Thinking, wishing, hoping that you’ll never feel the same again
Late in the closing credits of Inside Out, the latest feature from Pixar Animation Studios, there’s a dedication offered out by the filmmaking team to their collected children, urging them to never grow older. Ever. That’s hardly an original sentiment for parents to express. It even borders on the banal. That’s not what makes it notable. What makes it truly stand out is the way the wish for eternal childhood is at complete odds with the message of the movies that’s just preceded it. The creators may want their kids to stay kids. The film argues, persuasively, that growing up … Continue reading Thinking, wishing, hoping that you’ll never feel the same again
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Just a Little”
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. Brenda Lee saw two straight singles climb all the way to the top of the Billboard chart in 1960, when she was still a teenager. It was the beginning of a stretch of enormous success that allowed her to claim a quantity of chart hits in the sixties surpassed by only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Ray Charles. “I’m Sorry” resided at #1 for … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Just a Little”
That Championship Season: Justified, Season Two
By now, there are enough smart, fitting adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s work to the screen — big and small — that it obscures the long, problematic history the prolific writer had when turning his work over to Hollywood. And it wasn’t from lack of trying. According to some sources, there have been over two dozen whacks at transforming Leonard’s fiction, which is lean enough to sometimes read as if it’s a script treatment, into film or television. Even though it seemed the curse was broken with 1995’s Get Shorty, a story fittingly inspired by Leonard’s dismal encounters with Hollywood studios, there … Continue reading That Championship Season: Justified, Season Two
My Misspent Youth: Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers by Jack Kirby
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. While I was a committed student of the history of Marvel Comics upon devoting myself to their stories at the age of ten, I was shamefully slow to come around to the art of the creator who was arguably the most important figure in the groundbreaking, foundational years of the publisher. Working with writer Stan Lee, artist Jack Kirby was the architect of the early Marvel Universe, officially co-creating almost every … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers by Jack Kirby
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 32 and 31
32. Love Battery, Straight Freak Ticket It often seemed that playing grunge music and being from Seattle basically combined up to create a golden ticket for qualifying bands in the early-to-mid-nineties, but the crossover success wasn’t uniformly distributed. Love Battery had the right sound and the correct zip code. What they didn’t have was a label that knew how to market them. Straight Freak Ticket was the band’s fourth album overall and their first full-length since jumping from Sub Pop Records to Atlas Records. It obviously did pretty well with at least one batch of college kids. As far as I can … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 32 and 31
From the Archive: Life with Mikey
I’m well aware that not every movie that hits screen in the warmer months is expected to turn into a marauding blockbuster, but I’m still occasionally taken aback by how small-scale some of the summer releases were back in the early-to-mid-nineteen-nineties, when I was still one-half of a weekly movie review radio program. One week before Jurassic Park opened in 1993, one of the two wide release openings was Guilty as Sin, a lousy courtroom drama directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Rebecca De Mornay (who had at least had a surprise hit with the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle the year before) and Don … Continue reading From the Archive: Life with Mikey
One for Friday: Eugenius, “Flame On”
There were all sorts of reasons for me to play songs off of Oomalooma, the debut album from Eugenius, when it arrived at my college radio station, in 1992. First and foremost, there was the presence of Eugene Kelly as the band’s chief creative force. Kelly was one of the key members of the band the Vaselines, a group Kurt Cobain, recently installed as the voice of my generation, couldn’t stop talking about. Eugenius could also claim personnel, at one point or another, from buzzy bands like Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits. Then there was the helpful hook of the … Continue reading One for Friday: Eugenius, “Flame On”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty
#30 — She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949) One of the pleasures of examining the long swath of Hollywood film history is considering the ways in which the long-lasting masters of the form adapted to the technological changes that came their way. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was not John Ford’s first film in color, but it virtually quivers from the great director’s efforts to construct his film visually with all the possibilities that Technicolor had to offer as the nineteen-forties were drawing to a close. Like few of his contemporaries, Ford used the screen the way a master … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love Rollercoaster”
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. This feature has gone on far longer than I expected. Just look at all those songs underneath the Previously… down there. When I started this, almost four years ago, I had a nice, tidy list of singles that peaked at #40. As I poked around for other writing, I kept stumbling on other songs that qualified, enough so that I eventually decided I … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love Rollercoaster”
Beers I Have Known: 3 Sheeps Hello, My Name is Joe
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. I have been vociferous in my praise and appreciation for the tremendous craft brewery scene in the city I currently call home. It’s robust enough that I can sometimes lose sight of the fact that similar bounties are being brewed up all over the place, including my native state, which has its own storied history with beer, after all. Luckily, I’ve had regular trips to my dairyland homeland every spring and a batch of … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: 3 Sheeps Hello, My Name is Joe
