February 2007 Archives

Slate put me onto Snarksmith, a book-reader's blog, which led me to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring Robert Downey Jr. as an inversion of Chandler's Marlowe, and Val Kilmer as the gay LAPI who "shows him the ropes." The concept is clever, but moment by moment it's blisteringly funny. Still can't decide whether my favorite part was Downey slam-dunking his "audition," pissing on a corpse, or watching his finger get eaten by a dog. In the end, it was the ringtone: lying next to Kilmer, presumed dead, the cell goes off, prompting Downey to finish off the perps while hanging from the dead vic's arm hanging out of her coffin. The song: Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."





SHE'S NOT THERE by Jenny Boylan



Uncanny and ferocious, the Kinks' "Lola" as memoir.











LOVE IS A MIXTAPE by Rob Sheffield



The Nilsson of rock critics, in book form at last.

February 28, 2007 7:22 PM | | Comments (0)

Story airs TODAY on HERE AND NOW, between 12-1pm EST on WBUR-FM Boston. Click here for the live stream, audio will get posted as soon as it's up.




RILEY ROCK INDEX



The Index is now in official hardcore soft-beta, including a new weekly features page for groovy updates. Click on "grapevine," spread the word.

February 26, 2007 7:18 PM | | Comments (0)
February 18, 2007 7:18 PM | | Comments (0)


DAVID THOMSON



Reviewers couldn't get past the conceit of his Kidman crush, which motors his prose beyond devotional. Eccentric, over-the-top, and compulsively readable, in sections earning its analogies and fantasy roles, as Bee Wilson notes in LRB.




LESLIE SAVAN



The NYTimes especially seemed bent on turning this into skeet, when a close read reveals a mind humming with insight. Turns out "casual" slang is weightier, more poetic than it seems, and Savan has more to say about it than anybody else. Now in paperback.


February 13, 2007 7:19 PM | | Comments (0)


PULL QUOTE



"A composer whose core work represents brevity carried almost past its logical conclusion..." --Bernard Holland on Webern




How many aesthetic distinctions get coiled up in that word "almost"? Discuss.

February 11, 2007 7:20 PM | | Comments (0)

Gian Carlo Menotti 1911-2007

Along with all the other Amahls out there, a salute to Gian Carlo. Everybody should have such a regret in their obit: "I used it as an excuse to work less. Now I regret it bitterly." He was 95, and the Spoleto Festival he founded and ran for over fifty years made him feel as
though he never had enough time.


Telegraph

Bernard Holland, NYTimes

John Francis Lane, Guardian

BBC News

G. Schirmer

February 6, 2007 7:20 PM | | Comments (0)

File under: "My daughter's not gay so I have to find another way to be massively hypocritical..."

"America's corporate boardrooms must step up to their responsibilities," he said. "You need to pay attention to the executive compensation packages that you approve."
George Bush to the New York Stock Exchange, January 31st, 2007.
February 1, 2007 7:21 PM | | Comments (0)

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This page is an archive of entries from February 2007 listed from newest to oldest.

January 2007 is the previous archive.

March 2007 is the next archive.

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culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
Stage Write
Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
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Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
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