This piece was written as part of a series I deployed on Fridays on my former online home, essentially the last unique writing I did there aside from some later flotsam and/or jetsam. I’ve been really itching to play the … Continue reading From the Archive: Flashback Friday — 1992
As must happen from time to time, I have a “Jane” song to share. To the best of my knowledge, I never played a song by Dolly Mixture during my college radio days, but I wish I would have. Their sound was precisely what I hoped to discover when I dug deeply into the most obscure records in the radio station’s music library, finding those old releases that perhaps hadn’t been touched in years but exhibited a wear-and-tear in the packaging that suggested they were once deeply loved. Had a Dolly Mixture album been in our stacks, how could it … Continue reading One for Friday: Dolly Mixture, “How Come You’re Such a Hit with the Boys, Jane?”
I think Colin Farrell is exceptional across the entirety of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, but I have a clear favorite moment. In dire circumstances while roaming the woods outside of the compound where he’s been staying through much of the film, Farrell’s character, David, encounters a newly disgruntled acquaintance (John C. Reilly). Farrell meets the animosity with a desperate attempt to once again ingratiate himself to the person, delivering compliments and reassurances with a stilted calm. It’s a single scene, but it encompasses so much of what I adore about The Lobster: a genial off-filter quality and unhinged creativity that … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Three
It is a pleasing irony that the year’s most accomplished film that looks to otherworldly being to drive its story is so beautifully, wisely attuned to humanity. Arrival is centered on visitors from across the universe who park their skipping stone spaceships in a perpetual hover a few stories about the terra firma of Earth, but the primary commitment is to the people who struggle through daunting communication barriers to understand the planet’s new acquaintances. As linguist Louise Banks, Amy Adams gives one of those performances that perhaps only she can: grounded deeply in qualities that are equal parts charisma, approachability, … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Four
Happy holiday, everyone. Back to the movie countdown tomorrow. Continue reading Happy Valentine’s Day
At this point in the life cycle of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land — a winding excursion from celebration to backlash to the backlash’s backlash to the backlash’s backlash’s backlash and points beyond — it’s almost impossible to write about this modern musical without ending up with an insufferable think piece. So I’m going to lean into it. As the signature films of 2016 are bandied about, few feel more detached from our current perilous moment as La La Land. There are no shadows of social and political preoccupations to found in the story of young cultural artists falling in … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Five
82. R.E.M., “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” R.E.M. made their U.S. network television debut on Late Night with David Letterman, in October 1983. The band’s debut album, Murmur, had been in stores for about six months, and it naturally made sense for them to play “Radio Free Europe,” the single that became a smash on college radio and even managed to — somewhat inexplicably — cross over into the Billboard Hot 100. They did, but there was time for them to run through another song. After Letterman briefly interviewed the band about their hometown music scene (“Why all of sudden Athens, … Continue reading CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 82 – 80
This review was written for our old movie review radio show during a stretch of the summer of 1991 dire enough that one of the other films covered on the same episode was Return to the Blue Lagoon. While I’m already fairly down on the film in this review, I suspect Hot Shots! is one of those films that aged particularly poorly. It may seem a little late for a parody of the Tom Cruise smash hit Top Gun. After all, it has been five years since Cruise squeezed his smug grin into a navy fighter plane and soared to … Continue reading From the Archive: Hot Shots!
As is probably evident by now, the number of songs from my college radio days that I consider worthy of filing under the category of “favorites” could fill a full programming day. There are those that were clear peaks of beloved bands and there are those that snuck up on me over time, snuggling into my psyche following the discovery and championing of my valued cohorts. Then there are those songs that arrived as fully-formed, undeniable (to me) triumphs. From the moment the needle first hit the vinyl or the laser first struck the disc, the song was clearly, thrillingly … Continue reading One for Friday: All, “She’s My Ex”
Grief is easy in the movies. For filmmakers, it’s a shortcut, imbuing characters with emotions that can be grasped quickly. Beyond stating the simplest narrative fact that explains what has brought the character to sorrowful place, there’s not much internal layering that’s required. And any emergence from that aching state can feel so cathartic for an audience that trite turns of character outlook are often accepted gratefully by audiences, even if the progression doesn’t really play plausibly. But Kenneth Lonergan doesn’t do easy. With Manchester by the Sea, the writer-director doesn’t treat grief as a gloss of emotional profundity. Instead, it’s … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Six
