It’s a bad sign that my favorite moment from last night’s Academy Awards telecast was when Cate Blanchett called one of the nominees in the category she was presenting “gross.” Right before presenting that nominee with the award, of course. … Continue reading All that’s gold does not glitter
44. R.E.M., Green When R.E.M. released the album Green in 1988, fans immediately took note of the greater directness to the songs, especially when it came to some of the political messages the Athens band was trying to convey. It even marked the first time the band included printed lyrics with the packaging of the album, although it was only for one song, the potent “World Leader Pretend.” With that in mind, one of the interpretations of the album’s title is that its a reference to the environmental movement that several of the band members were becoming more deeply involved … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 44 and 43
This week, I made my usual contribution to the movie review section, offering up an assessment of Putty Hill, a film that has, in my opinion, some clear forefathers. It’s the sort of lo-fi cinema wonder that gets extra credit when it’s discovered at a film festival, where its unassuming nature always feels a little fresher. It’s very good, but has some of the hard-to-dodge flaws built into its understated methodology. Then there were a couple pile-on pieces that included my humble contribution. The first was the latest List Inconsequential, which focused on books that elicited tears. I’m not sure … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Part of the job of the Music Director at the college radio station during my days as a student was providing brief reviews of all the new releases. These upper left hand were handwritten onto little labels, approximately three inches by half-an-inch, that were then affixed to the upper left corner of the album cover. The limited space necessitated extreme brevity in the reviews (except for a couple of Music Directors I can think of who had remarkably compact handwriting that was also so legible it looked like it was produced by a special typewriter) making it sort of the … Continue reading One for Friday: Debbie Harry, “Liar Liar”
My standing tradition is to post this little exercise is Oscar wishcasting on the day of the actual ceremony. I don’t want to preempt the recurring feature that resides on that day (especially since one of the two albums featured this week is a big personal favorite), so we’ll jump the gun a bit. It’s not like there’s some hallowed sanctity to the timing of this, after all. Having made my opinion on the best films of the cinematic year 2010 abundantly clear over the course of the past few weeks, I want to turn my attention to the other … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or If I Had a Ballot
Ree Dolly is a teenage girl living in the Missouri Ozarks. Her family has a modest shack, a smattering of belongings and a distinct lack of money. Her father is completely absent, and her mother exists in a haze of … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number One
Twenty years ago, I thought of the Coen brothers as cheeky titans of upending genres. They started their mutual career with a crime film, a broad comedy and a gangster picture, each of them adhering to the tropes of their … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Two
Beginning with a novel by Dennis Lehane that was adapted into a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis, director Martin Scorsese built an intentional lurid psychological melodrama filled with existential trick shots and mental trap doors. After a decade of intensely focused … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Three
46. Slammin’ Watusis, Kings of Noise Some bands try to cultivate an air of mystery, intentionally remaining cryptic about the inspiration for their songs and sounds, insisting that they don’t want to influence the interpretations of individual fans or simply … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 46 and 45
I’ve had a little more modest output over at Spectrum Culture the past couple of weeks. I reviewed a Russian film called How I Ended This Summer about a burgeoning conflict between a couple of technicians at a remote weather station. Unfortunately, the frigid terrain they moved through looked a little too much like what was outside of our Carolina windows at the time. Luckily, that’s changed. Then this past week, I tapped into that distant part of me that stared down the copy of Dry that we received at the campus radio station nearly twenty years ago and tried … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Coffee for Two 