One for Friday: The Feelies, “Sooner or Later”
Lost music was harder to come by when I was in college than it is now. There was no eBay, no Hype Machine, no Amazon (well, there was an Amazon). There weren’t even great used record shops in the humble city where I went to school. So there were a few holy grails of college rock, widely revered albums that had slipped out of print and probably illicitly slipped out the door of the radio station library shortly thereafter. We could read about these records, but couldn’t play them, and often couldn’t even hear a bit of them. The album … Continue reading One for Friday: The Feelies, “Sooner or Later”
Gettin’ down with your royal badness
So the cinematic adventures of the world’s most popular boy wizard come one film closer to the end. Harry Potter and his favorite classmates at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry continue their academic pursuits while remaining vigilant against the … Continue reading Gettin’ down with your royal badness
Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Forty-Seven
#47 — Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) Far From Heaven is an exercise in adoration. It is an unabashed, spellbound, swooning tribute to the technicolor melodramas of the 1950’s, particularly those directed by Douglas Sirk. The titles alone reverberate with grandiloquence: Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, and the film that served as the most direct inspiration for Far From Heaven, All That Heaven Allows. Sirk’s films are famous for washing the screen with vibrant colors, sending the actors into teary-eyed overdrive with anguished dialogue, and approaching social issues with … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Forty-Seven
A man’s bar is his castle, and this stool is my throne
I seem to be having trouble stringing words together well enough to finish writing about the film we saw this weekend to help celebrate someone’s birthday. So instead, I’d like to share Stephen Colbert‘s suggested slogans for a couple of popular American beers. Bud Light Lime: “It’s like drinking a Bud Light downwind of an artificial flavor factory.” Coors Light: “Delicious–it doesn’t taste at all like Palmolive dishwashing soap.” (Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”) Continue reading A man’s bar is his castle, and this stool is my throne
A tattoo burned for everything I’ve ever wanted and lost
You know, I’d actually respect the team behind Roland Emmerich’s next movie more if they just went ahead and used the approach taken by this mocking revamp of their trailer. Why not! (Posted simultaneously to “Drilling Holes in the Wall.”) Continue reading A tattoo burned for everything I’ve ever wanted and lost
Maybe someday I’ll share your little distant cloud
Recently I saw an interview with Michelle Pfeiffer on a morning talk show, the sort of place where informed discourse goes to die. Amidst the general harmless banter that Pfeiffer was clearly tolerating rather than enjoying, there came a point … Continue reading Maybe someday I’ll share your little distant cloud
Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Forty-Eight
#48 — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003). When surveying the films of the past ten years, it’s tempting to view Peter Jackson’s three excursions into Middle Earth as a singular achievement. While he … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 00s — Number Forty-Eight
One for Friday: Half Miler, “Here Comes A Regular”
There was a time when I marked every summer with a baseball-centric trip with my friend Colin. In our fearless, energized youth, we would load up a vehicle with modest provisions and embark on cross-country journeys built around stops in cities that could boast a major league baseball team: Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, New York City, Toronto, and, to help properly date the era of these trips, Montreal. Through all this dedicated journeying, we only made a point of getting to one city that had no home team to root, root, root … Continue reading One for Friday: Half Miler, “Here Comes A Regular”
I can take it or leave it each time
I really intended to get to a post that would contribute to that major ongoing project, but that’ll have to wait until the weekend. At least this will make for a good warm-up for Five for Friday. Carrie Brownstein of … Continue reading I can take it or leave it each time
Pivotal Film Selling Out Your Monkey
Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007). This Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature catalogs and condemns the harsh treatment of prisoners in the Bush administration’s zealous “war on terror.” Gibney lays out the evidence of vicious abuse and clear-cut torture perpetrated by the American military at prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just as importantly–arguably even more importantly–he examines the ways in which the highest leaders created, encourages and perpetuated the environment for these horrendous practices and then casually, heartlessly blamed the enlisted men when the worst of it came to light. Like Charles Ferguson’s No … Continue reading Pivotal Film Selling Out Your Monkey
