When writing about the most impressive movies, it’s always tempting to to ascribe levels of nobility and import that may not actually be present. The impact of a movie is shaped by the feelings it stirs up, after all, and … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Seven
A couple weeks ago, I posted the 100th One for Friday entry. It came and went without me noticing, even though I tend to be hopelessly geeky about such things. With so many of these weekly wallows in sonic nostalgia, I can easily lose track of which songs I’ve already celebrated with a few hundred typed words. A few weeks ago, I even broke down and worked up a spreadsheet to make sure I don’t repeatedly indulge in the same tired story about, say, a a crazy album cover being discussed on air during a year-end countdown show. Turns out, … Continue reading One for Friday: The Jack Rubies, “Be With You”
One of the things I like about The Fighter is the plainness of its title. The lack of adornment is nicely representative of the straightforwardness of its storytelling, the directness of its performances and the confident ease of the directing. … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Eight
A dead owl half-buried in snow and squalid apartments and scarily lifeless strip clubs and forbidden, secret love and a beach littered with corpses and smokestacks billowing poison into the sky and bipolar disorder and melted ice cream and a … Continue reading They think the future’s bright as halogen, we know it’s pretty bleak
Take any minute or two of Lesley Manville’s performance in Another Year and strip it of all context. Even in total isolation, it would be immediately recognizable as a character from a Mike Leigh film. She exhibits a haggardness so … Continue reading All this, but no surprises for this year’s girl
Despite the mad rush to anoint the film a staggering excavation of a generation transformed and defined by a different type of interconnectivity than any that’s come before–a charge seemingly led by film critics and others with only the most … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Nine
50. Liquid Pink, Liquid Pink That cities that proved to be fertile group for college rock bands throughout the eighties often had characteristic sounds, whether the working class rock ‘n’ roll tinged with punk that marked the likes of The … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 50 and 49
In an action that somehow felt like an overdue fulfillment of a marital obligation, I devoted a wall of words to extolling the virtues (if that’s the right word) of the willfully trashy, perhaps mildly satirical 1990 horror film Luther the Geek. Doing so meant a fresh viewing of the film, which means that I’ve now see it more often than many films that I truly love and consider great works of art. Of course, I’ve also seen Summer School more often than many films I truly love and consider great works of art so I shouldn’t complain. I also … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I spent a lot of top hopscotching across different genres and subgenres as I solidified my music fandom during my teenage years. I attribute this, in part, to my first exposure to radio coming during the nineteen-seventies, when programmers were so perplexed by the rapidly evolving music scene that it seemed as though practically anything could climb to top of the singles chart. There was a certain aural wanderlust that defined my taste, as I took extended spins around the dance floor with local radio stations that specialized in country, Top 40 and even adult contemporary (the canvas can do … Continue reading One for Friday: The Strawberry Zots, “Waste of Time”
#46 — The Killing Fields (Roland Joffé, 1984) One of the unfortunate tendencies of filmmakers centering their art on foreign cultures or besieged minorities is a default towards protagonists who stand outside of the group being depicted, with a particular … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Forty-Six
