The Tree of Life couldn’t have come from anyone other than Terrence Malick. The primacy of directorial authorship is touted for all sorts of filmmakers, but Malick moves with such a distinct creative rhythm that it’s difficult to imagine anyone … Continue reading Burn bright through the night, two pockets lead the way
Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977). There’s certainly no reason to expect anything less than inspired lunacy from a Werner Herzog movie, especially one he made back in the nineteen-seventies when thew rules of cinema were falling away like worn paint from a waterlogged wall. Stroszek follows a German man whose perilous romance with a prostitute causes him to move with her and his elderly neighbor to, of all places, rural Wisconsin. From there, Herzog’s examination of the general travails of the downtrodden trying to forge better lives takes on the added harsh tinge of the false promise of the American dream … Continue reading Bailey and Barbato, Bogdanovich, Herzog, Kurosawa, Margolis
14. Camper Van Beethoven, Key Lime Pie There were a handful of albums that predated my arrival at the radio station by only a year or two that I was especially regretful about. I would have loved to reach … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 14
Just a couple things from me went up this week. I reviewed the new album from Memory Tapes, which was very strong. It’s actually one of those albums that makes wish I had a radio shift since most of the songs on it would be perfect to drop in the middle of a set to enliven it. I also tapped out another very positive review, this time for the movie Terri, which contains what I think is John C. Reilly’s best performance to date. Strangely, I wasn’t supposed to receive this movie. The promotional folks said they weren’t sending out … Continue reading Spectrum Check
By American legal definition, I was barely an adult when the song “I’m an Adult Now” was released, which naturally made me the perfect target for its rapturous celebration of all things reckless and young. Well, that’s not quite true. When the song was first released in 1986, I was stick a couple years away when I could jump pell mell into all sorts of mature decisions, like voting, getting married or, scariest of all, joining the military. When its rerecorded version was released on the Love Junk album in the fall of 1988, with the attention-getting imprimatur of producer … Continue reading One for Friday: The Pursuit of Happiness, “I’m an Adult Now”
#26 — Hairspray (John Waters, 1988) The first time I saw Hairspray, it was in black-and-white. I was at the house of a college friend, watching the movie on his big console TV with suspect technical dependability. The color wasn’t … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Six
“I straightened up, took some more air, bent down, touched it, and pulled on the part that was showing. It came up without any trouble, and I sat down and went over it, brushing off the dirt. It was a bone, a human pelvis, and there was not any doubt about it. That’s a damn strange thing to be inside of somebody, I said to myself. And it was, and it is. What I know about skeletons has to do with animals and fish, and I had never seen anything like this except in the medical and first-aid books my … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
We had a long holiday weekend and a pronounced need to purge our overloaded DVR with some of the uglier offerings taking up space. Under those circumstances, our household holds the belief that there’s one clear avenue to follow. We … Continue reading Bad Movie Night — The Sorcerer’s Apprentice/Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
15. The B-52’s, Cosmic Thing My knowledge of the B-52’s was limited enough in the summer of 1989, when their album Cosmic Thing hit the station, that I didn’t realize how difficult it probably was for the band to buckle … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 15
Coffee for Two 