rakemag

Who wouldn’t want to soar through the air on the wings of a bird? Well, not us, because heights scare the living bejeezus out of us. But otherwise, sure, everybody would. And barring a medically iffy, possibly uninsurable operation to transplant your brain into a duck, Winged Migration is your best option. The product of … Read more

Are there three sweeter words than “Peter Sellers retrospective”? Hmmm… “you’ve got mail”—no. “Here’s fifty bucks”—well, maybe. We haven’t seen about half the titles here (yet), but we can tell you with absolutely authority that there are four can’t-lose offerings from the mid-century’s great comedic chameleon: his two Stanley Kubrick collaborations, Dr. Strangelove and Lolita; … Read more

Sergio Leone, who reinvented the gunslinger genre in spaghetti westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, only directed one film in the fifteen years before his death. That would be this Prohibition-era drama, but in many ways the perfect capstone to his career, blending the spirits of Goodfellas and Great Expectations with one … Read more

These things become familiar, of course, but how shocking a really moral film like this was, in 1985. Stephen Frears’ snapshot of the 80s was out of tune with its time, but slowly built as an art-house video cult in the 90s. Which is to say, by the time conversations about “identity politics” and “victim … Read more

This third installment in the BBC’s amazingly lifelike recreations of the ancient world doesn’t live up to the high standard set by its predecessors, Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, which combined cutting-edge paleontology and computer graphics to stunning effect. Which is a pity, because the story it has to tell is uniquely … Read more

Great artists often reach an apotheosis in their careers beyond which they can do what ever they want. Radiohead managed that with OK Computer back in 2000, then followed up with Kid A, which was a low-rent, high-profile slumming in Aphex Twin territory, indulging in noise more than music. Which is fine—we’re as amenable to … Read more

Annie Lennox has not been terribly prolific in the years since she left the great ’80s art-pop duo Eurythmics at the beginning of the last decade. Solo, she brought us the sophisticated and occasionally wonderful Diva, and a dreadful covers album called Medusa, aptly named in that it turned the hearts of most critics to … Read more

That’s not a typo—terroir is a French term roughly meaning “soil” that has less to do with the current geopolitical bugbear than Farrar’s ongoing fascination with American culture and traditions. A song cycle about Farrar’s new hometown of St. Louis, it’s a solid piece of work that builds well on his earlier solo records and … Read more

Sometimes you’ve just got to see a show because of the rare lineup. And in the case of these completely simpatico artists, it’s a shame someone ends up playing in the invariably ignominious position of “warm-up.” Young, of course, still maintains a stadium-sized contingent of dope-smoking longhairs who need to be accomodated as they holler … Read more

Bley represents a new and unique impulse in jazz—a desire to embrace big, messy, intellectual subjects. It’s not a natural mode for jazz, which tends to dwell on aesthetic detail. You know, art for art’s sake. But her latest album, Looking For America, sounds the clarion that jazz is uniquely equipped to approach complex issues … Read more