Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Thirty-Seven
#37 — Shall We Dance? (Masayuki Suo, 1996) Part of the appeal of foreign films is the glimpse they can provide of a different culture. There’s a distancing angle to this as a film-goer, a sense that perhaps having a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Thirty-Seven
I know that Saturday’s got what it takes, babe
Some days I’m fully prepared and excited to string together a whole bunch of words. Some days all I want to do is post a picture of a monkey reading a comic book. Okay, it looks more like a magazine … Continue reading I know that Saturday’s got what it takes, babe
One for Friday: Paul Kelly & the Messengers, “Under the Sun”
Paul Kelly was one of those artists that I arrived at the college radio station determined to find. He had received laudatory reviews in Rolling Stone, one of the few sources for music information that I had in the mid-to-late eighties. Despite the Australian troubadour’s relative obscurity on these shores, the publication reviewed his records, approvingly quoting the lyrics and generally describing his songwriting capabilities with the same sort of unabashed enthusiasm they usually reserved for more sainted figures like Neil Young. His music clearly wasn’t going to get played on the commercial radio stations I could access during my … Continue reading One for Friday: Paul Kelly & the Messengers, “Under the Sun”
When you asked how I was doing was that some kind of joke?
And now an offer from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man: I think this particular offer has expired but Marvel seems to have a similar one ongoing at this point replacing “riddles and jokes” with “story ideas.” (Nicked from a classic epic … Continue reading When you asked how I was doing was that some kind of joke?
Great Moments in Literature
“The judge was a tall big man with blue eyes and a brown billy-goat beard and he seemed to me to be old, though he was only around forty years of age at that time. His manner was grave. On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic. That was his wife’s religion. It was his own business and none of mine. If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eight of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need of some stronger medicine than the … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Greatish Performances #2
#2 — Judy Davis as Caroline Chasseur in The Ref (Ted Demme, 1994) Judy Davis radiates strength. There’s an edgy intelligence in her eyes and forthright authority in her manner. She comes across as someone who will never quite get backed into a corner, but could manage to shove someone else into that position with a little more than a few withering glances. She’s imposing in the brittle exactitude of her domination of a scene. That is not, however, the entirety of who she is onscreen. She’s just as lucky to use that personal potency to heighten the vividness of … Continue reading Greatish Performances #2
I went shopping with a list from A to Z, everything I needed for a happy family
So apparently Megan McArdle came up with this nifty meme today (though, to give proper credit, I found out about it on Ezra Klein’s Interweb space). Go to your personal account history at Amazon.com and figure out the first you … Continue reading I went shopping with a list from A to Z, everything I needed for a happy family
Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Thirty-Eight
#38 — Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995) Richard Linklater’s earliest films are all very verbal. The people onscreen unleash their varied opinions and theories with a barrage of words. The writer-director had so much to say that he concocted small … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Thirty-Eight
You can stand up or you can run, you and I both know what you’ve done
Writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to the splendid creature feature The Host finds him moving from the realm of Ishiro Honda to that of Alfred Hitchcock. It could be argued that he’s still tracking monsters and assessing the damage that they … Continue reading You can stand up or you can run, you and I both know what you’ve done
One for Friday: Cheating Off of Someone Else’s Paper
As the sort of cop-out posts from the past couple of days clearly indicate, this is as extremely busy week for me, making the process of putting word together pretty and cogently to be hard. With that in mind, I’m going to defer to someone else’s older post for today’s musical selection. Luckily, while researching my post at the other site, I stumbled upon a song I’ve been wanting to hear for a long, long time. Enjoy. Continue reading One for Friday: Cheating Off of Someone Else’s Paper
