Author: Dan Seeger

FilmLeave a comment

Almodóvar, Campion, DeBlois and Sanders, Lumet, Pontecorvo

Dan Seeger

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988). Almodóvar’s international breakthrough is almost quaint in its kitschy simplicity when held up against the rich, lush films that have sprung from his off-kilter cranium in recent years. It involves a tangled web of romantic and sexual relationships, largely converging in a Spanish apartment that has a convenient batch of sedative-laden gazpacho in the fridge. There evidence of Almodóvar’s sterling eye, especially in the earlier scenes, but it’s mostly an engagingly casual farce, played with a relaxation that feels nicely cultural. Carmen Maura is especially good in the lead … Continue reading Almodóvar, Campion, DeBlois and Sanders, Lumet, Pontecorvo

FilmLeave a comment

Top Fifty Films of the 80s — An Introduction

Dan Seeger

Yes, I’m really going to do this. When I tracked through my selections for the fifty best films of the the ten year span that began with January 1, 2000, the timing made sense. It aligned with the pending spin of the third digit on the calendar’s odometer and everyone was cooking up lists intended to summarize the entertainment of “the aughts.” When I repeated the exercise with the films of the 1990s, it had its own warped logic (or so I convinced myself) as I was honoring and making a sort of effort to preserve the prior bout of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — An Introduction

Music1 Comment

One for Friday: Possum Dixon, “Watch the Girl Destroy Me”

Dan Seeger

Listen, we’ve all been there, reeling from some disastrous relationship. And for most college radio DJs, there are probably some wounds that are fairly fresh. So I always had a strange admiration for those bands that could tap into those feelings, not just because I could often relate to those songs, but because, on some level, I recognized that it was a great way for those artists to earn some airplay that may have otherwise eluded them. I’m not saying it’s all cold calculation. Many of the bands we played at the station were populated by individuals whose ages were … Continue reading One for Friday: Possum Dixon, “Watch the Girl Destroy Me”

Everything ElseLeave a comment

Banksy, Jackson, Parker, Scorsese, Wright

Dan Seeger

The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009). So poorly conceived that it borders on tragic. Jackson and his regular collaborators adapt Alice Sebold’s acclaimed and beloved 2002 novel about a murdered teenage girl, demonstrating such a bizarre lack of empathy that whole film takes on an off-putting robotic sheen. The movie is senseless in every definition of the word, over-directed and utterly tone-deaf. The actors all seem to have stumbled in from other movies with Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci approaching satire in their broadly drawn roles, Rachel Weisz looking bored and Mark Wahlberg thoroughly perplexed. It is cluttered with garish … Continue reading Banksy, Jackson, Parker, Scorsese, Wright