Spectrum Check

This week my writerly paw prints were in a few different corners of Spectrum Culture. First, I had a music review of a new reunion album, which I openly acknowledged that I was selecting because I’m one of the older guys on the staff. I usually approach such releases with a hearty dose of skepticism, although I’ve been pleasantly surprised in the past. Not this time around, as my honest assessment was fairly dire, an especially unpleasant scenario given that the band in question has at least one true classic to their credit. On the film side, I reviewed the … Continue reading Spectrum Check

Kosinski, McQueen, Melville, Reichardt, Young

Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010). “You’re messing with my Zen thing, man!” Is there another actor working today besides Jeff Bridges who could deliver a line like that and make it sound plausible? In the never-ending quest to mine every cinematic artifact from the past three to four decades and turn it into a sparkling new franchise, Disney delivers the sequel, almost three decades in the making, that almost no one waited anxiously to see. What’s more, someone apparently decided that the best way to honor the zippy innocence of the original digital groundbreaker was to heap a whole bunch … Continue reading Kosinski, McQueen, Melville, Reichardt, Young

Na na na na na na sorrow, everything’s gonna be all right

I live in Asheville, North Carolina. For the fourth straight year, Asheville has shared or won outright the title of Beer City USA for four years running, which makes an awful lot of sense considering there are a multitude of first–rate craft breweries within a fifteen minute drive of our front door. Besides the homegrown brewers, within the past few months it’s been announced that New Belgium, Sierra Nevada and Oskar Blues have all announced that they’ll be opening new facilities in the area to handle their respective East coast operations. With all that activity, and the accompanying growing suspicion … Continue reading Na na na na na na sorrow, everything’s gonna be all right

Spectrum Check

It can be frustrating writing reviews from my relatively remote outpost (of course, there are greater frustrations here these days than that minor inconvenience). I’m reliant on studios that are willing to send out DVD screeners, and that’s a little harder to come by in the day of prolific online piracy. There are often weeks when the film I’m most interested (or best equipped) to review flatly isn’t available to me. And then there are weeks like this one. I tried and tried and tried to select a film from the limited release offerings that might have a screener and … Continue reading Spectrum Check

Programming Note

Despite all the best of intentions, I simply don’t have the time, energy or necessary current mental functionality to hold up my obligation to provide a new installment of College Countdown today. In fact I may need to cook up some general low-impact content for the whole week ahead. That’s how thoroughly my annual excursion into the land of total cognitive exhaustion has done a number on me. My apologies. Continue reading Programming Note