rakemag

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 … Read more

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, … Read more

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, … Read more

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 … Read more

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.” … Read more

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 … Read more

It’s hard to know why these things happen, but this superhip French duo is more a living museum of genteel new wave than the bleeding edge of ambient electronica. Their chic debut of a few years ago, the moogy Moon Safari, rode the crest of a kitsch wave at about the same time we started … Read more

After 2002’s phenomenal Come Away With Me, one might expect Norah Jones to be weighed down by the challenge of following up such a debut…especially with that load of Grammys! But Jones claims that was never a concern of hers, and she describes the new album rather as a “snapshot” of where she is in … Read more

Six or seven years after being completely knocked for a loop on first hearing the traditional music of the tiny Russian republic of Tuva, we’ve still heard nothing quite like it. Throatsingers, as they’re called, can produce up to four notes at the same time, layered one on top of the other, rumbling like an … Read more

Still wondering what to get your beloved for Valentine’s Day? Here are a few hints: white linen shirt, a trip to a tropical rainforest, perhaps a new Jaguar. Still no idea? How about this: rhymes with “bling.” Sting brings the North American leg of his Sacred Love tour to Minneapolis before heading home for a … Read more