Indie films ain’t shit: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

Crazy in love, Bob (Casey Affleck) and Ruth (Rooney Mara) cuddle in a sun-dappled meadow. When Ruth tells Bob she’s pregnant, he commits a robbery that leads to a shootout in a rural farmhouse, lit as fetchingly as the meadow. Ruth wounds a deputy (Ben Foster). You tell’em I did it, Bob suggests. He goes

Seamus Heaney: “a spirit called extravagantly beyond the course that the usual life plot for it”

Covered in the last days of a late period survey of English lit course my freshman year of college, Seamus Heany’s “Digging” shouldn’t have stood out but did because it was a pleasure to read aloud, even to myself: The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts

“Washington will find a way to insert itself sooner or later.”

As minority leader, Nancy Pelosi was an irritant to the Bush White House. To her lasting credit she voted against the 2002 congressional authorization to invade Iraq under false pretenses; she even bemoaned the cowardice of fellow Democrats in not presenting a unified front against what was obvious to most of us then. Which is

Singles 8/30 – In the summer dancing bachata

Timing helped. The hottest days of the year deserve a drink as cold and bracing as “Propuesta Indecente,” and VV Brown’s dance track is a close second. Eminem performed better than he deserved, for which I blame the backing track. Click on links for full reviews. Romeo Santos – Propuesta Indecente (8) VV Brown –

San Francisco gays deliberately spread AIDS with rings designed to cut people

I didn’t know! Televangelist Pat Robertson claimed on his show, the “700 Club,” on Tuesday that gay people in San Francisco have deliberately spread AIDS using rings designed to cut people, according to a video published by Right Wing Watch. “You know what they do in San Francisco? Some of the gay community there, they

Chris O’Leary explains Bowie Bonds, late nineties nostalgia

The so-called “Bowie bonds” story of the late nineties confused me, in large part because most reporters, lacking the financial acumen, reduced the deal to “Aging rock star makes truckload of dough” and, to be fair, “securitization” was as alien and complex a concept as David Bowie himself in 1972. Chris O’Leary explains how it

The most pragmatic thing about poetic metaphor: you know that “your net cannot trap all of the experience in question.”

When I learned about the death of Albert Murray, I was ashamed not to know a thing about him. There’s a lot I didn’t. A lot. South To a Very Old Place, which I finished last weekend, collects a series of meditations on Southern cities as busing and the forced desegregation of schools forced a

“If we aren’t trying to ‘fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict on the ground,’ then why in the hell are we making war in in Syria in the first place?”

Charles Pierce: If Kerry is to be believed, the “situation on the ground” is that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its own people, a monstrous crime. If we aren’t trying to “fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict on the ground,” then why in the hell are we making war in in Syria

Karyn White – Secret Rendezvoous

While Janet Jackson holed up with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on the followup to Control, Karyn White kept us entertained with expert electro R&B produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface. Not as sharp as “Superwoman,” but in spring ’89 I went around imitating the spoken-word intro.

“The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.” — Bayard Rustin

Until Christopher Hitchens cited him as an outstanding example of an atheist on the God is Not Great tour, I had no idea who Bayard Rustin was. Neither did the audience, I presume. Call him the civil rights leader whose face few wanted public: a member of the Communist party as a young man and

Linda Ronstadt forced from singing by Parkinson’s: a couple thoughts

Linda Ronstadt’s seventies output — a series of albums starting with 1974’s Heart Like a Wheel that made her the biggest female rock star in the world — is uneven as hell but over the years I’ve come to love Simple Dreams, bits of Hasten Down The Wind, and a few singles that aren’t studied

A constitutional convention starring Tom Coburn and Mark Levin

Charles Pierce: This president isn’t going to make it easier on you. There isn’t going to be a personal scandal that you can gin up this time. I think you should proceed to hearings — all of you fine old white people — wherein you try to remove from office the first African American president