Twenty Performances, or Splitting Adams
As the banner above makes colorfully clear, this particular annual post is better-suited to make an appearance on Sunday, but that’s reserved for one of our beloved exercises in counting backwards. So instead, we’ll use it as a wrap-up to the extended retrospective on the best cinematic offerings of the calendar year not-so-recently completed. I’ve already rattled off my choices for the ten best films of the year, and here are the performances I’d celebrate if I had the privilege of filling out a nominating ballot issued to a member Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences acting branch, ranked … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Splitting Adams
Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number One
When I’m partial to a film, I will often devotedly adhere to whatever preferred version of it the filmmaker puts out there, including an alternative styling of the title. For example, I strongly advocate for the exclusive use of lowercase … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number One
Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Two
I’ve now written about Frances Ha so many times that I’ve effectively given up on trying to make certain I come up with something new to say when I take another crack at it. I don’t bother to review how … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Two
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Five
#45 — Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) No matter how many times the comparison is invoked by those trying to distract from the damage wrought by the sport, boxing isn’t poetry. It is instead angry prose slammed into place by harshly struck typewriter keys. The definitive cinematic statement of this truth is and will forever be Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, though there are certainly predecessors to that masterpiece that make the same argument with similarly brutish authority, most notably Somebody Up There Likes Me. Based on the autobiography written by middleweight champion Rocky Graziano (with what was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Five
College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 23
23. Greg Kihn, Next of Kihn Perhaps the only thing that needs to be known about Next of Kihn, the third album by Baltimore-born Greg Kihn with the band that bore his name, is that it inaugurated the practice of … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 23
From the Archive: Welcome to the Monkeyhouse
As might be able to predict, these first few weeks of the “From the Archive” feature involve methodically tracking through the various sources from which most future installments are likely to be drawn. My two primary collegiate sources duly covered, it’s time to move ahead a few calendar years. When I was living and working in central Florida, I was lucky enough to be in the orbits of some exceedingly interesting people, including an individual who is the most remarkable manifestation of the word “indefatigable” I’ve ever met. Among the many, many endeavors of my friend Dave was founding and … Continue reading From the Archive: Welcome to the Monkeyhouse
One for Friday: Steve Carlisle, “WKRP in Cincinnati”
Sometimes–often, actually–I miss radio. I don’t solely mean working in radio, though that’s true, too. Twenty-five years ago as I type this, I was in my first year of college, meaning I was in my first year at the college radio station. Around this point in the year, I’d just been elected to serve in my first position on the executive staff, a vital part of my higher ed journey that itself would represent four-and-a-half years of diverse, exhausting, challenging, exciting, gratifying work. From there I went to commercial radio for a time, learning just enough to realize it was … Continue reading One for Friday: Steve Carlisle, “WKRP in Cincinnati”
The New Releases Shelf: Burn Your Fire for No Witness
I’m prepared to admit that I can’t always readily identify what makes a great album great. Sometimes, sure, there’s a clear vision, a great leap forward for an artists, or some wholly evident backstory that adds depth to the melding … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Burn Your Fire for No Witness
Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Three
I think American Hustle is a fine name for David O. Russell’s latest film, but I prefer the title printed across the front page of the script he agreed to direct: American Bullshit. That has less to do with a … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Three
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Six
#46 — Beat the Devil (John Huston, 1953) Like most people, I suspect, I have a tendency to think of films of the nineteen-fifties–at least Hollywood films of the nineteen-fifties–as fairly staid and safe, lacking the rush of invention and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Six
Coffee for Two 