Now Playing: Baby Driver
When I stop to really think about the state of modern movies, one shortcoming is perplexing above all others. How is it that there are so few creations that evidence an abundant, overwhelming, crushing love of moviemaking itself? We’re now … Continue reading Now Playing: Baby Driver
Beers I Have Known: Surly Brewing Co. #Merica
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. Patriotism never tasted so good. Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Beers I Have Known” tag. Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Surly Brewing Co. #Merica
Now Playing: Okja
The title character of the new film Okja is a “super-pig.” In the bizarre, futuristic (though set in modern-day) vision of writer-director Bong Joon-Ho, an American corporation launches a publicity stunt competition to have odd, porcine animals — supposedly discovered in Chile, though that assertion is suspect from the jump — raised by individuals scattered all across the globe. After a decade, the creatures are to be evaluated in a glorified pageant before beings added to the assembly line of food production. Bong renders his story at a mad careen that resembles an inability to entirely setting on a general … Continue reading Now Playing: Okja
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 25 – 23
25. Soft Cell, “Tainted Love” According to David Ball, the synthesizer player in the duo Soft Cell, he was familiar with song “Tainted Love” from its venerated place in the Northern Soul club scene in U.K. in the nineteen-seventies. Originally … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 25 – 23
From the Archive: Hot Fuzz
This is a short one (it was originally offered as part of a set of capsule reviews), but it represents the first time I wrote about an Edgar Wright movie. In part because of the hit-and-run nature of the review, I didn’t write about his direction much. Truthfully, it wasn’t until Wright’s next film that his visual acumen and storytelling ingenuity really started to dazzle me. While I will elaborate in a few days, I’ll promptly acknowledge that I’m revisiting this particular piece because Wright has just delivered what I’m confident will shake out as one of the best films of … Continue reading From the Archive: Hot Fuzz
One for Friday: The Screaming Blue Messiahs, “I Can Speak American”
The Screaming Blue Messiahs were a blast. More specifically, just about any track from either of their first two full-lengths — both of which sat snugly in the music stacks when I arrived at my college radio station in the late-nineteen-eighties — was a blast of bristling rock ‘n’ roll energy in the midst of a playlist. I don’t think anyone at our station would have held up the band as some pinnacle artist, transforming the landscape of college rock music nor issuing records that we knew — just knew — would be enduring classics. They weren’t R.E.M. or the … Continue reading One for Friday: The Screaming Blue Messiahs, “I Can Speak American”
Playing Catch-Up: Privilege, Sully, Indignation
Privilege (Peter Watkins, 1967). This is exactly what I want a movie with a 1967 copyright date to be. The sole credited screenplay of novelist Norman Bogner, Privilege follows the story of Steven Shorter (played by Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones), a rock singer who is coopted by British authorities so they can insidiously control the upstart youth culture. Set in a near future, the film is groovy satire, just prescient enough to avoid being little more than an artifact of distant days when the counterculture seeped into cinema with sporadic success. Jones is a middling actor, but he … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up: Privilege, Sully, Indignation
Bait Taken: The 10 Essential Roles of Michelle Pfeiffer
There are many building blocks of the internet, but the cornerstones are think pieces, offhand lists, and other hollow provocations meant to stir arguments and, therefore, briefly redirect web traffic. Engaging such material is utterly pointless. Then again, it’s not like I have anything better to do. It was only a week ago that I found cause to revive the “Bait Taken” feature, and now here I am, all roiled up over another Vulture list. In my meek defense, the creative team behind New York magazine’s culture blog went ahead and crafted a list that is right in my proverbial wheelhouse. And … Continue reading Bait Taken: The 10 Essential Roles of Michelle Pfeiffer
My Writers: Carl Hiaasen
I lived in Florida for six years. Before I got there, Carl Hiaasen acquainted me with the haphazard charms of the Sunshine State. More precisely, he sketched out just how much craziness resided on that over-baked peninsula. As was the case with many of the authors whose wares I first sampled in the nineteen-nineties, I arrived at Hiaasen because of the movies. With some regularity, I bought novels that the entertainment press informed me were being adapted in high-profile films. I liked having the comparison at the ready when it came time to deliver my movie review, even if most … Continue reading My Writers: Carl Hiaasen
The Art of the Sell: The League of Honest Coffee Lovers
Because on weary days like this one, I believe this is indeed a flag I would march under. MORE COFFEE IN OUR COFFEE OR FIGHT! Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Art of the Sell” tag. Continue reading The Art of the Sell: The League of Honest Coffee Lovers
Coffee for Two 