Welcome back to Heady Entertainment, MERRY JANE's weekly guide to just-released movies, books, and music — all fresh, dank, and THC-friendly. In specific, we choose our picks based on how they can enhance your combined consumption of cannabis and entertainment.
On the big screen, basketball goes hilariously ballistic in Uncle Drew; Netflix swings to two very different, but equally intoxicating extremes with G.L.O.W. and Kiss Me First; our cult-classic pick veers into the listenable as the toke-along-in-terror soundtrack to the fright flick The Omen hits white vinyl (limited to 666 copies!); new books chronicle SoCal punk art and psychedelic history; and music for marijuana fans breaks big with new releases from heavy hitters including Kamasi Washington and Nine Inch Nails. So let's get straight — but not "straight" to this week's fresh-rolled recommendations.
Movies
"Uncle Drew" (2018)
Director: Charles Stone
Cast: Kyle Irging, Lile Rey Howery, Shaquille O'Neal
Hoops meets hilarity in Uncle Drew, a slam-dunk comedy with NBA all-star Kyle Irving tearing up the court and the screen alike as the elderly basketball legend of the title. The cast is a ridiculous roster of sports stars (Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, Lisa Leslie, and Aaron Gordon) and comedy slayers (Tiffany Haddish, Nick Kroll, J.B. Smoove, Mike Epps, and Erica Ash). No matter what, that assemblage of luminaries has already got us laughing. Now just light up and ease back at the multiplex.
Streaming
"G.L.O.W.": Season 2
Creators: Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch
Cast: Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Marc Maron
Watch It: Netflix
The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling return for another 10-episode bout of G.L.O.W., the hit Netflix sitcom inspired by the real-life, late-1980s female grappling league. The entire cast is back, include Alison Brie as our heroic actress-turned-bruiser Ruth, and Marc Maron as the beat-down impresario Sam. For this round, set in 1985, the Gorgeous Ladies get on TV and take down misogyny in a manner most fitting for cannabis consumption: with big hair, tight spandex, killer moves, and gleeful fearlessness.
"Kiss Me First"
Creator: Bryan Elsley
Cast: Tallulah Haddon, Simona Brown, Matthew Beard
Watch It: Netflix
In the wake of Black Mirror, Orphan Black, and Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, nobody's slaying made-to-be-smoked-to science fiction television these days like the UK. Kiss Me First is the latest Brit-launched mindblower best accompanied by loaded and lit bowls, a cyber-thriller series chronicling the relationship of two young women who discover the VR realms in which they met is spilling over into reality.
"Terminal" (2018)
Director: Vaughn Stein
Cast: Margot Robie, Simon Pegg, Mike Meyers
Get It: Amazon, iTunes, On Demand
In the slick, surreal, seizure-paced Terminal, Margot Robbie stars as Annie, a waitress whose double life as mystery figure Bonnie gets exposed when two assassins show up to rub her out.
From there, the hallucinatory chase is on, as Annie/Bonnie leads the hitmen through an anonymous, high-tech metropolis loaded with sick surprises. Simon Pegg steps in as a dying professor and Mike Myers plays a (literal) rubber-faced janitor. If the action doesn't make sense, just smoke more. Terminal's triptastic, reality-terminating visual feast is a trip unto itself (and you!).
Cult-Classic Reissues
"Deadly Daphne's Revenge" (1981)
Director: Richard Gardner
Cast: Candy Castillo, Laurie Partridge, Jody Jaress
Get It: Vinegar Syndrome
Filmed in 1981 as a revenge flick meant to showcase the clients of a local Florida talent agency, Deadly Daphne's Revenge didn't hit theaters until '87, and it didn't really find its audience until bong-passing fans turned it into a must-be-seen-high-to-be-believed party favorite on home video.
"Godmonster of the Indian Flats" (1973)
Director: Frederic Hobbs
Cast: Christopher Brooks, Stuart Lancaster, Peggy Bowne
Get It: MVD
One of the most fun and"baa"-d movies ever perpetrated on the public, Godmonster of the Indian Flats pits an African-American cowboy hero against a racist redneck sheriff as an eight-foot-tall mutant sheep that looks like a combination of Joe Camel and a wooly mammoth runs rampant (up on its hind legs) over unsuspecting victims in the Nevada desert.
"The Omen": Limited Edition LP
By Jerry Goldsmith
Get It: Varese Sarabande
Damien Thorne, the little kid Antichrist of the 1976 horror classic The Omen, has been freaking out stoned moviegoers ever since he first smirked so satanically on the silver screen.
Still, much of The Omen's power as a milestone fright flick arises from composer's Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-winning score — a terrifying trip of gothic gloom, diabolical incantations, and creepy crescendos that all erupt forth as nothing less than a full-blown sonic apocalypse.
Varese Sarabande, a company that reissues special edition LPs of beloved film soundtracks, is now issuing The Omen remastered on white vinyl — limited to 666 copies! Pack your pipe with your favorite paranoia strain, toss on this record, and brace yourself: the higher you get, the more you'll be convinced that Hell is all around us — and on fire right now!
Books
"Magic Medicine: A Trip Through the Intoxicating History and Modern-day Use of Psychedelic Plants & Substances"
By Cody Johnson
Get It: Quimby's Bookstore
In Magic Medicine, esteemed Psychedelic Frontier blogger and boundless psychonaut Cody Johnson documents 23 of the planet's most potently mind-expanding plants (ayahuasca, magic mushrooms) and compounds (MDMA, DMT).
Incorporating hardcore history and straightforward science, Johnson also explores the healing, therapeutic, transformative, and spiritual nature of such substances, too. Most enlightening of all, Cody writes Magic Medicine in the goes-down-easy, ignites-the-brain-instantly style he's used to become a popular psychedelic journalist online.
"Welcome to Venice"
By RXCK (Ric Clayton)
Get It: Kill Your Idols
Welcome to Venice compiles the unmistakable black-and-white artwork of graphic marauder Rick Clayton who, under the moniker RXCX, created the iconography of SoCal punk-metal destroyer gods Suicidal Tendencies. Beginning with flyers, stickers, and street art, the book expands into the album covers, t-shirts, and posters that continue to convert all comers to the Suicidal cause.
Welcome to Venice is a treasure trove depicting the frontline aesthetics of the time and place where marijuana, mosh pits, and skate rats combusted to serve music so monstrous the FBI branded its fans a "criminal gang" decades before the Juggalos got tagged.
Music
"Bad Witch"
By Nine Inch Nails
Get It: NIN
Raw, ravaging, relentless industrial metal juggernaut Nine Inch Nails strikes black-hearted gold yet again on Bad Witch, the group's ninth official dispatch from master mayhem-maker Trent Reznor's pitch-black pit of genius and despair. Bad Witch may be a long EP connected to NIN's previous release, or it may be a standalone LP, or it may be something else entirely. That doesn't matter. What does is that Reznor's raiders have once again dropped an earth-scorching dose of music that more than matches whatever drugs you're on with brain-bombing impact.
"Divine Weight"
By Alex Zhang Hungtai
Get It: Bandcamp
Switching among projects (Dirty Beaches, Last Lizard, Love Theme) as dynamically and frequently as he slams together genres, virtuoso Alex Zhang Huntai simultaneously rockets into the cosmos and dives deep into humanity's collective consciousness with his latest release, Divine Weight.
Huntai says the record emerged from the psycho-magic theories of maverick midnight movie auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain) and it sounds like it. Light up, lean back, and listen deep.
"Heaven and Earth"
By Kamasi Washington
Get It: KamasiWashington.com
With Heaven and Earth, Kamasi Washington makes a convincing bid to reign as the 21st century's Sun Ra. The space-bound saxophone supernova has consistently launched listeners into rarified realms of his own sonic rendering, where his records (and your reefer) add up to an ineffable new peak of consciousness.
On Heaven, Washington extends the limitlessness beyond all his previous highs, both in terms of music and the fact that he hid a secret record inside the LP's gatefold, compounding the official album's two-and-half hours of sublime sounds with an additional forty minutes of turntable bliss.
"I'm All Ears"
By Let's Eat Grandma
Get It: Transgressive Records
Freak-psych Brit twosome Let's Eat Grandma follow up their acid-dipped 2016 debut I, Gemini with I'm All Ears, an even more agro and experimental excursion into avant-garde rock, artistically-broken dance beats, hip-hop energy gone sideways, and ferociously-unpredictable vocals from the two frontwomen. Smoke an inspirational strain and let I'm All Ears fill your head accordingly.
"Scorpion"
By Drake
Get It: iTunes
A new Drake album is always worth rolling a fatty for. Scorpion is Drizzy's first compiled release since last year's More Life mixtape, and if his recent beef(s) with Pusha-T signals anything, Aubrey has plenty to prove with this double LP. But when it contains an instant-classic summer jam on the order of "Nice for What" and/or a music video like "I'm Upset," which reunited Wheelchair Jimmy with his Degrassi co-stars, the record is sure to be a reefer-friendly readymade, inevitably soundtracking our smoke seshes all summer.
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