Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Fifty
#50 — Always (Steven Spielberg, 1989) If you want a snapshot of who I was at the age of nineteen, Always is as good a place as any to start. Like a lot of people who grew up during the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Fifty
Top Fifty Films of the 80s — An Introduction
Yes, I’m really going to do this. When I tracked through my selections for the fifty best films of the the ten year span that began with January 1, 2000, the timing made sense. It aligned with the pending spin of the third digit on the calendar’s odometer and everyone was cooking up lists intended to summarize the entertainment of “the aughts.” When I repeated the exercise with the films of the 1990s, it had its own warped logic (or so I convinced myself) as I was honoring and making a sort of effort to preserve the prior bout of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — An Introduction
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 60 and 59
60. Too Much Joy, Son of Sam I Am Too Much Joy’s second album comes with its on description in the liner notes. It notes that “This album contains no songs about: Jack Kerouac, TV evangelists, safe sex, how dying … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 60 and 59
Everybody liked Jesus, everybody wanted to hang out with him
Twenty-seventh in a series. (Due credit.) Continue reading Everybody liked Jesus, everybody wanted to hang out with him
One for Friday: Possum Dixon, “Watch the Girl Destroy Me”
Listen, we’ve all been there, reeling from some disastrous relationship. And for most college radio DJs, there are probably some wounds that are fairly fresh. So I always had a strange admiration for those bands that could tap into those feelings, not just because I could often relate to those songs, but because, on some level, I recognized that it was a great way for those artists to earn some airplay that may have otherwise eluded them. I’m not saying it’s all cold calculation. Many of the bands we played at the station were populated by individuals whose ages were … Continue reading One for Friday: Possum Dixon, “Watch the Girl Destroy Me”
Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number One
#1 — Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) For me, the moment that best demonstrates the brilliance of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas isn’t one of the most commonly cited. It’s not Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito asking “Funny how?” to Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number One
Banksy, Jackson, Parker, Scorsese, Wright
The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009). So poorly conceived that it borders on tragic. Jackson and his regular collaborators adapt Alice Sebold’s acclaimed and beloved 2002 novel about a murdered teenage girl, demonstrating such a bizarre lack of empathy that whole film takes on an off-putting robotic sheen. The movie is senseless in every definition of the word, over-directed and utterly tone-deaf. The actors all seem to have stumbled in from other movies with Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci approaching satire in their broadly drawn roles, Rachel Weisz looking bored and Mark Wahlberg thoroughly perplexed. It is cluttered with garish … Continue reading Banksy, Jackson, Parker, Scorsese, Wright
What separates me from you? What separates me from you now?
The most important scene in the Coen brothers’ new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel True Grit occurs early on. Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross has journeyed to the Old West town where her father was shot and killed to retrieve the … Continue reading What separates me from you? What separates me from you now?
Whatever it was he was about to say, everybody understood everything was gonna change
It’s no wonder that The King’s Speech moved to the top of Oscar prognosticators’ lists as soon as it’d been seen. It’s not that it’s good, although it is. It’s that it is packed, from its production company logos to … Continue reading Whatever it was he was about to say, everybody understood everything was gonna change
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 62 and 61
62. Mary’s Danish, There Goes the Wondertruck… Many bands have influences, but few can trace them with the same sort of precision that Mary’s Danish can. Co-founders Gretchen Seager and Julie Ritter forged the plan to start a band while … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 62 and 61
