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"YOU WERE MENTIONED IN DISPATCHES/IN THE POSTSCRIPT, ANYWAY"There’s a big new post in the works for sometime in the near future. Until then, please enjoy my collaboration with my good friend Jamie S....
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"MY VOYAGE TO ITALY"I’m probably not the first person ever to ask this, but I find myself compelled. Is Morrissey—world-class pop star, self-described “famous international playboy,” and my perennial...
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"WELL, THEY SHOULD KNOW. I DON'T READ THAT MUCH."I read this line in a review of some new Beckett volumes in the Aug. 7 & 14 New Yorker: “Since Beckett got from Schopenhauer what Schopenhauer had...
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"SVEN NYKVIST (3 DECEMBER 1922 - 20 SEPTEMBER 2006)"From top: Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972); The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986); The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman,...
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"INGMAR BERGMAN (1918-2007)""MICHAELANGELO ANTONIONI (1912-2007)"After the death of Kubrick not so long ago (the day he died was the first day in my life that I really felt old), and of Edward Yang...
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"IT'S A HELL OF A RECORD"My continuing pursuit of Comparative Literature (French minor!), in addition to my obligatory full-time employment and trying to keep a relationship afloat through it all, has...
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"FADE AWAY AND RADIATE"It’s been ages since I’ve written about cinema here, which is not at all to say that I’ve been neglectful when it comes to actually partaking of the medium. Last year, I...
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"RESTE CHEZ TOI, SUNDAY GIRL"Sometimes my friend Jamie Rich makes me feel totally lame. Not purposely, mind you; he can’t help it if he’s moins > que moi. He’s posted a must-read review of last...
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"J'AI ENVIE D'AIMER, J'AI ENVIE DE VIVRE"Of course, I fully intended to make a nice, long blog entry during my much-too-short holiday break; however, I can’t claim to feel too guilty, as any potential...
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FILMS FOR MUSICI’ve taken to keeping a little note card with a running list of anything I’ve seen/read/listened to that’s of any lasting interest to me; that way I can remind myself what I’d like to...
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" 'OLDER AND WISER' NEVER APPLIES TO ME."Over the past months of academic insanity, there were a couple of releases—-an album and a film—-from two artists whom I love and whose work I always look...
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"LOOK AT THE WORLD THROUGH YOUR POLAROID GLASSES/THINGS'LL LOOK A WHOLE LOT BETTER FOR THE WORKING CLASSES"Why are American politics infuriating? Not because of all the disagreements and ideological...
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"WE UNDERSTAND HOW MUSIC WORKS"The story is old, I know, but it goes on.... I do realize that I’m far from the first to complain about the kind of Orwellian demographics-dependence that evidently...
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"THE ____ IS DEAD"Philosophically and ideologically speaking, the loss of any human life is not something to celebrate when one is speaking strictly of human rights and what should be the innate value...
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"THE RETURN OF INSPIRATION"Bernard Butler is a living sign that the best move for a muso who bravely resists his or her “proficiency”-obsessed leanings is to find a counterbalancing collaborator who...
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"DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES...."The demands of Academe (and the shameful ease with which I can be made to feel overwhelmed) have effectively kept me from blogging for a very long while, but an all-too-short...
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"AFTER THIS"The story and themes of Alice McDermott's After This are not new. This brief but very finely wrought novel takes on nothing more or less than the ups and downs of one suburban American...
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"WE HAD FIVE YEARS LEFT TO CRY IN"I have to admit that the point of reference leading me to group together the three "recent"* albums I'll be commenting upon here--Morrissey's Years of Refusal, The...
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"FILMS OF THE DECADE"*1. The Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2001) A parable about the terrifying vacuum created behind the former Iron Curtain by the fall of Communism. Also one of the single most...
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