As part of our ongoing consumer service for those who may be considering buying comic books published nearly forty years ago on the basis of entirely outdated promotional boasts found nestled within the pages of mighty Marvel mags, we examine … Continue reading Mighty Marvel Checklist Hyperbole Check: The Incredible Hulk #138
Danny Boyle makes the worst movies that I kinda like. 127 Hours is drawn from the actual experience of Aron Ralston, an outdoors enthusiast who gained fame in 2003 when a solo excursion to Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon went awry, leaving … Continue reading When all the fires are fanned, when we’re shucking our plans, when we’re too weak to stand on our two feet
68. Adult Net, The Honey Tangle Considering the legendary contentiousness of The Fall frontman Mark E. Smith, it’s wonder the college radio top forth isn’t fully stocked with splinter groups from his acclaimed art-punk outfit. But then it’s quality not … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 68 and 67
When I started at the college radio station, the 90FM music library was divided into three sections, each designated by one of the first three letters of the alphabet. The A Stacks were filled with the artists that were best-known to broader audiences. This was where U2 records resided, for example (and this was before the library was purged of its classic rock, so everyone from Aerosmith to ZZ Top helped fill out this area). The B Stacks was where the titans of college radio had their records filed, with the likes of Love and Rockets and The Replacements. Everything … Continue reading One for Friday: The Connells, “Fun & Games”
Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie, 2009). I fully expected that Ritchie’s first real stab at crafting a blockbuster entertainment would be an over-directed mess. Instead, it’s fairly drab, a generic exercise in filling the screen with bigger, louder, grander nonsense at every turn. Of course, it’s still a mess, a clumsy attempt at making the most famous detective in literary history relevant for a modern audience that’s more interested in quipping tomfoolery than feats of logic. Robert Downey, Jr. plays the title role with the sort of chomping fussiness that’s too often the defining characteristic of his acting, and Jude Law … Continue reading Eastwood, Kusama, Ritchie, Roeg, Vallée
What do you you say about a twenty-six-year-old girl with a terminal illness? That she’s beautiful and brilliant? That she loves Liz Phair and Polaroids, video cameras and Jake Gyllenhaal? In Love and Other Drugs, Anne Hathaway plays Maggie Murdock, … Continue reading One day things will be much better but I don’t really want to write another verse
Today, I will humbly direct you elsewhere. Continue reading Ain’t you hungry for success, success, success, success
#5 — The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) It didn’t occur to me at the time, but, looking back, Jonathan Demme wasn’t the most obvious choice to helm the film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s grim novel about an … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Five
70. Jesus and Mary Chain, Automatic If it seems like it took the brothers Reid to put out their third album as the Jesus and Mary Chain, that may simply be because they’re taking on more of the responsibilities of crafting their music themselves. They followed the experiments with drum machines on their previous release Darklands with extensive use of bass parts played from synthesizers on the Automatic. The mechanical drive of the backbeat becomes the perfect means to showcase their trademark gorgeous fog of thick guitar sound. The lands they survey are still dark, though that’s not necessarily the … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 70 and 69
Coffee for Two 