Category: Film

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Carpenter, Cronenberg, Ford, Truffaut, Wright

Dan Seeger

Hanna (Joe Wright, 2011). Well, I’ll say this for director Joe Wright: He’s not going to be pinned down. He made his feature debut with a Jane Austen adaptation and followed that with a prestige picture based on a Ian McEwan novel. Then came a fairly drab issues picture largely about the homeless community in Los Angeles. The bank shot away from that reunites him with Atonement Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan for a bizarre action film about a teenage girl who was raised in isolation to be an unstoppable assassin. The film is balanced awkwardly between stylish action and moody … Continue reading Carpenter, Cronenberg, Ford, Truffaut, Wright

Film, MusicLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week, I contributed to our List Inconsequential feature on badass album covers by writing about the Sonic Youth album that includes their fierce collaboration with Chuck D and, even better, helped make possible their eventual, inadvertent and unbelievably cool collaboration with Christina Aguilera. I also wrote about the latest album from the Felice Brothers, one of way too many bands with the word “Brothers” in their name that emerged at roughly the same time. The new record was pretty good, though, even if it made me think anew about (and do fresh research on) the Creepiest Place on EarthTM. … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Conway, Garbus, von Sternberg, Weir, Yates

Dan Seeger

The Hucksters (Jack Conway, 1947). Based on Frederic Wakeman’s novel from the previous year, The Hucksters burrows into the intersection between advertising and media as a sharp-witted, upstanding man returns to the former field after years away. Clark Gable plays Victor Norman, a crafty operator who views his soap company overlord largely with sardonic superiority. The portions of the film that survey the ever-shifting terrain of the radio environment are uniformly strong, thanks in no small part to the boisterously effective performance of Sydney Greenstreet as the corporate bigwig who sets everyone but Gable’s Norman aquiver. The stretches that deal … Continue reading Conway, Garbus, von Sternberg, Weir, Yates

Film, MusicLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

The first thing I had up this week was a review of the new album from Vetiver. I had a rough time finding a way into the piece, but I must admit that I like the Wes Anderson reference in the middle of it. On the movie front, I reviewed the African film Viva Riva! The title of that film has been affixed to our fridge with a magnet for weeks now. We read a rave review in Hollywood Reporter and tore out the headline to make sure I wouldn’t forget about when the chance to review it arose. I … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Thirty

Dan Seeger

#30 — Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) Woody Allen had been directing movies for twenty years by the time he made Crimes and Misdemeanors, which might be a contributing factor to my sense that the film is a sort of cinematic final exam. It’s not that Allen had anything to prove, having already signed his name to multiple masterpieces. He may have been coming off of a pair of critical and commercial misfires–September and Another Woman–but the eighties had been an especially fruitful time for him. There was no familial scandal sullying his reputation, no prolonged stretch of mediocre … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Thirty