#17 — Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962) And so here it is: not necessarily the best film to burst out of the French New Waves, but perhaps the quintessential example of the revolutionary movement and all the possibility it held, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Seventeen
Shaun of the Dead was clearly a take on zombie movies, and Hot Fuzz took direct aim at action films, even calling out Michael Bay by name. According to star and co-writer Simon Pegg, the third film in the loosely … Continue reading Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. We arrived in Asheville at the very beginning on the city’s seismic craft … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: French Broad Brewing Gateway Kolsch
#18 — The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) It’s helpful that Paul Newman eventually paired famously with Robert Redford onscreen, a teaming that was so renowned and beloved that it obscures the little detail that it only happened twice, in 1969’s Butch … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Eighteen
44. Chinadoll, Tango Usually I try to find a song or two to nestle into hyperlinks in these reviews, but that’s proving undoable for anything off of Chinadoll’s Tango release, which isn’t that surprising as I can barely find material … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 44 and 43
Thankfully, it was a light week for me at Spectrum Culture, somewhat by design. For instance, I entirely opted out of picking a film for this week, so the only full-length piece I had was for one of the music releases that’s been sitting in my iTunes for ages. I wrote on the debut release from the Brooklyn band Desert Stars. The writing process exists in my memory as only static, so I hope the review is at least reasonably well written. I also expelled a few words in service of lauding R.E.M. in the second entry in our countdown … Continue reading Spectrum Check
When I showed up at the college radio station in that fateful fall of 1988, I had a little catalog in my head of songs that I needed to find. I have been combing Rolling Stone for a couple years by then, fascinated by all these elusive artists that popped up in the review section or other humble corner of the publication. There was no way one of my local radio stations was going to play a performer like Shona Laing or a song like “(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy,” but that didn’t stop it for lodging in my brain … Continue reading One for Friday: Shona Laing, “(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy”
It’s this kind of week. Back to your regularly scheduled programming in the morning. Continue reading Programming Note
“From zero to two hundred, turn right to go right. “From two hundred to three hundred, turn left to go right. “Faster than three hundred, turn right to go right.” –Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers, 2013 “FOR ELIZABETH LANGLEY THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER AS SHE RUNS SCREAMING FROM THIS MAD ALLEYWAY. FOR IN TIME, IF SHE IS LUCKY, SHE WILL FORGET WHAT HAPPENED HERE…BUT FOR THE OTHERS, THIS IS A NIGHTMARE WHICH NEVER ENDS…” –Marv Wolfman, TOMB OF DRACULA, Vol. 1, No. 12, “Night of the Screaming House!” 1973 Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
It seems wrong to structure this as obit, somehow. No one who writes words like that really ends, do they? Elmore Leonard writes–wrote, it’s wrote–with such a pungent, fierce, sly, inspiring, dizzying command of the language, mostly because he understood … Continue reading My Writers: Elmore Leonard
Coffee for Two 