When it came time to hand out Oscar nominations for the 1988 movie year, Academy members were so dismayed by the compositions eligible for the Best Original Song category that they reduced the number of contenders by forty percent. Only … Continue reading One for Friday — Rachel Sweet, “Hairspray”
Now I’ve completed the process of listing my ten best films of the cinematic year not-so-recently-completed, I have one more bit of annual business to take care ahead of this Sunday’s trophy ceremony. As usual, I share the Actors Branch … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Bird is the Word
As filmmaking — U.S. filmmaking, anyway — becomes more and more entrenched in an era of high-concept spectacle, in which every new offering must have a big, shimmering storytelling hook, Greta Gerwig’s debut as the solely credited director offers the … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2017 — Number One
People are places exert powerful holds. They can be nurturing in their influence, or they can keep someone’s ambitions — their very possibilities — smothered, doing so with a blind indifference to the effect being rendered. Quite often, the opposite … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2017 — Number Two
In the unlikely even there were a few outliers who still doubted the enormous scope — and corresponding influence — of the extended exercise in filmmaking known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the recently released “class photo” should have put … Continue reading Now Playing — Black Panther
976. Madness, One Step Beyond… (1979) The band Madness essentially began in 1976, as a group called the North London Invaders. There were lineup changes of the course of the next couple years — including the entrance, exit, and then … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #976 to #973
Since I recently lobbed a few ill words in the direction of Joe Wright’s latest Best Picture nominee in which the evacuation of Dunkirk figures into the plot, I’ll look back to a far more admiring assessment of an earlier effort from the director. Atonement was also a Best Picture nominee in which the evacuation of Dunkirk figures in the plot. How about that? And ten years ago, because of the same film, little Saoirse Ronan was also getting ready for her first trip to the Oscars. Atonement is a terrific book, so artfully taking advantage of the storytelling opportunities unique to … Continue reading From the Archive — Atonement
Yes, this strikes me as the sound of 1980. The Johnny Average Band was the result of the strangely communal Woodstock-based recording studio known as Bearsville. Founded and operated by Alber Grossman, best known as Bob Dylan’s manager through much … Continue reading One for Friday — The Johnny Average Band, “Ch Ch Cherie”
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association endure a significant amount of wholly deserved derision for the sometimes spurious reasoning employing in divvying films into the broad categories of “Drama” and “Comedy/Musical” every year (a practice, it’s worth noting, abetted by studios … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2017 — Number Three
Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2017). Director Joe Wright does his damnedest to pump up Darkest Hour with tricky visuals and little jolts of energy, but the stodginess of this drama is finally overwhelming. The film depicts the early tenure of … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Darkest Hour; The House; Dear Heart
