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
In adapting Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of graphic novels following the romantic exploits of Toronto layabout Scott Pilgrim, director Edgar Wright presumably had at least six different titles to choose from. Settling on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is perfectly … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — Number Ten
I’m always a little sheepish when I begin the process of surveying the movie year just past. Given my physical placement in the world, I lack the ability to see all of the movies of any given calendar year before the December page is made obsolete at the moment when tradition dictates that Auld Lang Syne is sung. I don’t have the New York or Los Angeles luxury of the movies being rushed to my vicinity to qualify for year-end awards, nor do I have critic credentials sufficient to motivate studios to send me stacks upon stacks of screener copies. … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2010 — An Introduction
This simple way to describe Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is that its about both ends of a relationship: the beginning that’s full of promise and inspiration, and the ending that is like a crushing blow delivered over and over again. … Continue reading It’s the tattooed broken promise that I hide beneath my sleeve
52. The Tragically Hip, Up to Here Maybe it’s the fact that the character Mike Nesmith played on the Monkees always wore a tuque that drew the Canadian band The Tragically Hip to him. More specifically, the group with a … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 52 and 51
It was another fairly busy week for me over at Spectrum Culture. I contribute my first offering to the Film Dunce feature, which invites writers to watch and consider seminal movies that had previously eluded them. I confessed to having neglected the debut feature from Mike Nichols, the film adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Then I proceeded to rave about it to such a degree that it made it doubly embarrassing that I’d avoided it for so long. Then there are new movies, which led me to When We Leave, which was Germany’s official entry for … Continue reading Spectrum Check
There are always going to bands and performers that are inextricably linked with their eras. For me, The Cure represents one side of the nineteen-eighties and R.E.M. is the flip side. Nirvana’s Nevermind dirges are so embedded in the early nineties that it’s almost a shame that the album wasn’t actually called The Waning Days of Bush I or some such thing. Much of this music is still great, and even has some qualities that could be called timeless, but they also speak so clearly for their musical moment that playing them causes calendar pages to flip back like a … Continue reading One for Friday: The Smithereens, “Kiss Your Tears Away”
