Spectrum Check

I knew was a little extra stressed out this week for a reason. It just occurred to me, as I prepared this post, that I actually wrote a lot for Spectrum Culture this week. I’ll start on the movie side, where I claimed responsibility for reviewing the directorial debut of Vincent D’Onofrio. This was in part because he’s enough of an oddball that I was very curious as to what he’d do behind the camera. I also have a marital obligation to acquire a horror movie for review from time to time and this one had the added curiosity of … Continue reading Spectrum Check

One for Friday: Dreams So Real, “Rough Night in Jericho”

There were a lot of Dream bands in the nineteen-eighties. By that, I don’t mean dream pop, although I suppose that’s true too. I’m referring to bands that actually used the word in their names. Perusing the D section of the music library of any respectable college radio station would turn up the Dream Syndicate and Dream Academy (and by the early nineties, the Dream Warriors). A little more concerted digging yielded Eleventh Dream Day. The really well-stocked stations might have even had a record or two from the Revolving Paint Dream. With all this, it’s no wonder there was … Continue reading One for Friday: Dreams So Real, “Rough Night in Jericho”

College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 18 and 17

18. “Back on the Breadline” by Hunters & Collectors Hunters & Collectors formed in the early nineteen-eighties in Australia, quickly building a strong reputation as a propulsive live act. Except for those with an instinctive skill for combing the imports section of their local record store, the band didn’t really register in the U.S. until I.R.S. Records signed them up, probably inspired by the surprise success of Midgnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust briefly created a intense record company craving for all things that could be accurately described as both Aussie and epic. I.R.S. took the band’s 1987 album What’s a … Continue reading College Countdown: First Billboard Top 20 Modern Rock Tracks, Fall 1988, 18 and 17

Spectrum Check

Spectrum Culture was back in full wing this week, which meant that my words were all over the place as well. I was especially busy on the movie review front. First I weighed in on a highly problematic drama built around grief and guilt and contrived tension. We’re in that weird stasis zone in between the end of year Oscar fodder (much of which I can’t get screeners of because they’re being highly protective of pirating, even though they send them out as freely as Bed Bath and Beyond coupons to major critics and guild members) and the launch of … Continue reading Spectrum Check

One for Friday: The Ocean Blue, “Between Something and Nothing”

Back when I was playing their debut album off of the new releases shelf, I wonder if I knew that the band the Ocean Blue was from Hershey, Pennsylvania. As I’ve mentioned before in my best aggrieved tone of walked-to-school-in-three-feet-of-snow-uphill-both-ways of self-satisfied lamentation, we didn’t have ready access to Wikipedia pages and other online resources for the bands we played. There were all sorts of routes we did have for accumulating information, from magazine articles to the finer print of an album’s liner notes, but enough of the bands we played were obscure enough that missing (or not taking notice … Continue reading One for Friday: The Ocean Blue, “Between Something and Nothing”

Antin, Duplass and Duplass, Fellini, La Cava, Ray

Cyrus (Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass, 2010). After establishing themselves as slightly cheekier members of the mumblecore movement with the fun, cleverly self-referential Baghead, the Duplass brothers made their first venture into a film with actors carrying impressive resumes with them with the genially bleak relationship comedy Cyrus. John C. Reilly plays a despondent guy who begins to emerge from his post-divorce funk when he stumbles into a relationship with a beautiful woman played by Marisa Tomei. Matters are complicated, however, by her dependent son played by Jonah Hill, in one of his first real attempts at breaking the typecasting … Continue reading Antin, Duplass and Duplass, Fellini, La Cava, Ray