Bottoms (Emma Seligman, 2023). In a manner that recalls the structural alchemy of her ingenious feature directorial debut, Shiva Baby, which took an uncomfortable experience at a mournful gathering and rendered it with the white-knuckle intensity of the greatest cinematic … Continue reading Then Playing — Bottoms; The Window; Pushover
These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. There were a few ironclad rules of … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Back to Paradise”
10. R.E.M., Reckoning (1984) R.E.M. got off to an impressive start with their debut LP, Murmur. The quartet from Athens, Georgia made the record with only modest expectations and a keen awareness that their spare, cerebral music wasn’t exactly aligned … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #10
Post-Punk Legend Leads Fight for Clean Water as Britain’s ‘Sewage Czar’ by Stephen Castle As part of the Saturday Profile series, The New York Times presents this article about Feargal Sharkey, former frontman of the Undertones and relatively short-term solo … Continue reading Outside Reading — A Good Heart edition
“Shame” feels inevitable. There was little doubt that Lauren Mayberry, the effortlessly charismatic lead singer of the Scottish band Chvrches, would someday venture out with solo material, and there was also no reason to expect that the sound of that … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Lauren Mayberry, “Shame”
Since great television comedy always begins with the script, this series of posts considers the individual episodes that have claimed the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series over the years. The wise wagerer would have bet … Continue reading Golden Words — Frasier, “The Good Son”
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. In 2011, DC Comics embarked on the most ambitious initiative in … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — O.M.A.C. by Keith Giffen and Dan Didio
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I’ve written many, many times about the overwhelming appeal Marvel Comics had for me as a kid, … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — The Marvel Subscriber’s Club
Fall (Scott Mann, 2022). The premise of Fall is so perfectly suited for a feat of inventive B-movie storytelling that its relatively drab execution proves doubly disappointing. Working from a script he co-wrote (with Jonathan Frank), director Scott Mann brings … Continue reading Then Playing — Fall; Air; The Mighty Quinn
11. Love and Rockets, Earth, Sun, Moon (1987) “After the last tour, which was forty-five dates and a long tour by our standards, we made a decision to make a more acoustic-sounding album and get away from the rock ‘n’ … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #11
Coffee for Two 