#4 — Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951) The films of Alfred Hitchcock are ideally suited for clip reels, which can skew perception of them a bit. Moreso than Billy Wilder, John Ford, or any of his other rough … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Four
“I stopped listening to tapes at some point: it was a phase. You either get used to noises in your head, or you learn to focus instead on whatever other noises happen to present in the room, like the air conditioner. Still, I kept them, and they’re arranged neatly on the top of the dresser in my bedroom, which means Vicky dusts them once a week. They look like museum pieces now. Chaos Blood, Black Lake, Rexecutioner’s Dream. Sean at sixteen thought Rexecutioner’s Dream was the greatest thing he’d ever heard, something so strange and different it seemed like a … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
I appreciate that Christopher Nolan has taken the clout he earned from making Warner Bros. a couple bajillion dollars with his trilogy of Batman films and put it towards crazily ambitious, reality-warping films. In this cinematic age, when no studio … Continue reading It’s so hard to contemplate you ‘cos you’re so full of interstellar soul
6. Fishbone, Truth and Soul Fishbone decided to open Truth and Soul, their second full-length release, with a track that signaled a clear understanding of their forebears. Their ferocious take on Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” is a clarion call to the rock ‘n’ roll faithful. Fishbone is going to do right by the mélange of genres in which they traffic. “Freddie’s Dead” is steeped in funk authority, but it also blasts forward like a headlong hard rock anthem. Their earlier releases sometimes got Fishbone pigeonholed as an empty party band, maybe in part because it was all too easy … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 6
There was no question about which director should be represented in this space this week. Sadly, my options were somewhat limited. I would have loved to pull something from my days on The Reel Thing radio show in the early … Continue reading From the Archive: Charlie Wilson’s War
This is the way I like to imagine it happened: director Peyton Reed and his collaborators on the 2003 film Down with Love, part pastiche of and part spoof of old Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedies, were almost done with … Continue reading One for Friday: Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, “Here’s To Love”
I regret that I know the work of Mike Nichols primarily — almost entirely — from the movies he made. That’s no slight on his cinematic output. Nichols signed his name to a multitude of classic films, consistently bringing a distinctive sense of style to his efforts, one paradoxically defined most by its tricky invisibility. Nichols didn’t really have a signature, at least not one beyond a crisp mastery of the visual language of film. There was a spacial airiness to his compositions that made the films feel as though they’d been shorn of clutter. He had the efficiency of … Continue reading Mike Nichols, 1931-2014
According to Dion DiMucci, his time fronting the Belmonts came about because he decided to take his fledgling career into his own hands. In 1957, the Bronx-born singer signed to the newly-formed Mohawk Records. Almost immediately, the label heads had him record lead vocals for a pre-existing backing tracking, resulting in his first single, “The Chosen Few,” credited to Dion and the Timberlanes. DiMucci claimed he never even met the other individuals who performed on the record. He also found them unbearably bland, which inspired him to do what presumably any kid from the Bronx would do. He went back … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Don’t Pity Me”
#5 — Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) A story about the making of Rashomon insists that the actors were regularly asking director Akira Kurosawa to divulge the “official” version of the story they were telling in the film. That likely … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Five
The gimmick built into the construction of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) has every likelihood of sinking it. The not wholly novel story of a desperate actor (Michael Keaton) mounting a troubled stage production in hopes of reviving … Continue reading Arms getting heavy, exhaustion’s setting in, waves getting bigger, life’s getting thin
