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
Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli The Wages of Fear is a two and a half hour movie. I was surprised at the length, knowing what I knew about it before viewing for the first time: some guys have to haul nitroglycerine across some hazardous terrain, and some obvious problems ensue.… Read More The Wages of Fear (1953)
Created by David Simon. Starring Dominic West, Larry Gilliard, Jr., Sonja Sohn I remember how frustrated I was watching Glee, a show which in its first season gave meaningful screen time and plot directions to, by my count, at least sixteen different characters. Plot arcs which could have sizzled and developed over the course of… Read More The Wire, Season 1
Dir. Michael Haneke. Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert After Anne has had her first stroke – indeed, towards the tail end of her life as a more or less ambulatory, thinking human being – she and Georges are eating a meal together. He’s almost cleared his plate. She still has a fair bit… Read More Amour (2012)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Sam Neill, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern As a general rule, I don’t make a habit of seeing blockbusters in theaters. Most of them don’t really interest me, and I am in deep superhero-movie fatigue; the concept of the Marvel Universe painstakingly coming to film after film after film, an idea that… Read More Jurassic Park (1993)
Dir. David Livingston. Starring Avery Brooks, Louise Fletcher, Rosalind Chao (I’ve had this blog for three years now, and I have never written a post on Deep Space Nine. Not once! That amazes me.) There’s a wonderful scene in “Q-Less,” the sixth episode of DS9, where Q shows up with Vash for reasons not much… Read More Star Trek: Deep Space Nine S1E20, “In the Hands of the Prophets”
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar Once again, I find myself a little lost for words trying to talk about a Powell and Pressburger movie, so once again I’ll go to a shot and try to work backwards. There are fewer famous images in Black Narcissus than in… Read More Black Narcissus (1947)
Seeing Things Secondhand 