With a script by Samuel Fuller, this hardboiled Douglas Sirk noir does not disappoint if you like crisp dialogue, tight pacing, and disillusioned characters.
Recently, my friend Joe and I were continuing our age-old battle concerning the merits of Ween, a band that is often labeled a joke band, who recently broke up after years of creating musically proficient, genre-bending "joke" songs. A quick search on the internet shows that Ween has battled this label for years, and they probably tend to even welcome it, given such song titles as "Poop Ship Destroyer" and "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)." Yet in later years, the boys in Ween proved excellent songwriters, who could assemble a killer band. Their various pastiches of different genres helped define the "Ween Sound," a far-reaching enterprise, indeed. Whether creating twisted country records with actual country session musicians on 1996's 12 Golden Country Greats , giving into their psychedelic tendencies completely on 1997's The Mollusk , or perfecting the pop song throughout their catalog, Ween always surprised. The Zappa comparisons wer...
I recently finished watching the last season of Longmire , a show that I believe only got better when it moved to Netflix. A & E cancelled it, despite good ratings, because it did not directly appeal to the 18-35 age demographic. The writing and plot development improved as the show started focusing more on major themes and story lines and not story-of-the-week subplots. While the show's general premise is typical cop show fare, the strong characterization and settings give the show a primacy over similar procedurals. While I enjoyed the show, I never got around to reading the books even though I watched dutifully for six seasons. Once I started reading The Cold Dish , I realized how hard it will be not to binge the book series. The books are a treat. Craig Johnson's prose is punchy, and the characters are even better realized. Walt Longmire's love for Rainier beer and obscure literary metaphors, as well as other character's predilections and habits, become crys...
Oddly enough, Bob Dylan's songs on the Wonder Boys soundtrack marked a watershed moment for me as the 90s blended into the 2000s. I started going back to college in 1999 after a two-year break where I mostly worked and listened to records. My first attempt at college had been unsuccessful due to deep depression and homesickness that I did not realize was happening at the time. The period for me was full of change. I was trying to figure out who I was in an adult world, figuratively and musically. I was shifting between genres and personas like a man possessed. My high school musical interests ran the gamut from 70s punk to melodic hardcore to indie rock, but I had fallen away from most "alternative" music as I reached that age in a young person's life where I felt like I needed to be defined by a "style." Needless to say 90 percent of my listening tastes were firmly entrenched in punk circa 1999-2000. While I never gave up the punk rock and indie rock o...
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