Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Eight
#28 — From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) Any film from the first part of the nineteen-fifties is going to seem tame when measured against the norms at play some sixty years later, so its advisable to remember that the beach make-out scene in From Here to Eternity became iconic, at least in part, due to its raciness. The various censorious powers-that-been offered a fleet of suggestions as to how to make the moment palatable, from having the two lip-locked lovers demurely stand up to slapping a nice, thick bathrobe across Burt Lancaster’s bank vault torso. There was also … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Eight
Faxon and Rash, Kasdan, Lloyd, Lord and Miller, Snyder
Darling Companion (Lawrence Kasdan, 2012). I’ve got loads of residual affection for writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, but he sure doesn’t make it easy to be one of his defenders these days. Darling Companion was his first film in nearly decade, following the appallingly bad Stephen King adaptation Dreamcatcher. It doesn’t make an argument that he used his creative downtime wisely. As wispy of a film concept as anyone’s likely to come across, Kasdan’s story (co-written with his wife, Meg Kasdan) concerns an older couple who adopt a stray dog and then lose that new furry family member in the woods around … Continue reading Faxon and Rash, Kasdan, Lloyd, Lord and Miller, Snyder
Great Moments in Literature
“If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas, I heard my aunt Diane boom in my head. Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that’s why someone had invented a saying like that. So we’d all know that we’d never have what we needed.” –Gillian Flynn, Dark Places, 2009 “CLARKE FUTURISTICS: CALL IT A DREAM GONE BUST–JUST ONE MORE INSIGNIFICANT VICTIM OF THE RECESSION. STUART CLARKE HAD POURED HIS SOUL INTO A VISION OF THE … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
College Countdown: The First CMJ Album Chart, 7
7. Neil Young, Comes a Time Comes a Time, released in October of 1978, was the ninth solo release credited to Neil Young. It was at once a departure and a return to form. After a batch of prickly, complex, … Continue reading College Countdown: The First CMJ Album Chart, 7
From the Archive: Neu
This is one of the album reviews I wrote for The Independent, the weekly publication once presided over by the most indefatigable human being I know. Clearly, my later instinct when writing for Spectrum Culture to claim music that was outside my general comfort zone was in effect even back then. I’d like to say that all the cross-references that can be found in this short piece were indicative of the strong influence Mojo magazine had on my writing at the time, but I still do that. Polysics offer up a “Special Thanks to Devo” in the liner notes to … Continue reading From the Archive: Neu
One for Friday: Flesh for Lulu, “Time and Space”
Every band deserves one perfect song, a pop gem so glistening and lovable that all other transgressions against creative good taste can be forever forgiven. Flesh for Lulu had exactly that with “Postcards from Paradise,” a single off of their 1987 album, Long Live the New Flesh. The song is so good that any greatest hits album that includes that track and a random assemblage of eleven other of the band’s efforts is guaranteed to be a pretty damn good record. Of course, there’s a downside to that, too. Every other song, almost without exception, is going to sound fairly … Continue reading One for Friday: Flesh for Lulu, “Time and Space”
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Nine
#29 — Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) Roman Holiday comfortably coheres to many of the patterns that have dictated Hollywood-crafted romantic comedies for about as long as the moving pictures started to talk. There’s the upstanding man’s man, who may … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Twenty-Nine
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Like a Sunday in Salem”
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. Gene Cotton was a singer-songwriter who worked primarily in the nineteen-seventies, racking up a few moderately successful singles, four of which landed in the Billboard Top 40. Among that quartet was a 1978 duet with Kim Carnes on the song “You’re a Part of Me,” a track that stood as her first trip to the Billboard charts, two years before she made it … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Like a Sunday in Salem”
Well can’t you see me standing here, I’ve got my back against the record machine
At some point, the meta magic of filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller is going to wear so thin it can’t hold up a flimsy excuse for a movie concept, but the inevitable erosion hasn’t happened yet. Mere months after their astonishing and daring subversion of the corporate synergy movie model turned The Lego Movie into the most unlikely critical hit in ages (the film’s commercial success, while more impressive than expected, wasn’t exactly in doubt) they’ve returned with a sequel to 2012’s television show adaptation 21 Jump Street, itself a headlong dive into the rabbit hole of mocking self-awareness. … Continue reading Well can’t you see me standing here, I’ve got my back against the record machine
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty
#30 — Shane (George Stevens, 1953) No other film genre inspire hyperbolic statements about deconstructionist subversion like the western. That’s in part because the hefty log pile of westerns from the earliest decades of Hollywood are largely so staid and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty
