Another dizzying, pandemic-buffeted year for movies leads to another set of largely happy surprises with the Academy Award nominations. The Academy’s efforts to diversify the voting body continue to have interesting, rewarding results. Drive My Car took its flurry of … Continue reading Jane’s Getting Serious — Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations
Gas Food Lodging (Allison Anders, 1992). Here is early nineteen-nineties independent U.S. filmmaking in all its charm and shortcoming. Gas Food Lodging is a small story rendered with intimate emotional detail and acted with wildly varying ability. Simultaneously endearing and … Continue reading Then Playing — Gas Food Lodging; The Tragedy of Macbeth; C’mon C’mon
239. Shriekback, Big Night Music (1986) After three full-length albums, Shriekback had cause to reinvent themselves. During the recording of their third album, Oil & Gold, guitarist and vocalist Carl Marsh left the group. Frontman duties fell to keyboardist Barry … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #239 to #237
Why I’ve Decided to Take My Podcast Off Spotify by Roxane Gay With characteristic clarity, Roxane Gay writes about removing her current podcast from Spotify, part of an exodus of major figures in response to the streaming audio provider’s generous … Continue reading Outside Reading — Censorship vs. Curation edition
Promoting her new single on Instagram, Arlo Parks told her fans to “get ready to throw yourselves around your bedrooms with aching! glowing! hearts!” And ain’t that the truth. Bobbing on a cool neo-soul groove, “Softly” is an emotional accounting … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Arlo Parks, “Softly”
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. Lake Placid, New York is approximately three hundred miles away from … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Marvel Treasury Edition #25 by Bill Mantlo and Herb Trimpe
Respect (Liesl Tommy, 2021). In her feature directorial debut, Liesl Tommy brings a lot of panache to the familiar form of a music icon’s biopic. Tracing the youth and professional ascendance of Aretha Franklin (played in childhood by Skye Dakota … Continue reading Then Playing — Respect; Red Rocket; Belfast
Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929). Hampered by problematic stereotypes imposed by studio leadership that was otherwise unwilling to fund a production featuring a cast entirely comprised of Black performers, Hallelujah nonetheless provides a hint as how different the Golden Age of … Continue reading Then Playing — Hallelujah; Ghostbusters: Afterlife; Villain
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. The Committee started in … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Committee, “Soul Lessons”
242. Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle (1979) Anyone looking to provide a sonic example to accompany an explanation of new wave music could do far worse than to select Gary Numan’s “Cars.” Taken from The Pleasure Principle — technically Numan’s … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #242 to #240
Coffee for Two 