That Championship Season: Community, Season Two
It is dizzyingly appropriate that Community was a television series that eventually got swamped by its own behind-the-scenes backstory. From early in its run, Dan Harmon’s creation discarded most of its nominal overtures to sitcom convention in favor of demolishing any and all familiar tropes. The most basic summary of the show indicated that it was about a study group at a struggling community college. In actuality, Community was a television show about television shows, so enthralled with the clicking gears of traditional narrative that cracked the shell right off the machine, peering excitedly inside. It makes sense. That’s where all … Continue reading That Championship Season: Community, Season Two
CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 67 – 65
67. Psychedelic Furs, “Heartbreak Beat” Columbia Records really wanted new music from Psychedelic Furs. In 1986, the band were unlikely beneficiaries of the John Hughes teen movie factory, which was producing new material at a rapid clip. “Pretty in Pink,” the title of a 1981 single from Psychedelic Furs, was typed onto the cover page of Hughes’s high school romance script that he turned over to Howard Deutch to direct. The resulting film, released in 1986, was a box office success, and the Furs’ freshly recorded take on the song turned into a hit, just missing the Billboard Top 40. … Continue reading CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 67 – 65
From the Archive: Dreamgirls
The proper way for me to raid my own writing history to align with the major release this weekend entails unearthing my original radio review for the animated classic Beauty and the Beast, from 1991. I did write one at the time. And I was fairly proud of it, if I’m recalling correctly. That review is lost to the eroding waters of time (or at least taped into a box that hasn’t been accessed in a good long time). So I’ll instead look to the director of the new live-action take on Disney’s finest animated effort (Pixar movies don’t count). … Continue reading From the Archive: Dreamgirls
One for Friday: An Emotional Fish, “Grey Matter”
An Emotional Fish formed in Dublin, Ireland. That seems all the justification that’s needed for sharing this song today. For all those who are going to take today’s quasi-holiday as an excuse to abuse their own grey matter, for the love of Daniel-Day Lewis, at least do it with Guinness, won’t you? (I feel a little bad I’m skimping on the words here, so I will note that I’ve previously written about An Emotional Fish in a more expansive manner.) Listen or download –> An Emotional Fish, “Grey Matter” (Disclaimer: I’d like to type that I put in diligent effort … Continue reading One for Friday: An Emotional Fish, “Grey Matter”
The New Releases Shelf: In Between
When I was writing music reviews for Spectrum Culture, I sometimes felt obligated to volunteer for the new releases from bands who had banged out tunes at club shows staged before some of my cohorts were born. There was no clanging indication that I was an uncommon elder, but I felt a certain protectiveness. My own longstanding skepticism of bands who’d arguably overstayed their welcome — or, worse yet, reunited after a significant layoff — made me want to make sure that the artists I’d once played new records from on college radio were getting a fair shake. That I … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: In Between
Now Playing: Kong: Skull Island
When sitting before a modern aspiring blockbuster, I often feel like I know what the pitch must have sounded like as the filmmakers cajoled a major studio into giving them piles of money to build on vital piece of the cinematic franchise. In the case of Kong: Skull Island, I instead found myself thinking about what must have enticing the actors to sign on the bottom line, beyond the promise of filthy lucre, of course. What kind of exuberance director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and his collaborators must have brought to meetings in which they regaled the potential onscreen talent with the promise … Continue reading Now Playing: Kong: Skull Island
Great Moments in Literature
“Barrett watched the wrangling without pleasure. It all seemed impossibly dull and dreary to him, this quibbling over the phraseology of a manifesto. That was essentially what he had expected to find here; a bunch of futilitarian hairsplitters in a draft basement room, battling furiously over minute semantic differences. Were these the revolutionaries who would hold back the world from chaos? Hardly. Hardly.” –Robert Silverberg, Hawksbill Station, 1968 “SEA-BLUE AND BLOOD RED: THESE ARE THE COLORS THAT WASH PAST THE GOLDEN AVENGER’S EYES AS HE STRUGGLES, DESPERATELY, AGAINST HIS OWN ARMOR! FOR MERE HEARTBEATS AGO, BENEATH THE CHILL WATERS OF … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Collet-Serra, Davis, Heisler, Levine, Lewis
Lion (Garth Davis, 2016). The feature debut from Garth Davis — who has major cred in my book for directing half of Jane Campion’s great Top of the Lake — looks like the same achingly earnest, self-consciously award-hungry cinema the Weinsteins have been delivering since their Miramax days. For the first half of the film anyway, it’s far sharper and more compelling than that. When five-year-old Indian boy Saroo (played at that age by Sunny Pawar) gets separated from his family after boarding the wrong train, his travails lost, alone, and unable to effectively communicate about where he’s from are … Continue reading Collet-Serra, Davis, Heisler, Levine, Lewis
CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 70 – 68
70. Public Image Ltd., “Rise” John Lydon, formerly known as Johnny Rotten, is not someone who most would instinctively refer to as a folk musician, but that’s exactly how he sees himself. “What I mean by folk is that what I sing is from the heart and soul,” Lydon explained. “I’m not trying to imitate any other genre or style of singing. I’m singing as I feel it. I’m trying to be as truthful to myself as I possibly can. And hopefully that communicates to others.” With that established, it becomes a little more clear that “Rise,” the 1986 lead … Continue reading CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 70 – 68
From the Archive: Double Impact
I know it’s not true, but sometimes my memory tricks me into believing I needed to see a new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie about every other week when I was one-half of a movie review radio program in the early nineteen-nineties. Maybe that’s in part because, on deep level of my subconscious, I count this movie twice. Double Impact is the kind of film that can frighten you just with its premise. It’s not that the film is intended to be a masterpiece of horror. It’s just that by discovering the film’s plot and reading through the credits, one realizes … Continue reading From the Archive: Double Impact
Coffee for Two 