Wes Anderson knows who he is. it’s not as if he’s oblivious to his own artistic peculiarities: the mix of bone-dry humor and cartoonish tomfoolery, the characterizations so broad they actually feel more authentic than more restrained renderings, and, above … Continue reading Now Playing — Asteroid City
Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards, 1975). As nineteen-seventies New Hollywood was peaking, Robert Mitchum returned to his natural habitat. Mitchum stars as Philip Marlowe in an adaption of Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel, Farewell, My Lovely, which had gotten a couple … Continue reading Then Playing — Farewell, My Lovely; Carefree; Yes, God, Yes
INDIGO DE SOUZA All of This Will End (Saddle Creek) — All of This Will End, the third album from Asheville, North Carolina resident Indigo De Souza, is effusive in its caustic cacophonies. De Souza is relentlessly candid in her … Continue reading Medium Rotation — All of This Will End; The First Two Pages of Frankenstein
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. Sometimes I think every movie trailer should introduce close-ups of all the actors introducing themselves in character. … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Magnolia teaser trailer
32. The Cure, The Head on the Door (1985) It seemed the Cure were at an end. Post-punk upstarts on their 1979 debut, Three Imaginary Boys, the band rapidly evolved into trailblazers of goth rock on subsequent albums. That process … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #32 and #31
TCM Fans Are Right to Worry by Josef Adalian It was probably inevitable that the rampage of the wrecking ball serving as Warner Bros. Discovery CEO would eventually reach Turner Classic Movies, the one network that deserves to be part … Continue reading Outside Reading — Louis, I Think This Is the End of a Beautiful Friendship edition
The next Guided by Voices album, Welshpool Frillies, is scheduled for release in July. It is their second full-length album this year. They also released two studio albums last year and two the year before that. They released three studio … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Guided By Voices, “Meet the Star”
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. As we prepare to … Continue reading Laughing Matters — SCTV, “Check Please”
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. There are many reasons I feel fortunate in my timing in … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Fantastic Four Annual #15 by Doug Moench and George Pérez
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. Paula Adbul had a booming career as … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Knocked Out”
Coffee for Two 