Tag: from the archive

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From the Archive: Used People

Dan Seeger

Several weeks back, I offered up several short reviews I’d written for the “Best of 1992” episode of our movie review show on the radio. On the back of one of those pages was a true rarity from my time doing that program: a hand-written script. I wonder if that means I wrote it in an odd place, far away from a word processor, as if I needed to get my animosity down as quickly as possible, hoping to lose none of my spite for the film in question in the journey to a more familiar writing space. Regardless, from … Continue reading From the Archive: Used People

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From the Archive: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Dan Seeger

This review was written fairly early in the run of The Reel Thing, the movie review radio show I co-hosted from 1990 to 1993. I worked as hard on this piece as anything I wrote in those first months of the show, because I knew I was out of step with the broader critical community. More than that, I knew my partner on the program absolutely loved this film, so I had to make my case as sharp and compelling as possible. As soon as I was done, there was going to be an on-air fight. It wasn’t going to … Continue reading From the Archive: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

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From the Archive: Munich

Dan Seeger

I find it a little remarkable that I have no reviews of Steven Spielberg films from the time I cohosted the movie review show on college radio station WWSP-90FM. During the time our program was airing weekly, the prolific filmmaker signed his name to exactly one directorial effort: Hook, released in 1991. Given when it landed on the release calendar, it’s possible we didn’t even cover it on the show. (A December 11th release date means we could have already been off in correlation to the school’s winter break). Instead, in order to populate the “From the Archive” feature with … Continue reading From the Archive: Munich

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From the Archive: Waiting for the Light

Dan Seeger

This review showed up within the first few months of The Reel Thing, the movies reviews and news show I co-hosted on WWSP-90FM, from 1990 – 1993. I was clearly still adjusting my parameters on the star rating, since there are an awful lot of complaints leveled to land on the clear recommendation of three stars. In my modern fact-checking, I discovered I used the wrong name for the young actress Hillary Wolf, so it’s sort of a mess all around. That bit of research also brought me to the tidbit that Wolf went on to be a judo champion … Continue reading From the Archive: Waiting for the Light

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From the Archive: Hero and Mr. Baseball

Dan Seeger

When I wrote reviews for The Pointer, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I typically focused on a pair of films, doing my level best to thematically tie them together. As my rudimentary explanation of auteur theory here makes clear, there were plenty of instances when my attempts yielded strained results. The artistic success or failure of a film is often attributed chiefly to the director. Despite the acknowledged importance of fine writing and convincing acting, the director shoulders the majority of criticism because it is their job to tie everything together and strengthen the weak spots. … Continue reading From the Archive: Hero and Mr. Baseball

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From the Archive: Dying Young

Dan Seeger

There was a time when Premiere magazine was invaluable. When the digital asphalt was still drying on the information superhighway, coverage of movies wasn’t nearly as pervasive as it is now. Besides the obvious lack of anxiously competing websites, the mainstream media was also less likely to sully their pages or airwaves with excited previews of upcoming films or, even more sordid, widespread discussion of box office expectations and results. While Premiere was hardly the sole outlet providing such information, they were generally doing it better and more inventively than anyone else. For example, when it came time to offer a preview of the … Continue reading From the Archive: Dying Young