#44 — Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973) I’m hardly the only person who tends to point to the cinema of the nineteen-seventies as a blessed peak of the art form (conveniently ignoring that for every wonderfully aspirational effort there were plenty … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Forty-Four
New York Stories (Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen, 1989). I remember reading Roger Ebert’s review of this anthology film and thinking he cheated by giving individual star ratings to each of its three segments. After all, no one going to movie theater had the option of just paying for a third of a ticket to see the one part of the film he recommended. Now that I’ve seen it, however, I completely get why he chose to take that approach: one part of the film is significantly better than the others. Woody Allen’s segment is amusing but … Continue reading Allen, Coppola, Cukor, Gunn, Mills, Scorsese, Winterbottom
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. The Hollies were a band that formed in Manchester in the early nineteen-sixties. While they had success in their home country almost right away, scoring a Top 40 hit on the U.K. charts with their very first single in 1963, it took them a while to fully capitalize on the Beatles-led British Invasion in the United States. They had some modest chart attention … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Jennifer Eccles”
“Nineteen seventy-three. In the public imagination it was as fraught a year as you could name: Watergate, Roe v. Wade, withdrawal from Vietnam. Gravity’s Rainbow. Was it also the year that Prufrockian paralysis went mainstream–the year it entered baseball? It made sense that a psychic condition sensed by the artists of one generation–the Modernists of the First World War–would take a while to reveal itself throughout the population. And if that psychic condition happened to be a profound failure of confidence in the significance of individual human action, then the condition became an epidemic when it entered the realm of … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
6. “Intoxication” by Shriekback Dave Allen was the bassist for Gang of Four, a band that fully understood the value of a killer rhythm section. He left the band after the release of their sophomore effort, Solid Gold, and formed Shriekback with Barry Andrews, who was previously the fourth member of XTC. By the time 1988 rolled around, Allen had given up on the group and departed. In the absence of his former compatriot’s fierce, propulsive basslines, Andrews apparently decided to accelerate the band’s gradual evolution to a commercially polished, club-friendly outfit. Nothing like KC and the Sunshine Band cover, … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 6 and 5
This week at Spectrum Culture, I opted to review the new film from director Jill Sprecher, who previously created the very good comedy Clockwatchers and the sadly mediocre 13 Conversations About One Thing. It’s been a long time since that prior feature, so I had perhaps had reason to be leery. But then the movie poster calls attention to the fact that it takes place in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I couldn’t turn that down, right? It was good, but there’s some internet scuttlebutt that it may have been even better in the original cut that debuted at Sundance a year ago. … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Once the Academy Awards ridiculously came up with only two final nominees for the Original Song category, plenty of people were quick to respond with dismay, disgruntlement or downright animosity. It was evidence of a broken system or simply final confirmation that the category was entirely outdated, a relic of a different era of Hollywood when even the most serious-minded film found a way to wedge a number into the proceedings (there were fourteen songs competing at the 1945 Oscars). Then once the Academy announced that they had no intention of having either of the songs performed live on awards … Continue reading One for Friday: David Bowie, “Real Cool World”
Sure, that banner above would work much better on Sunday, but that’s the day I’m committed to demonstrating how good I am at counting backwards. For the foreseeable future, this annual indulgence needs to land a few days earlier. What follows is my best approximation of how I might fill out a nominating ballot issued for the acting branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had it landed in my hands. All the usual caveats apply, mostly the admission that there are problematic gaps in my personal viewing so the exclusion of certain names may reflect my … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Oscar, How Did We Grow Apart So?
Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life practically demands to be watched repeatedly, all the while tugging at its various artistic intricacies. While the central story centered on the rough progression of childhood is as simple as can be, the movie … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 — Number One
Perhaps the only thing more unlikely than Michael Lewis’s journalistic take on the statistically-driven transformation of the small market Oakland A’s turning into a major bestseller is the eventually film adaptation, which had its own torturous path to completion, standing … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 — Number Two
Coffee for Two 