I still love watching the Oscars by Karen Han To be simultaneously devoted to modern cinematic art and the Academy Awards is an invitation to perpetual heartbreak, and I type that as someone with fairly mainstream tastes (as opposed to … Continue reading Outside Reading — Oscars Eve edition
My usual intent with calling out a single song every Friday is to focus on brand new material, with a particular hope to introduce myself — and, if I can, others — to emerging artists. Although my research this week … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Bat for Lashes, “Boys of Summer”
With the annual Academy Awards ceremony mere days away and the sharing of my personal assessment of the previous year’s ten finest films duly completed, tradition holds that I put my pontificating about performance into the format of an Actors … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Women and Chill Don First
The stories we tell ourselves shape our sense of history, and our sense of history shapes the stories we tell ourselves. Legacy is built from both what actually happened and what we wish had happened, what we convince ourselves is … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number One
When it was announced that Greta Gerwig was following up her autobiographical triumph Lady Bird with a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a classic novel that had been transferred to the screen many, man times before, it … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Two
Bong Joon-ho has the panache of a master showman and the cunning of a regime-toppling agitator. His films are trenchant commentary gussied up into inspired entertainments, impressing as dervishes of audacity. Parasite, representing Bong’s return to South Korean filmmaking after … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Three
572. Various Artists, Dance Craze (1981) Although director Joe Massot couldn’t have had particularly warm feelings about working on the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same, having been kicked off the project by the producers, he was … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #572 to #569
The Most Important Comedy Writer of the Last 50 Years Finally Gets Her Due by Elyssa Goodman I am among the quickest to co-sign any declaration celebration the broad cultural impact of David Letterman. But I’m also keenly aware that … Continue reading Outside Reading — My Empty Dish Mocks Me edition
I retain a youthful tendency to fall hard for certain songs, albums, and music artists (and certain films and filmmakers, but that’s a different topic), and no performers have been more successful in recent years at making me dizzy with … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Diet Cig, “Night Terrors”
That Lulu Wang drew from a personal story to craft The Farewell inarguably adds to the aura around the film. What seems like high concept invention — a family conspiring to hit a terminal cancer diagnosis from a sweet, elderly … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Four
Coffee for Two 