Author: Dan Seeger

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A Week of Fridays: Candyland, “Fountain O’ Youth”

Dan Seeger

I’ve gone record shopping with Steve Senski, and it’s like watching Albert Pujols hit or Ray Allen sink three-pointers. Actually, those comparisons, while accurate, don’t suit him very well. It’s like watching David Cronenberg arrange a mound of fleshy gore just so for a shot. That’s better. It’s like watching a master at work is my point. There was a time when he was devoted to owning every release listed in the fourth edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide, and he came shockingly close to the goal. He knows music, and knows it well. These days he presides over … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: Candyland, “Fountain O’ Youth”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

When last we did this check, I was a meager contributor to the Spectrum Culture site. This week was a far different matter, with my words cropping up all over the place. First, there was my latest contribution to our WTF feature. My previous outing, I opted for horror films, but this time I went for one that was scary in an entirely different way: Otto Preminger’s 1968 disaster Skidoo. If only I could have watched it anew before writing, but the Preminger estate works overtime to keep this one as far from the public eye as possible. Another bit … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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A Week of Fridays: An Introduction

Dan Seeger

Tomorrow I leave for a week. I’m not going far, but, as a matter of choice, I’m not going to have access to the Wild West shootout that is The Interweb. I was in a similar situation right around this time last year, and I chose to let this site go dark for a week. After some consideration, I decided on a different approach this time around. For one thing, I don’t want to disrupt the marathon countdown that I’m right in the middle of. But I also wanted to use my absence as impetus to do something I’ve been … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: An Introduction

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Boorman, Capra, Jarecki, Koster, Lang

Dan Seeger

No Highway in the Sky (Henry Koster, 1951). This murky little thriller casts James Stewart as an American engineer working with Great Britain’s Royal Aircraft Establishment. He’s convinced that the design of the flagship Reindeer airliner is tragically flawed, causing the tail to fall off after a certain number of hours in flight. His worries comes to an head when he’s taking a transatlantic journey on the plane in question and discovers it’s nearing the fatal number of logged hours. It’s a fun premise, but the film unfortunately lacks either the ratcheted up suspense of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller or … Continue reading Boorman, Capra, Jarecki, Koster, Lang

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The Unwatchables: Alice in Wonderland

Dan Seeger

No director is in more dire need of a change of pace than Tim Burton. He needs some little story with two, maybe three characters just sitting around a simple, largely unadorned room. They should talk to one another, quiet little chats about their place in the world. There should be no music score and no special effects. Maybe then, just maybe, he’d be able to find his way back to making a movie with an ounce of humanity in it again. Until then, it’s safe to presume that he’ll follow his worrisome trend of grabbing onto well-established properties and … Continue reading The Unwatchables: Alice in Wonderland

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

Not much from me at Spectrum Culture this week, but I’m pretty fond of the one thing I did write. Specifically I wrote a review of the music compilation Those Shocking Shaking Days – Indonesia Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk: 1970 – 1978. I’m not sure about the quality of my work–it’s still way to early for me to give it an honest assessment–but it was fun to tap into my Mojo reader muscle memory and try to come up with something that could run in their reissue section. On the basis of all the writing I need to … Continue reading Spectrum Check