Author: Dan Seeger

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifteen

Dan Seeger

#15 — The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949) Technically, a period drama can be set in any past era, but the term immediately calls to mind a certain slice of the human timeline, long on corsets and stiff gatherings and short on electricity and rambunctiousness. In my informed but admittedly prejudiced view, a great many of these sorts of films are overly staid, buffed up with refinement and lacking in passion. The older the copyright date on the piece of cinema, the more likely my uncharitable prejudice is to be accurate, the confinements of still developing film stylings accentuating the already rigid, regimental … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifteen

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 8

Dan Seeger

8. Garbage, Garbage I’m pleased that I sit in Madison, Wisconsin as I write this post. Seattle was the epicenter of the explosion of grunge rock that shifted, defined, and to a large degree eventually decimated college rock in the early-to-mid-nineteen-nineties, but the state capital of Wisconsin is connected to a murky asterisk in any geographic history of that shifting music scene. Madisonian Butch Vig had been in a few small, locally notable bands, Spooner and Fire Town among them. More importantly, as it turned out, Vig partnered with Steve Marker to open Smart Studios, a recording facility housed in … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 8

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From the Archive: Arachnophobia

Dan Seeger

I suspect I thought I was pretty clever for the way I structured the beginning of this review. If nothing else, I was probably pleased that I included a Supertrain reference. Arachnophobia was a movie I needed to work hard to see, since it barely eked into the box office top ten for the summer of 1990 (our debut radio show counted down that top ten). It’s entirely possible it was one of the first movies that made me wonder what the hell I’d gotten myself into by committing to a weekly movie review show. This review was written for the home … Continue reading From the Archive: Arachnophobia

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One for Friday: Don Dixon, “Girls L.T.D.”

Dan Seeger

It sure seems like the most appropriate follow-up to last week’s One for Friday involves a song from Mr. Marti Jones. Most of the Girls Like to Dance But Only Some of the Boys Like To, Don Dixon’s solo debut, was first released in the United States in late 1986, only after it had proven successful as an import in Europe, where it had received distribution the year before. Making the journey seem even more arduous, most of the material on the album was first peddled to labels well before. As Dixon acknowledged at the time, practically every song on … Continue reading One for Friday: Don Dixon, “Girls L.T.D.”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Goin’ In”

Dan Seeger

These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. Jimmy Brooks was a student at Degrassi Community School, whose struggles with school, particularly English class, originally compromised his hopes to become a player on the basketball team. That eventually changed, and Jimmy become one of the star players on the team. He also came from a background of family wealth, which could cause strain with some of his friends, especially when Jimmy didn’t … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Goin’ In”

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One for Friday: Angst, “I Could Never Change Your Mind”

Dan Seeger

By 1988, Angst was a band with a honorable history. Formed in San Francisco, in 1980, Angst put out multiple albums on seminal punk label SST Records, including a couple that were produced by the label’s co-owner, Joe Carducci, making it reasonable to consider the group one of the signature acts of the pile-driving music house. When I got to my college radio station, I didn’t know any of that. All I knew is there was an album called Cry For Happy in rotation that had a striking drawing of roses on the front cover. I’m pretty sure I even pronounced … Continue reading One for Friday: Angst, “I Could Never Change Your Mind”

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Sixteen

Dan Seeger

#16 — The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) There are several different stories that explain, at least in part, the genesis of The Great Dictator, but it surely must have started with the mustache. How bizarre to be Charlie Chaplin, sporter of a distinctive sprout of facial hair, an inky little dust broom right under the nose, watching newsreel footage of a hateful lunatic across the ocean who’s taken the same approach to his daily shaving regimen. Supposedly Chaplin took further inspiration from a viewing of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (that he cackled through, his own skill as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Sixteen

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Enright and Berkeley, Garbus, McQuarrie, Van Sant

Dan Seeger

Promised Land (Gus Van Sant, 2012). This is exactly the sort of appalling earnest, dramatically inert fare that makes many rightly cringe when they think about the sort of medicine-tinged movies Oscar season might bring. With a story credit for Dave Eggers and a shared screenplay credit for Matt Damon and John Krasinski, who also start in the film, Promised Land takes the issue of fracking and tries to spin a sort of Capraesque fable with a dose of twenty-first century cynicism and a gotcha plot twist for good measure. Damon plays an ambitious employee of a global energy concern who … Continue reading Enright and Berkeley, Garbus, McQuarrie, Van Sant

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From the Archive: Jack the Bear

Dan Seeger

Jack the Bear isn’t a movie I remember well, but I strongly associate it with the doldrums of reviewing movies in the spring, when the Oscar-worthy material from the previous winter had finished cycling through our small Central Wisconsin town and the eagerly audience-friendly stuff was being held back for summer. Now, there’s a fairly ambitious year-round release schedule with only a handful of weekends (like, ahem, this one) devoid of movies that are interesting in one way or another. That wasn’t the case in the early nineteen-nineties. There were long stretches filled with the material in which the studios … Continue reading From the Archive: Jack the Bear