#32 — Harvey (Henry Koster, 1950) When we screened Harvey in a “Writers and Their Movies” class I took in college, the professor introduced it by writing a quote on the blackboard. It was from one of her distant colleagues, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty-Two
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. Before he started performing under the name Blowfly, Clarence Reid was a crack songwriter and a fine soul singer. While most of the material he released was fairly benign, there were some early indications that there was a raunchy sensibility lurking there. The Blowfly persona started as a gag at parties, with the singer trying out dirty songs and parodies on his pals … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Nobody But You Babe”
The Immigrant, the new film from director James Gray begins in 1921, as a woman and her sister are waiting in the anxiously hopeful misery of the line at Ellis Island. The supposed promised land is at the other end … Continue reading For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing
10. Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings and Food I don’t mean to denigrate the very fine–underrated, even!–album Talking Heads: 77 when I note that More Songs About Buildings and Food seems like the real debut of the most important … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 10
This review was written for the drops we created to slip into regular programming after the weekly radio show ended in 1993. I can tell from the script that it was written on the already-antiquated computer that resided on the desk of the closet-sized manager’s office in the movie theater where I worked. It’s one big block of all-capitalized text, making it brutally difficult to read during the recording process. I see I was pushing back against the critical instinct to overpraise the supposed deeper meanings of Eastwood’s directorial efforts even then. And I’m somewhat surprised that “Lazy charm” was … Continue reading From the Archive: A Perfect World
A vacation is hard work. No matter how enjoyable my ventures into the greater world may be, they are rarely relaxing, even when pure relaxation is the goal. And when the destination doesn’t involves time in a hammock rocking in synch with cool oceanic breezes, but is instead dominated by energetically traversing an urban landscape for miles of foot travel, well, it can leave even the heartiest souls a little ragged. And I am hardly the heartiest soul. So as I return to the personal digital screens for the first time in many days (the items that took up successive … Continue reading One for Friday: The Textones, “Vacation”
Fifty-second in a series…. (Via) Continue reading After all this time to believe in Jesus, after all these drugs I thought I was Him
#16 — John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig Robinson in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001) It’s almost unfair to celebrate John Cameron Mitchell’s performance as a transgendered rock singer in the film version of Hedwig and the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #16
“‘I wonder,’ she was fond of remarking, ‘what they’d say if they knew that we two old tramps were going to be the most marvellous novelist and the greatest actress in the world.’ “‘They’d probably be very much surprised.’ “‘I expect we shall look back on this time when we’re driving about in our Mercedes, and think: After all, it wasn’t such bad fun!’” –Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, 1939 “THEY WALKED ACROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AT DAWN, STOPPING HALFWAY TO WATCH THE RISING SUN> PAINT THE MONOLITHIC OFFICE TOWERS OF LOWER MANHATTAN IN STREAKS OF FIRE. THEY’D STARTED THE … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
I’m not so arrogant as to believe that I’ve got something profoundly novel to contribute to the vast ongoing discussion about the most important writer in the history of the English language. I can only do what the title of … Continue reading My Writers: William Shakespeare
Coffee for Two 