proof is a trade item nobody has cited all year: Home Media Magazine, August 17, 2011, Erik Gruenwedel, under the subheading “Inaugural event Oct. 15 plans to showcase strength and vitality of the independent video store.” Everything contemporaneous agrees, including Hanna in Centretown News that October: “It’s our first year, so we’re really getting our legs.” And the edition count never slips a rung afterwards, from year three in 2013 to the fifth year in 2015 to the eighth in 2018 to Scarecrow Video’s 13th and 14th annual to this year’s sixteenth. Counted from 2011 every one lands. From 2010 they are all off by one.
So where did 2010 come from? MVD’s July announcement of its Video Store Day partnership states in its own body copy that “VSD was created in 2010,” and that is MVD’s copy, not Hanna’s: he is quoted in the same release on “fifteen years of organizing VSD,” which is 2011 and sixteen editions. The founder’s arithmetic was right the whole time. Downstream, Wikipedia now states 2010 and cites the official site’s about page for it, which gives no founding year at all, and Checkiday says the day has been observed “since 2010” citing the same source, which again names no year. Two thousand twenty six minus sixteen is two thousand ten. The subtraction is the source, and it does not survive its own logic: the third Saturday of October 2010 was the sixteenth, and the fifteenth is the only date any account written at the time gives.
We printed it because it was everywhere, which is exactly why a journal that sells verification should have checked it.
We corrected a right date into a wrong one, inside the Corrections Desk itself. Last week this section said Maverick: The Complete Series had moved to October 13 along with Ryan’s Daughter, “which leaves Warner Archive with nothing at all on Tuesday.” Both halves are wrong. Warner Archive’s own press release says the thirty-two disc set arrived “ON OCTOBER 6th!”, blu-ray.com’s roundup agrees, and Warner Archive therefore had the biggest television set of the month out that week. Ryan’s Daughter on the 13th stands. An error in the section whose entire job is being right is worse than an error anywhere else in the issue, and this one is ours twice: we got it wrong, then corrected something that was already correct.
The Monster Squad and Cujo were never coming out here this month. Last week we promised Arrow Limited Editions of The Monster Squad, Cujo and The Last Boy Scout for Tuesday. Only The Last Boy Scout arrived. Arrow’s October announcement was a British release: the store pages are in pounds, Region B Free, with no US option and no US date anywhere. MVD’s Arrow catalogue for the United States runs continuously from AV895 to AV933 through December 15 and contains neither title at any date. The press release’s “October 11” was the Sunday before a British Monday, which is why it read as nonsense at the time. That should have been read as a warning rather than a typo.
Ryan’s Daughter has no standalone Blu-ray. Warner Archive announced a 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo and nothing else. The separate Blu-ray we listed appears to have been invented downstream and repeated, by us among others.
Maniac: Issue #12 was right and our correction to it was wrong. We printed Severin’s Maniac for October 13, then corrected ourselves to say it had already streeted on September 29. MVD has it at October 13 and Severin has taken it off its pre-order page, so the original date was right. The title that genuinely streeted on September 29 is Anthropophagous, which is also a Severin two-disc 4K with a limited slipcover, was announced in the same window, and went up on the same day in June. We conflated them.
The method note, and it is the useful part. What led us astray was seeing Maniac in stock on Severin’s own web store at the start of the month and treating that as evidence of a street date. It is evidence of the opposite. Severin ships web store pressings ahead of the trade date, which this desk had already documented in writing about Anthropophagous in the same week and then failed to apply. A label having stock on its own site tells you about that label’s warehouse, not about Tuesday.
SIGN-OFF
That is Issue #15. A video store day invented by a shopkeeper who heard a record shop having a party under his floor, with a founding year nobody had bothered to check, including us. A 1956 film from a British boutique outselling every new 4K release in America. A Toronto video store fixing its front window with a pin-up calendar. Fifty-four films going onto celluloid this year because Congress pays for it and nobody else will. And a film I produced that got renamed for a Walmart shelf and exists in high definition in exactly one country, which is not this one.
If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one. See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Sean Reid
Film & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
Kayleigh Matthews Talks ‘The Voice,’ Passion for “Traditional Country Music” And Exploring The “Hard Road”
Kayleigh Matthews’ blind audition performance of the Vince Gill staple “When I Call Your Name” led to a four-chair turn on The Voice. It was an amazing accomplishment for Matthews, and she ultimately chose Queen Latifah as her coach. Matthews reflected on that moment during the interview, and she also elaborated on a personal journey that was encapsulated on her reflective song “Hard Road.” Plus, she also talks about her passion for “traditional country music.” Check out the full interview with Matthews below!
Read more: Kayleigh Matthews Talks ‘The Voice,’ Passion for “Traditional Country Music” And Exploring The “Hard Road”“I love the storytelling aspect of traditional country music,” said Kayley Matthews on ‘When I Call Your Name. ‘We had this opportunity and I knew I wanted to at least turn a chair. I wanted a song that I was really comfortable with, and this is a song I’ve played out so much being a touring musician. So I was comfortable with it. And so I knew that being able to share a song like that, it has a lasting impact because you don’t hear it on mainstream platforms anymore.”
Even with all the praise from the coaches, Matthews was still critical of her rendition. “Even when I walked off the stage, getting all four chair turns, I was still in my own head like ‘It didn’t go this way (and) it wasn’t perfect.’ Watching it back on television allowed me to really process it, because it put the whole story into perspective.”
If you want a closer look into Kayleigh Mattews’ artistic journey, give Hard Road a listen. ”I lived in Nashville until 2025, and my husband and I made a decision to move back to Arizona,” said Matthews, who has been ‘gigging like crazy’ for the past six years. “And I had written a song right before we left, and it was Hard Road, which was talking about the journey of being an independent artist. I had written this song as we were leaving just about how the road is sometimes hard, but I’ve loved every single second of the journey up until this point.”
With her time The Voice, Matthews has seen witnessed an altogether different chapter. “All I’ve ever wanted is just honestly to make music that people wanted to hear and listen to and connect with and tell stories,” added Matthews. “Thats all I’ve ever wanted to do and so getting to kinda see that come into play in this new chapter has really been – honestly it’s life changing.”
Full interview with Kayleigh Matthews:
The Voice airs Monday and Tuesday at 8/7c with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock.
Sean Gunn Talks ‘Appofeniacs’ And Acting Journey: “I Still Love It”
Sean Gunn’s career has taken him in directions he never anticipated. The guiding principle behind that journey, however, has remained pretty simple. If he could make a living doing something he loved, that would be enough. During our Appofeniacs interview, Gunn reflected on his relationship with acting and the work that goes into portraying another person. After three decades of earning his living through the craft, his enthusiasm has not faded.
Read more: Sean Gunn Talks ‘Appofeniacs’ And Acting Journey: “I Still Love It”
Clinto Binto (Sean Gunn) is an artist whose cosplay, weapons, and wardrobe creations catch the eye of a cagey individual named Duke (Aaron Holliday). When Clinto refuses to do Duke a solid (Holliday) regarding a business transaction, Duke seeks revenge with the use of AI and deepfake technology. Duke’s actions have a devastating domino effect on several Appofeniacs characters, and Clinto finds himself in precarious position towards the end of the narrative.
“I really responded to the script the first time I read it,” said Gunn, whose previous credits include the TV series Creature Commandos and The Hive. “I’m like, ‘Oh, this is very current.’ It does what good horror movies need to do, which is speak to what people are actually afraid of right now.”
Speaking of the present, Gunn is grateful for his career and has lived by the following guiding principle: “If I love doing this so much (and) if I can make my living doing it, I’ll be happy.”
“I try to remind myself of that all the time, because I’ve been making my living doing it for 30 years, and I love it,” he said. “I still love it. I love tackling a character. I love getting a new role. I love trying to truthfully portray other human beings.”
“I would have never guessed where my career could have gone,” added Gunn who played performed the motion capture for Rocket Raccoon for the Guardians of the Galaxy films. “I would have never thought that I’d be doing superhero movies. It’s crazy. But I try not to focus on that stuff and just move forward.”
Asked what he wished audiences better understood about acting, Gunn pointed to the discipline behind the finished performance.
“Everybody is out here, for the most part, trying to make good stuff,” said Gunn. “The job of trying to truthfully portray another human being is tricky in a lot of ways. I wish people would be easier sometimes on actors. But it’s easy for me to say. I’m an actor.”
Full interview with Sean Gunn:
Written and directed by Chris Marrs Piliero, Appofeniacs is now playing in select theaters.
We review Once Upon A Time in The Middle East and The Beast on CinemAddicts:
Koumba Diallo Talks ‘The Voice,’ Learning From Kelly Clarkson, And Being A Perfectionist
Koumba Diallo received a four-chair turn during her Blind Audition on The Voice. Performing the Demi Lovato track “Stone Cold,” Diallo performed the song in a confident manner and simply nailed the performance. Diallo, who described herself as a “perfectionist,” is also proud of her Guinean and Filipino heritage. As a fellow Pinoy, I had to ask about her favorite dishes. Our interview runs the gamut, and check out the full discussion as Diallo delivers some important insights that she learned from Coach Kelly Clarkson!
Read more: Koumba Diallo Talks ‘The Voice,’ Learning From Kelly Clarkson, And Being A Perfectionist
Kelly Clarkson described “Stone Cold” as a “big song” at the beginning of Koumba Diallo’s performance. “It’s a pretty difficult choice,” said fifteen-year-old, who has performed national anthems in over 300 events. “You’re going up on stage in front of some of the biggest names in the industry, and you have to choose something that’s going to show people who you are. Choosing that song was important to me, because I got to tell my story and convey my message through it.”
Diallo ultimately chose Clarkson, and during her time on The Voice she gained some valuable tips from the powerhouse artist. “This is actually a piece of advice that Kelly gave me that I’m always going to remember and keep in mind, is that if you’re singing, you don’t want to really give all of yourself away yet,” said Diallo, who has been singing since she was nine years old. “You kind of want to show people ceratin parts of your voice, but also impress them at the same time. Another thing that I had to learn was that emotion can be conveyed in all kinds of sorts of different ways, but performing on stage doesn’t just mean singing a song. You really have to get the feel of the song.”
Much of Diallo’s hard work comes from the inspiration of her immigrant parents and being a perfectionist. Even with success on The Voice and having a natural talent does not mean that she has her sights on another career. “I really do want to become a singer in the future, and I know it doesn’t work out for everyone, so I’m always keeping that in mind,” she added. “I need to set boundaries and be realistic. Another thing I would love to do if I’m not going to use my voice to sing and storytell, is I’m going to use it to defend people as a lawyer.”
Catch Koumba Diallo and fellow Team Kelly memeberr Lance Tenazas perform on the Battles round tonight!
Full interview with Koumba Diallo, in which she talks about her favorite Filipino dishes and making close friends on The Voice:
Catch The Voice on NBC Mondays and Tuesday nights (8/7c) with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock.
Dara Van Dusen on Her Passion for ‘A Prayer for the Dying’: “My Brain Was on Fire”
One movie we did not get to cover on the latest CinemAddicts episode was A Prayer for the Dying, a drama headlined by Johnny Flynn, John C. Reilly, and Kristine Kujath Thorp. I’m assuming co-host Eric Holmes forgot he had seen the movie when we taped last week, and that is also why his interview with filmmaker Dara Van Dusen is running a day late (and a dollar short!). The feature is now playing in theaters via Quiver Distribution, and check out Eric’s full interview with Van Dusen in our post.
Read more: Dara Van Dusen on Her Passion for ‘A Prayer for the Dying’: “My Brain Was on Fire”
A Prayer for the Dying centers on Jacob Hansen (Johnny Flynn), a Civil War vet who aims for a new life in Friendship, Wisconsin. Acing as the town’s sheriff, clergyman, and mortician, Jacob has a ton of responsibilities. When a plague hits the area, Jacob does whatever it takes to protect his community.
The feature is based on Stewart O’Nan’s novel of the same name which came out in 1999. ”Kind of by accident, my father handed me this book in an English language bookstore and said, ‘You should read this,’ said Dara Van Dusenh, . “Little did I know that it would consume my life for 20 years after that moment. But I read it in one sitting, and it just completely overwhelmed me, and it shocked me.”
Reading A Prayer Before Dying certainly put the filmmaker in a state. “I remember putting it down, and I was wandering around,” said Van Dusen. “I just couldn’t understand what had happened. It was such a visceral, strange experience of reading just words on paper. And I felt like my brain was on fire.”
The impact went beyond being captivated by a good story. O’Nan’s novel left Van Dusen examining her own beliefs, and that experience sparked her desire to bring it to the silver screen.
“There were unanswered questions, and there were things that made me think about myself, my own beliefs, about the big questions, ego, faith, and morality,” said Van Dusen, who made her feature directing debut with A Prayer Before Dying. “And as a 19-year-old at the time, it was just overwhelming that something so short and brief could do that to me. And I thought how amazing if a film could do that.”
Van Dusen emailed O’Nan, expressing admiration for his book. That initial exchange developed into years of conversations and a friendship that helped sustain her through the adaptation.
“He’s not only, like, my favorite author who wrote the best book ever, but he’s an unbelievable supporter, cheerleader, and friend now,” said Van Dusen. “And I’m just grateful that he was by my side the entire time.”
Keeping the novel’s core intact remained a priority. The film’s camera work, colors, and visual style offered Van Dusen a way to express what the book made her feel all those years earlier.
“I think they’re very much in line with the experience I had as a reader of it,” she added. “And I hope that other readers feel the same.”
Watch CinemAddicts co-host Eric Holmes’ interview with Dara Van Dusen below.
A Prayer for the Dying is now playing in theaters.
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***We review Deathgasm II: Goremageddeon and Once Upon a Time in the Middle East on the latest CinemAddicts episode:
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The Crowd,’ ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ‘Walk Hard’ (PM Weekly Issue #14)
In 1989 the Library of Congress picked the first twenty-five films for the National Film Registry. That list had to prove the whole idea, so it was stacked: Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Best Years of Our Lives, Sunrise, Snow White. And King Vidor’s The Crowd, from 1928.
In the thirty-seven years since, The Crowd has never had an authorized American release on DVD or Blu-ray. It missed the entire disc era.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The Crowd,’ ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ‘Walk Hard’ (PM Weekly Issue #14)That ends on the eighth of December. Flicker Alley announced last Friday that it is putting the film on Blu-ray in a new restoration from Blackhawk Films, all-region, made possible, in the label’s words, through the generous support of the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. David Mackenzie of Fidelity in Motion authored the disc. Three accompaniments come with it: a piano composition by Antonio Coppola, an orchestral score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, and a xylophone accompaniment by Illya Amar.
The gap is the story. There was an MGM VHS in the 1980s, in the Silent Classics line with a Carl Davis score, and a laserdisc that double-billed it with The Wind. Then the format changed and the film did not come with it. Silent Era keeps an edition history, and what fills the last three decades is grey-market and foreign DVDs out of Hong Kong, Spain, France and England, plus a US DVD-R this year the reviewer believes was struck from pirated files. A film in the inaugural class of the national registry, and the way Americans have owned it since the laserdisc died is an import or somebody’s burn.
There is a joke in here that is not really a joke. The Crowd is about a man named John Sims who arrives in New York certain he is going to be somebody, and spends ninety-eight minutes becoming nobody in particular. Vidor used hidden cameras for some of the New York scenes so the people on the street would not perform. The shot everyone remembers finds Sims at one desk among hundreds, identical and numbered, and it is the shot Billy Wilder borrowed thirty-two years later to introduce Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. A film about disappearing into an undifferentiated mass spent a generation circulating as an unlabelled copy of itself.
What makes this worth leading with rather than listing is that the disc puts the absence on the record instead of papering over it. One extra is a 2026 piece called The Paths of The Crowd, about the film’s deleted sequences and alternate endings, which is to say about the parts of it that are gone now. There is also a new visual essay, a Kevin Stoehr commentary, Robert Florey’s Skyscraper Symphony from 1929 out of the George Eastman Museum collection, and a booklet by Jordan Young, who wrote a book about the making of the film. That is a release built by people who know exactly how long this took.
One caution, and it is the kind this journal exists to make. Flicker Alley’s copy says the film “comes to home entertainment for the first time in a brand-new restoration from Blackhawk Films.” Read one way, that sentence claims the film has never been on home video at all, and the VHS and the laserdisc say otherwise. Read the other way it only claims this is the first time in this restoration, which is fine. The accurate thing to say is that this is the first authorized American edition on a digital disc. Smaller claim. Still a thirty-year wait.
Flicker Alley also does not state the resolution, the source elements, or which archives supplied them. So nobody should write “4K scan of the negative” until somebody says so.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Halloween (1978), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Scream Factory
- Halloween II (1981), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Scream Factory
- Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Scream Factory
- Child’s Play 2 (1990), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Scream Factory
- Aces Go Places Collection (1982-1989), five films, ten discs, Shout! Factory
- Little Shop of Horrors (1986), 40th Anniversary 4K UHD, theatrical and director’s cut, Warner Bros.
- An American Werewolf in London (1981), 45th Anniversary 4K UHD, Universal
- Welcome II the Terrordome (1995), Blu-ray, Criterion
- Moana (2026), 4K UHD, Walt Disney
- Van Helsing (2004), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Universal
- Disclosure Day (2026), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Universal
- Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert (2026), 4K UHD, Well Go USA
- Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition (2026), Limited Edition 4K UHD SteelBook, Universal
- Wizard of Oz: Dead Walk, DVD, Shout! Factory
(Next Tuesday is heavier: Ryan’s Daughter from 8K scans of the 65mm negative, the thirty-two-disc Maverick, Criterion’s The Shout, and Arrow Limited Editions of The Monster Squad, Cujo and The Last Boy Scout.)
MARKET SIGNAL
On Tuesday, Paramount closed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The combined company began trading as Skydance, WBD came off Nasdaq the same day, and the release announcing it described the result as “the most diverse film and television library of any studio.”
The words home entertainment do not appear in that release. Neither do physical, Blu-ray, DVD or archive.
That is worth noticing, but on its own it is an absence, and absences make bad arguments. What makes it a signal is what happened eight weeks earlier, which almost nobody on this beat connected at the time.
On the fourth of August, Universal and Warner Bros. sold Studio Distribution Services to Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions, a disc manufacturer owned by Variant Equity. SDS was the joint venture the two studios formed in January 2020 to merge their physical distribution into one operation, and it was the thing that actually moved every Universal and Warner DVD, Blu-ray and 4K in North America: sales, retail marketing, distribution, the whole pipe. Conectiv did not only buy the operation. It also took exclusive long-term licenses to run both studios’ physical home entertainment businesses going forward.
So put the two in order. In August, two of the six majors handed their disc business to a contract manufacturer under license. In October, one of those two was absorbed into a company that did not exist in its current shape in September, and the documents never mentioned discs.
This is what consolidation actually looks like from down here. It is not a studio announcing it has stopped making Blu-rays, because nobody will ever announce that. It is the slow separation of the people who own films from the people who put films in boxes, until the box business is a service contract between two parties, neither of whom has any particular reason to care which titles get pressed.
The counterweight is real, because this journal has spent four months arguing that the disc business is healthier than the obituaries say. Alliance Entertainment’s physical movie revenue rose 22 percent to $339 million in the fiscal year ended June, in filed numbers, during a half-year when American consumers’ disc spending fell 6.9 percent. Both are true at once, and they are the same fact seen from two ends. Volume is holding up. It is just consolidating into fewer pipes, owned by companies whose business is logistics rather than cinema.
One more line is worth sitting with. The consent decree that cleared the merger is specific and itemized about production: thirty theatrical films a year for two years and thirty-two a year for three after that, $300 million a year in domestic production, a workforce fund, a news independence board, and a thirty-million-dollar penalty attached to missing the film target. Twelve state attorneys general and the Writers Guild negotiated protections for films that have not been made yet.
They negotiated nothing for the ones that already exist. The library is not mentioned. Catalogue licensing is not mentioned. Preservation is not mentioned. It would be unfair to call that a failure, because nobody asked for it. It is a statement about what the public interest in a studio merger is currently understood to cover, and right now that does not include the hundred thousand hours already in the vault.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Orbit DVD (Asheville, NC)
Orbit DVD opened on the thirteenth of October, 2003, in a thousand square feet on the corner of Haywood Road and Mildred Avenue in West Asheville, next door to a record shop called In Your Ear Music Emporium. It has never moved. In 2006 it took the record shop’s space and knocked down the wall, which got it to the 2,400 square feet it has now, and around 2010 Marc McCloud, who founded it and still owns it, bought the building. Its twenty-third birthday is next Tuesday.
This column teased Orbit last week on the grounds that it publishes the street-date calendar this desk keeps checking its own work against. That is true, and the truth is better than the tease.
The calendar is a third-party Shopify app. It is called The Shop Calendar, it costs about ten dollars a month, and Orbit switched it on at the start of August. Nobody compiles it and no editor is credited, because there isn’t one. Every entry is a product record with a street date on it, dropped automatically onto a grid. It runs twelve weeks forward and thins fast: 228 dated entries in August, eighty-one in October, five in December, nothing in 2027. It is a pre-order book, not a release calendar.
And it has been right when we were wrong. It put Magic on 29 December, which is where this column landed it last week against JoBlo. It put Mannaja on 15 December, matching the correction in Issue #12. A video shop in Asheville running a ten-dollar widget agreed with this desk twice in a row while three national aggregators did not.
The honest limit: UK and Region B titles sit on their own Monday dates, which is more careful than most American calendars manage, but region-free UK SteelBooks do land mixed into the US Tuesdays. Of eleven entries on the sixth of October, four were UK-sourced. These are the dates Orbit expects to have a specific item in hand, which is not the same as a trade street date, and that distinction is the reason it is useful.
Orbit is not a rental store, which matters because it keeps getting written up as a rental survivor. Rentals ended in 2020, confirmed on Orbit’s own About page and by the Mountain Xpress piece that says it went to a hundred percent sales model after the COVID closures. The student paper at UNC Asheville got the reason on the record a year later: rentals were about three percent of sales, and the growing games section had taken the back room where the rental cases lived. The Better Business Bureau still files Orbit under Video Tape Rentals, which is probably where the confusion starts.
McCloud has a motto and it is printed on his own About page in capitals. ADAPT OR DIE. He said it to Mountain Xpress in 2023, along with the thing that goes with it: “I outlasted all of them.” He also said the quieter part. “People think that physical media is dying, and it is if you look at the grand scope of things.” To WLOS a year earlier he put it better than anyone has since: “I like calling it collecting dead media.”
(Next week: Eyesore Cinema in Toronto, where Daniel Hanna invented Video Store Day in 2010, the day before its sixteenth edition.)
//www.instagram.com/embed.js
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
Format: Two-disc Unrated Special Edition DVD, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 8 April 2008
Bonus Features: both the theatrical version (96 minutes) and “American Cox: The Unbearably Long, Self-Indulgent Director’s Cut” (120 minutes); audio commentary with director Jake Kasdan, writer-producer Judd Apatow, executive producer Lew Morton and John C. Reilly; sixteen full song performances (41:22); ten deleted and extended scenes (19:23); Line-O-Rama (6:22); “A Christmas Song from Dewey Cox”; “Cox Sausage Commercial with Outtakes”; song demos performed by the songwriters themselves; “Tyler Nilson: A Cockumentary”; “Bull on the Loose”; “The Music of Walk Hard” (16:42); “The Making of Walk Hard” (15:03); “The Real Dewey Cox” (14:03); “The Last Word with John Hodgman” (25:58)
It cost thirty-five million dollars and took twenty and a half worldwide, then did a reported $15.7 million on DVD by 2010. In 2008 a flop could still be half-rescued by a shelf.
The reason it is still on mine is the twenty-four minutes.
American Cox is not an alternate ending or a handful of restored scenes. A shot-by-shot comparison counts seventy-six individual changes, thirty-six of them alternative takes, nineteen recuts, and four places where the theatrical version actually has footage the longer one drops. On the Blu-ray both cuts play off the same disc side through seamless branching, with a pop-up marker telling you when you are in new footage, which was a very 2008 way to solve a problem and is still better than making you buy two copies.
I went looking this week to see whether that version has escaped the disc in eighteen years. Every digital storefront and streaming service I could find lists ninety-six minutes and an R rating, which is the theatrical cut. Tubi, Pluto, Amazon, Apple: all ninety-six. None of them, as far as I can determine, has ever offered the hundred-and-twenty-minute version. I will not say it is impossible to see any other way, because absence of evidence is not a confirmed negative and this desk has been caught on that before. What I will say is that I could not find it, and the only copy I am certain of is the one in the case.
There is a second disappearance here. The Blu-ray was one of Sony’s first BD-Live titles, and the downloadable extras were three mini-featurettes with Bill Hader playing a “Coxologist” named Derek Stone. They lived on a server. They are not on the disc, the server is gone, and so are they. The 2024 Mill Creek SteelBook reissue dropped three more extras, so the 2008 Sony release remains the only complete edition that has ever existed.
The film itself has quietly gotten better since nobody went to see it. Metacritic had it at 63 and Ebert gave it three stars, but it landed in the culture as a flop the critics had buried. Rotten Tomatoes now has it at 75 percent across 138 reviews, and Rolling Stone put it sixth on its list of the best comedies of this century. The songs took Golden Globe and Grammy nominations, and Reilly sang every one of them himself.
And the thing everybody says about it is not quite true, which is the other reason I keep the disc. The received wisdom is that Walk Hard killed the straight music biopic. Reilly’s own version, from a 2019 oral history, is funnier and more accurate: “Oh, we tried to kill the musical biopic with this movie. And it turns out it’s a very resilient cliché.” James Mangold, who directed Walk the Line and is therefore the actual target, was asked again in 2024 while promoting A Complete Unknown, and refused the premise outright. He found the film hilarious, he said, and then: “I also never understood why satire would negate making the real thing anymore. That seems a little ludicrous to me.” The only filmmaker on record saying Walk Hard constrained him is Eric Appel, who had to design Weird: The Al Yankovic Story around it, because you cannot make the same parody twice.
So the parody did not kill the genre. It killed the easy version of the parody, and then sat on a shelf for eighteen years holding twenty-four minutes nobody else has.
THE CORRECTIONS DESK
Ryan’s Daughter is the thirteenth, not the sixth, and we leaned the wrong way. Last week this column printed the date as disputed, Warner Archive’s press release on the sixth against HD Report’s thirteenth. The release went out in two versions. One copy reads “ON OCTOBER 6th!” and another reads “ON OCTOBER 13th!”, and the thirteenth is the one that held: blu-ray.com is counting down to it and it is still a pre-order today. HD Report had it right. Maverick: The Complete Series moved with it, which leaves Warner Archive with nothing at all on Tuesday.
“This Old Man” is American, and we called it Canadian. Last week we corrected Physical Media News for listing it as a 6 October US release, and said it was a Canadian disc from Ruby Max dated the thirteenth. MVD’s distributor record says Ruby Max, territory WORLD, street date 13 October. The original date was wrong and our correction to it was wrong in the other direction.
Three open items closed. Magic is confirmed for 29 December on Shout’s own store, which settles the move we flagged. The Addiction on Arrow is a phantom: that Limited Edition streeted in December 2024 and what is in stock is discounted catalogue. The Cable Guy SteelBook, which Sony announced for the sixth, is still a pre-order at several US retailers today, so it has become the twentieth without anyone saying so.
THE SIGN-OFF
Two things this week that are the same thing.
A silent film in the first class of the National Film Registry sat out the entire disc era, and a label with no studio behind it is fixing that in December. A comedy that lost money in 2007 holds a version of itself that eighteen years of digital distribution has never bothered to carry.
Neither is a story about nostalgia. They are both about the same gap: the difference between what exists and what is available, and who closes it. Studios do not close it. Streaming services demonstrably do not close it. It gets closed by Flicker Alley, by a shop on Haywood Road running a ten-dollar calendar app, by whoever at Sony in 2008 decided the long cut was worth the authoring.
If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one. See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Sean Reid
Film & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
Kyle Davis Talks Four-Chair Turn On ‘The Voice’ And Finding Balance With Music Career
Kyle Davis believes there is no time limit in chasing one’s dreams. Case in point was his decision to become one of the artists on The Voice, and he advanced to the next round with his rendition of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Davis received a four-chair turn on the show and chose Kelly Clarkson as his coach. Check out our interview with Davis as he talks about his experience on The Voice and why having a real estate career has also brought balance to his music.
Read more: Kyle Davis Talks Four-Chair Turn On ‘The Voice’ And Finding Balance With Music Career
Kyle Davis On His Four-Chair Turn
Having recorded albums and opened for Bob Dylan, John Mayer and Sheryl Crow, Kyle Davis was no stranger to performing. On The Voice episode, he also mentioned that, during his early years in the industry, he signed a record deal with Phil Ramone. That said, he also tempered his expectations regarding his performance.
“If I get one person to turn, I’ll be thrilled,” Davis said. “Their teams could be kind of filled up. I was surprised and I just remember thinking, “Okay, Kelly’s turned already.” I think Riley Greene was the second (person) to turn. And then Adam and then Queen Latifah. I tried not to have any expectations. I was just like, ‘I’m going to get up here and do what I do.'”
Reflecting On “In Your Eyes”
“In Your Eyes” was already a song he loved and had performed at his own shows.
”I love Peter Gabriel,” said Davis, who described ‘In Your Eyes’ as ‘ethereal.’ “I love what matters to him and what he tries to do through music and ‘In Your Eyes’ is a great song. It feels good (to sing) and says good things. I felt lucky to get to sing it really, to tell you the truth.”
Listen to Kyle Davis’ 2025 album Jericho:
Kyle Davis’ Balanced Approach To Music
Kyle Davis also carved out a successful real estate career, although he understands artists who focus primarily on their music career. Balancing both, however, has its distinct advantages. “This is a lot healthier,” said Davis. “I can get my mind away from it. and can come back home and write. (Also) I can go out for a few days and do shows with people. I get it, wanting to do just music. I did that for a long time – I’m happiest right now with a little bit of balance in my life.”
One song from Davis that I really love is his reflective song “Not Broken,” a 2019 track which would end up on his album Make It Count.
After The Voice season is finished, Davis plans on compiling a retrospective album which gives listeners an overall look at his previous seven albums. As a newfound lisltener to Davis’ music, here is another track of his that I highly recommend – the catchy and insightful “Better Days.”
Full interview with Kyle Davis:
The Voice airs Monday and Tuesday evenings at 8/7c.
‘Double Trouble’ Director Shaun Paul Piccinino’s Filmmaking Tips: Why Editing And Collaboration Matter
Filmmaker Shaun Paul Piccinino has worked in practically every aspect of movie production, and his experience behind the camera has given him a unique perspective on directing. For aspiring filmmakers, his advice involves much more than simply having a creative vision. He applied that diverse approach into his latest movie Double Trouble which hits theaters October 9.
Read more: ‘Double Trouble’ Director Shaun Paul Piccinino’s Filmmaking Tips: Why Editing And Collaboration Matter
A Family Film Christmas Tale Set In Vegas!
Sisters Madeleine and Violet McGraw star in Double Trouble as sisters who get unwittingly caught in the middle of a Las Vegas jewelry heist. It’s up to them and a skilled but frustrated security guard (Andrew Koji) to stop the brazen operation. Rounding out the ensemble are Azizi Donnelly and Jack Griffo. Inspired by the Home Alone films of yesteryear, Double Trouble is family fare powered by the McGraw sisters’ star power and the action stylings of Andrew Koji (Warrior).
Shaun Paul Piccinino’s Filmmaking Origin Story
Piccinino began making short films when he was just 11 years old, eventually working in numerous departments throughout film and television production. “When I was coming up through the ranks I viewed it all as an education,” said Piccinino, whose previous film credits include That’s Amor and Wheels of Fortune. “I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker.”
His professional experience includes editing, visual effects, makeup, wardrobe, and grip work. That extensive background has informed his approach to directing, particularly when it comes to understanding the demands placed on his crew.
“I think the thing that has given me the biggest tool in my toolbox is that I have an understanding of almost all these departments, but it’s also I have a respect for them,” he explained.
Get Ready And Stay Ready
Piccinino believes preparation is essential to filmmaking, and he typically arrives on set with detailed shot lists and a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish.However, he also understands the importance of remaining flexible.
“I’m always prepared but I’m also very open-minded and collaborative,” said Piccinino. “I come prepared, I have a vision, but I’m also not like it’s my way or the highway.”
For the director, filmmaking is ultimately a collaborative endeavor in which the strongest creative ideas should prevail.
“It’s best idea wins,” he added.
Don’t Forget The Power of Editing!
Another integral aspect of Piccinino’s filmmaking is his editing prowess. Having spent years working as an editor, he can anticipate how individual shots will eventually fit together during post-production. “I’m editing as I’m filming,” said Piccinino. “And so I do believe that’s a big time saver.”
He urges aspiring directors to develop a strong understanding of editing, even if they are solely focused on being the person behind the camera. “I always tell people who wanna be filmmakers, directors, like really have a good understanding of editing,” he explained. “You also need to understand acting and how to support the actors, so that they can have the freedom to give their best performances.”
Understanding these disciplines can improve production efficiency, allowing directors to finish their projects on schedule and on budget.
Piccinino also stressed that technical knowledge and preparation mean little without the ability to work effectively with others.
“It truly comes down to treating people with respect and kindness,” he said. “And that goes so, so, so far, and has taken me so far.”
***Full interview with Shaun Paul Piccinino:
Double Trouble hits theaters October 9. Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.