Top 40 Smash Taps: “Good Timin'”
By my rough count, the Beach Boys notched thirty-eight Top 40 singles over the course of their multi-decade career. A significant number of those made it into the Top 10, and four of those topped the chart. That quartet of number ones includes their final Top 40 song, a single so simultaneously awful and incessantly catchy that the only word that suitably describes it is “hellish.” (Seriously, don’t click on that link. The song will be trapped in your brain for increasingly uncomfortable hours upon hours.) In 1979, the band was in a rough space commercially. It had been three years … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Good Timin’”
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 59-57
59. Simple Minds, Good News from the Next World If I’d been forced to lay money on whether or not Simple Minds was still releasing new music in 1995, I would have placed my chips smack on “NO” and felt like I’d made a pretty safe bet. The band that peaked hard with the quintessential John Hughes soundtrack song one decade earlier never really stopped trying to outrace their biggest chart success, which came with the indignity of being the rare example of a track they recorded which they didn’t write themselves (they were at least the fourth different act … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 59-57
From the Archive: Liz Phair
Yesterday was about praising Liz Phair, so I guess today we present the counterpoint. Or rather, this is Phair a few years later when her musical output transformed indie coolness with a “personal mileage may vary” disclaimer to downright terrible … Continue reading From the Archive: Liz Phair
One for Friday: Liz Phair, “California”
This is how I saw it: Liz Phair needed to reclaim some of the energy that surrounded her out-of-nowhere indie sensation debut, Exile in Guyville. By most measures, her follow-up effort, Whip-Smart, was an even greater success, climbing higher on the album charts, selling more copies (at least initially, though Exile in Guyville has outpaced it by now), and yielding a couple of decent modern rock radio hits. But her coolness quotient took a pretty sizable hit. She became a Rolling Stone cover girl instead of a Village Voice icon. That’s not inherently bad — and there are plenty of indications … Continue reading One for Friday: Liz Phair, “California”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-One
#41 — Key Largo (John Huston, 1948) I typically put John Huston in the category of classic Hollywood directors whose excellence is best measured by their absolutely command of craft. As the vocabulary of classic narrative was still being shaped, Huston was one of those in the cinematic blacksmith shop, swinging his mallet at the glowing red steel. Unlike some of his immediate predecessors (and rough contemporaries) on this timeline — John Ford and Howard Hawks are the two who immediately come to mind — Huston embedded a slightly shiftier personality into his art. He had a flair for the torrid that … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-One
I was on the inside when they pulled the four walls down
There are certainly of plenty of potential reasons for the current renaissance in indie horror, not the least of which is the well-established helpful ratio of low budgets and high potential box office reward that the genre offers. Just as road movies were once the handiest ways to develop high drama with limited dollars (and inspiration, quite frankly) so too are horror movies one of the most direct routes to getting a film made for a fledgling filmmaker. But I think the more interesting consideration is the growing proliferation of artistically rich horror films, particularly in terms of the visual … Continue reading I was on the inside when they pulled the four walls down
Amirpour, Asante, Dobkin, Glatzer and Westmoreland, Roskam
Belle (Amma Asante, 2014). Based ever so lightly on real history — the only real source is a 1779 painting — this period drama tells the story of Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a young woman who is the offspring of a British naval officer (Matthew Goode) and an African-born slave. She’s raised among the British gentry by her grandparents (Tom Wilkinson and Sarah Gadon), treated as a beloved member of the family but also relegated to diminished status in her own home because of the conventions of the day. If the unconventional story elevates the film a bit past its restrained … Continue reading Amirpour, Asante, Dobkin, Glatzer and Westmoreland, Roskam
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Two
#42 — The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) “I’ve got some unfinished business with him. I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” That bit of barbed dialogue is hardly unique within the cascade of knotty language that spilled from movie screens throughout the nineteen-forties. Roughly a generation after movies learned to talk, they’d mastered talking sharp and hard. Any number of offerings — especially comedies — cut like hacksaws, the crazy strong ones made for getting through metal. But few of his contemporaries could weld cynicism and downright meanness onto a script and still keep it paradoxically light … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Two
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 62-60
62. Moonpools & Caterpillars, Lucky Dumpling Lucky Dumpling was the one and only major label effort by California band Moonpools & Caterpillars, bookended by a couple of self-released albums. The Fillipino-American band, led by singer Kimmi Ward Encarnacion and guitarist Jay Jay Encarnacion, was supposedly signed to their Elektra Records contract when a label rep saw them opening for a different act that he’d actually shown up to scout. They had some modest success on the college charts, primarily with the single “Hear,” though it wasn’t enough to satisfy their new corporate bosses. Given a taste of the big time (and with bank … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 62-60
From the Archive: Straight Talk
I have a memory that endures far more than seems reasonable of my colleague of the radio show that feaured this review showing up as the station with a cassingle of “Straight Talk,” the song Dolly Parton released in conjunction with the film of the same name. We always tried to get appropriate music to accompany the reviews, so he now had this item in his collection, and I assure you it’s unlikely it would have arrived there in any other way. There are several significant things that can happen to a film when Dolly Parton is cast in it. … Continue reading From the Archive: Straight Talk
Coffee for Two 