Review (Theatrical): BOYHOOD (2014)
Ambitious, moving, and profound, Richard Linklater’s BOYHOOD is hands-down the most artistically successful American movie since THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Period.
Review (Live Music): PHISH Returns to Charlotte
The snooze-you-lose show: no mere mythical creature, Phish has often dropped mind-quakingly offbeat or unique shows at undersold venues, at tour stops off the beaten track, perhaps most famously epitomized by the storied 11-2-98 Utah stopover in the wake of the huge Vegas Halloween run; the four thousand phans in the cavernous basketball arena that […]
Review (Live Music): PHISH Halloween at Boardwalk Hall
Better late than never, and in acknowledgement of the new Phish album due next month, here’s a never-posted review of last year’s epic Halloween concert. — For the second time in four years, Phish, Vermont’s perpetually popular group of prog rock virtuosi, returned to Atlantic City for their typically-legendary Halloween run. Anticipation, through the roof; […]
Review (Theatrical): NEBRASKA (2013)
From its initial silvery, widescreen, black & white frames, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska unfolds at an unhurried pace, much like the shuffling steps of its principal character, the taciturn, boozy, elderly Woody Grant (Bruce Dern, in a career-best performance). When we first meet him, Woody trudges along a freeway ramp up and out of Billings MT, but it’s […]
Review (Theatrical): ALL IS LOST (2013)
An ocean of consciousness, but individuated nodes comprising our minds and bodies. We’re bobbing on the surface, mostly, or at times plunging to the depths, if we’ve taken up meditation, let’s say. But it’s difficult. We need solitude. Quiet. And time, in order to find ourselves. All good reasons to take a sailing trip around […]
Review (Live Music): PHISH in Alpharetta, GA (Part 2)
Here’s part two of my review of the recent Phish shows in Georgia. Click here for part one. PHISH Wednesday, 07/17/2013 Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park, Alpharetta, GA Soundcheck: Energy -> Gimme Some Lovin’ Jam -> Energy Set 1: Runaway Jim > The Moma Dance, Funky Bitch, Divided Sky, Gumbo > Nellie Kane > Frost[1], Alaska, Guyute, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan > Suzy Greenberg Set 2: Punch You […]
Review (Live Music): PHISH in Alpharetta, GA
After a one year hiatus from Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park, an acoustically pleasing, smallish shed (~12k) set amidst a pine forest in northern Georgia, Vermont’s prog-rock favorite sons returned this week to the American South to present a pair of shows that fairly crackled with energy, engagement, thoughtful song selection, and yes, rain […]
Review (Live Music): PHISH in Bangor, ME
Travel to Phish shows. Whether hitchhiking, driving across country, or choosing more upmarket conveyances, it’s always a thrill, more so when it’s show day and you have planes and rental cars and rigmarole and miles to go, and the potential for delays and misadventure hanging over your head. And all that’s also why in getting […]
Review (Theatrical): MAN OF STEEL (2013)
Full of half-baked religious and political allegories, bizarrely inappropriate handheld ‘shaky cam,’ not terribly impressive CGI, plot holes, weak characterization, blatant product placement and a climatic hour’s worth of overwrought, overblown, nonsensically cartoonish action, Zack Snyder and David Goyer’s Man of Steel lands in the summer 2013 moviegoing seasion with a clangorous and incoherent thud. […]
Review (Blu-ray): HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (2012)
A crashing, offensive bore, Hyde Park on Hudson features a mostly charmless, flat Bill Murray perf as that most iconic of 20th century American presidents, FDR, as he hosts the king and queen of England (yes, the stuttering king—again) at a Hudson River retreat, i.e., the president’s mother’s house. The stakes? How the royals will […]
