I’m been stretching my memory for several days now, and I think I can accurately report that I’ve never seen a movie quite like Beasts of the Southern Wild. Movie fans who’ve had happier experiences than me when it comes … Continue reading When you’re golden, I’m your beast
The super-secret, ever-so-intriguing backstory behind the images chosen to accompany these “My Writers” posts is this: as often as I can, I try to select the book cover that corresponds to the specific edition of the title that was my … Continue reading My Writers: Don DeLillo
14. The Beta Band, Hot Shots II Like a lot of people, I suppose, my first exposure to the Beta Band came in the single finest moment of the decent but disappointing 2000 film adaptation of Nick Horby’s novel High … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 14 and 13
So, Spectrum Culture this week… I truly believe in reviewing films almost entirely on their own merits. It’s hard to confront a film by a major director without putting it into a career-long context (and there’s obviously some merit to that approach), but a significant number of viewers won’t be doing that. They meet a film for what it is and any comparisons to other creative efforts will be superficial at best. Still, it was so very tempting for me to expend a whole lot of words in my review of Nikolaus Geyhalter’s documentary Abendland to the three-hour, staidly observational … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I think of the Soup Dragons as one of the highly favored bands of the 90FM DJs during the early nineties, but I’m not sure I’m correct about that. As I’ve written before, they were a fiarly unlikely band for me to champion at the time with their glammy, danceable grooves standing in marked contrast with the one-foot-in-the-gutter rough-hewn guitar rock that I favored. The Soup Dragons sounded like they knew what they were doing in a recording studio, understood how to get the most out of the technology at their control. They didn’t sound overly manufactured, but there was … Continue reading One for Friday: The Soup Dragons, “Pleasure”
#22 — Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977) Technically, I suppose, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep could have also factored into my Top Fifty Films of the 00s list. In fact, that may be the more accurate placement for it … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Two
#11 — Nick Nolte as Lionel Dobie in the “Life Lessons” segment of New York Stories (Martin Scorsese, 1989) Of the once bankable, respectable actors who’ve fallen on hard times, typified by mediocre film role options, no descent is more … Continue reading Greatish Performances #11
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. Jamaican-born Millie Small was just sixteen years old when she had a smash hit with “My Boy Lollipop,” a cover of a song originally performed by Barbie Gaye. The track went all the way to #2 on both the U.K. and U.S. charts (held out of the top spot on the latter by the first #1 single by the Beach Boys), and insinuated … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Sweet William”
Humpday (Lynn Shelton, 2009). While I don’t always give the background on my viewing choices, I will note that this finally made its way from out queue to our screen in preparation for watching Lynn Shelton’s excellent follow-up. I’m mostly sharing that to give myself a public chastisement. Humpday is pretty terrific, providing a surprisingly plausible narrative progression to an utterly implausible scenario. Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard play old college buddies whose reunion after several years apart winds up involving an odd pledge to make a man-on-man pornographic film together, in direct opposition to their heterosexual tendencies, for Seattle’s … Continue reading Jason, Milestone, Minnelli, Scorsese, Shelton
16. Rainer Maria, A Better Version of Me Occasionally, my re-acquaintance with college radio in 2001 involved something approaching cruelty in the reminders I was given as to how detached I’d become from the music scene. As a College DJ … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 16 and 15
Coffee for Two 