Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Goin’ In”
These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. Jimmy Brooks was a student at Degrassi Community School, whose struggles with school, particularly English class, originally compromised his hopes to become a player on the basketball team. That eventually changed, and Jimmy become one of the star players on the team. He also came from a background of family wealth, which could cause strain with some of his friends, especially when Jimmy didn’t … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Goin’ In”
One for Friday: Angst, “I Could Never Change Your Mind”
By 1988, Angst was a band with a honorable history. Formed in San Francisco, in 1980, Angst put out multiple albums on seminal punk label SST Records, including a couple that were produced by the label’s co-owner, Joe Carducci, making it reasonable to consider the group one of the signature acts of the pile-driving music house. When I got to my college radio station, I didn’t know any of that. All I knew is there was an album called Cry For Happy in rotation that had a striking drawing of roses on the front cover. I’m pretty sure I even pronounced … Continue reading One for Friday: Angst, “I Could Never Change Your Mind”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Sixteen
#16 — The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) There are several different stories that explain, at least in part, the genesis of The Great Dictator, but it surely must have started with the mustache. How bizarre to be Charlie Chaplin, sporter of a distinctive sprout of facial hair, an inky little dust broom right under the nose, watching newsreel footage of a hateful lunatic across the ocean who’s taken the same approach to his daily shaving regimen. Supposedly Chaplin took further inspiration from a viewing of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (that he cackled through, his own skill as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Sixteen
Enright and Berkeley, Garbus, McQuarrie, Van Sant
Promised Land (Gus Van Sant, 2012). This is exactly the sort of appalling earnest, dramatically inert fare that makes many rightly cringe when they think about the sort of medicine-tinged movies Oscar season might bring. With a story credit for Dave Eggers and a shared screenplay credit for Matt Damon and John Krasinski, who also start in the film, Promised Land takes the issue of fracking and tries to spin a sort of Capraesque fable with a dose of twenty-first century cynicism and a gotcha plot twist for good measure. Damon plays an ambitious employee of a global energy concern who … Continue reading Enright and Berkeley, Garbus, McQuarrie, Van Sant
From the Archive: Jack the Bear
Jack the Bear isn’t a movie I remember well, but I strongly associate it with the doldrums of reviewing movies in the spring, when the Oscar-worthy material from the previous winter had finished cycling through our small Central Wisconsin town and the eagerly audience-friendly stuff was being held back for summer. Now, there’s a fairly ambitious year-round release schedule with only a handful of weekends (like, ahem, this one) devoid of movies that are interesting in one way or another. That wasn’t the case in the early nineteen-nineties. There were long stretches filled with the material in which the studios … Continue reading From the Archive: Jack the Bear
One for Friday: Marti Jones, “You Can’t Take Love for Granted”
Marti Jones was one half of what passed for a power couple in the land of college rock, circa 1988. Jones was part of the band Color Me Gone in the mid-nineteen-eighties. They released a bit of music on A&M Records. It didn’t take, but the label clearly liked Jones, signing her to a solo contract that led to the release of the LP Unsophisticated Time, in 1985. The man behind the boards for that record was Don Dixon, then a hot, up-and-coming producer thanks to his efforts, with Mitch Easter, on the first two R.E.M. albums. He wasn’t making … Continue reading One for Friday: Marti Jones, “You Can’t Take Love for Granted”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seventeen
#17 — The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges, 1942) By all evidence, Preston Sturges despised being confined, either by studio meddling or expectations. His distinctive comic voice, as bold as any ever committed to cinema, didn’t fit cleanly into the polished, reticent refinements of his era, when every last movie had to run through a clumsy, inconsistent official approval process. The filmmaker’s embedded cynicism was challenge enough to the dainty norms, but his rambunctious playfulness with the rigors of narrative structure could set his work teetering on the precipice of blissful mayhem. The Palm Beach Story exemplifies that clownishly caustic dynamic. Sturges … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seventeen
My Misspent Youth: Stig’s Inferno by Ty Templeton
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. When I was buying comic books during my high school years, I mostly opted for the superhero offerings of the big two publishers, Marvel and DC. By that time, it wasn’t a matter of availability. Purchasing new comics from spinner racks in the grocery store or local drugstore had already shifted into a near impossibility, causing me to satisfy my need through monthly orders from a subscriptions service, getting a big … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Stig’s Inferno by Ty Templeton
How do you know you’ll recognize me? I’m not too clear, but I’m easy to see
I’m not often able to assert the following right after seeing a new movie: I have a clear favorite scene in Mistress America. Tracy (Lola Kirke), a young woman in her first semester of college, has just been charged by her new friend and anticipated step-sister, Brooke (Greta Gerwig), with picking up some pasta for dinner. Alone in the grocery store, Tracy is flummoxed by the array of options before her, both in trying to determine which brand is fancy enough to impress her older, more worldly companion and simply which damn shape she should opt for. Maybe the ones that … Continue reading How do you know you’ll recognize me? I’m not too clear, but I’m easy to see
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Eighteen
#18 — The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949) Energized as I might be to see obvious artistry that endures throughout the years when I survey old films, I don’t view the material in a void. As best as I can, I contextualize the work agains the time in which it was released. Often that’s to the favor of a film, with so much that now seems mundane instead looking revolutionary when stripping away the intervening years that may have transformed the novel into a trope. I suppose my mental maneuvering around The Reckless Moment has a similar effect of elevating its stature, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Eighteen
Coffee for Two 