Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Ted Danson, James Fox, Mary Steenburgen I have long been on the record that just because something shares the same title as its source material doesn’t mean, necessarily, that it must follow the source material’s lead. In practice, what that means is that film adapters should feel real freedom to edit… Read More Gulliver’s Travels (1996)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Ronee Blakley, Henry Gibson, Michael Murphy To me, the most remarkable thing about Nashville is that it places the American id not in New York City or Los Angeles, nor Boston or Texas or DC, but in Tennessee. It has the audacity to presume that something interesting has happened away from… Read More Nashville (1975)
It’s 1983. Stephen King has just published Christine and Pet Sematary, although “The Body,” the novella that birthed Stand by Me, was just published last year, and no one could have forgotten Carrie just yet. Last year was also the year that E.T. came out, where friendly aliens get sloshed at home, dress in Yoda costumes, and have to hide… Read More Stranger Things, Season 1
Inspired by the events of the reasonably recent B&B B&B episode, “Podcast Yes!” and bummed out by how many books I have which are still in Rubbermaid totes, I’ve gone through the Harry Potter books again for the first time in a couple of years. In lieu of doing separate posts on each book, which… Read More Seven Sevens: A Harry Potter Retrospective
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder The Age of Innocence is the mirror universe of Gangs of New York, films released and set less than ten years apart, with the same director and the same leading man. Admittedly, the differences begin to proliferate from there; Day-Lewis’ Newland Archer is never quite as… Read More The Age of Innocence (1993)
We learned during the podcast! We admit that this edition is a touch scattered, but maybe it’s just because we’re finally one of our longest-percolating ideas. We’ve combined Pokemon and famous philosophers into cute(?), marketable(?), playable(!) “Pokelosophers,” each with their own moves, HP, types, and evolutionary trees. Find out about some of our favorite evolutions,… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 23: When Did You Learn that Persian Looks Just Like Michel Foucault?
Are you breaking up with someone right now? Neither are we, but that didn’t stop us from running a break-up song bracket. Find out why we couldn’t actually finish the bracket, why we disagree vehemently about which is the superior “Ne me quitte pas,” and what each of us would put in our ten-song breakup… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 22: God Creates Man, Man Bemoans Fortune
It’s so exciting for me to have to say: Spoilers! I never talk about recent things! I’ve always been leery of reviewing plays, especially plays I’ve never seen. But most plays don’t have their scripts published at midnight, either, and most plays don’t have “Harry Potter” in the name. Like Hamilton, which has a cultural… Read More Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
In this episode, we strike out into a discussion of Mad Men, arguably the finest television drama of all time. We try not to linger too long on Dick Whitman; we spend ample time discussing the tragedy of Lane Pryce; we giggle over the possibility that Archer’s Cherlene might go on tour with Ramblin’ Don… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 21: The Allman Brothers feat. Ramblin’ Don
There’s almost too much to talk about in this latest installation of a series on Top 100s in music, but we give our level best to a host of topics, like: what happened to rock music? what happened to rap and hip-hop? where are the white women at? Join us as we take a long… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 20: How Purple Light Killed Music
Seeing Things Secondhand 