#18 — You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan, 2000) I feel like I owe Laura Linney an apology. If you reattach ten years of torn-off calendar pages to the wall and find me back in the fall of 1999, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Eighteen
I was the Program Director at WWSP-90FM throughout the 1990-91 academic year, a span I shared a house with five other station “executive staff” members, a house we incongruously dubbed “The Terrordome.” I remember a lot of things about that house–including several messy, messy parties–but one of the clearest memories involves my bedroom being filled with records. At this time, the Program Director also held significant responsibility for the music that went into rotation at the radio station, and we were getting so much material that it was often a practical impossibility to review every new album at the station. … Continue reading One for Friday: The Soup Dragons, “Lovegod”
It’s been a while since we’ve ventured out the theater for a new film, a dry spell that will end this weekend. Here’s a hint as to which movie isn’t inspiring our forthcoming ticket purchases. I miss Buffy. (Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”) Continue reading I have ever so much money, I’m gorgeous and I can fly
Last week, I responded to a post at the In Contention blog celebrating the best picks the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made at their annual awards ceremony with my own version of the exercise. Certainly, we all knew that a follow up was inevitable, especially since, as much fun as it is to recall moment when the Oscar ceremony made you beam with satisfaction, it’s even more fun to rail against the misbegotten moments. So here’s the opposite of what we did last week: the worst selections made by the Academy during the 00s. Worst Best Picture: … Continue reading Stop right where you are, already you’ve gone too far
The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976). The film has Marlon Brando at the very beginning of his anything goes, deliberate insanity phase, and Jack Nicholson still wrapped in the energy of his wild genius phase (this film arrived in theaters almost exactly six months after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and just a couple months after he won his first Oscar). It’s a revisionist western, a style and genre that Arthur Penn had done quite well with a few years earlier. All this makes it equal parts surprising and sad to report that the resulting film is drab. The … Continue reading Howard and Williams, Kazan, Mamet, Penn, Weber
#19 — Born Into Brothels (Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, 2004) When evaluating documentaries, it’s easy to the conflate the worthiness of the subject with the quality of the filmmaking, which is why, for many years, Oscar pools could be … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Nineteen
We have a well guarded household. (Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”) Continue reading Ever Vigilant
#20 — Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005) Michael Haneke pulls no punches. The German-born and Austrian-raised director believe that films should have missions, usually to challenge and provoke. Watching his films gives the strong sense that he’d much rather leave an … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Twenty
By the time I reached my second radio home–my stay in commercial radio didn’t count as a home, I was just renting–I felt a little detached from music. I still listened, I still collected, I still tried, but it was incredibly difficult to stay in tune with new material. Like a lot of people, I suspect, I wound up largely sticking with familiar artists from my college days, even when their releases constituted an ongoing audio demonstration of the concept of diminishing returns. Without the constantly updated wall of new that resides someone in every good college radio station’s broadcast … Continue reading One for Friday: Death By Chocolate, “Magpie”
In lieu of a new balloon animal Jesus, I humbly submit the following: (Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”) Continue reading I don’t care what they may say, I don’t care what they may do
