There is a subtle way to measure progress. Every time we head north to God’s country, we’re forced to bring along the cell phone. Normally, we refuse the electronic leash. But when we’re on the road in a secondhand mini-van full of kids, or when we’re trying to rendezvous with people who have already gone … Read more
When Billy Bragg paints you a picture, there’s always a lot of red in it. His music alternates passionate expressions of his socialist ideals (“There Is Power in a Union”) with more personal songs of love and heartbreak, the best of them remarkable for their emotional incisiveness. It’s a dichotomy he once acknowledged with the … Read more
Although it would be a mistake to overpraise the last decade of the Man in Black’s career, it’s certainly true that the four albums in his American Recordings series more than rehabilitated his eighties-era reputation as an irrelevance. The work he did with producer Rick Rubin was of such consistent high quality that when he … Read more
FOX canceled this sketch-comedy show ignominiously after only half a season in 1992, but in retrospect it’s clear that its chief fault was being too hip for the room. There’s the posthumous Emmy, and the ongoing success of cast members Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show) and Andy Dick (NewsRadio), repeatedly proving their satiric … Read more
You know, Disney always left us cold, even as young Rakesketeers. Mickey and his tedious, bland bunch… Feh. Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam—now, those are cartoons. Brash and anarchic. Gleefully punning, with their comic timing perfect to the second. Ducks getting hit with frying pans. That’s our America. (We’re choosing to ignore Space Jam and Back … Read more
It’s exponentially less likely than, say, Cold Mountain to pick up an Oscar nomination, but Bubba Ho-Tep’s got the makings of some glorious kitsch. And this inventive horror-comedy, based on a story by Texan novelist Joe R. Lansdale, has already succeeded wildly on its own low-budget terms, picking up enough good word-of-mouth at festival screenings … Read more
Before investing three and a half hours into the final Rings film, there’s one or two things you should know. A) If you have ten and a half hours to spare, you may also want to see the first two movies again on the big screen, with all the DVD versions’ added scenes. Or, B) … Read more
The short movies showing in this three-day, kid-friendly program can’t and don’t compete with the big-budget snazziness of Finding Nemo or Spirited Away. For these films, spanning thirty years of Iranian animation, the creative spark comes from the minds of the animators, not the wallets of the producers. The series is subtitled, but even pre-readers … Read more
I’ve been thinking about spaghetti sauce a lot lately. I grew up in a very busy household with parents who didn’t have a lot of time to cook, so the sauce on our noodles was always of the canned variety. Not knowing the different between canned and fresh, we kids slurped it right up—the soggy … Read more
Ghouls. Hags. Evil curses… Sure signs either that the family is headed to my house for holiday dinner this year, or that Jeune Lune has brought back Circus of Tales for a second year. Popular with audiences last year, The Circus of Tales combines the magic of Italian fables with a one-ring flying circus in … Read more