#14 — The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985) I noted at the start of this traipse through a decade of movies that these are the films that were arguably most formative for me. These were the films that … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Fourteen
I never read Moneyball, the 2003 nonfiction bestseller by Michael Lewis that serves as the source material for Bennett Miller’s long-awaited follow-up to the wonderful Capote, but I didn’t come into the film entirely blind either. The film focuses on … Continue reading You can get tangled in a ball of rubber bands and twine
3. Violent Femmes, 3 While I’ll admit to loving that an album titled 3 landed in the third spot of the Top 90 chart, I swear that the tally wasn’t doctored to make that happen. Sure, I might find the temptation to finesse a ranking to accommodate such symmetry entirely irresistible at times, but accurate reporting prevailed in the matter of assembling this list. The scientific method employed in determining the Top 90 may have had some gaps in it, but I followed it assiduously. 3 is at #3 because #3 is where 3 belongs. 3 was the fourth album … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 3
My posted work came entirely from the movie beat this week. I started with a French film that was a little wisp of of a thing. It may have sometimes felt like a foreign film softened into an American sitcom but it also featured Gérard Depardieu, who remains a marvelous actor, at least in his mother tongue, despite his recent unseemly exploits that made him the fodder for silly jokes. I also reviews a documentary about the Black Power Movement of the late-sixties and early-seventies. It had some basic structural flaws, but much of the footage was amazing. Angela Davis, … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. Let me concede right up front that the term “youth” is … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: The Thing by Dan Slott and Andrea DiVito
R.E.M. had a lot of theoretical end-dates. I may be misremembering, but it seems like various band members used to speculate on the moment that they’d collectively decide to call it quits, pegging that date as roughly equivalent to their … Continue reading Resign yourself that radio’s gonna stay
The worst thing to emerge from the success of the 2009 movie The Hangover is the misconception that Todd Phillips makes good movies. Before that, the matter seemed to be fully settled, the opposite conclusion largely agreed upon across the … Continue reading The Unwatchables: Due Date
#15 — Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, 1980) Part of the appeal of subscribing to auteur theory is the sense of extra connectedness to the directors with the strongest cinematic presence. It’s easy to feel like watching a film is akin to getting concerted insight into worldviews, spiritual philosophies and political preferences. The collected work becomes a backward version of a Rorschach test, with very specific material being transformed by the viewer into something nebulous enough to project suppositions onto. While I realize the inherent fallibility of such a view, I also can’t help but fall for it when it … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Fifteen
4. Lou Reed, New York Lou Reed’s New York has the following instructive message amongst the liner notes: “This album was recorded and mixed at Media Sound, Studio B, N.Y.C., in essentially the order you have here. It’s meant to … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 4
Ah, here’s Spectrum Check, back at it’s regularly scheduled time. So the first piece I had go up this week happened as a direct result of the intervention of my friend, a fabulous babe who a generation of Madison music fans know as Casino Queen. Somewhere around the midpoint of my ongoing countdown of the best films of the nineteen-eighties, she emailed me with the gentle but firm assertion that our friendship might be in jeopardy if the 1981 cinematic extravaganza The Great Muppet Caper wasn’t included somewhere on the list. I sheepishly informed her that it indeed would not … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Coffee for Two 