#30 — Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965) “Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus.” These are the words … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Thirty
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. If there’s any doubt whatsoever that Donna Summer was the queen of the disco era, consider the following: in 1978 and 1979, Summer had three consecutive double albums top the Billboard chart, the first artist to accomplish that feat, and placed four separate singles atop the Hot 100, including a duet with Barbra Streisand (amazingly, “Last Dance,” practically the official anthem of disco … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Who Do You Think You’re Foolin’”
Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936). My instinct is to refer to this as an early Alfred Hitchcock film, but he was a decade and almost two dozen films into his career by this point. What’s more, this was released the year after The 39 Steps, so while Hitchcock may not have been The Master yet, he was a seasoned, skilled and respected filmmaker already. This was toward the end of the run of his British-made films, and there’s a certain added restraint–even somewhat pedestrian quality–to the narrative about a terrorist group staging bombings around London. It notably adheres to all of … Continue reading Cianfrance, Hitchcock, Levine, Sonnenfeld, Zinnemann
In many respects, Frances Ha is a perfectly logical follow-up to Noah Baumbach’s 2010 film, Greenberg. Putting aside observations about the newer film’s sense of hope being gradually thwarted that makes it feel like the cautionary prequel to the earlier … Continue reading These things I know, they come and go like laughing
66. The Cardigans, The First Band on the Moon First Band on the Moon was the third album released by the Swedish pop band the Cardigans, but for most U.S. listeners, it was the first one that registered. That was … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 66 and 65
I missed posting yesterday, but for good reason. Honest. I endeavor to have something new up here every day, but since I’m the one who’s ultimately in charge of that decision, I’m going to hit the pause button briefly. I’ll … Continue reading Pause Button
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. Though I first started buying superhero comic books at the very … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: The Amazing Spider-Man #25 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
#31 — The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968) There are few greatest pleasures in film than watching great actors–and I mean truly great actors–feast on wonderful words. In a way, that’s a counterintuitive statement, or at least one that bucks harshly against a more accepted conventional wisdom, one which venerates film as a visual medium, first and foremost. Happy as I am to celebrate the pristine, deeply considered imagery of the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, even those directors reached their greatest heights in films that were equally beholden to language (the latter’s Days of Heaven, for … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Thirty-One
68. Descendents, Everything Sucks Released in the fall of 1996, Everything Sucks was the first new studio album from punk rock semi-legends the Descendents in almost a decade. The group stopped recording under that name in the mid-nineteen-eighties, after lead … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 68 and 67
The Memorial Day holiday made for a truncated week at Spectrum Culture, but a convergence of minor issues meant that I had the rare instance of two different new movie reviews go up. First, I wrote on Hannah Arendt, about a writer and intellectual who covered the Adolf Eichmann trial for The New Yorker. Keeping with the heavy subject matter, I reviewed Shadow Dancer, centered on the The Troubles in Ireland, its own sort of period piece, taking place in the mid-nineties. Probably the most notable aspect of this film is the director, James Marsh. He won the Best Documentary … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Coffee for Two 