My knowledge of the band Sparks started with the new wave hits “Angst in My Pants” and “Eaten by the Monster of Love” (featured in the 1982 film Valley Girl), and ended with the pop confection “Cool Places” (a charming hit with the Go Go’s Jane Wiedlin). To get an idea of how surprisingly (to …
I’ll give credit where credit is due: Sylvie’s Love is a gorgeous-looking, gorgeous-sounding movie. It is a fresh twist on classic romantic melodramas, with an extremely attractive black cast set in a glossy, soft-focused Harlem. Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) meet cute at a record store. She helps out her father at the …
Once upon a time, a group of extraordinarily talented young musicians married traditional Irish music with a punk rock attitude helping to revitalize a wounded Ireland’s international popularity in the process. The Pogues recorded a handful of brilliant albums, and toured the world several times over. At the height of their success, an overwhelmed lead …
Crock of Gold – A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan Read More »
A couple years ago, I abruptly lost my hearing as a strange side effect to a sinus issue. I was probably only hearing at a level of about 20%. Co-workers would tell me that they would said hi to me, but I’d walk right by them, clueless. I’d be in meetings where I’d be completely …
As a teen, no one wants to be second fiddle to their sibling, or, in the case of Juliet (Sydney Sweeney), second piano. Juliet and her twin sister Vivian (Madison Iseman) are both senior students at a prestigious performing arts high school, where both excel at classical piano playing. Except, well, Vivian has always been …
This film chronicles a flamboyant, iconic singer from his meteoric rise to superstardom in the 1970s, to hitting rock bottom from sex and drugs and rock and roll, to his triumphant comeback in the mid-1980s. Wait, is this Bohemian Rhapsody? No, this time instead Queen’s Freddie Mercury, it’s a musical biopic of pop star Elton John, …
Set in 1962, the film tracks the literal and figurative real-life journey of two unlikely traveling companions: hulking NYC club bouncer Tony “Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) and Don “Doc” Shirley (Mahershala Ali), the virtuoso pianist who hires Tony to be his muscle on a potentially dangerous eight-week concert tour through the racially divided Deep American …
I don’t really know why, but when the trailer for A Star is Born came out, I simply couldn’t look away. The trailer opens with the camera panning over the crowd at Coachella. The first picks of acoustic guitar begin as Bradley Cooper croons the lonesome Americana-tinged, “Maybe it’s time to let the old ways …
Rami Malek, sporting one helluva set of prosthetic dentures and an array of questionable wigs, stars as Mercury, who went from Heathrow baggage handler to rock god over the course of about two decades. Directed (mostly) by Bryan Singer, who was fired from the production late in the game and replaced with Dexter Fletcher, the …
I have a love/hate relationship with Oasis. I adored their catchy pop-rock sensibilities in the 90s, especially the masterpiece that is “Wonderwall”. But then I saw them in concert, and was faced with a bunch of arrogant brats who threw water bottles at the audience and sneered at us with disdain. Part of the issue …