newcritics

Six months ago, it was cold. So I downloaded Wordpress and started this blog. And stayed inside. Time well-spent, I’d say - though it was just the smallest spark that provided a hint of hint of fuel for all the cultural combustion that has come this way since. I just keep the lights on here [...]

Bruce Weber has made a career out of fetishizing the human body as a photographer of homoerotic art books, Calvin Klein’s “Obsession” advertising, and the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs. His photographs seem to embody anonymous sex, a style that lends itself well to commercials, with their promise of immediate gratification. In Let’s Get Lost, Weber’s [...]

(Been working on various things, and since most of you haven’t read my earlier criticism, I thought I’d post some of it here. The following was written in ‘05, and still stays crunchy in milk. Enjoy.)
The local public library and HBO conspired in the same month to grant me a chance to compare the two [...]

Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park has finally come out on DVD, 36 years after its theatrical release. Warning: this movie is a scabrously realistic story about junkies, with close-up shots of needles entering flesh. So if you can’t handle this sort of thing (and I don’t blame you if you can’t) cross this [...]

I used to love war movies. In part, because they were so darned…reliable.
Serve up a viewing of Bridge Over The River Kwai or The Dirty Dozen, and you could rely on a heapin’ helping of gunfire with the bare minimum of chit-chat. You could rely on knowing – I mean really [...]

So lush is the detail in Michael Chabon’s brilliant The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, so developed the back-story, the alternative history, that it’s the rare short novel that feels long - like you want to live in its dark and distinct precincts a little longer.
Chabon has described the book as an ode to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell [...]

Ken Levine got memed. And then somehow I did! That’s ok, though because I like the topic. A post listing my favorite TV theme songs.
Ken Levine writes, I MISS TV THEME SONGS. I miss my favorites, too, but that got me thinking. Don’t any of the new shows have theme [...]

Tearing Down The Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector is nothing if not timely. The biography by British journalist Mick Brown has been released just as Spector’s murder trial is a daily focus of Court TV. Brown got the last major interview with Spector mere weeks before he allegedly shot B-movie [...]

Anglophilia is hard to resist. Like a Hugh Grant-Richard Curtis movie, the British just can’t help charming us.
After politely following our lead into Iraq, they are now getting out in their understated way by quietly withdrawing their troops and disposing of Tony Blair.
Less stodgily, they are stoking nostalgia this weekend by re-creating Woodstock–music, mud and [...]

In the opening sequences of Moscow on the Hudson, flashing back to his life in Russia, Robin Williams’ character, circus musician Vladimir Ivanoff, remembers risking being late for work, putting his job and his upcoming, much looked forward to trip to New York City with the circus in jeopardy, to jump into a long line [...]

The story of Fletcher Hanks is one of those revisionist tales that historians of the arts have fallen in love with over the past 30-40 years or so.
As the academy was opened up to blacks and women, the standard story of the “history of art” had to be rewritten to allow their work to be [...]

Cross-posted on my blog, but I thought New Critics readers might be interetsed: Everyone is talking about the American Film Institute’s updated Top 100 list. I’m intrigued by these kinds of lists, in part because I think they do introduce important questions about taste and about our criteria for evaluating films, and while I [...]

The Dum Dum Boys
(written by Iggy Pop and David Bowie; from Iggy’s The Idiot, 1977)
What happened to Zeke
He’s dead on (unintelligible) man
How about Dave
OD’d on alcohol
Well what’s Rock doin’
Ah he’s livin’ with his mother
What about James
He’s gone straight

Things have been tough
Without the dum dum boys
I can’t seem to speak
The language
I remember how they
Used to stare [...]

The AFI updated—by repolling—its 100 Greatest American Films list on the 10th anniversary of when they first did it (and following all the sub-lists that the original spawned: best lines, best romances, best heroes/villains.)
It’s a list that is institutional and MOTR by nature, and as such, has limited value. But what is fascinating [...]

I don’t even remember when or where I heard it first. It was probably at home, on my FM radio, or maybe on a car radio driving somewhere with my parents. But I can remember the chugging strains of the piano keys, and Blondie Chaplin’s insistent vocals and the odd lyrics about “restful waters and [...]

Brad Paisley is the most talented pop music star since Prince.
As a guitar player he’s as good or better than, say, Albert Collins, Richard Thompson, Danny Gatton, or any guitarists’ guitarist you can think of. Although he writes most of his songs in collaboration, he’s a great a songwriting collaborator, like Elton John, and as [...]

The year 1967 is referred to as The Summer of Love. Forty years have passed and the Whitney has taken the opportunity to celebrate with an exhibit. I just wish they had really taken the opportunity and blown it out. So much potential not executed on.
The exhibit takes places on 2 floors, [...]

The last time I visited New York, before 9/11, a colleague directed me through the narrow streets of the Village off Washington Square. After twisting around several blocks, we found what we were looking for: a small plaque marking the spot where 146 workers perished in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It’s one of [...]

Eurydice is the new play by Sarah Ruhl currently playing at the Second Stage Theater on 43rd Street. As a whole, I have really enjoyed the majority of the plays put on by Second Stage this season. I am definitely signing up again to be a patron again for next year.
Eurydice is [...]

Perhaps it should surprise no one that this middle-aged white woman with no formal musical education enjoys hip hop so much. My daughter works for an indie record label and her boyfriend is a hip hop deejay and producer. Consider, though, that I loved listening to hip hop back when both it and I were [...]

Years ago at the Gagosian Gallery, I saw a Richard Serra exhibit. I admit it, I am a bit pedestrian when it comes to art, and I just didn’t get it. Luckily, someone was there to give me a bit of guidance.
In essence, it is architectural art. Taking large structures of steel, [...]

My father was a constant reader, a wicked prankster and something of a film buff. His film tastes were pretty eclectic–we went together to see The Pope of Greenwich Village, for example–but his real reverence was for the classics. I remember his description of a scene in The Gold Rush, to give his daughter a [...]

Tomorrow, I shall take my breakfast under the covers - a twice-yearly occurrence around case Watson (birthday, too!) - and I shall enjoy the mild but heartfelt tribute to my fatherhood. Later, I’ll give my old man a card and a gift, and char a few burgers in his honor. And I will feel well-satisfied [...]

One of the coolest uses of web video–or perhaps more precisely mobile video–is Yellow Arrow’s documentary project about the Washington, D.C., harDCore punk scene, Capital of Punk. The project features ten short videos that you can watch either on your computer, with the scene’s prominent locations highlighted on a Google map, or via video [...]

I’ve got this extremely fragile and yellowed page from the Philadelphia Bulletin, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 1945. I keep it folded up in the back of a photo album. The page has a round-up of the latest military casualties: killed, wounded, missing, taken prisoner. My father is listed in there:
Sergeant Edward J. Leo, 22, son of [...]

I was recently invited to an art show opening at a large Soho gallery where a friend’s work was being exhibited. I found most of the paintings, drawings and photographs on display quite interesting, with some exceptions. After a while, I noticed that most of the people surrounding me in the gallery were more interested [...]

On a particularly savage bender last night — who knew that raspberries soaked in ether could be such a kick? — my consciousness faded like a blow to the back of the head just as an announcement came on the teevee that the third season of Deadwood had come out on DVD. This morning, [...]

I’m an audiophile…but as with everything else I do, my audiophilia is of the hands-on, DIY-type.
Other than my phono cartridge, every piece of gear in my home audio rig is modified. I’m particularly fond of budget Chinese gear as a platform for mods–China is like the US in the 1950s, cranking out, among the sweatshop [...]

“You and my dad, you two ran North Jersey.”
“Hmph. That’s nice.”
Gandolfini is at his hulking, ominous best in the penultimate scene of the series finale, when Tony goes to see Junior in the state facility. He’s trying to see to things—to make sure Junior’s stash goes where it “should,” to Bobby’s children (and [...]

I have been enjoying the pinnacles of cinematic art since my late teens, when I began haunting a beautifully shabby repertory theatre in Philly’s Germantown called The Bandbox. Those were the days, those pre-home-video days, of going to see Himalayan double bills of Fellini and Bergman, of Kurosawa and Godard, and all for the first [...]

I’m going to say right out of the gate that I’m a fan of Fountains of Wayne. Like many others, I was vaguely aware of them for some time, mostly due to the fact that co-founder Adam Schlessinger was the author of the wonderful title track from Tom Hank’s “That Thing You Do.” My [...]

In his post on The Sopranos, Dennis commented that “the longer a TV series runs, the tougher it is to end.” I think Dennis is basically right about this point. As TV series develop increasingly complex story worlds, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide any satisfactory closure for those worlds. Because [...]

Many critics have a terror of going down in history like Bosley Crowther, as the relic who looked at a seminal moment in movie history (in Crowther’s case, Bonnie and Clyde) and reached for the smelling salts. The Siren has no such anxiety. She wears her fuddy-duddiness with pride. Describe her taste as 1950s and [...]

The longer a TV series runs, the tougher it is to end. I can’t think of a Last Show that was at all satisfying, that tied together loose ends, that left me feeling wistful or wanting more. M*A*S*H, Cheers, thirtysomething, Seinfeld — none of these shows ended artfully or even memorably. Each in its own [...]

You’ll have to excuse Hank Jones if his fingers aren’t as nimble as they once were. At 88 years of age, performing three months after quadruple bypass surgery, his stiffness is only ocassionally audible, like when he reaches for an Earl Hines-style, ragtime, triplet bounce up the keyboard during his first solo on Kids: Live [...]