I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. Like a modern action movie determined to not dink around with … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Werewolf By Night #31 by Doug Moench and Don Perlin
Free Guy (Shawn Levy, 2021). This high-concept comedy about the dawning sentience of a non-player, bystander character in a Grand Theft Auto–style video game is inane chaos. Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, who evolves into heroism from his assigned role of … Continue reading Then Playing — Free Guy; Attica; Inside Daisy Clover
As an overly devoted watched of the Oscars for more than thirty years, I often complain that the ceremony doesn’t show me anything I haven’t seen before. I guess that particular gripe is off the table for the ninety-fourth annual … Continue reading Oscars Exit the Speed Force
218. Golden Palominos, Visions of Excess (1985) “Everybody on the record is a favorite musician of mine, and they also happen to be my friends” Anton Fier said of the fluctuating Golden Palominos lineup on the album Visions of Excess. … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #218 to #216
The Story Behind That Photo of Ketanji Brown Jackson and Her Daughter by Gina Cherelus In the interest of focusing on the positive, I am setting aside the instinct to engage with arguments made in bad faith to instead celebrate … Continue reading Outside Reading — Through Sarahbeth Maney’s Lens edition
When the COVID-19 pandemic roared into destructive dominance in the spring of 2020, there was a lot of discussion online and elsewhere of the way it was upended the music industry. When venues shut down and acts couldn’t tour or … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Adia Victoria, “Ain’t Killed Me Yet”
We come to another tradition of mine. The last day before the Oscars that isn’t claimed by other recurring business, I offer the names that I would have scratched out on an Actors Branch nominating ballot had I the privilege … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Tick, Tick… Nom!
A middle-aged person who’s thoroughly accustomed to their life of relative solitude is called upon, briefly or maybe for an indeterminate period of time, to caretake a child. That’s the animating premise of countless movies, and it is the basic … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2021 — Number One
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson could have made a straightforward concert film with the footage he was given, and the finished product could have still been one of the highlights of the cinematic year. With hours upon hours of footage from the … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2021 — Number Two
Writer-director Ti West has a clear, abiding affection for bygone eras when certain film genres were afforded the space to exist in their own dark ecosystem. He is an expert explicator of templates and tropes, slyly operating on the borderline … Continue reading Now Playing — X
Coffee for Two 