Alfonso Cuarón is almost peerless in his visual craftsmanship. The accuracy of that observation is only enhanced by his prolonged absences from the screen. (He has delivered only two films in the past ten years.) Watching a Cuarón film invited … Continue reading Now Playing — Roma
These posts are about the songs that just barely failed to cross the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. At the 2010 CMT Music Awards, held … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “The Story of Us”
It’s been twenty years since Deborah Davis’s screenplay for the film that would become The Favourite first made the rounds. Of course, that was well before director Yorgos Lanthimos got his sharpened, toxin-tipped talons into it. The particulars of the … Continue reading Now Playing — The Favourite
The Landlord (Hal Ashby, 1970). The feature directorial debut from Hal Ashby stars Beau Bridges as Elgar Enders, a young man from a wealth family who buys an apartment building in a poverty-stricken Brooklyn neighborhood. His initial plans involves kicking … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — The Landlord; Annihilation; The Death of Stalin
808. Shoes, Present Tense (1979) Shoes were always interested in making records, first and foremost. Hailing from Zion, Illinois, the band largely skipped the common step of playing lots of rock club dates to hone their craft. “There’s no way … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #808 to #805
I thought about dusting this review off a couple months back, during a weekend when a certain feature starring Tom Hardy became an unlikely smash hit. But then I realized the word “Venom” doesn’t appear anywhere in the few hundred … Continue reading From the Archive — Spider-Man 3
Thirty years ago, in the autumn of 1988, the Go-Betweens released the album 16 Lovers Lane. It’s probably overstating it to proclaim the record the Go-Betweens’ version of Rumours, but there are some distinct similarities. There was a lot of … Continue reading One for Friday — The Go-Betweens, “Was There Anything I Could Do?”
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. At the time I started reading superhero comics, figuring out how … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan
“I break bricks with my heart/ Only a fool would call it art,” Jeff Tweedy sings on “Some Birds,” a track from his new album, Warm. In the most accurate determination, the album is Tweedy’s proper solo debut, though it’s … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Warm
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951). A feat of cinematic austerity, this French drama follows a youthful man of the cloth (Claude Laydu) as he struggles presiding over a rural parish populated by congregants who dismiss him or … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Diary of a Country Priest; Pacific Rim: Uprising; The Rider
Coffee for Two 