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. As the occasional wobbly wheels on this sidecar of the web have indicated … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Three Floyds Apocalypse Cow
As I consider Pacific Rim, one question nags at me: would I be as charitable towards this film if it were from a director other than Guillermo del Toro? Not that I feel all that charitable towards the film, but as I sat through the procession of overblown digital spectacle populated by thinly conceived characters and driven by a plot holey enough to zing like a Wiffle ball, I had to admit that the damn thing won me over by the end, even as that end indulged in every goofy trope imaginable, including the sort of big, dumb, rousing speech … Continue reading I hear the human race is fallin’ on its face and hasn’t very far to go
52. The Wallflowers, Bringing Down the Horse Here’s what rock ‘n’ roll nepotism sounded like in the early-to-mid-nineteen-nineties. Bringing Down the Horse was the sophomore effort from the band the Wallflowers, fronted by Bob Dylan’s son Jakob. The group is … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 52 and 51
We had another shortened week at Spectrum Culture, because that’s the way the summer goes sometimes. It coincided nicely with my own week away, but I still managed to slip in one major review, writing on a unique new documentary covering mass killings in Indonesia. It’s a complicated topic and, amazingly, an even more complicated movie, which caused me to put an awful lot of effort into the piece at a time when it would have been handier to dash one off. I hope I did it justice. I also pulled together a few words for our feature on the … Continue reading Spectrum Check
While I try not to cede this weekly space entirely to the efforts of others, there is indeed a precedent. We’ve just returned from almost a week away, and my brain is soft, pliable and unable to think of a good entry for this week. Honestly, I can’t even come up with a wildly creative, obscure song selection. But there’s always Mr. Robyn Hitchcock… Continue reading One for Friday: Cheating Off of Someone Else’s Paper
#22 — Salesman (Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 1968) I tend to think of the documentaries from the Maysles brothers as fairly wooly and structureless. Grey Gardens, undoubtedly their most famous film, is an intimate portrait of the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Two
Forty-sixth in a series… Continue reading One thing I don’t want to see is a network Jesus on TV
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. As a general rule, I don’t care for fruit beers. I completely understand … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Abita Strawberry Harvest Lager
#23 — The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962) The guests at a snooty, upper crust dinner party adjourn to the music room, engaging in discussion, whiling away the night. Then the time comes to leave, many of them announcing their … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Three
54. The Cure, Wild Mood Swings Many observers thought the Cure might be finished after their 1992 album, Wish, though that was hardly the first time the disintegration of the band was predicted. (There may have been some who would have preferred the band shuffle away for good after the their yucky Judge Dredd theme song.) Those doomsayers forgot Robert Smith’s endless capacity for regenerating his chief creative outlet and eyeliner-streaked cash cow. Wild Mood Swings, the band’s tenth album, was released in the late spring, the precise time frame that worked well for them since 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 54 and 53
Coffee for Two 