Golden living dreams of visions
Three years ago, tossed the keys to the most important vehicle for the successful but still relatively new Marvel Studios, the film that would offer the culmination of a lot of careful positioning through a practically unprecedented convergence of cinematic properties, writer-director Joss Whedon went ahead and bravely made a Joss Whedon movie, drawing on his ample skill set honed through a bevy of geek-friendly properties, many of them interconnected. He was fulfilling the Marvel corporate vision, but doing so with a film that popped with his own sensibilities. The rhythms, dynamics, and dialogue were thrillingly familiar to anyone who once spent … Continue reading Golden living dreams of visions
Beers I Have Know: 21st Amendment Brewery Down to Earth
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. That monkey has the right idea. 21st Amendment is one of my favorite breweries (non-local division), and this beer — by the packaging, anyway — is a spiritual sequel to Bitter American, one of the first brews I wrote about in this series, so I should theoretically have plenty to write. Given my day, though, all I feel compelled to offer is a reiteration of that opening sentence: That monkey has the right … Continue reading Beers I Have Know: 21st Amendment Brewery Down to Earth
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 48 and 47
48. Push, Shamefaced Like a lot of college radio stations, 90FM proclaimed a strong dedication to local music. In the case of our station, we expanded “local” to mean anything that originated, even initially, in the state of Wisconsin. By the time I arrived there in the late nineteen-eighties, no one was really thinking of Violent Femmes as a Milwaukee band, for example, but that’s where they started, so that was good enough for us. There was one band that showed up in the mid-nineties that was not only from our town of Stevens Point, they were populated by, on … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 48 and 47
From the Archive: Predator 2
To help prove that I dutifully transcribe these old reviews regardless of the temptation to give the decades-old language a sprucing up, just look at the garbled syntax below. Some of these sentences gave me pangs of pain as I retyped them. Then again, those buzzes of internal agony could be attributed to memories of the many movies cited in the first paragraph slithering out from behind whatever suppression devices my brain has kindly deployed to this point. This is from the November 26, 1990 episode of The Reel Thing. We’d only be doing the show for about three months, and … Continue reading From the Archive: Predator 2
One for Friday: The Shaking Family, “Tic Toc”
A debate flared up from time to time at my radio station regarding the relative merits of digging into albums versus concentrating on the singles. It was more of a jabbering-over-beers debate than an almost-coming-to-blows one, but still it was there. Generally, I opted for the deep cuts argument, feeling it was what most differentiated us from just about everyone else on the dial. Especially in an era that found some of the most unlikely college rock bands and tracks crossing over (seriously, how on earth does “I Touch Myself” become a Top 5 song?) sticking to what the labels … Continue reading One for Friday: The Shaking Family, “Tic Toc”
My Writers: Art Spiegelman
It was in high school that I started defensively insisting on the artistic value of comic book storytelling. Although in deference to the subject of this point, I should say it was co-mix narratives I was stumping for. Spiegelman prefers that nomenclature, undoubtedly in part because it is has some of the hardscrabble spirit of the term “comix,” which was used for the underground, head shop publications that served as his developmental home. But Spiegelman was even more specific in his choice, adding the hyphen to emphasize the two different words parts, each suggesting an intermingling of elements, in this … Continue reading My Writers: Art Spiegelman
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Seven
#37 — Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942) Lots of films have indelible images, those visual moments that don’t just endure in the memory but are so closely, solidly associated with a single work of art that any approximation that follows, no matter how tangential of glancing, automatically stirs comparison. There is no way, for example, for a horror film director to set a smart, evocative scene at an indoor swimming pool without calling to mind Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, at least for a certain breed of film fan. (Those who think the horror genre started with Friday the 13th likely escape this … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Seven
Edwards, Ficarra and Requa, Levy, Stoller, Wyatt
Focus (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2015). There are a whole lot of film folks trying to pivot their careers with this strangely aspirational con job drama. Star Will Smith is clearly trying to put After Earth completely behind him by staking a claim on the territory of smart movies for adults that George Clooney has made his whole grain bread and artisan butter. At the same time, filmmaking partners Ficarra and Requa endeavor to demonstrate they can do more than comedies with a slightly twisty edge. Everyone fails in their attempt to stretch. The film is notably tepid, even as … Continue reading Edwards, Ficarra and Requa, Levy, Stoller, Wyatt
Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Movin’ On” and “Sticks and Stones”
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. Ray Charles is one of the few figures in the history of American popular music who deserves the descriptor “legend.” With well over one hundred singles to his credit, tallying up his total entries into the Billboard Top 40 is beyond my current mental energy, so let’s concentrate strictly on the two songs that qualify for this feature. “I’m Movin’ On” was the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Movin’ On” and “Sticks and Stones”
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 51-49
51. King Crimson, Thrak It’s so bizarre to me that the 90FM charts from around this time are peppered with the sort of improbably enduring prog rock bands that I thought I and my cohorts had swept out of the main airplay times with an aggressive recalibration of the stacks a couple years earlier (the 1996 list previously counted down had a Rush album in it, which I think is at least partially explained by the fervent fandom of a good friend who graduated that particular year). Thrak was the first full-length studio album by King Crimson in over ten years. Multi-instrumentalist … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 51-49
Coffee for Two 