Happy Halloween

“Dooly appointed”

Shutter Island is the kind of movie whose principals (Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo), nervously contemplating the eponymous prison from the boat, get their dialogue squelched before the narrative’s started by a portentous, immersive score (music editor Robbie Robertson requires shock treatment), but not before the boat captain informs them/us that (a) the dock they’re

Singles 10/29

Lauryn Hill, emerging from exile, returns with a lovely sounding ballad. She gets stuck in the details though. Eric Church – Smoke a Little Smoke (6) Lauryn Hill – Repercussions (6) Faith Evans – Gone Already (5) Pixie Lott – Broken Arrow (5) Fucked Up – Year of the Ox (5) Alexis Jordan – Happiness

Wine, and cheese, whatever

An excerpt from my favorite bit of pornography of the last twenty-five years: I remember a Thanksgiving evening in our house eight or ten years ago; he was carving the late-night turkey after a drive from the country, and four of us were seated around the kitchen table with wine, and cheese, whatever… He was

Corrections

A few months ago I wrote this about John Mayer’s “Half of My Heart”: The half of the heart that’s worrisome here is Mayer’s, who sings like he suffers from angina. When he lets his guitar do the mewling, the song very faintly evokes the early eighties brand of boomer bathos epitomized by “Leather and

I’ve never heard silence quite this loud: Taylor Swift’s Speak Now

The kicker in “Dear John” comes after almost two minutes of singing that verges on the clenched: “Didn’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” She places too much emphasis on the key adjective in the line “your sick need to give love and take it away” — a sign that her

Don’t stand there against the dying of the light

Now that Orbison can boast several extant compilations, you can appreciate this forgotten mid eighties non-hit. .

Moloch, with your NPR values and Jon Hamm eyes: Howl

As Allen Ginsberg, James Franco, through a lisp and singsong intonations, explains, as if addressing an NPR donation drive, how he wrote the famous line about Moloch. Jon Hamm and Bob Balaban praise nice liberal values such as “artistic” freedom of expression in speeches that would have gotten them Academy Award nominations in 1956. Timid

Singles 10/22

Some of my favorite rappers release thoroughly average singles. The same goes for Kylie Minogue, but her average this week is much better than Gucci and Kanye’s.   Kylie Minogue – Get Outta My Way (7) Chrisette Michele – I’m a Star (6) Kanye West ft. Rick Ross, Bon Iver, Nickie Minaj, and Jay Z

“I would follow you into the mists of Avalon if that’s what you mean”

Friends swear by Step Brothers, the 2008 comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as two grown child-men forced together by marriage (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins play their parents). One went so far as to say it was the best comedy of the decade. This was okay! Talladega Nights boasted much better one-liners

“Tomorrow will get better”

You know how I feel about her, but this is one of her warmest performances to date.

Lifetime piling up: Please Give

Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) own a furniture store specializing in accessories bought from the dead. Their daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), a teenager who’s got serious problems with acne, often feels dead. After they buy the apartment next door, they wait for its occupant, a horrible octogenarian killjoy (Ann Guilbert), to die so