Now Playing: Hell or High Water
Hell or High Water is about robbery. The more overt way this is true is obvious. The film begins with two men (Chris Pine and Ben Foster), brothers and partners, engaged in armed robbery of a bank, striking early in … Continue reading Now Playing: Hell or High Water
The Art of the Sell: “The House of the Devil” poster
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I have a longstanding appreciation for movie posters, going back to the days when my trips to the theater were sadly infrequent. I’d wander the hallways staring at these vivid promises of cinematic wonders to come, resigned to the knowledge that taking in this one design and promotional statement would likely comprise the totality of my experience with the films in question in the palace of flickering lights where they were best seen. As official movie posters … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “The House of the Devil” poster
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 157 – 155
157. XTC, “Earn Enough for Us” Andy Partridge and his cohorts within XTC weren’t exactly renowned for being accommodating with the producers foisted upon them by their label (not were they especially accommodating with their label either), but their combativeness with Todd Rundgren during the recording of the 1986 album Skylarking was especially notorious. They’d chosen Rundgren from a list of names given to them by Virgin Records, delivered with the warning that the band needed to start selling records in the United States. According to all involved, Partridge and Rundgren were viciously at one another from the jump, with the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 157 – 155
From the Archive: The Shadow and I Know Who Killed Me
We’re taking advantage of the weekend’s gloomy weather to stage a little in-house film festival. The DVR needs clearing, you understand. That got me to thinking about multiple feature nights over the years that have, deliberately, been a little more … Continue reading From the Archive: The Shadow and I Know Who Killed Me
One for Friday: Fetchin Bones, “Stray”
As was projected in this space, I spent a portion of last weekend on the air at my alma mater, my first spin in the air chair in that particular studio in over fifteen years. It was delirious and delightful, a truly joyful experience that had the intense feel of coming home. With only two hours of airtime available to me, I barely got to dig into the history I carry with me from those days, much less the intervening decades of professional life and music fandom informed by my beloved time as a college radio kid. In particular, by … Continue reading One for Friday: Fetchin Bones, “Stray”
Now Playing: Pete’s Dragon
In making a film, it takes some industrial strength confidence to include an explicit promise of magic. I don’t mean constructing a story around a boy wizard or some other spinner of spells, fancifully warping reality with the behind the scenes … Continue reading Now Playing: Pete’s Dragon
My Misspent Youth: Laff-A-Lympics by Mark Evanier and Owen Fitzgerald
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. Typically, I devote my reminiscing for this recurring feature to those superhero comic books I devoured through my tween and teen years (and, somewhat sad to type, beyond), with an occasional hat tip to a nineteen-seventies comic that, as the italicizes introduction concedes, I now feel I should have read. Truth is, during the seventies, which was very much my youth, I was collecting comic books with an unstoppable fervor. They … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Laff-A-Lympics by Mark Evanier and Owen Fitzgerald
Landis, McDonagh, Nichols, Parks, Trevorrow
The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980). I routinely think of this musical-action-comedy as the strongest film of the many that have been spun off from Saturday Night Live recurring characters, though we’re admittedly looking at a shallow, fetid pool. A recent fresh viewing suggests I might have been inflating in, undoubtedly on the basis of how freely I and my cohort of dopey high school friends quoted it, as if reciting a bar order of “three orange whips” at a purportedly clever moment would position us as comic geniuses. The movie is more slapdash than I remembered and spotted with … Continue reading Landis, McDonagh, Nichols, Parks, Trevorrow
Beers I Have Known: Toppling Goliath Mornin’ Delight
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. The weekend just past was profoundly memorable for me, even the part that found me engaging in a pastime known clouding one’s recollection. I was one of thousands in attendance at the 30th annual Great Taste of the Midwest, a beer fest of colossal proportions. Were I more adept at describing the cascade of sensations that wash across the tongue when particularly vibrant and delectable potables are sampled, I could probably write a … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Toppling Goliath Mornin’ Delight
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 160 – 158
160. Patti Smith, “People Have the Power” When “People Have the Power” arrived, nearly a decade had passed without any new music from Patti Smith. She’d been effectively living in semi-retirement while starting a family with the man she married in 1980, Fred “Sonic” Smith, a punk icon in his own right thanks to his tenure in the foundational band the MC5. According to Patti, it was Fred who started her on the road to the song when he marched into the kitchen and said, “People have the power. Write it.” Armed with only that title, Patti embarked on a … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 160 – 158
Coffee for Two 