#27 — Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018) It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to reckon with their own past through their chosen medium, but the end result rarely carries as much grace as Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma. Drawing on his own history … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty-Seven
Realistically, only Bob Dylan could rhyme “Indiana Jones” with “those British bad boys the Rolling Stones” and make it sound profound. The unlikely lyrical couplet containing those pop culture references on “I Contain Multitudes,” the lead track of the new … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Rough and Rowdy Ways
Bumblebee (Travis Knight, 2018). A prequel spinoff of the Transformers films, Bumblebee benefits immensely from the natural comparison to the unwatchable eyesores that director Michael Bay foisted on a helpless world. Making his first live action effort following wide acclaim … Continue reading Then Playing — Bumblebee; Stuber; Just Mercy
488. The Pretenders, Extended Play (1981) The Pretenders delivered a major hit with their self-titled debut album, and the record label wanted more. An English band fronted by a tough, charismatic American, the Pretenders melded classic rock ‘n’ roll structures … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #488 to #486
The Asbury Park Revolt by Katy Slininger It was fifty years ago today that a few Black teens were horsing around in a destitute, civically abandoned part of Asbury Park, New Jersey, prompting a couple police officers to intervene, escalating … Continue reading Outside Reading — Ain’t That America edition
Ganser sounds the way I want a Chicago band to sound. On their new single, “Emergency Equipment & Exits,” the music is thick, muscular. It moves along with the beat of rushing traffic, guitar like bending metal and a keyboard … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Ganser, “Emergency Equipment & Exits”
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I take it as a cunning affront on the part of the British that they chose to … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — “A Hard Day’s Night” trailer
Back in my college radio days, when I moved with a music-nerd crew that devoted our collective brain power to sussing every mystery of the artists we loved when there was no superhighway continually exiting information to us, one of … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — To Love is To Live
For my eleventh birthday, all I wanted was a Carl Reiner movie. A little more than a year after the release of The Jerk, Reiner’s sixth film as a director and his first of four straight starring Steve Martin, the … Continue reading Carl Reiner, 1922-2020
When I fell for Hope Downs, the debut full-length from Australian band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, it was because I heard the college radio of my own personal era in the earnest, tuneful stylings. It wasn’t true retro, reliant on … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf —Sideways to New Italy
