Category: The Arts
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First off, Mark drove, and did an awesome job parallel parking in North Philly. For free. (We evaded the parking captain a block east of The Met.) It ain’t easy. Mark is an avowed “Isbell skeptic” who has made much fun of me over the years for my avowed devotion to JI. I was wondering…
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Here are my fave songs released last year. And yeah, if you know me, Jason Isbell’s latest solo effort dominates it. I can take the heat.
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I caught “A Complete Unknown,” the movie about Bob Dylan’s emergence as a cultural force, and I’m trying to understand how it is landing so heavily in my own house. My wife, not a Dylanphile at all, has been intrigued for two days now. She has asked me for Spotify playlists that correspond to the…
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I am an artificial intelligence skeptic. That said, I like to see what it does with requests that I think will teach me something about it. So recently when I heard that Philly-based TV shows Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia had committed to a joint episode, I thought it provided a chance…
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It looks like a very Oppie year. It’s been a while – like, 4 years – since I felt like I saw enough of the Oscar Best Picture nominees to have an opinion. But this year, I have, and I even saw some of them in theaters. Take that, covid! That said, here are my…
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I’ve seen Jason Isbell — with and without the 400 Unit — 16 times since 2014. And I have to say, he’s never sounded better, more sure of himself and his music, than last week at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J. It’s hard to quantify, because I have seen some great concerts —…
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My wife loves Wes Anderson. A couple of Christmases ago, she got a book about him and his movies. She thinks everything he has done is great — from Bottle Rocket to now. Me? Not so much. I think there is good Wes (Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums, Moonlight Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel), bad Wes (The French…
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These are weird times for movies. I don’t know if “going to the movies” is really a thing anymore, and movies now compete with all these TV shows for in-home screen time and attention. Over the last couple years, I just haven’t seen as many of the Oscar contenders as I used to, plus there’s…
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Jason Isbell remains my favorite musician these days, and there’s a lot of energy around him right now. There was a post on a Facebook fan group I enjoy for Isbell about how his wife Amanda Shires was not in the band photo that accompanied the release of the first single for his band’s upcoming…
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I’ve seen most of the Best Picture nominees this year (no Nightmare Alley, Drive My Car or West Side Story) and wanted to drop a quick post on who I think should win this Sunday. Best Picture Power of the Dog There’s a point early in the movie, where Montana simply swallows you as a…
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Virginia and I continued on a torrid pace of movie-watching, this time watching Jerry Maguire with friends on New Year’s Night. One couple had never seen it. I hadn’t seen it in more than a decade, maybe closer to two. Anyway, I reacted to it a little differently than I did back in 1996. Some…
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We continued our movie-watching last night and caught Don’t Look Up, directed by Adam McKay. It is ostensibly about what happens when two scientists (Leo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence) discover a comet heading straight at earth. The movie starts out playing it for laughs, then downshifts into an increasingly frustrated, incredulous satire and pretty dispiriting critique…
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