Cocteau, Keaton and Crisp, Kent, Reed, Welles
Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946). Cocteau’s take on the famed French fairy tale is elegant and unsettling, standing as a cunning exploration of the ways in which imagery and mood can reshape a familiar story. Beginning with opening credits written on a chalkboard (and then promptly erased) and an explanatory that calls for the film to be viewed with the appropriate childlike wonder, Cocteau also establishes a terrific playful quality. The resulting mix of the sublime and the goofy gives Beauty and the Beast (or, if you prefer, La Belle et la Bête) an absolute surplus of charm. … Continue reading Cocteau, Keaton and Crisp, Kent, Reed, Welles
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Ask Me No Questions”
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. B.B. King is an undisputed legend of the blues, using a guitar dubbed Lucille (usually, but not always, a black Gibson) to plow through powerhouse songs, many of which he himself established as standards of the genre. Despite all that, he only had modest crossover chart success. From the string of singles that began with “Miss Martha King,” released in 1949, and ended … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Ask Me No Questions”
College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 5
5. Billy Bragg, Workers Playtime Billy met Mary in 1986. Specifically name-checked in the song “The Short Answer” (“Between Marx and marzipan in the dictionary/ There was Mary/ Between the deep blue sea and the devil/ That was me”), Mary … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 5
From the Archive: The Rescuers Down Under
Looking back on this review from the first semester of our radio movie review program, I’m pretty sure I can spot where I was bluffing. Putting together Oliver & Company and The Little Mermaid as equal titles in Disney Animation’s … Continue reading From the Archive: The Rescuers Down Under
One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions”
On this day, when crass consumerism reigns supreme, I woke up with a Billy Bragg song galloping through my head. So even as I watched the morning news programs, wherein all the more important, more meaningful, more troubling developments of the day were pushed to deep on the segment list in favor of grotesquely chipper reports on which sales were generating the most aggressive enthusiasm among desperate holidays shoppers, my mental accompaniment involved a distinct Essex accent delivering the battle cry “We’re making the world safe for capitalism!” Bragg was one of the artists I clung to most gratefully … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions”
Happy Thanksgiving!
Good luck with today’s cooking! Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving!
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Four
#4 — Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951) The films of Alfred Hitchcock are ideally suited for clip reels, which can skew perception of them a bit. Moreso than Billy Wilder, John Ford, or any of his other rough … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Four
Great Moments in Literature
“I stopped listening to tapes at some point: it was a phase. You either get used to noises in your head, or you learn to focus instead on whatever other noises happen to present in the room, like the air conditioner. Still, I kept them, and they’re arranged neatly on the top of the dresser in my bedroom, which means Vicky dusts them once a week. They look like museum pieces now. Chaos Blood, Black Lake, Rexecutioner’s Dream. Sean at sixteen thought Rexecutioner’s Dream was the greatest thing he’d ever heard, something so strange and different it seemed like a … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
It’s so hard to contemplate you ‘cos you’re so full of interstellar soul
I appreciate that Christopher Nolan has taken the clout he earned from making Warner Bros. a couple bajillion dollars with his trilogy of Batman films and put it towards crazily ambitious, reality-warping films. In this cinematic age, when no studio … Continue reading It’s so hard to contemplate you ‘cos you’re so full of interstellar soul
College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 6
6. Fishbone, Truth and Soul Fishbone decided to open Truth and Soul, their second full-length release, with a track that signaled a clear understanding of their forebears. Their ferocious take on Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” is a clarion call to the rock ‘n’ roll faithful. Fishbone is going to do right by the mélange of genres in which they traffic. “Freddie’s Dead” is steeped in funk authority, but it also blasts forward like a headlong hard rock anthem. Their earlier releases sometimes got Fishbone pigeonholed as an empty party band, maybe in part because it was all too easy … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 6
