I have seen the sleeping knights of Jesus and they look extremely tired to me
Thirty-ninth in a series… (Source.) Continue reading I have seen the sleeping knights of Jesus and they look extremely tired to me
Author: Dan Seeger
Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Four
#24 — Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972) I will readily concede that it didn’t necessarily take a brilliant director to capture the crazy glint in Klaus Kinski’s eye–a nearsighted drunkard wielding a Polaroid with a scratched up … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Four
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Freight Train”
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. Given on the full-on hysteria for all things Beatles that began in the early nineteen-sixties, it’s a little surprising that the unique subgenre of rock ‘n’ roll that stood as their earliest, most profound influence never gained much of a foothold on this side of the Atlantic. Skiffle is the music that all four of the moptops loved, to one degree or another, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Freight Train”
College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 20 and 19
20. Daft Punk, Discovery Daft Punk is comprised of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, but early editions of their 2001 sophomore release, Discovery, essentially welcomed all interested listeners into their unique, electronic beat-driven, border-free nation. The album came with a Daft Punk membership card that allowed online access to all sorts of material, including music that wouldn’t show up on proper releases for years. The robot helmets the band members wore gave the whole endeavor a futuristic, almost otherworldly sense, as if they’d slipped over from another timeline where the wildest futuristic predictions of the nineteen-fifties had … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 20 and 19
Spectrum Check
By the evidence of the reviews I wrote, I had a pretty grumpy week at Spectrum Culture. Through the normal cycle, I wound up with a lot of middling material to write about. First of all, I had the new album from Sonny and the Sunsets. I like their previous outing quite a bit, but this new release is drab and uninteresting. And I’m usually a sucker for breakup albums. On the movie side, I reviewed the directorial debut of Martin Donovan, still probably best known for the movies he made with Hal Hartley a couple decades ago. As if … Continue reading Spectrum Check
One for Friday: The Frogs, “Layin’ Down My Love 4 U”
There was a hefty stack of records in a black metal cabinet. This was my first winter break of college, and I had returned to campus early in order to pitch in around the student-run radio station, operating with the usual short staff that corresponded to those days when classes weren’t in session. Besides keeping all the on-air shifts filled in our shortened programming day, there was a backlog of albums from the late fall and early winter that needed to be sorted through. The major releases had duly made their way to the rotation, so this pile was entirely … Continue reading One for Friday: The Frogs, “Layin’ Down My Love 4 U”
Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Five
#25 — Interiors (Woody Allen, 1978) Interiors was Woody Allen’s eighth film as a director. That’s both an impressive amount of features to have churned out in his first twelve years as a filmmaker (Paul Thomas Anderson’s sixth in sixteen … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Twenty-Five
I feel the magic like I never felt before, I imagine that it’s always been there
I don’t have a signed document to this effect or anything, but I do believe I have previously pledged to follow director Steven Soderbergh anywhere. That has brought me some undue misery over the years, but I’ve largely stuck by … Continue reading I feel the magic like I never felt before, I imagine that it’s always been there
Maysles brothers, Melville, Ophüls, Scherfig, Scott
The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949). This was the last film made by the great German director Max Ophüls during a brief dalliance with Hollywood, and it exhibits both his mastery of the form and the knack for scratching away at tremulous morality that probably sealed the failure of Stateside tenure. Based on the Elisabeth Sanxay Holding novel The Blank Wall (which later became source material for the Tilda Swinton vehicle The Deep End), the film relates the story of an everyday woman who attempts to cover up a murder that she suspects was perpetrated by her daughter against a … Continue reading Maysles brothers, Melville, Ophüls, Scherfig, Scott
Now he’s up above my head, hanging by a little thread
Longer ago than I care to admit (it can be measured in decades, sadly), I first started reviewing movies on a weekly radio program, originally adopting the strategy of treating each new film as strictly its own entity. Theoretically, a sizable percentage of our listening audience would be coming to these films fairly fresh, with no working knowledge of the director’s wider oeuvre, the history of the production or any of the other odd particulars that can fill the heads of seasoned moviegoers as the lights go dim in the theater. I figured I should do the best I could … Continue reading Now he’s up above my head, hanging by a little thread
Coffee for Two 