One of Woody Allen’s funniest short stories involves a humanities professor who has a disastrous affair with Emma Bovary by magically transporting himself into Gustave Flaubert’s novel. Welsh writer Fforde takes this concept to a whole new level in his three very witty novels about Thursday Next, a detective who works the mean streets of … Read more
There’s a quintessential dichotomy about the American big city: a place where smart or lucky nobodies strike it rich, and where the unlucky and rootless get swallowed up. Larsen’s Devil In The White City, a finalist for the National Book Award, tells of two men of 1890s Chicago who embodied that split: Daniel Burnham, the … Read more
A reliable biography of French filmmaker Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve does not exist, apparently by his choice, which leaves us unable to verify the rumors that he was born of Mongolian nobility, or explain his choice to rename himself after the Magic Marker beyond its obvious utility as (ahem) a pen name. If you know his … Read more
With so much unwitting awfulness in theaters already, it seems like overkill to try to make something bad on purpose. But that’s the point of this often very funny, straight-faced spoof of 1950s sci-fi movies like Robot Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Writer/director Larry Blamire shows his affection for the semi-competent cinema of … Read more
Collaborations between actor and director have created some legendary pairs—think John Ford/John Wayne, Akira Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune, Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood. But none was more volatile, even violent, than the creative ferment between Germany’s Werner Herzog and the enfant terrible Klaus Kinski. The two childhood friends made five movies together in the seventies and eighties, including an … Read more
With the George Romero original now on DVD, there’s no reason not to brand the bound-to-be awful remake, due in theaters this month, as undead on arrival. Despite the limitations of a low budget, some iffy acting and an ending that feels like an A-Team episode, Dawn is, simply put, the best horror film of … Read more
Seijun Suzuki’s heyday in the fifities and sixties was spent fighting constraints, both within Japan’s studio system and the not-particularly-respectable yakuza genre, his specialty. He made around forty films during this time, mainly splashy and stylish noirs with titles like Age of Nudity, Fighting Delinquents, and our favorite, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards. … Read more
If you’re looking to catch the early bandwagon for the next hipster band, you’re about six months late for TV On the Radio. Their summer ’03 debut EP, Young Liars, has already wowed and bored the pierced-and-tattooed cognoscenti, and we’re already reading about how last August they are. So silly. This Brooklyn trio is worth … Read more
A frequent guest on Garrison Keillor’s show, the Williamses practically have an official residence in Lake Wobegon (Keillor even came up with the organizing concept behind their last recording, Visions of Love). The Carolina couple cements another Minnesota connection with disc number seventeen, their first for Greg Brown’s local Red House imprint, and provides more … Read more
Walking away, for now, from the 200-strong big band that he led through 2002’s All Rise, the great traditionalist of jazz returns with his first small-group recording in five years. Befitting an album that takes familial intimacy as its theme, Marsalis has gathered a quartet of musicians he’s known since they were teenagers. Bobby McFerrin … Read more