Some films approach greatness by bucking convention. They take a standard narrative apart and rebuild it with mischievous haphazardness, or heap in abstract, abrasive imagery like rubble out of a steam shovel basket. They upend expectations about identity, motivation and … Continue reading I’m in a head spin waiting for that bell to ring
Black Swan is a big, raging swarm of a movie. It’s either a horror film with art house pretensions or an art house movie enamored of the grandiose luridness that can be borrowed from the horror genre. It rains the … Continue reading She waves a magic wand and then she settles on me
64. Public Image Ltd, 9 By now, it’s probably well-established that John Lydon doesn’t particularly work and play well with others. For his band Public Image Ltd’s seventh studio album, and ninth overall inspiring its numeric title, they were originally … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 64 and 63
I’ve spent most of this week linking over to Spectrum Culture in order to call attention to my various contributions to the year-end features. As it happens, there’s one more left, which spurred me to come up with a ranking of the top songs of the year, something I routinely indulged in back in my college radio days, but which I haven’t done in quite some time. I wrote on “Swim” by Surfer Blood, my selection for best song of the year. These are the others that I had in my top ten that didn’t make it on to the … Continue reading They sing “I’m in love, what’s that song? I’m in love with that song.”
My favorite time of year at my college radio station was winter break. Though we were student-run and largely student-staffed, we were also proudly on the air every day of the year, including Christmas. We labored on with our skeleton crew, many of taking an on-air shift or two every day. It was dead-quiet like no other time of the year. During the summers, there were classes happening in our building, and the campus was infiltrated by a bevy of conferences, camps and other events that caused child prodigies and health nuts to mingle awkwardly with our lingering student population. … Continue reading One for Friday: Trip Shakespeare, “Snow Days”
What can I say? It’s a busy week at Spectrum Culture, so I will once again direct you elsewhere. Continue reading In the middle of the winter, in the middle of a wood
Today, I will once again direct you elsewhere. Continue reading I didn’t know what a brute I was
I definitely think the Hollywood Foreign Press Association got one of the Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama nominees right today. To see more of my thoughts on that particular performance, I must direct you … Continue reading Except in parts when the moral kicks in
#3 — Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) Before he was a brand, Quention Tarantino was just a filmmaker, and when Pulp Fiction arrived in 1994 he still had the capacity to surprise. It was only his second movie, after all. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Three
66. Syd Straw, Surprise Syd Straw originally intended to go into the family business. When she moved to New York City at the age of nineteen she planned to become an actor like her father Jack Straw, whose most significant credit was a supporting role in the 1957 film The Pajama Game. Before long, Straw decided that she might be better off pursuing a singing career, a decision that quickly yielded dividends when she earned a prominent place in the ever-shifting line-up of Anton Fier’s band The Golden Palominos. That in turn helped her make plenty of impressive connections so … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 66 and 65
Coffee for Two 