‘The Gospel of the Hold Steady’ Captures Their Unhinged Magic
Michael Hann’s oral history The Gospel of the Hold Steady traces the band’s image, music, and challenges in a brilliant chronicle of the promise of rock ‘n’ roll.
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‘Calling for a Blanket Dance’ Sews Together a Story of Single Fatherhood
Calling for a Blanket Dance stitches an intergenerational quilt of rich themes: gift-giving, second chances, reclaiming culture, family loyalty, and the indelible search for a home.
Yuppies, Punks and Sociopaths Congregate in Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’
In After Hours, Scorsese’s camera wanders through a tableau of living and breathing graffiti incarnated as ’80s New York City’s most dangerous bottom-feeders.
What ‘The White Lotus’ Conveys About the Fraudulence of Perception
Through its storytelling method of glances, we see The White Lotus‘ critique of our tendency to extrapolate that which we do not understand, and to fill gaps in our knowledge with ideologies, mythologies, learned stereotypes, and meme-logic.
Acid Trips Meet Ancestral Trauma in ‘All-Night Pharmacy’
With the same shocking specificity that sets apart her poetry, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy brings us uncomfortably close to everything the narrator witnesses in a hospital waiting room.
Margaret Atwood’s ‘Old Babes in the Wood’ Fears Nothing
Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood brims with biting humor, precise detail, and incisive observations about life and aging.
Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ Detonates Moviemaking’s Limits
Christopher Nolan’s latest juggernaut Oppenheimer is an earth-shattering study of modern politics and governance that redefines what filmmaking can be.
Living Colour’s Time’s Up Isn’t Over
Rock-loving professor Kimberly Mack spends some time with Living Colour’s Time’s Up, giving the album and the band well-deserved attention and appreciation.
Chuck D Adds Talented Visual Artist to His Resume with ‘Stewdio’
Chuck D’s style in his three-volume, Covid-era graphic novel STEWdio can be described as neo-expressionistic with images and text often intertwined like Jean-Michael Basquiat’s art.
You Will Learn to Love the Beatles’ Movies
Steve Matteo’s meticulously researched and infectiously enthusiastic dive into the Beatles’ movies, Act Naturally, will make you love those silly films.
The Punk Rock Sci-Fi of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Hit Parade of Tears’
Though her fiction retains elements of future conjecture and civilizational prognosis, like punk rock itself, Izumi Suzuki is more committed to the sci-fi genre as an edgy social and emotional analysis tool.
How Much Money Do You Need? Tell ‘Dear Mr. Brody’
Among many topics raised in Dear Mr. Brody, the story of a man who gave away his ill-gotten money for need, not greed, is how media and money blur our already imperfect perception of mental illness.