Category: Film

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I had a fairly light week on Spectrum Culture, in part because the film I chose for this week never came through. As I recall, it had something to do with Wisconsin. Sorry I couldn’t write about you, native state. So I had only one full-length review this week: Willy Mason’s Carry On. He’s one of those performers who first edged onto my personal radar because of some gushing write-ups in Mojo magazine, which contributed to my take on him perhaps becoming overly concerned with the relative success he’s had in the U.K. That’s what happens when I don’t actually … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Forty-Eight

Dan Seeger

#48 — Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963) Eight years before Peter Bogdanovich’s exceptional adaptation of The Last Picture Show, writer Larry McMurtry had his first dalliance with the silver screen when his debut novel, 1961’s Horseman, Pass By, was transformed into Hud. This film holds a defining star turn by Paul Newman and an astonishing, Oscar-winning performance by Patricia Neal. It also inspired a vital early essay by Pauline Kael in which she laid bare her own conflicted feelings about the work in such compelling terms that it was one of the cornerstones of her legend and could legitimately lay claim … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Forty-Eight

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

There were plenty of my upstart opinions flung around digitally this week at Spectrum Culture. Among the film reviews, there was my take on a new indie thriller, the sort of neo-noir that had a momentary spell of prominence in the mid-nineties. That’s not to imply that this new effort was outdated. Instead, it’s major sin was its unrelenting dullness. I’ve been sitting on a fair number of albums from late 2012 while still picking up new releases to review, and that stockpiling led to a pair of pieces this past week. I reviewed the second full-length from the Joy … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Top Ten Movies of 2012 — Number Eight

Dan Seeger

I hedged a bit when I first wrote about Magic Mike, noting that the final act had problems. I stand by that, but as time has passed, I find I care less and less about where the movie sags and more about its thrilling thrust. Inspired in part by star Channing Tatum’s own experience as a male stripper, the film makes this hedonistic world appear both unbearably sleazy and wickedly intoxicating, often in the same gasped breath. In that way, it races along the same track as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, but Anderson’s vivid sprawl is replaced by director … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2012 — Number Eight

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Carax, Davies, Godard, Huston, Lord and Miller

Dan Seeger

21 Jump Street (Phil Lord and Chris Miller, 2012). This adaptation of the ludicrous nineteen-eighties television series about cops undercover in high school (one of the first hits for the Fox network) was met with surprising appreciation by the critical community when it was released last spring. I can certainly understand why its metafictional comedy may have been a welcome surprise, but it’s still more ragged and predictable than it is shrewd and effective. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have nice interplay as the requisite mismatched cops working together, and there’s something refreshing about the inversion of stereotypes, with the … Continue reading Carax, Davies, Godard, Huston, Lord and Miller

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I had a busy week over at Spectrum Culture. I usually lead off this recap with the pieces I wrote for the film section, but given yesterday’s One for Friday post in this space spring directly from the new music review I wrote, it seems more appropriate to begin there. I often pick up releases from the bands that endure from my college radio days since I figure I have a little more authority in writing about them. That rarely results in getting the chance to celebrate a genuinely great records, but that’s exactly the pleasure I had with the … Continue reading Spectrum Check