Pennsylvania

Biopics are an almost universally boring and unnecessary category, but I, Tonya subverts that by a) relitigating a scandal and depicting as a hero someone long understood to be a villain, and b) being brutally entertaining. Its pitch-black comedy is reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street, with inferior style but a vastly more appealing and sympathetic protagonist. As Tonya Harding and her mother, Margot Robbie and Allison Janney own the film, and without performances… See more →

Call Me by Your Name strikes me as an important achievement, but one that doesn’t speak to me as much as I had hoped, at least not as much as Carol or Moonlight, the other recent queer crossover hits that are inevitably offered for comparison. The gulf between its adolescent protagonist’s cosmopolitan intellectualism and my own experiences as a teen may be a factor, and it doesn’t help that I am definitely not a fan… See more →

A sweet fairy tale, easily the best of the small handful of Guillermo del Toro films I’ve seen. My one gripe is that it relies so heavily on the (strong) appeal of Sally Hawkins’ and Richard Jenkins’ performances that the film sags when they’re not onscreen. Michael Shannon is a serviceable villain, but his contours aren’t nuanced or idiosyncratic enough to justify the amount of attention del Toro lavishes on him.

A Metallica concert in 2017 is pretty unnecessary but I went anyway and my main takeaway was that Lars’s drums were purple and sparkly.

In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ambulance scene, an EMT says awkwardly to her charge, “I’m just gonna… check you.” She looks enough like Abbi Jacobson – a Philadelphia area native, like Split’s writer/director, M. Night Shyamalan – that it instantly becomes my favorite scene in the movie, a random cameo with Jacobson’s hapless Broad City character stumbling into an EMT job for which she is comically unqualified. But it’s not her. In her absence, the scene… See more →

A love letter to a city I do not love, La La Land nevertheless did an impressive job of disarming me with its vivid palette and dazzling setpieces. It managed to seize on my love of music while circumventing my distaste for musicals.

Color me impressed that @ChamberMonster managed to keep a secret for 2+ months, and tonight we’re seeing Stephin Merritt!

Last month I described Birdman – unfavorably – as a “series of carefully scripted temper tantrums meant to embody the struggle of making capital ‘A’ Art.” I wouldn’t have guessed that a short time later, another film fitting that description would knock me on my ass.

Whiplash is a trenchant examination of greatness, approaching the idea not by deconstructing a success story, but instead by observing an integral moment in the life of someone who … See more →

A technically adroit series of carefully scripted temper tantrums meant to embody the struggle of making capital “A” Art, Birdman pays lip service to the nuance that accompanies authenticity, but it tends to make its points as loudly as possible. This is probably about as good as overwrought showbiz navel gazing gets, and it’s still pretty off-putting.

McConaughey is excellent, but the redemption story is pretty by-the-numbers, and is ultimately overpowered by a rather shrill anti-FDA polemic.

All @mSutters ever wanted from an @AndrewWk show was a bloody nose, and now I have given it to him.

To my Philly people: I’m not saying I hadn’t been to an R5 show in ages, but the last time I saw the sound guy, he was clean shaven.

Realized tonight that Mike Watt chooses to play with guitarists who sound not like D Boon did, but how he would by now if he had survived.

Backstage, an hour before show time, the cramped green room buzzed and shuffled with conversation and preparation. Rhinestones and tassels adorned leather and denim, which adorned bodies aged eighteen to forty-eight, travelers hailing from as far as West Virginia. Many were veterans of the air guitar stage, and some had competed as recently as the previous night. Having failed to capture the titles in their home towns of New York, Boston, and Washington DC, they… See more →

Cheers to Paul Green School of Rock for this fest with kids from all over the US playing rock music. Jeers for letting Skoal be a sponsor.

Just saw what is sure to have been the best Bruce Dickinson imitation ever to be perpetrated by a teenage girl.

The Hold Steady has found the ears of the lite beer crowd.

These kids are exceptionally skilled musicians, but they can’t save this Yes song from itself.… See more →

Emperor X was so good tonight. Pretty much everyone I can think of would have enjoyed this show.

I like adjectives that are both crystal clear and totally vague. For example, you may be coming off a “good” weekend just like I am, but it’s entirely possible that the “good” elements of our respective weekends were completely different. Perhaps you were served an amazing slice of peach cobbler, or your blind date turned out to be George Clooney, or you finally disposed of some incriminating evidence that’s been haunting you for years. But… See more →

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Brooklyn is not terribly far from where I live, so waking up there this morning made a clear enough impression that I would be arriving home today. But I still just couldn’t get my head around the idea of being home and staying there. Perhaps in a subconscious attempt to slow the approach, I made a few stops on the way. There was a very nice breakfast with Stan and Shawn Morrison at DuMont in… See more →