Dive into the archives.
- The Top Ten Films of 2006 (Part Two)
In Which We No Longer Postpone The Inevitable…
4. The Lives of Others
Where does this film’s uncanny power come from? It’s certainly not its formal grandeur, though the film’s wide-angle compositions and gorgeously constructed soundtrack are among its chief pleasures. It’s also not from any sort of narrative ingenuity or innovation - indeed, the film’s [...]
- The Top Ten Films of 2006 (As Of Right Now)
You never can see them all. As much as you bargain and try, reschedule and scrutinize timetables, tell yourself that when you get off work you’ll head over to ____ theater, you’re never gonna see all the movies you want to see. I, for example, have at least a dozen films I know I shouldn’t [...]
- San Antonio
Over the next few weeks I’m gonna retcon this blog a little bit - it occurs to me I should help you guys out with a little background information on where I come from.
Right now I’m in San Antonio. It’s a city in Texas. It’s very large, the seventh largest city in the country, but [...]
- Saddam Hussein, Superstar
My consciousness of a world out there was formed by two defining texts, each equally important. The first is my well-worn copy of National Geographic’s Our World, a factbook with large color photographs of countries around the world (Afghanistan, in my mind, will always be an image of a young boy chowing down on an [...]
- The Year in Music, Part Five (5-1)
Final five! Congratulations to the following artists for almost making 2006 a redeemable year in music.
5. El Perro del Mar - El Perro del Mar
Sample song: “Here Comes that Feeling”
The other, less heralded girl-group inspired album of 2006. And the better. Where the Pipettes updated Girl Group by running it through hyperproduced anthems of pro-sex [...]
- The Year in Music, Part Four (10-6)
Here’s where it gets good. Remember what I said about this year being a bad year for music? Well, it was - but the following ten are all albums I can support 100%. Hope you can too.
10. Tokyo Jihen - Adult
Sample song: “Toumei Ningen”
Tokyo Jihen is the band of one-time solo J-Pop icon Shiina [...]
- The Year in Music, Part Three (15-11)
Turning the corner here…
15. Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell
Sample song: “Pills I Took”
“Another year, another token country album.” Can it. This is an album by one of the only truly innovative songwriters in country today, and like last year’s ‘token country album’ by Shooter Jennings, this one’s the product of a multigenerational musical [...]
- The Year in Music, Part Two (20-16)
Now with more self-indulgence!
19. Man Man - Six Demon Bag
Sample song: “Van Helsing Boombox”
I suppose one of the big musical trends of the moment is the integration of Eastern European folk musics into ‘indie’ rock - Black Ox Orkestar, Beirut, Gogol Bordello being some of the more important figures of this sound. My favorite album [...]
- The Year in Music, Part One (25-21)
For those of you who are new to the phenomenon of my blogging, welcome. My year-end Top 25 in music is a four-year-old tradition that’s been carried over from Livejournal to my old blog (which will not be linked here) and now to My Five Year Plan.
Oh, and it’s been an awful year for music. [...]
- Television in 2006
It’s been a hard slog this year - 2006, by many accounts, was a bum year in entertainment - film certainly didn’t step up. Music didn’t either. Did television? Certainly I watched more television in 2006 than I did in 2004 or 2005, but was that merely a function of my having more free time [...]
