Play ball
What’s very clever about Moneyball is that it’s so inside baseball, it’s inside out. The truth is that this is more of a business movie than a sports movie.
Life choices
“Homeland” Sunday 10pm, Showtime Claire Danes returns to series television with this new political thriller. It’s terrifying to think that Danes, now 32, got her big break back in 1994 as a 15-year-old actually playing a 15-year-old on the short-lived but iconic teen drama “My So-Called Life.” Now she’s all grown up, with some major […]
He’s a spastic man
Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier is always busy. When I got him on the phone one Sunday, he was in the middle of mixing a live album to be posted for free on the band’s website. The day before, Saunier participated in an explosive show at Brooklyn’s Union Pool with three other percussionists.
Reboots and re-imaginings
“The X Factor” Wednesday-Thursday 8pm, Fox Simon Cowell exports his other hugely successful televised talent show to America, and it’s already courting controversy before the first episode airs. British pop-star Cheryl Cole was initially on the judging panel, but was booted after early auditions and replaced by Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, who was initially hired […]
Buddy cops
First, a warning: Don’t try this at home. However much it may seem like a piece of cake to build a whole movie around a lazy, lonely, corrupt, faux-racist, foul-mouthed provincial Irish cop, in fact it is a delicate art. Consider The Guard, wherein writer-director John Michael McDonagh, whose brother Martin wrote and directed In […]
Writing on the walls
Most people with English rattling around their heads give little thought to what their language looks like. Typeface and handwriting vanish quickly behind the meaning of the words they form. It’s a playful change of pace, then, to study the work of Noriko Maeda, whose Japanese calligraphy, on view through September at Warm Springs Gallery, […]
The underground actor
A barrel-chested man with a white beard and a casual manner, James “Ike” Eichling strikes up a conversation on anything, anywhere. He is most often found in his Downtown Mall shop, Ike’s Underground, an emporium for vintage clothes, furnishings, magazines, and other artifacts. Located below street level, that is where he sits most days, and […]
Quiet destroyer
As the Microphones, the Anacortes, Washington-based musician Phil Elverum released The Glow, Pt. 2 in 2001, through the tastemaking K Records. The record channeled analogue warmth and a personal style that turned the songwriter and studio whiz into one of indie rock’s most respected.
Checking in with John Milliken Thompson
What were you doing when we called? I was actually correcting a blog that I’ve been working on, a guest post about my novel for a book reviewer. They just want to know about my book. Aside from that stuff—how I wrote the book and why—the topic is usually sort of open. Which of your […]
In with the new
“Ringer” Tuesday 9pm, CW Buffy is back! Well, not really, but Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to TV with this new thriller about identical twin sisters in trouble. Recently sober Bridget goes on the run after witnessing a professional hit job. She turns to her estranged sister Siobhan, a wealthy Manhattanite who has kept her past […]