528. Any Trouble, Where Are All the Nice Girls? (1980) “Any Trouble we had difficulty with, because they just looked so ordinary and people were really kicking back on the ordinariness of them,” Stiff Records promotional ace Sonnie Rae said … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #528 to #525
What Have Epidemiologists Learned About the Coronavirus? by Isaac Chotiner As the most committed members of the reckless-idiot brigade start to push back against sincere efforts to preserve the public health, taking to the street with their weaponry and Confederate … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Answers We Need edition
“Brooklyn,” the new single from U.K. singer-songwriter Katie Malco, starts out slow and relatively spare. Against her prowling guitar and a steady, stealthy drum beat, Malco start sharing memories of time spent with a friend, against the many backdrops of … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Katie Malco, “Brooklyn”
#39 — Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010) Fittingly, Certified Copy had its genesis in a ruse. Lore has it that Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami was chatting with his friend Juliette Binoche, disguising a fictional story he’d concocted as an anecdote … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirty-Nine
The story at the heart of the new film Never Rarely Sometimes Always is small and enormous all at once. With a low-key dramatic restraint and workaday simplicity that evokes independent filmmaking of the nineteen-eighties and earlier, writer-director Eliza Hittman … Continue reading Now Playing — Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, 2020). A wooly mash-up of a modern Western, a riff on The Most Dangerous Game, and a roaring revenge potboiler, this Brazilian film is gonzo is all the right ways. Well, it’s probably … Continue reading Then Playing — Bacurau; Maiden; Through a Glass Darkly
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. I am lucky enough to divert my fretting away from my own household’s … Continue reading Beers I Have Known — Ale Asylum FVCK COVID Pilsner
532. Lene Lovich, Flex (1980) A resolute oddball, Lene Lovich is an unlikely figure to have heightened commercial expectations attached to one of her projects. That was precisely the case, though, with her sophomore album, Flex. Her debut, Stateless, was … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #532 to #529
The Bars of New Orleans Are Closed. They’re Still Getting the City Through This. by John Stanton We are lucky in our household. Transitioning to a work-from-home model was easy for us, and our employers are incredibly supportive of the … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Big Not-So-Easy edition
In this time of disconcerting norm erosion, when the user’s manual for global society is being rewritten on the fly, at least we have Randy Newman to see us through. A sardonic chronicler of human failings for over a half-century, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Randy Newman, “Stay Away”
