Top 40 Smash Taps: “Let It Be Me”
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. Okay, acknowledging that Wikipedia is a shaky source, here goes: Over the course of a music career that began with “No Place For Me,” recorded when he was working as a disk jockey, Willie Nelson has released over one hundred singles, including five last year. While the red-headed stranger has had an abundance of huge hits on country radio and is at least as … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Let It Be Me”
My Misspent Youth: Magik by Chris Claremont and John Buscema, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema
Like a lot of teenaged comic book fans in the nineteen-eighties, I was a helpless devotee of the uncanny X-Men, the group formally tagged as “Marvel’s Merry Mutants” but far more angsty and melodramatic in their iteration two decades in to their publishing history. (They weren’t really all that merry in the nineteen-sixties either, but Stan Lee loved alliteration.) They’d been shepherded from a group perpetually on the brink of publishing extinction to a true sensation by writer Chris Claremont, who became a star creator in the process. The X-Men had so clearly become the line’s prime commodity and Claremont the … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Magik by Chris Claremont and John Buscema, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema
The Sound of Oscars
Those with whom I watch the Academy Awards, both virtually and sharing the same couch, were a little worried about me last night. My praise for the remarkable achievement of Boyhood has evidently been effusive enough that there were nationwide predictions of dire thoughts overtaking me when it became clear the night was turning against Richard Linklater’s film. But I like Birdman, too. (There are some critics out there this morning undoubtedly feeling far angrier about this outcome.) If it had been a night about venerating the dreadful The Imitation Game, exactly the sort of prestige pablum the Academy might have … Continue reading The Sound of Oscars
From the Archive: Goodfellas
Since I invoked Goodfellas as a comparison point for excellence in writing about my clear choice for the best film of 2014, it seems appropriately to reach back to when I wrote about Martin Scorsese’s masterful film for the edition of 90FM’s The Reel Thing that looked back at the top cinematic efforts of 1990. This was my first chance to write about the film (my cohort on the show drew Goodfellas when we originally reviewed it), but it wouldn’t be the last. Though I keep trying, I suspect I’ll never fully do it justice. This is a mediocre piece of … Continue reading From the Archive: Goodfellas
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 73 and 72
73. Grant McLennan, Horsebreaker Star By the time Grant McLennan released the album Horsebreaker Star, there were a healthy number of years that had passed since the demise of his band the Go-Betweens. Between the formal break-up, in December 1989, and this album, McLennan released two other solo outings, so there’s no real reason to characterize Horsebreaker Star as some unique statement of purpose, an announcement about his determination for enduring creative relevance. And yet that’s exactly what the record seems like, both in its content and through a few more superficial indicators (it’s the first solo album on which he’s … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 73 and 72
One for Friday: Cyndi Lauper, “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)”
There were only three nominees in the Best Original Song category at the 61st Academy Awards, presented to films released in 1988. This was the first time I can recall hearing the argument that it was time to eliminate the category altogether, the proposal accompanied by the insistence that it was a relic of the time when Hollywood was still cranking out original musicals on a regular basis. Even though the nineteen-eighties were boom years for soundtracks, there was a sense that the process of assembling a batch of pop songs that could be slapped onto cassettes (that was the … Continue reading One for Friday: Cyndi Lauper, “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)”
Twenty Performances, or The Unexpected Virtue of Birdman
As per usual, the capper to the staggered countdown of the best films of the year is a listing of the names I would have scratched into an Academy Award nominating ballot for the acting branch had it somehow landed in my hands. Obviously I think these are all terrific performances, but I feel a little less fervor for the acting this year than is typical for me. Interestingly, the film represented most across these four categories didn’t make my top ten for the year (though it was a strong runner-up). With resolute honesty — about opposed to giving in … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or The Unexpected Virtue of Birdman
Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number One
I’m concerned that placing Richard Linklater’s Boyhood atop my list doesn’t truly convey just how impressive I find it. After all, in a tally such as this there’s no differentiating a close call from a blowout, no column of “Games Back” to illuminate the level of distance between the victor and the runner-up. So let me share a little mental exercise I’ve been performing almost from the moment Boyhood‘s closing credits start to roll. I’ve been trying to figure out the last movie that topped one of my year-end lists that I think might outrank Boyhood if chronology got jumbled … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number One
Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Two
There are a multitude of reasons for the outrage that greeted the omission of Selma from key categories in this year’s Academy Award nominations. While some of the most compelling involve taking issue with the willful and arguably cowardly disregarding of its current political pertinence, my personal fierce disappointment is inspired by a far simpler reason: Ava DuVernay’s depiction of a seminal moment in the Civil Rights movement is one of the great filmmaking achievements of the year, joined in my mind with only a couple other of releases as a pure triumph of directing. DuVernay delves into a portion … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2014 — Number Two
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Eight
#48 — 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948) A common and entirely apt complaint about modern Hollywood filmmaking is the evident pronounced disinterest in the pursuit of originality in favor of figuring out ways to cram familiar brands into the CGI-shaped contours of self-perpetuating (and, increasingly, interlocking) blockbuster franchises. It’s not unreasonable to wish for more invention and less anxious opportunism in the creative choices of modern crafters of cinema, and yet any misty-eyed pining for more golden eras necessarily require a certain amount of willful amnesia. Back in the time before older movies hung around like atrophied specters on late … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Eight
Coffee for Two 