The Art of the Sell: “Give Yourself a Pat on the Bock”
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. It is a certain season. And as I try to find ways to distract myself from the pending collapse of the nation, a sad prediction bolstered by every congressional session with a prospective cabinet member, I can at least take solace in the knowledge that Point Bock is once again being offered in America’s Dairyland. I’ve waxed ineloquently on the longstanding appealing of this dark wonder before. It always arrived in the heart of winter, usually serving as … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “Give Yourself a Pat on the Bock”
My Misspent Youth: The Thing by John Byrne and Ron Wilson
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. As I’ve confessed many, many times in this digital space, there was no character who held greater sway over me during the years that my time was most clearly monopolized by superhero comics than bashful Benjamin J. Grimm, also known as the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing. The craggy colossus of the Fantastic Four, the first family of Marvel Comics, was a character I’d follow just about anywhere. I religiously purchased the title featuring … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: The Thing by John Byrne and Ron Wilson
Now Playing: Elle
Though I’m going to go ahead and follow my usual practice of typing out a bunch of words, I think the ideal way to evaluate the new film Elle is with an artfully constructed infographic. This helpful guide would take individual moments from the film and measure whether their inner being is guided more by the aura of French cinema or by the ruddy instincts of director Paul Verhoeven. The scene in which a woman confronts the new, young lover of her ex-husband and the two of them conclude that, with the tension of an initial encounter out of the … Continue reading Now Playing: Elle
Laughing Matters: Larry Wilmore on Martin Luther King Jr.
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. On this day that has been dominated by continuing discussions of the U.S. president elect’s infantile anger towards one of the undisputed heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and celebrity imbeciles offering condescending lectures on proper social discourse, I was reminded on one of Larry Wilmore’s more inspired contributions back in the day he was the “Senior Black Correspondent” on The Daily Show. And that was … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Larry Wilmore on Martin Luther King Jr.
CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 94 – 92
94. Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, “Tomorrow People” Realistically, the 1988 album Conscious Party was always meant to be be a sort of coming out party for Ziggy Marley. Signed to Virgin Records with his band the Melody Makers, which included a handful of his siblings, the son of the most legendary reggae artist of all time was a focus of the new label, certain they’d be able to capitalize on the familial connection with all those high school and college kids who tacked posters of the Legend album cover to their walls. Talking Heads members and Tom Tom Club … Continue reading CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 94 – 92
From the Archive: The Departed
I haven’t done the math, but I’d confidently wager that there’s no other director about whom I’ve written more often and more enthusiastically than Martin Scorsese. The movie review radio program I co-hosted and co-produced debuted in the fall of … Continue reading From the Archive: The Departed
One for Friday: Dsico, “Dirty Bottle”
In writing about the music of 2016, I noted that the inclusion of major pop stars was something of an anomaly for me. I’ve long carried a certain snobbishness about the tracks that easily carry over to Top 40 radio (if that’s even a thing any more), an intellectual affliction I suspect a great deal of a college radio alumni carry with them. When bands that fall into the alternative or indie rock realm cross over, they’re reflexively dismissed as a sell-outs, and when material seems as designed to appeal to mass audiences as a plastic container for laundry soap, … Continue reading One for Friday: Dsico, “Dirty Bottle”
Now Playing: Hidden Figures
Hidden Figures is just good enough that I wish it were better. The film, fictionalized from Margot Lee Shetterly’s recently released history book of the same name, digs into the sadly under-shared story of the African-American women who were centrally involved in the monumentally difficulty scientific and mathematic work that drove the U.S. space program in the nineteen-sixties. In a way, it’s satisfying that the film is stodgily constructed and strangely facile in its examination of how the obvious talents of these women needed to scramble around the confining, casually bigoted norms of the era. In the field of Hollywood … Continue reading Now Playing: Hidden Figures
Larraín, Lubitsch, Riley, Snyder, Sollett
No (Pablo Larraín, 2012). In Chile in the late nineteen-eighties, the dictatorial government of General Augusto Pinochet orchestrated a public vote to give the populace a chance to weigh in on whether or not they’d maintain control for another eight years after a decade-and-a-half of bludgeoning rule. With various systems under tight control and the people largely cowed by governmental forces, it was expected to be a mere formality on the way to maintaining continuity, a show of phony democracy to appease the international community. Instead, Pinochet was ousted. In this consideration by screenwriter Pedro Peirano and director Pablo Larraín, the … Continue reading Larraín, Lubitsch, Riley, Snyder, Sollett
Laughing Matters: “Shining”
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. It’s been some time since I taught a film class, and the likelihood of that task ever again falling to me dwindles by the day. Even so, I have a little mental tally of the material I’d like to use to illustrate the possibilities and parameters of cinema to a roomful of students. My fictional lecture supplements aren’t loaded with full films so much … Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Shining”
Coffee for Two 