Author: Dan Seeger

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Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty

Dan Seeger

#40 — Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941) For all the huffing and harrumphing that plenty of people resort to when engaged in discussions of the broken state of modern politics (and I include myself in that “plenty”), there’s a sad, corrosive truth at the core of our problems. To borrow a handy bit of phrasing, this dysfunction of our politics isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. That’s perhaps best evidenced by the ways in which the damage decried today as proof of the historic animosity and corruption within the power structure can be found recurring through U.S. history like the clearest … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty

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My Writers: Richard Price

Dan Seeger

There was a time in mid-nineteen-nineties — before my energy started to flag — when I actively sought out books that I knew were on their way to becoming potentially significant feature films. This was especially common, weirdly enough, after I no longer had a public outlet to review films, meaning I had no particular impetus — no mandate, imposed or otherwise — to fill in the background. Freed from the burden of collegiate assigned text, I felt I had the time (though I was routinely working well over forty hours per week) and I maintained a hangover principle from … Continue reading My Writers: Richard Price

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Greatish Performances #19

Dan Seeger

#19 — Eric Bogosian as Barry Champlain in Talk Radio (Oliver Stone, 1988) The play Talk Radio had its off-Broadway premiere in May of 1987, with its writer, Eric Bogosian, in the leading role. It wasn’t exactly viewed as transformational theatre (New York groused, “neither as drama nor as social psychology does it cut deep enough”), but it had the air of sensation to it. And it transformed Bogosian, however briefly, from that unique nineteen-eighties calling as “performance artist” into a more well-rounded creator who needed to be taken seriously. When the property was snapped up for a film adaptation, … Continue reading Greatish Performances #19

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Good Timin'”

Dan Seeger

By my rough count, the Beach Boys notched thirty-eight Top 40 singles over the course of their multi-decade career. A significant number of those made it into the Top 10, and four of those topped the chart. That quartet of number ones includes their final Top 40 song, a single so simultaneously awful and incessantly catchy that the only word that suitably describes it is “hellish.” (Seriously, don’t click on that link. The song will be trapped in your brain for increasingly uncomfortable hours upon hours.) In 1979, the band was in a rough space commercially. It had been three years … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Good Timin’”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 59-57

Dan Seeger

59. Simple Minds, Good News from the Next World If I’d been forced to lay money on whether or not Simple Minds was still releasing new music in 1995, I would have placed my chips smack on “NO” and felt like I’d made a pretty safe bet. The band that peaked hard with the quintessential John Hughes soundtrack song one decade earlier never really stopped trying to outrace their biggest chart success, which came with the indignity of being the rare example of a track they recorded which they didn’t write themselves (they were at least the fourth different act … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 59-57

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One for Friday: Liz Phair, “California”

Dan Seeger

This is how I saw it: Liz Phair needed to reclaim some of the energy that surrounded her out-of-nowhere indie sensation debut, Exile in Guyville. By most measures, her follow-up effort, Whip-Smart, was an even greater success, climbing higher on the album charts, selling more copies (at least initially, though Exile in Guyville has outpaced it by now), and yielding a couple of decent modern rock radio hits. But her coolness quotient took a pretty sizable hit. She became a Rolling Stone cover girl instead of a Village Voice icon. That’s not inherently bad — and there are plenty of indications … Continue reading One for Friday: Liz Phair, “California”

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-One

Dan Seeger

#41 — Key Largo (John Huston, 1948) I typically put John Huston in the category of classic Hollywood directors whose excellence is best measured by their absolutely command of craft. As the vocabulary of classic narrative was still being shaped, Huston was one of those in the cinematic blacksmith shop, swinging his mallet at the glowing red steel. Unlike some of his immediate predecessors (and rough contemporaries) on this timeline — John Ford and Howard Hawks are the two who immediately come to mind — Huston embedded a slightly shiftier personality into his art. He had a flair for the torrid that … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-One

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I was on the inside when they pulled the four walls down

Dan Seeger

There are certainly of plenty of potential reasons for the current renaissance in indie horror, not the least of which is the well-established helpful ratio of low budgets and high potential box office reward that the genre offers. Just as road movies were once the handiest ways to develop high drama with limited dollars (and inspiration, quite frankly) so too are horror movies one of the most direct routes to getting a film made for a fledgling filmmaker. But I think the more interesting consideration is the growing proliferation of artistically rich horror films, particularly in terms of the visual … Continue reading I was on the inside when they pulled the four walls down

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Amirpour, Asante, Dobkin, Glatzer and Westmoreland, Roskam

Dan Seeger

Belle (Amma Asante, 2014). Based ever so lightly on real history — the only real source is a 1779 painting — this period drama tells the story of Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a young woman who is the offspring of a British naval officer (Matthew Goode) and an African-born slave. She’s raised among the British gentry by her grandparents (Tom Wilkinson and Sarah Gadon), treated as a beloved member of the family but also relegated to diminished status in her own home because of the conventions of the day. If the unconventional story elevates the film a bit past its restrained … Continue reading Amirpour, Asante, Dobkin, Glatzer and Westmoreland, Roskam