DVD Review: ’50s TV Classics
This indiscriminate three-disc DVD package from Film Chest Media Group offers 14 copyright-free television episodes from the 1950s that are fascinating as broadcast and cultural history. Unfortunately,...
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Movie Review: Searching for Sugar Man
True story – in the early 1970s, two record company executives received a tip to go to a dingy club in downtown Chicago to see a musician perform, a purportedly a creative genius and a promising new...
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Music Review: Gary Lewis and The Playboys – The Complete Liberty Singles
Cynicism may be the reaction to the hit singles of mid-late 1960s pop band, Gary Lewis and The Playboys. As son of the famous comedian Jerry Lewis, Gary and his Playboys were fortunate with the luxury...
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Movie Review: Life of Pi
Somehow I wasn’t expecting to be handed a pair of 3-D glasses – a good, sturdy collectable pair – when I viewed director Ang Lee’s new film, Life of Pi in 3-D. I hadn’t seen a 3-D film since Andy...
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Movie Review: Hitchcock
While Hitchcock, the new biographical film directed by Sacha Gervasi, gives us little insight into the mind of the “master of suspense”, Alfred Hitchcock, it does provide an inside view of the making...
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Music Review: Life of Pi [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
The soundtrack of the film Life of Pi will invoke images of the beloved film, but is alas, only a movie soundtrack, wherein dramatic surges in the score only serve as plot advancements in the film,...
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Music Review: Unwound – Live Leaves
Unwound (1991-2002) were a Washington state post-hardcore band that flew under the radar throughout the 1990s, showering their small but committed fan base with a spattering of albums and singles, and...
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Music Review: Devendra Banhart – Mala
I’ve warmed up to Devendra Banhart’s new album, Mala. The folkie freak, who hates when he’s referred to as anything resembling a hippie, cruises lazy Tiki bar rhythms and tequila sunrise musings on his...
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DVD Review: Frampton – Live In Detroit
If you can stand another round of Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do”, complete with talk box guitar – and as offered here with a superlative keyboard solo – and if “Show Me The Way” and “Baby I...
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Book Review: The World’s Rarest Birds by Erik Hirschfeld, Andy Swish, and...
In our ever photographic world, where satellite technology can reproduce an image from anywhere on the planet, and cell phone cameras are as plentiful as pocket change, it is hard to imagine any...
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Book Review: ‘The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trees’ by David More and John...
If you’re contemplating trees, and you want to know the identification of a certain species, you can pull out a pocket field guide for trees to aid you. It should be as simple as that. But if you’re...
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Frog Watching: Into the Woods
FrogWatch U.S.A. is a national effort to determine the populations of the various species of frogs by monitoring their audible presence in given areas. This citizen science project – a joint effort of...
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Movie Review: Woody Allen’s ‘Blue Jasmine’
Woody Allen’s new film, Blue Jasmine is a disturbing, engaging, and finally dispassionate study of a woman buckling under the weight of social pressures. Jeanette “Jasmine” Francis (Cate Blanchett),...
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Music Review: Sly and The Family Stone –‘Higher!’ [Four-CD Box Set]
When record label executives pressured Sly Stone into producing a hit single in 1968, mainstream audiences were rewarded with a new infusion of pop music: psychedelic soul. The new music genre bent the...
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Movie Review: ‘Blackfish’
The orca that killed veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010 before a packed, horrified audience was an aggressive individual that had killed twice before and would likely kill...
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Book Review: ‘Roger Waters The Man Behind The Wall’ by Dave Thompson
This biography, by renowned rock ‘n roll scribe Dave Thompson (frequent Rolling Stone magazine writer and author of the Kurt Cobain bio Never Fade Away) says as much about Roger Waters, co-founder of...
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Music Review: Tony Joe White –‘Hoodoo’
In 1968, Washington D.C.-based Monument Records released Tony Joe White’s first single, “Polk Salad Annie,” a delectable blend of swamp rock and Mississippi Delta Blues that was immediately likable and...
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Book Review: ‘A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir’ by John Grant
Ask the question “What is film noir?” of film buffs and you’ll likely get diverse answers. Ask them “What is neonoir?” and you’re liable to start a fight. Passionate arguments abound over what is and...
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Music Review: Al Kryszak –‘Lullabies for People Who Don’t Need Sleep’
Bless the unknown musician who, despite a constant output of musical creation thrown to the wind unheard, continues to burrow through the icy and crowded stream of pop culture with his latest,...
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Music Review: Various Artists –‘Punk Goes Christmas’
This is not your father’s anarchic punk Christmas. The punks in the new holiday compilation from Fearless Records, Punk Goes Christmas, are a gentle lot content on cuddling warm embraces under the...
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