#28 — Lost in America (Albert Brooks, 1985) Albert Brooks is very funny, but that compliment, high as it is, can be paid to many people. The thing that truly sets the finest work of Brooks apart is its fearless … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Eight
Portions of Woody Allen’s 1996 film Everyone Says I Love You take place in Paris, including the scene in the closing moments that finds Allen’s character dancing with his ex-wife, played by Goldie Hawn, along the Seine. What starts as … Continue reading The home of Piaf and Chevalier must have done something right to get passion this way
…And last but not least…do I have to say his name? Do I have to speak his name? Do I have to say his name? In this corner: the king of the world, the master of the universe. Weighing in at 260 pounds, the Big Man, Clarence Clemons. That’s how Bruce Springsteen touted the venerable saxophone player during the band introductions that arrived at the midway point of the typically robust performance of “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” captured on the majestic Live: 1975-1985 box set. I listened to Springsteen’s music at near-obsessive levels during my high school years, paying special … Continue reading Clarence Clemons, 1942 – 2011
17. Couch Flambeau, Ghostride I’m not sure if we’d coined the term “Dairy Rock” by 1989, but the staffers of 90FM were definitely devoted to it by then. That was the all-encompassing name we gave to the music that derived … Continue reading College Countdown, 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 17
This week, I contributed to our List Inconsequential feature on badass album covers by writing about the Sonic Youth album that includes their fierce collaboration with Chuck D and, even better, helped make possible their eventual, inadvertent and unbelievably cool collaboration with Christina Aguilera. I also wrote about the latest album from the Felice Brothers, one of way too many bands with the word “Brothers” in their name that emerged at roughly the same time. The new record was pretty good, though, even if it made me think anew about (and do fresh research on) the Creepiest Place on EarthTM. … Continue reading Spectrum Check
This weekly feature is usually devoted to a song that I swooned over during, as I put it, “my college radio days,” by which I mean the span of time when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and spending most of my time at 90FM, that institution’s student-run station. There is, however, a whole second life I had in college radio, working as the advisor and General Manager for WPRK-FM at Rollins College in central Florida. In additional to all the other opportunities and benefits this job shift brought, it gave me a chance to … Continue reading One for Friday: Firewater, “Psychopharmacology”
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. When the first Alpha Flight series was released, there was no … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Alpha Flight by John Byrne
#29 — Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) There’s something unique about the sedate assurance Peter Weir brings to his films, especially when the works in question are at their most bleakly lovely and elegiacal. I remember reading an interview with Weir … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Nine
The Hucksters (Jack Conway, 1947). Based on Frederic Wakeman’s novel from the previous year, The Hucksters burrows into the intersection between advertising and media as a sharp-witted, upstanding man returns to the former field after years away. Clark Gable plays Victor Norman, a crafty operator who views his soap company overlord largely with sardonic superiority. The portions of the film that survey the ever-shifting terrain of the radio environment are uniformly strong, thanks in no small part to the boisterously effective performance of Sydney Greenstreet as the corporate bigwig who sets everyone but Gable’s Norman aquiver. The stretches that deal … Continue reading Conway, Garbus, von Sternberg, Weir, Yates
Kelly Reichardt’s new film Meek’s Cutoff stands in direct opposition to almost every trend and tendency in American film. It is slow where most other films are fast, emotionally contained where other films are effusive and showy, deliberately serious where … Continue reading Your grass it is turning black, there’s no water in your well
Coffee for Two 