If you’re ever tempted to think that the banjo is an instrument good only for backwoods pickin’ parties by Deliverance types who make their shoes out of tree bark, remember Bela Fleck, who’s done more than anybody to demonstrate conclusively that his chosen instrument is worthy of a virtuoso’s hands. For the past twenty years, … Read more
Using deadpan realism to mask a deep sense of the absurd, Jim Jarmusch has a mindset unmatched by any other American director (though, as we’ve noted, he’s got a spiritual twin in Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki). Indeed, despite his dryness, he’s awfully quick with the razor-sharp left-field gag: the aging gangster who abruptly launches into a … Read more
With the exception of 1990’s Goodfellas, the five films in this set are among the more obscure of Martin Scorsese’s works – though in its day, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore did spark the wildly popular spinoff sitcom that made “kiss my grits” the “shizzle my nizzle” of 1976. But in the case of the … Read more
Five of the very best examples of 1940s-era crime thrillers. There’s too much here to praise in the space we have at hand, so let’s concentrate on three examples of great acting. First: Out of the Past’s Robert Mitchum, in a career-defining performance, trying to escape his ties to gangster Kirk Douglas. Second: Sterling Hayden … Read more
We get the impression that this all-star smackdown from beyond the stars is shooting for the quality level of the cheesier of its two battlin’ sci-fi franchises – namely Predator, the movie that gave us the Ventura credo, “I ain’t got time to bleed.” But for a late-summer fix of lasers and monsters and stuff … Read more
Let’s steal a riff from Spy, shall we? Here’s the equation for Open Water: Two divers stranded mid-ocean + lo-fi camerawork + huge film-festival buzz / Blair Witch Project x Captain Quint’s USS Indianapolis speech in Jaws = scaring the living heck out of us. You might have seen the unnerving trailer before Fahrenheit 9/11, … Read more
It’s tempting to join the grumbling about the staggering genius that is Dave Eggers. But we welcome one of the latest products from his literary empire, out August 10, in part because it contains a piece by Twin Citizen and sometime Rake contributor Keith Pille. Pille’s work, along with many other pieces in this compendiumÑparodies, … Read more
Odell’s childhood in small-town Mississippi and participation in the Civil Rights movement gave him a full well of memories to draw upon for his debut novel. A View From Delphi opens with Hazel Ishee, the young daughter of a white Mississippi farmer, seeing a photograph of herself for the first time and discovering that she … Read more
Every unhappy family is unique, Leo Tolstoy reminds us, which might be one reason for the rich vein of stories about children coping with a broken home, including this highly praised first novel. Lychack, whom you might have heard on This American Life, frankly admits that the nine-year-old protagonist of Wasp Eater is autobiographical in … Read more
Tara had it all: She was young, beautiful, married to one of the smartest, richest men in America. Now she finds herself divorced and middle-aged. In The Tree Bride, Indian expatriate Mukherjee picks up Tara’s story where she left off in Desirable Daughters. As Tara dives into the story of her ancestor, the Tree Bride … Read more