In the photo, team members for the Chicago-based organization My Block, My Hood, My City are with a truck newly loaded with more than fifty boxes of supplies that will be taken to elderly residents as part of their Senior … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Mavis Staples, “All In It Together”
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. When I was a puffed-up, opinionated kid, I was a purist … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Gotham Academy by Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, and Karl Kerschl
Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019). This long-gestated sequel to The Shining is an odd mash-up of Stephen King’s typical narrative tricks and a lavish tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s relentlessly examined 1980 film. Taking place a little more than thirty years … Continue reading Then Playing — Doctor Sleep; On the Basis of Sex; The White Ribbon
#42 — We Are the Best! (Lukas Moodysson, 2013) “Hate the Sport,” the signature song from Sweden’s finest teen punk trio, properly carries the rebellion of rock ‘n’ roll inside it. Written as a direct challenge to the bullying, patriarchal … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Forty-Two
Cold Pursuit (Hans Petter Moland, 2019). Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland makes his English-language debut with a remake of one of his own previous features, presumably because the narrative framework was well-suite to the very-particular-set-of-skills era of Liam Neeson’s career. … Continue reading Then Playing — Cold Pursuit; The Book of Henry; The Naked Spur
540. Re-Flex, The Politics of Dancing (1983) Formed in Birmingham, England, in the early nineteen-eighties, Re-Flex was a band that wanted to have its chart success and simultaneously scoff as pop ate itself. With regular Roxy Music studio collaborator John … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #540 to #537
‘We’re in Disaster Mode’: Courage Inside a Brooklyn Hospital Confronting Coronavirus by Sheri Fink One of the frustrations I’ve felt over the coverage of the current health crisis steams from my perception that there hasn’t been enough attention paid to … Continue reading Outside Reading — Lessons Worth Learning edition
I think this bloke says it best: Stephen William Bragg has spent the last forty years, give or take, surveying a tumultuous world and making sense of what he sees through the grounded poetry of his lyrics, often accompanied by a trusty acoustic guitar. Politically astute, socially empathetic, and a whip-smart thinker, Bragg has a way of getting straight to the core of a problem and finding the emotional poignancy that resides there. As we all keep our distance for the greater good, Bragg expresses the melancholy that arises from all the missed events and commemorations. Like the bulk of … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Billy Bragg, “Can’t Be There Today”
Although it’s hardly a new debate, recent years have seen an uptick in snappish back and forth about the wisdom of separating artists from the art they create. Primarily driven, of course, by the near-constant lifting of heavy rocks to … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Miss Anthropocene
A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio, 2017). Marina (Daniela Vega) is Chilean who works as a waitress and sometimes moonlights as a singer. She’s engaged in a romance with an older gentleman named Orlando (Francisco Reyes), who dies of a brain … Continue reading Then Playing — A Fantastic Woman; The Quiet Man; Blow the Man Down
Coffee for Two 