Author: Dan Seeger

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From the Archive: Broken Flowers

Dan Seeger

The latest film from writer-director Jim Jarmusch dribbles into my town this weekend. As a good little cinema devotee, I should head out to the local multiplex to take it in — especially since the film has earned strong reviews, notably for star Adam Driver — but I’ll admit that I probably won’t. Since I wrote the piece shared here, I’ve come around to some of Jarmusch’s earlier features, but he remains a distancing artist for me. I could go on, but that’s basically what I write about in this review from my former online home, so…. I suppose I … Continue reading From the Archive: Broken Flowers

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One for Friday: Randy Newman, “New Orleans Wins the War”

Dan Seeger

They started to party and they partied some more Cause New Orleans had won the war There are probably songs that should come to mind more quickly for me when I think of New Orleans — something steeped in the jazz, zydeco, or blues that serve as the city’s musical pulse. But, in truth, Randy Newman’s “New Orleans Wins the War” is the track that echoes up from my memory when I head out for another visit to the Crescent City. It’s probably because this was the first song about New Orleans that I truly embedded into my head — … Continue reading One for Friday: Randy Newman, “New Orleans Wins the War”

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Beers I Have Known: Abita Turbodog

Dan Seeger

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 was in New Orleans less than a year after Katrina. No further embellishment is needed on that name. It is its own story. It is the storm and the aftermath all in one. That’s how it felt then. To a degree, that’s still how it feels now. I was in New Orleans providing help, spending days gutting houses that had been saturated by flood and nights in a makeshift compound called Camp … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Abita Turbodog

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Eight

Dan Seeger

The impulse to belong is powerful, especially for girls of a certain age. In The Fits, the feature directorial debut of Anna Rose Holmer, the girl trying to find her place in the world is Toni (Royalty Hightower). She regularly accompanies her brother (Da’Sean Minor) to the local community center, where he trains as a boxer. Toni half-heartedly participates in that brutish gym work until she spies the workouts of a dance troupe in an adjacent gym. Shortly after she falls in with that group, individual girls on the squad start falling victim to unexplained, seizure-like attacks, each a little … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Eight

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Nine

Dan Seeger

There are movies that I love unreservedly, quoting them with the hopped-up reverence of a devoted Bible thumper. 13th is a movie that I wield. Since viewing Ava DuVernay’s exceptional documentary on — for starters — the perpetuation of black persecution through the establishment of a skewed judicial system and incarceration complex, I find myself continually referencing it in spirited debates about current affairs. I have operated in multiculturally mindful academia and engaged with leftward political commentary enough to be comfortably acquainted with notions of institutionalized oppression, so there’s little in 13th that is fully revelatory to me. But I … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Nine

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John Hurt, 1940 – 2017

Dan Seeger

“When I say that acting is just a rather more sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians, it’s my way of trying to quash all the pretentious crap that’s said about acting. What I mean is, if you pretend well enough, the audience will believe you.” –John Hurt, 1990, as quoted in The New York Times I can’t honestly say that John Hurt was ever an actor whose films I actively sought out solely because of his presence. On some level, I think that might have pleased him. There was a proper retreat from ostentation in Hurt’s work. He never … Continue reading John Hurt, 1940 – 2017

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CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 88 – 86

Dan Seeger

88. Eurythmics, “Would I Lie to You?” In 1985, when Eurythmics released their album Be Yourself Tonight, the safe bet would have involved creation of calculated echoes of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” their smash hit single from a couple years earlier. Doing so was anathema to the duo. “It’s just to do with the original concept of Eurythmics, which was to keep changing every situation all the time so it never got stale,” Dave Stewart explained while the album was still in its formative stages. “In order to make this album, we had to do a load of … Continue reading CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 88 – 86

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From the Archive: Pride & Prejudice

Dan Seeger

This was written fairly early in my return to movie reviews, when I was finally figuring out how to make reasonable use out these online tundras. When adapting a Jane Austen novel such as Pride & Prejudice, it must be sorely tempting to try every conceivable trick to make it visually engaging. This sort of period piece from the Approved Canon of Great Literature is especially prone to becoming the sort of staid veddy, veddy English film that Eddie Izzard once identified as “a room with a view with a staircase and a pond type movies.” (“What is it, Sebastian? … Continue reading From the Archive: Pride & Prejudice

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One for Friday: The Balancing Act, “This Is Where It All Begins”

Dan Seeger

As I’ve shared previously, I first played music from the Balancing Act because of magnets. In conjunction with the L.A. band’s second and, as it happened, last LP, Curtains, I.R.S. Records inundated college radio with a huge batch of refrigerator magnets. Sporting the band’s odd little logo, the magnets were scattered across practically every metal surface in my happy broadcasting outpost in Central Wisconsin. That included all of the door jambs. I couldn’t cross from one end of the station’s offices to the other without being remind multiple times about the Balancing Act. Luckily, I wasn’t being coerced into playing … Continue reading One for Friday: The Balancing Act, “This Is Where It All Begins”

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Ten

Dan Seeger

There is a splendid modesty to The Witch, the feature debut from writer-director Robert Eggers. Positioned with false comfort as “A New-England Fable,” the film progresses with a stern leanness, as if its a spiritual sequel to Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt’s saga of tragic pioneers. Set in the seventeenth century, The Witch covers the hardships of a family struggling to make do out in the rural outskirts after being cast out of their community. The tension increases when the family’s infant goes missing while being looked after by eldest daughter Thomasin (marvelous newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy), a vanishing that happens in … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Ten