Matt and I take several tacks in an X-Men podcast for the rest of us. We review X-Men: Apocalypse in the context of the new trilogy and preview what might happen in X-Men: Tired Fourth Movie in a Series; we give some thought to the Claremont run in particular, and to the paradox of the… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 16: Cranky Criticism from the Podcast in a Bottle
There’s a title that doesn’t have anything to do with the podcast, which is in fact a Top 100 list of the most ’90s songs in the style of our last post. Listen to hear Matt’s Eddie Vedder impression (prefaced by Tim’s impeccable freestyle), how emo everyone was during America’s most cheerful decade maybe ever,… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 15: Mentholated Buzz Lightyear Holidays
Matt and I dip back into music and Top 100 lists for this podcast, in which we talk about the most quintessentially ’80s songs. Find out what Toto’s “Africa” and Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” have in common, why Matt loves The Outfield’s “Your Love” so much, learn about the magic of hair metal, and… Read More Baumann and Burch, Episode 14: Private Karaoke
Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. Starring Matthew Modine, Saul Rubinek, Alan Alda The story of the HIV/AIDS crisis, especially in its nascent days in the late 1970s, is utterly terrifying. Until I read Randy Shilts’ magnificent tome on the first ten years of AIDS, And the Band Played On, it was hard for me to realize just… Read More And the Band Played On (1993)
Dir. David Cronenberg. Starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen In love and psychoanalysis, where one rests relative to one’s partner is of vital importance. Throughout the film, Jung (Fassbender) and Spielrein (Knightley) switch places relative to one another befitting just those concepts. In the beginning, while Jung is still her doctor and not her… Read More A Dangerous Method (2011)
Dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. Starring Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Angela Lansbury Since I reached adulthood, which is best defined here as that time in a person’s life when s/he begins to pine for childhood, I’ve spent more time than I ought to debating Disney movies. It’s been almost ten years that I’ve been… Read More Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Last night’s draft lottery was hypnotic. The Sixers finally won the darn thing; for an evening, before Philadelphia begins to dissect Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram only to be surprised when Jamal Murray goes first overall (I’m kidding, probably), we could enjoy the dream of a first overall selection. The Process, which has been roundly… Read More It’s Bailout Season, and Other Last Thoughts on the Old Sixers
Depending on who you are, Donald Trump proved his seriousness as a candidate as long ago as last summer, although I think many of us came to it later than that. For me, it was back in February when Donald Trump handily won the Republican primary in South Carolina. My thoughts on what signaled the… Read More Re: Unraveling the Trump Phenomenon
Dir. Errol Morris Colloquially, it’s the documentary that released an innocent man from prison; it’s one of those cases about art both affecting and effecting life, sort of the reverse of Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, Jr. being inspired by Nashville or Taxi Driver. That Randall Dale Adams could be freed from his life sentence (after having… Read More The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut, Melinda Dillon Close Encounters, if I’m honest, is a hard movie to love. A lot of the film is about Richard Dreyfuss rapidly going insane after having been the only witness in his family to three UFOs. It’s one thing to listen to him pontificate about the… Read More Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Seeing Things Secondhand 