I remember watching Martin Scorsese’s excellent 2004 outing The Aviator and feeling certain that scenes that revolved around subject Howard Hughes operated as an obsessed director in old Hollywood represented a peak of personal filmmaking. For all the amazing work … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 — Number Five
There are human tragedies that are ultimately too enormous to be captured onscreen, but that, of course, doesn’t mean filmmakers should stop trying. Because sometimes, just often enough, they succeed in capturing some small slice of the unthinkable, some glimpse … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 — Number Six
10. “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)” by Information Society I’ll admit to having my own preferences that decisively inform my perspectives on different music eras in different regions. For example, Minneapolis in the nineteen-eighties is strictly the punk-influenced rock ‘n’ roll of Hüsker Dü and The Replacements for me. This is despite the fact that the biggest-selling artist to hail from the city during that decade had a very different sound indeed. So maybe it shouldn’t be that hard for me to wrap my head around the notion that Information Society and their dippy, skippy pop music started in … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 10 and 9
I was all over the place at Spectrum Culture this week. First of all, I had a piece in the music section, reviewing something that was definitely outside of my usual range. The super-secret DVD backstory of this review is that I wrote it while flat in my back while suffering with an ailment that really needs not be elaborated upon. You should appreciate my discretion, believe me. I also reviewed the new film from director Ti West, which I actually made a point of requesting months in advance. For one thing, I have a marital obligation to get horror … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Sometimes I really struggle to figure out which song to post from an individual album. Especially when I’m pulling from an obscure album, I have a strong instinct to select a song that doesn’t seem to be readily available otherwise. I’m continually surprised by how much of the pop culture flotsam and jetsam of years gone by has found its way to information superhighway, and yet there’s still all sorts of material that is circling aimlessly, hunting for an on-ramp. If I’m going to post a song from an album that seems to mainly perplex Amazon and doesn’t merit its … Continue reading One for Friday: Stump, “Charlton Heston”
In the introduction to this year’s ten best list, I noted that my personal tally was filled with films that couldn’t reasonably be called perfect, but compensated with brilliantly messy ambition. I think that Melancholia from director Lars von Trier … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 — Number Seven
#46 — That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977) I will readily admit to generally finding myself less enamored with the films that rely heavily upon the absurdly symbolic. My bias tends to those films that insinuate themselves deeply … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Forty-Six
While all movies strive for authenticity, there’s an added expectation of voracious adherence to the truth when it comes to documentaries, even as advocacy pieces become more and more prevalent. And yet there’s also a growing commitment to transforming non-fiction … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 — Number Eight
My favorite moment in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive–the moment that encapsulates everyone that’s special about this reinvention of the old-school action movie–isn’t especially iconic or gripping in a conventional way. It’s not the elevator attack or some burst of shocking … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2011 – Number Nine
12. “Up There Down There” by Patti Smith It was a big deal when Patti Smith released the album Dream of Life in 1988. It had been almost ten years since the last album that bore her name and Smith had spent the interim living a life of domestic serenity in the suburbs of Michigan with her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, and their two children together. She had gone from a seismic force practically reinventing rock ‘n’ roll with the sheer passion of her vocals and the jagged anger of her songwriting to a brilliant phantom who largely sat out … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 12 and 11
