Monday, February 6 2012
‘Nebraska’: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Heart of Darkness’
In 1982, with the charts ruled by “Physical”, “Don’t You Want Me” and “Eye of the Tiger”, along came a low-tech record about killers, small-time thieves and other forgotten souls -- and it's still one of the best albums in American music.
Thursday, February 2 2012
Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt
I'll Be There in the Morning offers an affectionate but hardly rose-colored view of Townes Van Zandt and his influence on other songwriters.
Friday, January 27 2012
‘Library After Air Raid’: On the Survival of Culture Amid the Barbarity of War
War is a science, science is an art and art, as Library After Air Raid attests, is everything.
Monday, January 23 2012
Riding Into a Nightmare: ‘A Train in Winter’
Caroline Moorehead's A Train In Winter, like Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost, leaves nothing to the imagination, a decision that makes reading it simultaneously engrossing and deeply disturbing.
Thursday, January 19 2012
Doing The Worst Things Well: What We Can Learn from Anthony Burgess
The 50th anniversary of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, along with the recent discovery of a vast archive of the author's unpublished work, should shine fresh light on one of the 20th century's most prolific, daring and underrated writers.
Monday, January 16 2012
Machine Guns and Metaphors: Outlaw Poet Todd Moore Remembered
The tough, vernacular, and outsider writer Todd Moore became an icon of Outlaw Poetry; he disdained academia, embraced gangsters like John Dillinger, and made American poetry pulse with dark blood.
Friday, January 13 2012
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Failure May Be Your Style: ‘The Queer Art of Failure’
Rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace of the absurd, the silly, and the hopelessly goofy.
Wednesday, January 11 2012
What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Vampire
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part I is a gratifying escape from reality. Those who are familiar with the books will be pleased with Director Bill Condon's attention to detail.
Monday, January 9 2012
Queer Country: Chely Wright’s Coming Out
The upcoming documentary, Wish Me Away, centered on country singer Chely Wright chronicles the pains of coming out in Nashville and raises questions about why more country musicians haven’t come out.
Tuesday, January 3 2012
Kicked in the Teeth by Art
For a full day, it seemed like I got pummeled by unflinching art. And I feel like I'm better for it.
Friday, December 16 2011
O Captain! My Captain! Going Where No Octogenarian Has Gone Before
As "Bill" explores the meaninglessness of celebrity, "Shatner" embraces the shallow and the superficial like an Andy Warhol soup can come to life.
Thursday, December 8 2011
Art for the Hip-Hop Generation
The Legends of Hip Hop chronicles 50 deserving pioneers of the culture, and ultimately transforms and humanizes them.
Wednesday, December 7 2011
When the Music’s Over: Greil Marcus on the Doors
Apparently seeking to account for every important rock act of the '60s, Greil Marcus turns his critical attention to the Doors.
Tuesday, December 6 2011
Showing My References: On Reading Too Much About TV & Watching Too Much TV
I still yearn for a hefty volume of pages to take down from the shelf, to leaf through at my leisure or to zero in on that relevant fact.
Friday, December 2 2011
‘Caligula’s Ghost: Why Cinema Needs Epic Failure More than Mediocre Success
Obscene, grandiose and artistically worthless -- such is the monstrous reputation of the 1979 art-porn blockbuster Caligula. Is this most shocking of Roman epics worthy of reappraisal?
Tuesday, November 29 2011
Cold Wars End, Betrayal is Forever: ‘Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy’
What is espionage if not getting into bed with people -- physically or ideologically -- for purposes of betrayal?
Monday, November 28 2011
Simon Reynolds Redux: A Conversation from the Past About Post-Punk
Simon Reynolds discusses Joy Division and The Ramones, sex and politics, and punk's blatant localism and latent racism around the time of the release of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984.
Monday, November 14 2011
Symbolic Weight & the Def Jam Aesthetic
A coffee table book about rap does not sound too "hardcore" or "gangsta", does it? Well, that's because it's not. What it just might be is sincere.
Wednesday, November 2 2011
Before There Was ‘The Exorcist’, There Was ‘The Possession of Joel Delaney’
Once again, the film industry came in and took a perfectly creepy book and upped the sensationalism because nothing can ever be too shocking in Hollywood.
Monday, October 24 2011
Michael Moore vs. Jon Stewart: The Self-Destruction of the American Left
Michael Moore is a populist and Jon Stewart is an elitist. The blind liberal embrace of the superficial smugness of Stewart and detachment from the heroism of Moore is the most powerful and convincing illustration of the suicidal tendencies, moral bankruptcy, and spiritual decay of the American left.
