Brandon Vick reviews the John Turturro-led The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, for which Turturro is getting some serious awards buzz, on this bonus episode of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast.

Keep up with all of our work covering the world of movies on Nashville Movie Dispatch. Listen to The Vick’s Flicks Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Just search for ‘Nashville Movie Dispatch’ and you’ll find us. Or, just smash the play button on the embed below!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

To this day, Ray Bradbury is my favorite author. With savory prose and big ideas, I haven’t read a Bradbury yet that I didn’t like. In Dandelion Wine, he perfectly captured the essence of youthful summers. In The Halloween Tree, he does the same for Halloween. This instantly became a book I aim to add to my Spooky Season rotation as often as I can read it. Few stories capture the magic of Halloween for a child as this one.

Courtesy of Goodreads:

A fast-moving, eerie tale set on Halloween night…

Eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite through time and space to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween.

Maybe the most endearing quality of The Halloween Tree is that it’s just 145 pages. Theoretically, if you didn’t have a whole lot going on, you could probably slam this thing on Halloween before the kids step out to trick or treat. Or, more likely, if you’re a grown ass adult with a real job like me, you can sprinkle it out across a few days leading up to Halloween. But, Bradbury certainly gets the vibes right with this novel and immerses readers in an atmosphere that exudes ‘Halloween.’

The plot does move rather quickly, but it’s not so winding that one cannot keep up. As is the case with most of Bradbury’s work, the prose is tight, the characters are memorable, and there’s plenty of meaning to glean from it. But, where I think this novel truly excels is in how it is a sort of celebration of the holiday itself. Bradbury gives us a crash course on Halloween and how it came to be what it is known as today, making The Halloween Tree equal parts history lesson and fun, festive Halloween tale.

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

What the hell is a cryptid, Stoney? You might be wondering. Well, I’m here to tell you, folks – cryptids are like mythical creatures. Animals/beings/entities/whatever that are shrouded in legends, and whose existence can’t actually be proven by the always trustworthy Scientific Method (tin foil hat spin cycle: maybe because they’re actually INTER-DIMENSIONAL beings that can come and go between our reality and their’s – yes, let’s get freaky).

And, yes – as a journalist, I am here to do my job to the fullest extent. That job, as defined by my boss at SoBros Network, means determining the best of things. Today, in honor of Spooky Season, I will be diving into cryptids and determining which one is the best. Now, you might ask, “what is the criteria, Stoney?” Good question – simple answer. The criteria I’ve set forth is based on how many wild and spooky legends surround it, mainstream brand recognition, and how badass the cryptid is. That’s it. So, let’s dive in.

Honorable mention to the chupacabra – it’s just not badass enough to crack the top 10.

Spooky Season Power Rankings: Top 10 Cryptids

10. The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp – So this thing is like South Carolina’s real life version of the creature from the Black Lagoon. You want to talk about branding, the ‘Scape Ore Swamp’ just sounds like a hotbed of weird and spooky action. To think that it has its own king, which is like a giant lizard man that jumps on top of cars in the middle of the night, is merchandising gold. The description on this dude’s Wikipedia page: “green, wetlike, about 7 feet tall and had three fingers, red eyes, skin like a lizard, snakelike scales.” Hell yeah – that’s a badass.

9. Huldufólk – We’re talking about real life elves, people. Apparently, that’s a thing in Iceland. It’s widely accepted that elves live out in the woods, and can turn invisible whenever they don’t want to be seen (convenient). They’re believed to be supernatural creatures that can transport between the Earth and a parallel world. If that’s not some boss ass shit, I don’t know what is.

8. The Ozark Howler – I’m here for a good hellhound legend, and that’s the kinda deal you get with the Ozark Howler. Is it a big bear? Is it a big cat? We don’t know, but it definitely has red eyes and horns, and can howl like a sonofabitch. You can find this one out in the remote parts of Arkansas and Missouri, according to legend.

7. Loch Ness Monster – The brand recognition may be on point for ol’ Nessie, but I feel like there are just way too many logical explanations for this one that I can’t justifiably put it any higher than #7 on this list. They might’ve even found the creature! #1 rule of being a cryptid: you can’t be found. So, Nessie’s best years as a legend are behind it for sure.

6. Mapinguari – Maybe a ‘hairy humanoid cyclops’ doesn’t sound like your thing. I get it. But, how fucking wild is the Mapinguari? It’s a giant…that has a mouth on its abdomen….it doesn’t get any wilder than that. The cryptids down in Brazil are on some next level shit.

5. The Beast of Exmoor – It’s just a big cat. Apparently, that’s a thing across the pond. The British love their big cats. But, as an avid fan of cats and The Jungle Book, I’m kind of here for it. The fact that they got the armed forces involved to try and track this thing down makes it even more of a legit badass.

4. Mongolian death worm – This one comes to us courtesy of the Gobi Desert, and is some straight up Beetlejuice shit. A long snake-lookin’ thing that creates waves in the sand, can spray venom, and even has an electrical discharge? No wonder this motherfucker is the stuff of legend. Maybe it’s an upset, but this thing is grading high on my list.

3. Jersey Devil – There is some crazy rich history surrounding the Jersey Devil that involves occultism, religion, politics, Ben Franklin, and some really bored people that lived in what was actually a pretty dangerous place (the Pine Barrens). Personally, I just think it’s a classic case of what the mind can do as a result of public panic and mass hysteria. Looking into it, I think there’s definitely a Phone It In episode in here somewhere. The Jersey Devil has a lot of different descriptions, but the general consensus is that it’s some humanoid bird lookin’ thing with a goat’s head and bat wings. Sorry, but you can’t have a spot in the top two on this list if you have a goat head, no matter how cool your back story is.

2. Bigfoot – No cryptid has the brand that Bigfoot has. I think if you asked most Joe Schmos on the street who the G.O.A.T. cryptid is, they’re probably going to say ‘Bigfoot.’ I definitely respect that – Bigfoot probably is the Michael Jordan…the Hulk Hogan…of cryptids. Bigfoot has built quite the pop culture empire over the course of its (non)existence. But, there’s just not a lot of depth to the whole ‘creature in the woods’ angle, and that’s why I can’t justify giving the Bigfoot the top spot.

1. The Mothman – Where do I even begin when talking about how awesome the Mothman is? It’s so awesome that we’ve named it the official unofficial mascot of the SoBros Network, Rooster wrote a long feature on the Mothman, AND we did an episode of Phone It In on the Mothman. Yeah, we got some Mothman content up in this bitch.

But, I think what makes the Mothman so great is just the bizarre story surrounding him. Some weird shit started happening beyond just seeing some freakish monster in the woods. We had some government conspiracy theories spawned out of this – the Men In Black were involved. Some odd physical maladies fell upon the people who saw the Mothman. Not to mention, the Silver Bridge – holy fuck, the SILVER BRIDGE. I don’t want to spoil it for you guys because it really is a rich, deep story. Go seek it out for yourselves – dive full steam ahead down that rabbit hole.

If Bigfoot is the Jordan/Hogan of cryptids, then the Mothman is the LeBron/Cena.

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

Brandon Vick reviews Whalefall, Other Mommy, Street Fighter, and Wicker on this month’s installment of The Cinema Chronicles!

• Whalefall – 6:30
• Other Mommy – 13:22
• Street Fighter – 18:30
• Wicker – 26:16

Keep up with all of our work covering the world of movies on Nashville Movie Dispatch. Listen to the The Cinema Chronicles podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Just search for ‘Nashville Movie Dispatch’ and you’ll find us. Or, just smash the play button on the embed below!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

As a young girl, I spent most of my time with my three best friends. Every weekend, we were at each other’s houses engaging in the usual teenage girl activities: boy talk, sneaking sips of our parent’s booze, talking to creeps in chat rooms. Real rebel type stuff. As a group, we were untouchable. It was like we were a pack. If one of us was in danger, the others followed close behind, and we survived school, breakups, and family drama by sticking together. However, we didn’t know that this time, it was going to be surviving a life or death situation.

It was a Friday night and we were at Macy’s house. We ate dinner and scurried up to her room. In the early 2000s, we are definitely rocking the goth look, so we spent a lot of time doing each other’s makeup while listening to Kittie. We donned our tightest fishnet shirts and heavy eyeliner then decided to go on a walk. There was a gas station not too far from Macy’s house, and we needed snacks for the movie we were going to watch later that night. 

We convinced Macy’s parents that a quick walk to the gas station wouldn’t be unreasonable if we stuck together. They sighed and let us go.

  It was one of those October days when you wore a t-shirt during the day, but had to throw on a sweatshirt when the sun went down. The moon hung bright and high over the tops of the trees acting as a sort of guide as we made our way down the winding country road. We joked with each other and laughed boisterously like we always did. Our laughter drowned out the crickets, frogs and other nighttime noises you always hear in the south. Even the cows in the pastures were quieted by our cackling.

I guess we drew too much attention to ourselves, because when we stopped at a tractor crossing sign to see if we could take it home as a souvenir, a figure appeared behind us. The four of us somehow missed where it came from. It was in street clothes: jeans, black hoodie pulled up to it’s face and around it’s head, and black boots. There was no outline of a face that I remember. I do remember the baseball bat it was carrying though. And now it was talking.

“Do you guys want to go to a party?” it asked. We jumped away from the tractor sign and turned toward the figure. The four of us looked at each other and collectively replied, “No.” The figure then dragged the baseball bat on the paved road, but it made a disgusting sound and we noticed there was a can attached to the end of the bat.

“Are you sure? It’ll be fun. Come with me,” the figure whispered. Carelessly, we start to back away from this thing, and its strange weapon, in the opposite direction of Macy’s house. The figure raises the bat and takes a step closer. Then we take off in an all out sprint. “We don’t want to go to your fucking party!” one of us screams behind us. I grab hold of Macy’s hand while we are running since it is extremely hard to keep balance in the unpractical platform boots I decided to wear.

You know that trope in horror movies where the victim is running and the killer is walking, but somehow still manages to keep up with them? That’s exactly how this next part plays out. We are running as fast as we can, holding on to each other, and every time we look back, the figure is right on our heels. I felt like we were never going to shake him, and that winding road was never going to end. The gas station, our original destination, seems like it’s a million miles away. We start down a hill and before the figure could see, one of us yells “bushes!” Theatrically, the four of us jump into bushes of a vacant house that is for sale in the neighborhood.

The road is obscured by hedges and limbs that jut out unevenly, creating shadows all around us. My friends and I are stunned that this was actually happening to us. Our hearts are beating fast, and I am very close to having a full blown attack. They calm me down and we wait quietly in the darkness. It seemed like hours, but it is most likely a few minutes after we hear the dreaded noise from the baseball raking the road. We cover our mouths to silence our breathing, our hearts beating rapidly. “You girls don’t think I know where you are. Ha Ha Ha stupid girls.” Our eyes get wide and we look at each other, but not daring to make a move. Several minutes passed in terrifying silence.

It was time for a plan now. There was no way we could stay crouched behind these bushes all night. Macy’s parents would start to worry and call the rest of our parents. We HAD to get home as soon as we could. We decided that this figure couldn’t take all four of us down at once. There are strength in numbers and we would be more than capable of disarming him. The four of us leap out of the bushes at the count of three ready to fight. There was no figure in the road. We didn’t waste time looking for him and took off as fast as we could towards the safety of home. There was no sign of the figure on our way and we quickly, but quietly, rushed into Macy’s house and locked all of the doors behind us. One after another, we bounded upstairs to the bedroom and locked that door behind us as well.

My friends and I sat quietly for a long time while trying to catch our breath. The silence is broken by one of us asking, “Did that just happen?” I believe we were all asking ourselves the same question. Morning finally came after a sleepless night, and we all went back to life as normal. Our parents didn’t know about that night until years later. The figure never showed itself to us on York Road again, and to this day, we don’t know if it was a ghost, demon, or a real life human being. When the story gets told, we refer to it as a figure, and still have to remind each other that the strange October night was real.