Jurassic Park Collection The word gets thrown around a lot but that first Jurassic Park movie is nothing short of iconic. It might be the last Old Hollywood movie ever made. Or maybe it’s the movie that kicked Old Hollywood in the pants. It was so ubiquitous that it made it to my little island of Aruba and we lined up to get into the drive in theatre, as the movie was already playing, and I was trying to...
All The Answers by Michael Kupperman I didn’t know anything about Michael Kupperman. Apparently, he’s a big deal in comics. Shame on me for not knowing that. But, apparently there’s something Kupperman didn’t know about his dad either, and that’s that he was a big deal in the world of Quiz shows. A very big deal. You like my segway? I am. But no, seriously. Kupperman’s father never spoke about his childhood because he had a secret. It defined him...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime LP by Family Of The Year. It’s funny how, as similar to one another as every Family Of The Year has been to date, Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime feels like a significant departure and/or move forward for the band. That Goodbye Sunshine Hello Nighttime is the group’s first album for Reprise after enjoying a celebrated 2LP+1EP stretch at Nettwerk is irrelevant – Family Of The Year has...
Documentary Now! Season One and Two The mere existence of a show like Documentary Now! is baffling. Because, let’s break it down. It’s spoofing documentaries by recreating them and adding a new twist. In order for this to work, the show must 1) understand the subject matter (the film it is spoofing) 2) develop an intriguing enough twist to reinvent the documentary 3) have actors who are versatile enough yet bring their own sensibilities to the roles and 4)...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Deadpool 2 score picture-disc album by Tyler Bates. Before even considering the music pressed into the twelve-inch score released in support of Deadpool 2, one has to respect the flamboyant nature of this album. First, in a time period marked by the decline of interest in soundtrack and score album releases (due in no small part to the fact that the cherry picking nature of soundtracks mirrors the common operating procedure...
Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Policis Kim Phillips-Fein (Metropolitan Books) Books about financial crises shouldn’t be this exciting. Books about financial crises that happened 40 years shouldn’t be this exciting. But, somehow, Kim Phillips-Fein has achieved the impossible. One would think a book dealing with such a serious and complicated subject would read like dry homework, but Phillips-Fein has managed to tell the story in a riveting way. I don’t want to say that...
The Evolution of Beauty Richard Prum (Doubleday Books) Richard Prum seems to think he’s a Richard Dawkins type, which he’s not, and that’s probably at the heart of the problem with the Evolution of Beauty. What could have been a book that elevates our awareness of the world we live is instead just a clunky fragmented book. First of all, Prum is the arrogant showoff type. Richard Dawkins is too, but Prum seems not to notice that he keeps it...
Super Troopers 2 Whether you like it or not, you gotta admire the underdog nature of Super Troopers. It’s a comedy that’s aged surprisingly well that fortunately never fell victim to many of the popular comedies of today. It’s not dependent of cameos for its performances but focuses on writing. Instead of relying on a “remember them?” neuron firing when we see an actor on screen, it instead focuses on its script actually being funny on the page...
Oh Sees ORC (Castle Face) Show me someone who doesn’t appreciate Thee Oh Sees and I’ll show you a damned fool. Same with all the other name incarnations of the band: The Oh Sees, Oh Sees, and OCS. It’s almost like band head honcho John Dwyer doesn’t want his steps to be traced back. Or maybe he’s divvying up the band’s output under slightly different namesakes so that listeners can distinguish them. OCS definitely was a different approach to the...
The Blueberry Tour with Joe Pera, Dan Licata, Jo Firestone, and Connor O’Malley If you’re a comedy fan and you haven’t heard of the participants in the Blueberry Tour, you just aren’t paying attention. Connor O’Malley’s bizarre comedy has been gracing YouTube and the Seth Meyers show for years (even now that he’s not working there anymore), Jo Firestone, a standup in her own right is a writer on the Tonight show, even though I keep seeing her pop up...