The Art of the Sell: Wes Anderson, “My Life, My Card”
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. Wes Anderson is rightly earning a fleet of social media raves for his new Christmas-themed ad for H&M. Thankfully, it’s far better than what he came up with the last time he pointed his camera at Adrien Brody on a train. It also got me thinking about other commercial spots Anderson has directed, including his contribution to the American Express “My Life, My Card” campaign. The meticulous detailing that can swerve towards preciousness can get wearying across … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: Wes Anderson, “My Life, My Card”
Now Playing: Rules Don’t Apply
It’s reasonable to be skeptical about Rules Don’t Apply, Warren Beatty’s first directorial effort in nearly twenty years and his first big screen acting performance in fifteen. While Beatty was never a prolific speed demon as filmmaker, that’s the sort … Continue reading Now Playing: Rules Don’t Apply
Great Moments in Literature
“I made a big entrance when I arrived in my flying DeLorean, which I’d obtained by completing a Back to the Future quest on the planet Zemeckis. The DeLorean came outfitted with a (non-functioning) flux capacitor, but I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d installed an artificially intelligent onboard computer named KITT (purchased in an online auction) into the dashboard, along with a matching red Knight Rider scanner embedded in the DeLorean’s grill. Then I’d outfitted the car with an oscillation overthruster, a device that allowed it to travel through solid matter. Finally, to complete my … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 115 – 113
115. Peter Gabriel, “Red Rain” Lest there be any doubt about the prog rock foundations of Peter Gabriel’s musical artistry, even the seemingly straightforward ballad “Red Rain” has its beginnings — its genesis, if you will — in one of those profundity-laced song cycles that serious minded pop musicians were pursuing in the nineteen seventies. Though released as the lead track on So, the 1986 album that represented Gabriel’s major commercial breakthrough, “Red Rain” was first composed several years earlier, in conjunction with the songs that made up Gabriel’s sophomore solo album, self-titled but often referred to as “Scratch.” It … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 115 – 113
From the Archive: Bruce
Usually this weekly glimpse in the rearview mirror dredges up some ancient review I wrote, along with an introduction that involves varying degrees of current anguish over the wonky way I put the words together way back when. This time around, I’m going to opt for something a little different. In honor of Bruce Springsteen receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, here is, as best as I can digitally collate, everything I’ve written about The Boss. –One of the first time I put fingers to keys to reflect on Springsteen’s work, it was to level a negative assessment of the … Continue reading From the Archive: Bruce
One for Friday: Caterwaul, “The Sheep’s a Wolf”
Realistically, it was all about R.E.M. I arrived at the college radio station in the fall of 1988, one year after the little ol’ band from Athens, Georgia released Document, the album that can be fairly termed their breakthrough into broader commercial success. Even before that, though, the were in complete command of the college charts. The dominance was so complete that any artists even mildly associated with R.E.M. got a boost. By the time I arrived, that absolutely extended to any band on the same label that launched R.E.M., the mighty I.R.S. Records. It’s not unusual for college radio … Continue reading One for Friday: Caterwaul, “The Sheep’s a Wolf”
Happy Thanksgiving!
Burn it all down, friends. Burn it all down. (Gif found elsewhere.) Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving!
Now Playing: The Edge of Seventeen
In The Edge of Seventeen, Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine Byrd. She’s a high school junior beset by a fairly typical array of problems: family that doesn’t understand her, a small cluster of friends whose loyalty is continually tested, the always baffling pile-up of signals from boys. If the issues aren’t familiar from life, they certainly will tickle the recollection of anyone who’s watched a movie about teen-aged existence, at least those that flowed downstream from the rough seas sailed by Commodore John Hughes. Even as I type that out, becoming approximately the ten million and seventy-seventh person to handily categorize The … Continue reading Now Playing: The Edge of Seventeen
The Unwatchables: The Beaver
There was a time when I was absolutely convinced that Jodie Foster was the future of U.S. cinema. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs, giving a riveting performance as Clarice Starling that justly earned her an Academy Award, her second Best Actress win in the span of three years. That same year, she delivered her directorial debut in Little Man Tate, an imperfect but insightful drama about precocious talent that benefited from the sense Foster was drawing on her own experience as a child actor who could somehow slip comfortably between a loopy Disney comedy and … Continue reading The Unwatchables: The Beaver
Bird, Coon and Skousen, Garrone, Huston, Paradisi
Tomorrowland (Brad Bird, 2015). There’s nobility in Brad Bird’s oft-stated aspiration to use Tomorrowland to reanimate the futuristic optimism of his youth, countering the long meander into an endless procession of sci-fi dystopias. Intent is one thing. Execution is quite another. Bird’s second outing as a director of live-action features is a muddled, overbearing squawk of condescending nonsense that too often barrels headlong into disastrous inane storytelling choices. As a grizzled, grumpy outcast of a once-proud secret nation of innovators, George Clooney is in the mode of hammy, insistent twitches that rightly earned him derision when he made his initial … Continue reading Bird, Coon and Skousen, Garrone, Huston, Paradisi
Coffee for Two 