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| By Simon Britton |
Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Paul Hogan, Steve Irwin, Errol Flynn, Guy Pearce, Bruce Spence, Heath Ledger, Eric Bana, John Jarrod, Hugh Jackman, Clive James, Germaine Greer, Judy Davis - what a pack of mongrels!
Have you ever wondered why such a small country miles from anywhere at the bottom of the world is so over-represented on the world's media?
It’s the mongrel-factor.
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 t takes a very special kind of genius to make vibrating strings bring a audience to screaming seething mass. Rock guitarists are effective conduits for the visceral emotions our lizard brains respond to. |
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Leo Baxendale
Who is that in the photograph next to my name on your website? It isn't me.
Leo Baxendale
Comment by Leo |
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Get Smart
Talk about "missed it by that much." Steve Carrell is a great phsyical comedian, but a great Maxwell Smart he is not. Carrell ended up playing his typical role until it came time for one of Smart's catch-phrases when he managed to channel Don Adams for a fleeting moment before returning to his old self. I was however, completely sold on Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, and considering that 99 was someone I wanted to be since I was about five years old, I'd say Hathaway had some big shoes to fill. Props to producers for throwing in the more obscure references (Hymie the robot), but in the end the references to the original series seemed a bit too forced. Overall, the film fails to compete with Brooks' original series but manages to hold its own as a run of the mill summer comedy.
Comment by Catherine Wernquest |
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Leo Baxendale
I was born on 27/Oct/1930
Comment by Leo |
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And No Bad Breath!
Somehow, in the case of material like this, it just wouldn't be funny if it was kids in sweatshirts sitting at card tables. The actors are spot on; the sets and lighting sell what is required for the joke: that this is a (wink, wink) real newscast. Yes, a lot of funny stuff is coming at us from flip phones and no more money invested than the three minutes of bandwidth it takes for the upload. But in the case of the Onion, at least, there is clearly a connection between budget and product.
Comment by Tim Fall |
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The Happening
(Potential spoiler?--)
I don't think the reason for the suicides is that laughable and could have been interesting, but they just killed it by making it so obvious. Shyamalan's other movies were pretty cool because he withheld the important information until the end.
I saw this last night. Totally absurd, worst dialogue/acting I've seen in a while.
Comment by Kristina Chiappetta |
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BMW GINA
Chris Bangle (the BMW designer) is a genius. Whatever he does others follow. This idea is so great, so inventive. I want a car like this now.
Comment by Geoffrey Gifford |
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Gloria Vanderbilt
Years ago I bought a copy of your "Memory" collage. It was well loved by my two daughters (now 37 and 40)!! It simply wore out.
Are there copies of it still being reproduced?
The Felix Domestica and the Canis Familiaris patterns were also delightful.
Comment by Helen Howes |
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Gloria Vanderbilt
Comment by Helen Howes |
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Anna Maliere
exotic
Comment by Antonio |
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Anna Maliere
Comment by Antonio |
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Playing the Building
I saw this on opening night. It's completely brilliant and charming.
It makes you listen like a child again.
Happy New Ears!
Comment by Geoffrey Gifford |
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And No Bad Breath!
"Since The Onion spends money, the product they create is genuinely funny."
Ahhhh - were you around in 1999? Do you have any idea how much money was spent on giving web portals high production value? I was one of the thousands of people paid to do this, all the while knowing that it's the idea that makes the product work, and not solely the look or the production values.
The dot com bust was meant to be and we all knew it, unless you were one of the few idealists who drank the corporate koolaid and took the stock instead of the cash.
Making something 'good' does not necessarily mean spending a motza. Making something good for the net means isolating a thought that resonates with a community, translating it for the net and getting out of the way.
Comment by Mara Marich |
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Harold Holt
Cmon - give us a bit more. There's more there.
Comment by Mara Marich |
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The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Velvet Underground are one of the many underrated bands of the 1960's and this album is a classic. The band consisted of Lou Reed, who sung lead vocals on most of the songs, played lead guitar on most of the songs and wrote all of the songs (he used to be employed in the Brill Building in New York as a professional songwriter), John Cale, who played the electric viola, piano and bass, Sterling Morrison, who played rhythm and bass guitar, Maureen (Moe) Tucker, who played drums, and Nico who is listed as 'chanteuse' and sung on this album.
The band was Andy Warhol's pet project and this album was their first foray into the world of the music business and popular charts. The album has a distinctly dark yet fun sound to it and is intensely creative and touching. The genres the band touch on are wide and varied. The opening track "Sunday Morning" could be the kind of pop song you would hear in the early Sixties, except for its dark undertones, "I'm Waiting For The Man" is pure, early R'n'B (i.e. the original, real R'n'B), "Femme Fatale" (supposedly written for Edie Sedgwick) is poppy but made serious by Nico's Germanic voice, "Run Run Run" is a shuffle-beat blues song about scoring in New York, and "All Tomorrow's Partis", Warhol's all time favourite song, involves a piano motif that has been heard many times after this record was released.
And that's just the A-side.
The real gems are on the second side which is opened by the epic, imagery-laden, dark "Heroin" a song which was mistaken by audiences as glorifying the drug. This song is the kind that sends shivers down your back and I for one have never heard anything like it. And this was all from an album that came out the same year as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" by the Beatles and "Their Satanic Majesties Request" by the Stones.
This album is a classic in that it shows some of the true, unadulterated creativity of the 1960's and gives you some idea of what the people on the East Coast (as opposed to the hippies in San Fran) were doing.
Comment by Lou Richards |
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Stephen Stills
This landmark album by Stephen Stills perfectly fused the folk-rock scene of West Coast America with the blues and rock scene of Britain. The opening track "Love The One You're With" has the fantastic blues hook of 'If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with' and has musical luminaries such as Calvin 'Fuzzy' Samuels (later to play bass for Manassas with Stills), and Rita Coolidge, Graham Nash, John Sebastien and David Crosby singing backup vocals. The album, which was recorded in London in 1969, featured an array of prominent British musicians that make this album a must-have for many lovers of Sixties music. In the song "Old Times, Good Times", the lead guitar spot is filled by none other than Jimi Hendrix, the reknowned blues guitarist who was made famous by his love of psychedelia and how he fused this with blues. Jimi was living in London at the time and this record was one of the last tracks he played on before his untimely death in 1970. Another legendary British blues guitarist, Eric Clapton, plays the lead on "Go Back Home", a song which also shows Stills' ability with the Wah-wah pedal. On the second side, the song "Black Queen" (which was recorded live and which the performance is courtesy of Jose Cuervo Gold Label Tequila), is a standout with just Stills singing and accompanying himself on double-dropped D tuned guitar. This song displays the incredible technical ability that explains why Stephen Stills was a member of many seminal groups of the Sixties and Seventies, including Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young), and Manassas. The album was engineered by Andy Johns, who went on to record the Stones' double album "Exile on Main St." in 1972, so expect to hear it sounding well mixed. This album is a definite for anyone interested in blues, folk-rock, the Sixties and Stephen Stills in particular.
Comment by Lou Richards |
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Jimi Hendrix
Hey,
Good review, but I think Hendrix's music was firmly rooted in....blues music. The psychedelic stuff came much later & his music never lost its blues roots. He followed in the footsteps of earlier blues guitarists who always incorporated the blues with their own unique sounds (bending notes, hammer-on, vibrato, etc) In Hendrix's case it was bends & then feedback.
How about a review of Hendrix's Pali Gap? That track almost defies defintion.
Comment by Zena O'Connor |
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Elvis Costello
When I think of Elvis I think of the high note in the last verse of God Give Me Strength, which will make your skin rattle every single time you listen. Is it a G? I can't get up and test it on the piano right now. He plays with it the first two times through, just teasing it out in falsetto. Then, last verse, bam, right from the chest and out the top of his head. That to me is the modern Elvis. After all the sneering Dylan-y vox style of his formative albums, he continually reinvests in himself as a musician and (here with Burt B) as a singer. Just listen if you haven't in a few years. The man's a monster in the best possible way.
Comment by Tim Fall |
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Achim Freyer
If you ever get a chance to see an opera designed by this guy - GO! It will be fantastic and extraordinary.
Comment by Geoffrey Gifford |
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Insightful observance well expressed.
Comment by Mary Adele |
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The Packrattitude of Andy Warhol
Very interesting, a real moment in time.
Comment by Mary Adele |
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Being clever - every day – is one tough gig.
Excellent! This is so right on. Keep me posted as to what becomes of this piece.
Comment by Mary Adele |
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| BROTHER'S KEEPER |
| Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's documentary about a controversial death in a rural farming community in upstate New York is documentary filmmaking at its best. |
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| by Catherine Wernquest ~ 26|Jun|2008 |
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| GET SMART |
| I enjoy silly things like Bill Murray having a conversation with Steve Carell from inside a tree. |
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| by Kristina Chiappetta ~ 23|Jun|2008 |
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| THE HAPPENING |
| Billed as Shyamalan's first R-Rated movie, The Happening is filled with scenes of senseless gore as people are driven to kill themselves in a variety of graphic ways (I won't tell you why because you'd be laughing too hard to finish reading the rest of this review). |
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| by Catherine Wernquest ~ 17|Jun|2008 |
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| THE SLIP |
| Trent Reznor continues his march toward Internet-music-distribution domination with The Slip, the second Nine Inch Nails release in the calendar year of 2008, following the mostly instrumental Ghosts I-IV. |
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| by John Brodeur ~ 02|Jul|2008 |
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| IVEY-DIVEY |
| Winning album of the year awards, Ivey-Divey has already become heavily critically acclaimed, and rightfully so. |
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| by Alan Bjorklund ~ 02|Jul|2008 |
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| SONGS IN A&E |
| Spiritualized's sixth studio album is named for the Accident and Emergency ward, the British emergency room. |
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| by Rob Wohl ~ 25|Jun|2008 |
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| LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN |
| Who would have thought Conan would become such an institution? When the gawky redhead took over the NBC's Late Night in 1993 as successor to the wildly popular David Letterman, few expected him to last more than a few years. |
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| by John Brodeur ~ 02|Jul|2008 |
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| WEEDS |
| Weeds has quickly become the pinnacle of premium channel comedy, even with storylines that keep getting crazier and crazier. |
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| by David Wicks ~ 26|Jun|2008 |
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| HAROLD HOLT |
| The Prime Minister of Australia in 1967 was young and handsome with a constant megawatt smile. |
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| by Simon Britton ~ 22|May|2008 |
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| JASON MORAN |
| As a new generation jazz musician, Jason Moran approaches the music in a classic fashion. |
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| by Alan Bjorklund ~ 22|May|2008 |
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| ERIC DOLPHY |
| Multi-instrumentalist and composer Eric Dolphy was the spectacle of the jazz world for far too short a period in history. |
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| by Alan Bjorklund ~ 22|May|2008 |
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raffiti, bombing, ugly crime, beautiful crime, street art, outsider art, painting, tagging, social protest. Whatever you call it Bomb It director and producer Jon Reiss says that "it really is a hot topic for a lot of mainstream folks." Reiss, named by Daily Variety as one of "10 digital directors to watch" calls graffiti "the ultimate outsider art." And defines it as: "Any form of illicit artistic interference in public space."
