Life goes on, as the story goes
Forty-first in a series… (Source) Continue reading Life goes on, as the story goes
Author: Dan Seeger
My Writers: Donna Tartt
In some respects, I’m not entirely sure I should even include Donna Tartt on this list. Unlike those writers that have preceded her in this informal tally and most who will follow her (certainly all of them in the initial … Continue reading My Writers: Donna Tartt
Mighty Marvel Checklist HyperboleCheck: Spider-Woman #25
By now, it should be wonderfully well-established that the merry mavens at Marvel Comics summoned superlative skills in self-promotion throughout the sixties and seventies. The practice persisted past that ecstatic era, even if the promos proved less vivid and verbose. … Continue reading Mighty Marvel Checklist HyperboleCheck: Spider-Woman #25
College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1
2. Weezer, Weezer Unlikely as it may have seemed that a band that had only released their debut album seven years earlier was in dire need of a comeback, that was exactly the situation Weezer was in when they released their third album in late spring of 2001. Following a surprising smash with the oddball pop of their self-titled debut in 1994, Weezer’s sophomore effort, 1996’s Pinkerton was widely seen as a failure, although admiration for the record has swelled in the years since. Rivers Cuomo, the main creative force behind the band, put Weezer on hiatus while he toyed … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1
Spectrum Check
It was a fairly straightforward week for me at Spectrum Culture. I reviewed a film called Breathing, which is the directorial debut of a fairly significant Austrian actor (although not one who’s significant enough for his film to stir much more than a blip of curiosity over on this side of the planet). On the music side, I reviewed the second full-length album from the Australian band Van She. This was one of my periodic attempts to select a release for review that’s somewhat outside of my typical realm, which actually stymied me just enough that I turned it in … Continue reading Spectrum Check
One for Friday: Velocity Girl, “Sorry Again”
It’s almost too easy to keep up on new music while working in college radio. Whether working directly with the music as part of the leadership staff or sitting in the air chair on a regular basis, the great discoveries just keep on coming. Checking the mail is like rooting through Santa’s bag and scanning the new releases shelf could upend even the most meticulously planned playlist. Sometimes all it took was a crazily wonderful album cover to crack open the door to entire new worlds. It gets so much harder after graduation (or some other adjustment) necessitates moving on … Continue reading One for Friday: Velocity Girl, “Sorry Again”
Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Sixteen
#16 — The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) One of the risks in indulging in this ongoing exercise in counting backwards is that all my various cineaste heresies will eventually be revealed. Certainly filmmakers will be underrepresented and specific titles that have earned consensus admiration among learned film viewers (or at least the cool kids among them) will be utterly absent. I think I ultimately have fairly conventional, time-tested tastes when it comes to my tallies, which makes the aberrations stand out all the more. Tracking through the seventies, for example, illustrates that I’m completely out of step with the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Sixteen
That Championship Season: St. Elsewhere, Season Four
To the degree that enormous permanent changes to any form of media can be pinpointed to a single event, to a pivotal moment, the entire landscape of television underwent a seismic shift on January 15, 1981. That marked the debut … Continue reading That Championship Season: St. Elsewhere, Season Four
Donen and Kelly, Frankenheimer, Salina, Skolimowski, Téchiné
Flow: For Love of Water (Irena Salina, 2008). Because there are few things we enjoy in our house than watching documentaries that offer an assessment, in painful detail, of how humanity is engaged in self-inflicted extinction through carelessly destructive exploitation of one of the most necessary substances for human existence. It make for a fun night of movie-watching. Real popcorn fare. Irene Salina’s film is compelling and suitably frightening, although it occasionally tangles itself up because there’s simply so much ground to cover. As admirably as it presents the scope of the problem, there are definitely times when it seems … Continue reading Donen and Kelly, Frankenheimer, Salina, Skolimowski, Téchiné
Top 40 Smash Tap: “Six Feet Deep”
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. I love that … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Tap: “Six Feet Deep”
Coffee for Two 