Pop Past

The Ska Will Go On

[5.Oct.09] :. Ska never died... it merely sank back underground to the grimy clubs from whence it sprang, while the genre’s biggest stars took time to rest, regroup, and strategize their comebacks.

Dirty Harry: Nothing Wrong with Shooting the Right People

[21.Apr.09] :. The year Dirty Harry was released (1971) saw several demonstrations of angry cops questioning why criminals had very solid constitutional protections that often interfered with law enforcement work.

Monotrematous Funk: An Interview with Platypus

[16.Apr.09] :. How did a progressive rock-funk band from Dayton, Ohio become label mates with KISS and Donna Summer? 30 years later, the members of Platypus tell the story.

M Squad: Clench-jawed and World-weary

[15.Apr.09] :. Lee Marvin almost floats through his space, bending his graying hatchet-head forward on his tall lanky body, his loose limbs on the point of uncoiling into savagery when some mug pulls a rod or throws a punch. He's a dangerous gentleman.

The Aesthetics of Absorption: Truffaut’s ‘The 400 Blows’

[2.Apr.09] :. In Truffaut, the camera works not to keep the viewer out of the constructed reality of the film but rather to draw the viewer into the artifice, to make the viewer complicit in its feigned reality

Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer): One More Time with the King of Western Swing

[20.Mar.09] :. Today, many performers play a revivalist form of Western Swing, but even more may be tipping a hat to Bob Wills without even knowing it. Chomping down on his cigar, Wills and his legacy strut around the stage of musical history, rarely taking the lead but now and then giving a holler of approval.

An Auteur’s Touch of Evil

[19.Mar.09] :. The auteur is dead, long live the auteur: Orson Welles and Touch of Evil, 50 years on.

Bettie Page, Dead Since 1957

[15.Dec.08] :. What might be remembered of the life of a woman who was long ago replaced by her own representation?

Honoré de Balzac: A Man of Enormous Appetites

[17.Oct.08] :. One has to wonder, having conquered two duchesses before reaching his 25th birthday, if Honoré de Balzac didn't believe he deserved the aristocratic title in his name more than some who'd come by it more honestly.

Jokerman Meets Mad Man

[15.Sep.08] :. Bob Dylan helped change the way the 1960s sounded; advertising icon George Lois changed the way it looked. It's only fitting that their paths have crossed several times since

The Invaders: Cold War Central with the Vietnam Blues

[29.Aug.08] :. The aliens carry silver dollars with lights which function both as cell phones and as gadgets that can make anyone drop dead from an instantly diagnosable "brain hemorrhage".

Adah Isaacs Menken: The First Broadway Star

[6.Jun.08] :. A predecessor to virtually all stage and screen sirens, Menken thumbed her nose at the Victorian fetish for decorum that deformed the female figure, and celebrated her body electric, firm and active before being wasted from typhus or riddled by bullets.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

[3.Dec.07] :. Berlin Alexanderplatz, both serial film and novel, are essential to knowing Rainer Werner Fassbinder.