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Katzin, Kurosawa, Muschietti, Walsh, Wise

Dan Seeger

Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh, 1949). This Raoul Walsh western both locks in on the form and offers a sort of sour, woozy commentary on its many tropes. Joel McRae plays a notorious outlaw who’s sprung from jail and gets himself enmeshed in the fabled “one last job,” a train heist that will net him and his conniving compatriots enough money to allow them to retire for good. Along the way, he also becomes enamored with a lady bandit, the wonderfully named Colorado Carson (Virginia Mayo). Walsh had used the exact same source material to make a film noir crime picture … Continue reading Katzin, Kurosawa, Muschietti, Walsh, Wise

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 16 and 15

Dan Seeger

16. Various Artists, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet soundtrack Yet another soundtrack, but this time I get it. And not just because a copy of this one still sits on our household CD shelf. Like a lot of director Baz Luhrmann’s films, his kinetic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is such a melange of music and imagery, essentially the culminating cinematic product of the heavy MTV influence from the prior decade, that getting the soundtrack comes across as almost a necessity, a way to openly acknowledge the fingerprints Luhrmann has left on the mind, for good or ill. Surely it … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 16 and 15

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

Considering it was a short week, I had a lot of material up at Spectrum Culture. The most challenging piece to write was my “Revisit” on Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, part of my ongoing attempt to exhaust all of my pop culture touchstones for the site. I suspect the result reads as a little more unkind towards the film than my actual, official stance on it, but I went where the writing took me. The other film I wrote on was a new documentary on Bettie Page. I picked it up because of the promise that the famously private … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Dream Warriors, “Wash Your Face in My Sink”

Dan Seeger

For all the fondness and pride I have when I look back at my college radio years, I’m also amused by all the instances when my alma mater station proved to be far from prescient. Given the span of years when I happily toiled as an undergrad in the poster-laden studios, I’d love to be able to report that we were truly among the first to play the bands that would eventually become a sacred part of the indie firmament. But I don’t actually remember us giving a whole lot of airtime to, say, Bleach before Nevermind. For a college … Continue reading One for Friday: Dream Warriors, “Wash Your Face in My Sink”