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Continue reading →: Dennis Hopper R.I.P.
Not much to add to the tributes and obits I’ve read in the last couple of days. My own experiences are a little different from Matos’. In high school I knew him for his gonzo turns as Marlon Brando’s addled hagiographer in Apocalypse Now and the coach in Hoosiers, two…
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Continue reading →: Take this, sister, may it serve you well: Janelle Monae
Except for a handful of comments fluttering through the Internets, I haven’t said much about Janelle Monae’s opus. The ArchAndroid is aptly titled: its cybernetic soul-rock hybrid is clever in a self-congratulatory way, in the manner of someone who wants to wow the audience with her range of interests. Heard…
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Continue reading →: Singles Jukebox 5/27
Nothing spectacular here except witnessing the collapse of Marshall Mathers. All scores rated out of a possible ten points. Dum Dum Girls – Jail La La (7) B.O.B. ft. Hayley Williams – Aeroplanes (6) Kele – Tenderoni (6) Eminem – Not Afraid (5) Hurts – Better Than Love (5)
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Continue reading →: Swing low
The late Lynn Redgrave got her only Best Actress nod for Georgy Girl, a piece of Swinging London juvenilia that, in the words of Celeste Holm in All About Eve, takes the prize for running, jumping, and standing gall. Even allowing for the changes of fashion that have rendered the…
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Continue reading →: “Matronly equals trustworthy”
Semiotics matters to Beltway insiders, as this profile on Elena Kagan’s wardrobe makes clear. How discombobulated would folks be if a male nominee walked the Hill wearing a Thom Browne suit with trousers that ended at the ankles or if a woman strode purposefully down the marble corridors in a…
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Continue reading →: Album is Whatever
The vague, slightly evocative title is a clue. Heaven is Whenever is the Hold Steady’s weakest album. I won’t know until their next release whether the departure of Franz Nicolay, the band’s Mike Garson, has affected their chemistry and songwriting; but Tad Kubler hasn’t come up with any good riffs,…
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Continue reading →: Happy Saturday.
From my favorite Lou Reed album of the eighties, here stripped of its terrible production.
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Continue reading →: Singles 5/19
Big Boi gets this week’s apology for underrating his single, which I’ve now road tested for nine days straight and haven’t gotten tired of. As for Justin, if he hired The National’s string section and drummer to play around with his patented production and songwriting mannerisms he’d cause a minor…
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Continue reading →: “The bottom line is, art really is uncool”
Donald Fagen’s take on critic “Sascha Frere-Jacque” is a cool dress rehearsal for a possible Steely Dan song. Frere-Jacques is besotted with a noise act called CapGras (whose rhythm section, Frere-Jacques rhapsodizes, creates a bottom so powerful it sucks the crowd “like the viscous mouth of a giant lampray”).
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Continue reading →: “I won’t be giving any hugs”
After a terse, unsentimental first third, The Messenger drifts into the weeds when Ben Foster teases the audience with a will-he-or-won’t-he pass at grieving wife Samantha Morton and comes to a full stop when Woody Harrelson and Foster turn the movie into attenuated psychotherapy. Before that though, first-time director Oren…
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Humanizing The Vacuum 