I once posited in this space that Veronica Mars was one of the unsung (or at least under-sung) creations in the long transformation of the television series model from collections of loosely connected episodes to the mythology-heavy novels divided into … Continue reading Now she walks through her sunken dream to the seat with the clearest view and she’d hooked on the silver screen
20. Joe Cocker, Luxury You Can Afford In the late nineteen-seventies, Joe Cocker was going through one of those rocky stretches that were the accepted territory of raspy-voiced rock ‘n’ roll singers. He spent a decent portion of the decade bouncing around different managers and cultivating a reputation as a self-destructive alcoholic with an occasional penchant for vomiting mid-set onstage. In 1978, he was further trying to rebound by some significant commercial disappointment, and he had to prove himself to a new label. Luxury You Can Afford was his first for Asylum Records, after a long stretch with A&M Records. … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 20
It’s girl detective weekend at the movies, isn’t it? The main thing that strikes me about this review from an August 1991 edition of The Reel Thing is the rapid way that certain film careers can crumble away, especially for actresses of, shall we say, a certain age. When we started doing the radio show in 1990, Kathleen Turner was a performer of great significance and acclaim. By the time we were done, three years later, her career was reeling from a series of commercial missteps. Her wonderfully wicked and wackadoo turn in John Water’s 2004 film, Serial Mom, was … Continue reading From the Archive: V.I. Warshawski
I have enough invested in the idea of perfect artistic finality that occasionally I can drift into the mental parlor game of selecting the best last album for an individual artist. This doesn’t necessarily mean identifying their very best work under the theory that everyone should go out at their absolute peak. Instead, it’s about finding those releases that feel just right as a sort of summation, a proper closing statement of artistic identity and intent. To shift the topic to movies for a useful illustration, Robert Altman probably made at least a dozen movies that I consider plainly better … Continue reading One for Friday: Lyle Lovett, “Step Inside This House”
#43 — Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953) I like to think that Billy Wilder is the only filmmaker — hell, maybe the only creator — who could make a film like Stalag 17 work, but that’s clearly not the case, on the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Three
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. When I became a dedicated reader of superhero comic books, the … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Fantastic Four by Marv Wolfman and John Byrne
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. As 1977 began, the Isley Brothers could claim a total of nine Top 40 hits across their fifteen years as a charting artist, beginning with the seminal “Shout,” which reached the Top 20 in 1962, and climbing all the way to #4 as recently as two years earlier, with “Fight the Power (Part 1).” That year, the line-up consisted of actual siblings Ernie, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Livin’ in the Life”
#44 — Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) “I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” There. I’ve completed one of the necessities of writing a piece of any amount of skill and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Four
21. Happy the Man, Crafty Hands Prog rock was still a very viable music genre in 1978, even if it was fighting a losing battle against disco for privilege of primacy among pop diversions into excess. (One year later, disco … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 21
The earliest months of the film year are brutally hard to get through. The problem is lessened by the quality offerings from the prior calendar year that dribble into smaller markets in fits and starts, but most films that get their initial, often widespread release in the months January and February (and even into the spring) are largely the weaker material that studios felt couldn’t compete in Oscar season or weren’t worth holding back for the highly charged summer season. That’s still the case, but it was even more pronounced back in the early nineteen-nineties, before the release schedule started … Continue reading From the Archive: Once Around
Coffee for Two 