Beers I Have Known: Toppling Goliath King Sue
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. I try not to get too caught up in the chase for beers … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Toppling Goliath King Sue
The New Releases Shelf — Out in the Storm
It causes me some amount of pain to acknowledge that an album with a distinctly nineteen-nineties alternative rock sound is a throwback. My aged bones ache a touch more heartily at the mere thought of it. But here we are … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Out in the Storm
Laughing Matters: The Ben Stiller Show, “Low Budget Tales of Cliched Horror”
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. I swear I’m not … Continue reading Laughing Matters: The Ben Stiller Show, “Low Budget Tales of Cliched Horror”
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 10
10. Midnight Oil, “Beds are Burning” Diesel and Dust, the sixth album from the Australian band Midnight Oil, had in origins in a tour they had undertaken the year before. In 1985, a group called the Warumpi Band released a … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 10
From the Archive — Flashback Friday: 1978
I think I’ve already dug through and shared all the old reviews I have that detail the usually dire outcomes with film adaptations of Stephen King’s work. In order to tie-in with this weekend’s big new movie — which reportedly … Continue reading From the Archive — Flashback Friday: 1978
One for Friday: Big Audio Dynamite, “Just Play Music!”
In this weekly feature, I invoke my days at college radio station quite a bit, especially those from my first year as an undergraduate. I mean it with utter sincerity and not an ounce of hyperbole when I celebrate everything … Continue reading One for Friday: Big Audio Dynamite, “Just Play Music!”
Now Playing — Dunkirk
Dunkirk is exactly the film Christopher Nolan needed to make at this point in his career. I’m not referring to whatever artistic compulsion the writer-director may have felt in his pulsing, creative soul. Instead, I mean this is the sort … Continue reading Now Playing — Dunkirk
Great Moments in Literature
“None of us could stand it if every place were a grizzled Chicago or a bilgy Los Angeles — towns, like Gotham, of genuine woven intricacy. We all need our simple, unambiguous, even factitious townscapes like mine. Places without challenge … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Now Playing — Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
There may be no clearer demonstration of the artistic failure of Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets than my exhausted disdain for nearly every bit of it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that … Continue reading Now Playing — Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Playing Catch-Up — Citizen Jane: Battle for the City; Concussion; The Debt
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (Matt Tyrnauer, 2017). This documentary is the sort of non-fiction filmmaking that willingly, happily tips toward hagiographic agitprop, treating its central figure as a beam of inspiring light rather than a complicated person. As … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Citizen Jane: Battle for the City; Concussion; The Debt
