Why Are We So Obsessed with Tár?
Why would writer-director Todd Field make the character so eloquent, cast her with such a beloved actress, and spend so much screen time building pathos for her, all the while[…]
Category: Music & Musicals
Colonialism · Historical & Epic · Music & Musicals · Myth and Archetype · Native Americans · Westerns
Horse Operas and Real Operas: Melodramatic Reflections and Refutations of the Turner Thesis
The handful of “frontier operas” we’ll consider therefore propose an unusual dialectic of both aesthetics and ideology. What might occur when male Western heroes – traditionally stoic and pragmatic –[…]
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Human Sacrifice in Brigadoon: The Fate of Harry Beaton
Brigadoon is a quasi-origin story that is closely associated with the way stories transform the reality of the recent past. Communities, societies, and nations survive by means of having sacrificial[…]
Dance · French Cinema · Interviews · Music & Musicals
GROVER DALE! An Interview with the Dance Legend
Dancing in the streets of Rochefort was the best performing experience I’ve ever known. Reacting to real sunshine, breezes, cafés, and streets was miraculous. My emotions suddenly became as accessible[…]
Celebrity Culture · Counterculture · Music & Musicals · Production History · Societal Trends · Youth
How the Monkees Birthed New Hollywood
A rewatch benumbed to this flash and flare reveals the stark morbidity of Head. Throughout the movie the Monkees are assaulted, hunted, and caged. Words fail, fists fail. The film[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Under Bloodless Skies: U2 Live at Red Rocks after 40
Their performance isn’t marked by precision or technical mastery. It’s an onrush of unbridled enthusiasm all the way through – a frenzied, joyous romp that treats the show as if[…]
Actors & Personalities · Dance · Dancers · Hollywood · Music & Musicals
Fred Astaire: Footsteps on the Sands of Time
He is transfixing just walking across the screen in his first movie, Dancing Lady (1933), where he partners Joan Crawford and looks as if he could fly if he wanted[…]
The New Old West Side Story
The Sharks and Jets may have been initially inspired by Shakespeare’s Capulets and Montagues, but the gang members we see are really first cousins of the “troubled youth” in popular[…]
Comedy · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals · Production History
“Baby, I’m Having Fun”: Allan Arkush and Kent Beyda Discuss Get Crazy
ALLAN ARKUSH: Get Crazy never actually got a real release, you know. It was in theaters for a month. . . . A month? I’m sorry, a week, in some[…]
Comedy · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Campy Love and the Underdog: Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap
This Is Spinal Tap is coated with the stylized veneer of a rockumentary turned inside out or, rather, back on itself as self-conscious dress-up, playful disguise. The cultivated image of[…]
Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Something to Sing About: Why Cop Rock Fails
“The height of the Bush era was a weird, giddy time.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True (1989) * * * Cop Rock (ABC,[…]
Counterculture · Music & Musicals · Noir
Punk Rock: The Psychic Soundtrack of Film Noir
In noir, tales of wrongful accusation tend to play out on mean streets that reflect social inequalities, which at times do have a nasty way of tilting normally upright people[…]
Weird American Odysseys: Music, Authenticity, and the Coen Brothers
“When somebody’s wearing a mask, he’s going to tell the truth. When he’s not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely.” – Bob Dylan (while not wearing a mask), Rolling Thunder[…]
A Fine Romance: When Love Neither Leaves nor Stays
But goes on being itself * * * True Love in cinema is more than fine acting, well-written scripts, or even directorial tone. Not that IMDb cast and crew should[…]
Drama · Music & Musicals · War
Singing in the Rubble: A Musical Map of the Cold War in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War
Suddenly jazz became a major taboo in Soviet society until Stalin’s death. In Western Europe, by contrast, mainly in Paris, jazz took off after the Nazis’ defeat in the hues[…]
LGBT & Queer · Music & Musicals
Bonjour, Paris! Musical Conventions in Les Chansons d’amour (2007, Christophe Honoré)
Les Chansons d’amour is unusual because of the realism of its characters, setting and story; the film has little dance and no big production numbers, but it is a musical.[…]
Counterculture · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Marc Bolan and Born to Boogie: The Great Unsung Rock ’n’ Roll Film
A roar grew in the wrestling room of daybreak . . . And now where once stood solid water stood the reptile king, Tyrannosaurus Rex, reborn and bopping. – Marc[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Who Becomes a Legend Most? And Why Wasn’t It Betty Garrett?
“The reason I sought out Betty Garrett’s book in the first place was because of something devastating that I read – and didn’t want to be true – in Farley[…]
“The Joke’s on History”: Retro-Reality, Twee, and Mediated Nostalgia in La La Land (2016)
Mia: It feels really nostalgic to me. Sebastian: That’s the point. Mia: Are people going to like it? Sebastian: Fuck ’em. – La La Land * * * The popular[…]
Movie Vacations · Music & Musicals
Living the Dream: Robert Altman’s Popeye Island
An Altman theme park does, in fact, exist. Sweethaven, the set of Altman’s 1980 musical Popeye, lives on in Mellieħa, a village on the island of Malta, where Harry Nilsson’s[…]
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