A Joel For All Seasons

2021 Year in Review – Top Albums

Here’s an Apple music playlist, containing these albums, along with a bunch of others I enjoyed in 2021: Top of 2021 – Top Albums Top of 2021 – Top Albums – Ambient 1. Low – Hey What No, you’re never gonna feel completeNo, you’re never gonna be releasedMaybe never even see, believeThat’s why we’re living in days like these againDays Like These 2. The Notwist – Vertigo Days Telephone brings…

Top of 2020* – Top Albums & Songs (Ambient)

*Rated R Behold: a list of ambient albums and also songs, perfectly tailored for a year that tested the boundaries of our selfish resolve. Apple Music Playlist: Top of 2020 – Top Albums (Ambient) 11. Mary Lattimore – Silver Ladders A classically trained harpist, Silver Ladders is Lattimore’s newest LP. Produced by Slowdive’s Neil Halstead, who had never recorded a harp before, at his studio…

The Birria Boom Is Complicated, but Simply Delicious – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/dining/birria-recipes.html?campaign_id=58&emc=edit_ck_20210210&instance_id=26932&nl=cooking&regi_id=82805974&segment_id=51362&te=1&user_id=4309c93cd16d421652e5cf35ff06d670 “The hype for birria is relentless. On Instagram, there’s a collective fetishization of cheese pulls in extreme close-ups, and images of tacos half-dipped in Styrofoam cups of meaty broth. The…

Top of 2020* ~ Top Albums & Songs

Quarantine Film Diary: Until the End of the World (1991)

Wim Wenders’ 5-hour-long, “ultimate road trip” film, Until the End of the Worldis something of a semi-dated curiosity. It portrays a rather startling prevision (from 1991) of what the future (in the film, 1999) would be like, with our omnipresent, audiovisual connection to the rest of the world via technology, and it also contains a kind of bleeding-heart romanticism for the power of dreams and…

Targets (1968)

Written & Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Starring Boris Karloff, Tim O’Kelly, Peter Bogdanovich, and Nancy Hsueh. And a bonus star, if you can spot him: Jack Nicholson, appearing in the film-within-the-film The Terror (1963), directed by Roger Corman and also starring Boris Karloff.

Targetsis the confident and bold directorial debut of cinematic wunderkind Peter Bogdanovich. Frank…

Year in Review 2019 – Top Films & TV

2019 saw the launch of The Criterion Channel and Disney+, a watershed moment for the availability of streaming content. While Disney clamps down and restricts, Criterion is out here making sure the masses have unfettered access to their fill of sacrilegious art-house cinema. Thanks in no small part to the no-holds-barred approach of Criterion, I present my favorite films (and TV) of 2019.

First…

2019 – The Year in Review – Top Albums & Songs

Yes, I managed to listen to over 120 albums in 2019. Streaming music subscription services can be a wonderful thing (for consumers, at least). Believe it or not, I still actually purchase music in physical formats, as well.  At any rate, distilling those 120+ albums down to a serviceable “list” of favorites was no mean feat. Behold, my Top Albums of 2019:

15. Peter Caws & Parkington Sisters –…

2019 – The Year in Review – Top Albums (Ambient)

A 2019 Year in Review list of albums that primarily skew towards the ambient, electronic, experimental and instrumental. I created a separate list for 2019 because I found myself increasingly turning to such records throughout the year. Part of the allure would definitely have to be the meditative, relaxing quality of many such recordings. Another might have been simply a kick I got on, after…

NYT: The Mr. Rogers No One Saw (Or Perhaps, Everyone Saw?)

“A lot of this — all of this — is just tending soil.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/magazine/mr-rogers.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/magazine/mr-rogers.html

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Opines on Impeachment

Oh my god.

You know, everyone keeps repeating this story about Ben Franklin over and over again  —  you know the one  —  about how in 1787, as the Constitution was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of Independence Hall. When they saw Franklin, they asked, ‘What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?’ and Franklin replied, ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’

But what did Ben Franklin even mean…

I Can’t Tell If It’s Satire: The Best Coldplay Songs Of All Time, Ranked

Leaving aside the fact that ranked lists are inherently subjective, I honestly cannot tell if this one is an elaborate satire or if perhaps the author concluded that actually choosing a “best” Coldplay song was an exercise in self-flagellating effrontery.

Here it is: A line of demarcation between those of us who embrace Coldplay as…

“Wanderin’ Star” as performed by Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon

Without a doubt, Paint Your Wagon(1969) has got to be the most bizarre movie musical I have ever watched. Adapted for the big screen by Paddy Chayefsky from Alan Jay Lerner’s original 1951 stage production, the film stars Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood (his one and only appearance in a musical) and Jean Seberg. Although I have never…

Addendum: Hell on Earth

After viewing The Devils (1971) the other day, I searched and found Mark Kermode’s 2004 documentary about the film, containing some of the storied “deleted” scenes that were removed by British censors, including the scene dubbed, “the rape of Christ.”

Hell on Earthis a production of BBC Four and contains a healthy amount of graphic imagery. Definitely NSFW but also essential if you, like me, are…

2018 – The Year in Review – Film & Television

[This was an unpublished draft I’m dusting off… and almost in time for the compilation of my 2019 Year in Review 🤦🏽‍♂️]

Increasingly, the lines between entertainment mediums are being blurred and new forms are emerging. From the entire-season-all-at-one-time binge-fests facilitated by the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, to the evolution of the “mini-series” or “limited” series on HBO, FX and…

I just finished watching Ken Russel’s film The Devils (1971), currently streaming over at The Criterion Channel.

The film is itself an adaptation of a 1960 play of the same name by John Whiting, as well as the 1952 non-fictoin novel by Aldux Huxley, entitled, The Devils of Loudun.

Criterion is streaming the 108 minute cut of the film, which is not the uncut version.

The events depicted in the…