Month: January 2004

We’ve been saying for years now that the future of pop music is the Flaming Lips, but that may have been only because Stereolab appeared to be on extended hiatus. True, they’re Eurotrash, whereas the Lips are all-American Okies. But like so many great rock bands from abroad, Stereolab had a special ear for traditional…

The sixties were tumultuous enough here in America, but it was nothing compared to the institutionalized insanity of China’s Cultural Revolution. One survivor, interviewed in this compelling and chilling documentary, calls it “an age ruled by the poet and the executioner. The poet scattered roses everywhere, while the executioner cast a long shadow of terror.”…

Before he directed low-budget B-movies, Sam Fuller was both a hard-nosed newspaper reporter and a World War Two combat infantryman. So it’s no wonder that his noir films were especially gritty and no-nonsense examples of the form. Pickup on South Street is one of his finest, a grim and multilayered tale of Red Scare politics…

George Cukor’s all-singing movie version of George Bernard Shaw’s much more nuanced Pygmalion was a smash success, winning eight Oscars (including 1965’s Best Picture), and one of the most commercially successful musicals ever made. It’s still a remarkable piece of entertainment, though it seems fairly dated forty years down the road. The costuming is terrific,…

During these contentious weeks when football and baseball fans argue over the recent picks for their sports halls of fame, it is nice to know that that there are no arguments in the blood sport called Hollywood, at least in the all-important question of “who’s the worst director ever?” Many have tried and failed spectatularly,…

Olson’s debut novel Welcome to My Planet is one of our happy memories of the year 2000, and we’re pleased to report that the local heroine hooks us again with her followup, a sequel starring Planet’s semi-fictionalized version of Olson herself. A few more years down the road, Olson is now thirtysomething and still single…