One for Friday: Allo, Darlin’, “Will You Please Spend New Years with Me?”
I’m hardly the first or most eloquent person to observe that 2016 has been one kick in the teeth after another. It’s as if the historic event of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in over a century used up every drop of good karma the year had amassed leaving existential carnage everywhere else. As we close the calendar on these dismal twelve months (and head into a 2017 that, let’s be real, will get worse before it gets better), I’m craving something charming and a little on the gentle side. Hiding in a bedroom … Continue reading One for Friday: Allo, Darlin’, “Will You Please Spend New Years with Me?”
Top Ten Albums of 2016
As per tradition in this digital space, the close of the calendar year means it’s time to reflect on the best music releases of the year. It’s been a while since I’ve been beholden by writing duties to an outside source, which was the initiating cause of my modern top ten albums lists, but I still do the best I can to keep up. I’ll acknowledge that it was more challenging than ever in 2016 to be comprehensive in my listening, and more than a few of the titles that make this tally have only making glancing appearances in my personal rotation. … Continue reading Top Ten Albums of 2016
Now Playing: Jackie
Hardly a grizzled old soul at the age of thirty-five, Natalie Portman has nonetheless been working in film long enough — over twenty years — to have distinctive phases of her career. Without being precise about the timing of each shift (though I certainly could for anyone foolhardy and masochistic enough to ask me to), I’d say she’s already gone from child actor to precocious ingenue to adult actor. Presumptive as it might be to make too bold a declaration on the basis of a single performance, the new film Jackie could very mark the beginning of a convincing transformation into … Continue reading Now Playing: Jackie
Carrie Fisher, 1956 – 2016
Generationally, my appreciation for Carrie Fisher is supposed to begin with Star Wars. Only her second feature film appearance, following a sharp debut in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo, her turn as Princess Leia Organa in George Lucas’s space saga earned her a permanent place in pop culture history. To the degree that I even thought about such things at the time, Fisher’s performance seemed a little perfunctory in Star Wars, filling out the damsel in distress role that Lucas simplistically typed out. Looking back now, with the helpful illumination of another few decades of Fisher’s spectacularly unguarded public persona, her performance … Continue reading Carrie Fisher, 1956 – 2016
Now Playing: La La Land
Damien Chazelle wastes no time in establishing exactly what kind of movie he aims to deliver with La La Land. As opposed to many other modern screen musicals that are coy about their commitment to the genre, Chazelle’s film opens with a full-scale number staged in the midst of a Los Angeles traffic jam, blue sky above and pavement below. There’s no freeing cut to a soundstage or winking implication that the narrative is dipping into a character’s rousing imagination. Instead, there’s a fleet of performers adorned in bright colors singing and dancing and staring right at the audience with feral confidence. … Continue reading Now Playing: La La Land
CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 103 – 101
103. The Mighty Lemon Drops, “Inside Out” Other bands that started plying their tunes in the nineteen-eighties had the advantage of fertile local scenes. That wasn’t the case for the Mighty Lemon Drops, who hailed from Wolverhampton. “When we started out in early 1985, there wasn’t much going on locally,” said guitarist Dave Newton. “Not even in nearby Birmingham, with a few exceptions, such as the Nightingales and Pigros. As for Wolverhampton, there was absolutely nothing of note.” But a band as good as the Mighty Lemon Drops is going to draw attention, no matter the geographical limits. They wound … Continue reading CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 103 – 101
Merry Christmas!
Happiest holiday wishes to you and yours. Continue reading Merry Christmas!
One for Friday: Sleater-Kinney, “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”
I believe tradition holds that I feature a Christmas song in this space today. Usually, this would be presented as downloadable MP3 file, culled from my collection. Truth is, though, I don’t possess any holiday songs that are as cool as the one delivered in this video. Happy holidays, all! Continue reading One for Friday: Sleater-Kinney, “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)”
Now Playing: Manchester by the Sea
Michelle Williams recently reported that Kenneth Lonergan was in tears while directing at least one pivotal scene in Manchester by the Sea. The actress shared this detail with a touch of awe, noting that she’d never had that experience on a movie set before (and Williams is not exactly reticent to sign on for films that deliver emotional gut punches). Having watched the new film, I have a difficult time imagining any other reaction from Lonergan, and not only because he was watching the film’s most wrenching scene play out before his watering eyes. Overall, Manchester by the Sea betrays … Continue reading Now Playing: Manchester by the Sea
My Misspent Youth: “I’ll Be Doom for Christmas” by Scott Lobdell and John Byrne
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. For a variety of reasons, superhero comics rarely provide more than glancing attention to the holidays. That was especially true years ago, when there was limited pages for the roiling sagas because publishers were wary of flooding the market. (That’s not really an issue now.) That often meant that any dose of holiday cheer was more likely to arrive in strange, non-continuity corners of the fictional universes. In the late nineteen-eighties and … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: “I’ll Be Doom for Christmas” by Scott Lobdell and John Byrne
Coffee for Two 