Author: Dan Seeger

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Just try to do your very best, stand up and be counted with all the rest

Dan Seeger

In the immediate aftermath of watching Selma, I was one of those many people who marveled at what a leap forward it was for director Ava DuVernay, considering the perceived degree of difficulty in shifting from small, intimate dramas to a period picture on a wide scale depicting a signal moment in recent American history. Then I revisited my own review for DuVernay’s prior film, Middle of Nowhere, and I realized the resounding inaccuracy of that perception. Yes, the scale of Selma is very different, most evident in the scenes recreating the various attempts at mounting a protest march the fifty … Continue reading Just try to do your very best, stand up and be counted with all the rest

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 90 – 88

Dan Seeger

90. The Falling Wallendas, The Falling Wallendas The Falling Wallendas were a power-pop outfit out of Chicago, close enough to 90FM’s Central Wisconsin home base that there was surely a little regional affection and pride for many of the deejays that played their self-titled debut. After an admittedly cursory search, I wasn’t able to find any music from this album readily available on the interweb for open listening. The closest I got was a live version of the song “Porn,” which appears in its studio version on their sophomore effort, Belittle. That second outing was also their last. Besides having an aces band … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 90 – 88

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From the Archive: The Rocketeer

Dan Seeger

With the Oscar nominations due to be announced this week, I thought about trying to find some old Academy Award speculation from the days of the radio show, but it was pretty rare that there was a script involved in discussion on that topic. The Academy Awards — the ceremony, the history, the politics of nominations — was our shared wheelhouse. We could fill a fairly polished-sounding hour with little more than a couple notes of reference. Instead, I’ll use the recent television premiere of Agent Carter as inspiration for this week’s retrospective selection. I like the show thus far (and … Continue reading From the Archive: The Rocketeer

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One for Friday: The Dazzlers, “Lovely Crash”

Dan Seeger

As must periodically happen, the One for Friday space this week is devoted to carrying the baton forward for the late, beloved (by me, anyway) blog Little Hits. The online space that shared notably obscure songs from a certain era — basically the power pop, post-punk, modern rock tsunami from the late nineteen-seventies to the late nineteen-eighties — was one of my favorite destinations when I first started assembling a pile of music onto a hard drive, building the automated radio station of my most blissful dreams. Besides admiring the taste of the blog’s creator, his selections spoke to a favorite … Continue reading One for Friday: The Dazzlers, “Lovely Crash”

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Besson, Clooney, Gilroy, Jarmusch, Jones

Dan Seeger

Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014). Though based on a half-baked idea from the rambunctious mind of its director rather than anything that originally appeared on a printed page, Lucy can make a claim on being one of the best comic book movies of the past year, in that it establishes and locks in on its own suspicious and imaginative logic and then lets all other rules fall away in favor of what’s most thrillingly entertaining in any given moment. Scarlett Johansson plays the title character, a young woman whose scruffy boyfriend gets her ensnarled in a situation in which she’s an … Continue reading Besson, Clooney, Gilroy, Jarmusch, Jones

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “All I Really Want to Do”

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. During the decade of their first iteration, the Byrds had seven Top 40 hits. Their first charting single went to #1, as did their third. In between the two, the band had another trip to the Top 40, although one that stalled out at that special number. Like many of the band’s songs (including that initial chart-topper), “All I Really Want to Do” … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “All I Really Want to Do”

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By and by, Lord, by and by

Dan Seeger

Bringing the wartime experience of Louis Zamperini to the screen has been on the Universal Pictures wish list for so long that they once dangled the part to Tony Curtis. There’s nothing like a blockbuster book to suddenly propel a film project into being. Delivering the same sort of clear storytelling and reportorial depth that distinguished her earlier Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand tracked through Zamperini’s youth, athletic feats, military achievements, astounding endurance both lost in sea and as a prisoner of war in Japanese internment camps, and finally struggles with pronounced post-traumatic stress disorder after returning home. There is a staggering amount of … Continue reading By and by, Lord, by and by

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“He had never been completely unembarrassed while speaking on the radio; this was a fact (his mike fright was something else). He had always felt just a little silly announcing, introducing, selling, describing, interviewing, giving the time and telling the weather, doing local color, acting and reciting bed-time stories, holding up his spokesman’s end of the conversation — which in radio was the only end there was. For the truth of the matter was that radio was silence as well as sound; the unrelenting premise was that the announcer’s voice occurred in silence, in the heart of an attentive vacuum … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, An Introduction

Dan Seeger

I don’t orchestrate when certain countdowns will start or end. It is my good fortune that it is time to begin a new exercise in counting backwards on the first Sunday in 2015, allowing me to unveil a chart from twenty years ago (or, technically, from nineteen years ago since it would have been presented on the last day of the calendar year in question, but this is the anniversary year of much of the music contained herein). Such round-numbered ages aren’t a necessity for our charts. It’s still nice when it happens. This is third time this feature will … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, An Introduction

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From the Archive: Beowulf

Dan Seeger

This is another review raided from my former online home. If nothing else, it’s a snapshot of a time when considering the relative value of a 3D viewing was still required when evaluating a film that has that option. By now, except in the rare occasions when it’s an enormous part of the intended experience, the technology is rarely brought up in reviews. I’ll also note that, following my habit of using song lyrics as the headlines to film reviews, this piece was original presented under the banner “The rain was there to wash away my tears, I wanted to … Continue reading From the Archive: Beowulf