Film Friday: Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum and White Material
A quiet movie called 35 Shots of Rum is traveling around the country, a film of uncommon grace, and I mention this because I’d like to see it again myself whenever I have the chance. I’m waiting for it to come to my town; maybe you’re doing the same. World-class filmmaker Claire Denis made the movie last year, and anyone who’s been keeping score knows that I’m one of her unabashed fans. Name the date, and I’ll be there.... read more
The Booky Man: Plague Upon Your Houses
Undecided on that flu shot? Read Thomas Mullen. You’ll be ready to stand in line for a vaccination.... read more
Start Press: Details, Details
Like millions of gamers around the world, I spent a decent chunk of this past week clutching an M4 Carbine assault rifle and elbow-crawling around in the muck trying not to get waxed. I watched from space as a nuclear missile detonated over the United States’ eastern seaboard. I scrambled through the charred husk of the Oval Office while the entire city of Washington D.C. smouldered to ash around me like a bad acid trip at a 4th of July barbecue in Hell. On a deep-cover assignment as a CIA operative, I followed a group of Russian terrorists as they... read more
High Definition: AMC's The Prisoner Escapes From the Ordinary
AMC doesn’t do a tremendous amount of original programming, but when it does, it does it well. After two critically acclaimed series, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, the network is broacasting its second miniseries, a six-episode remake of the 1960s 17-part series The Prisoner, originally broadcast on ITV in the UK.... read more
Listen Up: Marissa Nadler, Where Have I Been All Your Life?
Two Saturday nights ago, the night before my birthday, I'd had two tacos and two margaritas and I was at The Earl in Atlanta with my boyfriend Joe when I decided that I was going to love Marissa Nadler forever... read more
Film Friday: Werner Herzog Goes Nuts Twice (and Other Observations About Crazed Filmmakers)
A new movie called Bronson by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is traveling around the country, three screens per week. It’s about a man (true story) who’s so incorrigible that British authorities had to lock him up in a jail (or rather, a gaol) for 30-odd years. He’s the kind of chap who hauls off and belts people just for being within arms’ reach: school teachers, police officers, you name it. Bald, mustachioed, and hard-knuckled like a carnival strongman, he has no place in a civil society, even though his crimes don’t seem to warrant three decades in solitary confinement, either.... read more
The Booky Man: Children’s Accursed Literature
The first book that ever made me cry told the story of an egg-sucking, ringwormy male with one ear chewed off. Did I mention he was yellow? And I was six?... read more
Start Press: The Spirit of Radio
The story is already legend. On October 30th, 1938, listeners who tuned in to hear CBS Radio’s regular broadcast of Mercury Theatre on the Air were whipped into a frenzy by a series of increasingly calamitous news bulletins chronicling a Martian invasion of Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. At that moment in history when Orson Welles staged his now-infamous radio drama War of the Worlds, the run-up to World War II was already in motion. The American public might as well have been collectively listening to the cadence of a wooden roller coaster clack-clacking inexorably toward the first of many stomach-turning... read more
High Definition: After 3 Seasons, Mad Men Is Just Getting Started
I was born a couple years after the 1960s ended, but the decade’s shadow loomed with import over the ones I first encountered. It was the second half of the decade I always heard about, though—Viet Nam, the moon landing, the summer of drugs. So one of my favorite things about AMC’s Mad Men is watching the forgotten beginnings of the ’60s, before John, Paul, George and Ringo touched down in an airport that had recently been named for the just-assassinated president John F. Kennedy.... read more
Listen Up: Mariah, Hootie & My Golden Hour
I turned 11 years old in November 1995, let me just say that up front.... read more
Film Friday: A Weekend of Pushing Buttons
This weekend at your local Big Screen, the movies are about pushing buttons. In The Box, directed by Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly, a mysterious man in a long coat who appears to have been slapped in the face on more than one occasion shows up at the home of Cameron Diaz and James Marsden to ask if this attractive, cash-strapped couple wants to see what’s in his box. Spoiler: it’s a button. Push it and you get a million dollars, but when you do someone on the other side of the earth whom you do not know will be... read more
The Booky Man: Maus... or There's No Place Like Home for the Holocaust
Comic books in their most familiar form—tales of super-heroes and adventurers—sprang from pulp novel potboilers of the 1930s and ‘40s. They were often lurid, licentious, shocking. In fact, by the 1950s, as America focused on the Red Scare and those dirty Commies tunneling like termites under our American way of life, ‘seditious’ comic books grew so popular among impressionable young people that authorities passed laws banning comics… and even burned them.... read more
Start Press: Lost In Space
Lately it’s been getting dark around five o’clock in the evening. Ireland is situated far enough north that it won’t be long before the daylight—notice I said ‘daylight’ and not ‘sunshine’—will fizzle out each afternoon around 3:30pm. I like to imagine that the sun has gotten sick of its job and begun showing up late to work, slipping out the backdoor early. I don’t mind the shorter days. Nighttime amplifies the comfort of your domestic environs. Like when you’re watching a stage play with an elaborate set and all the lights fade to black except for one spotlight trained on... read more
High Definition: Modern Family Finds Its Funny
Despite my high hopes for Joel McHale, John Oliver, Ken Jeong and the rest of the cast of NBC’s hit-and-miss Community, the funniest new comedy this season is Modern Family on ABC. The story of three inter-related families works because its characters seem familiar to life but fresh to the screen.... read more
Listen Up: The Tourettes Are Dead, Long Live The Tourettes
I wore a lot of skirts my freshman year of college, but one of my favorite songs that year was “Pants Fever,” a catchy little tune by a band that I’m pretty sure you’ve never heard of. And I mean that in absolutely the least snobby way possible. You don’t not know them because you’re not cool enough. You don’t know them because, really, there’s just not that much to know.... read more
Film Friday: George Lucas and the Canadian Force
When the National Film Board of Canada released an iPhone application last week, I naturally thought of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Yoda. For some people, trolling through the NFB’s video archives will undoubtedly bring to mind those three famous Canadians.... read more
The Booky Man: The Stranger Among Us
God bless the French. They gave us French kissing, French bread, Brigitte Bardot and Tati. They gave us useful terms: ennui and guillotine. They gave us The Statue of Liberty.... read more
Start Press: If I Could Turn Back Time
In the past I’ve tended to avoid racing games that strive for a realistic simulation of the driving experience. As far as I was concerned, the brake pedal existed for morning commuter traffic, not virtual speed-demon fantasies. I could abide the handbrake, but only because it allowed you to go drifting around bends, tires screeching like a pack of bloodthirsty harpies on the attack. But it felt wrong that a game would require you to slow down in order to be successful. Inevitably I’d spend a few minutes skidding off the track and spinning my tires in the sand or... read more
High Definition: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Today marks the release of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan on DVD and Blu-Ray, and for a couple of hours, the show’s fans can relive the best sci-fi show in TV history from the perspective of the Cylons who almost completely annihilate humanity. Without answering the series’ biggest unresolved questions (like, what exactly was Kara Thrace?), it certainly adds a layer to the show’s first two seasons.... read more
Listen Up: Welcome to the New Folk Revival
Alela Diane Menig, the Portland-by-way-of-California singer-songwriter who released one my favorite albums of this year, To Be Still recently got a haircut... read more
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