Films

  • Dirty Harry Does Diversity.2: Indicting Invictus

    (Like the original Magnum Force, this post is a sequel to the first Dirty Harry.) Of all of Clint Eastwood’s “Sympathy for the Other” movies, Invictus was the most popular in the Land of the Liberals.  J. Edgar (gays), Million Dollar Baby (women), and Gran Torino (SE Asians) all did well but received more criticism than…

  • Dirty Harry Does Diversity.1: Magnum Tucked In Tweed

    One of the weirder phenomena of early 21st century cinema has been the emergence of Clint Eastwood as would-be spokesman for various groups marginalized by the white male power structure his famed ’70’s character Dirty Harry once defended with a famously long phallic symbol.  Million Dollar Baby (2004) concerned itself with issues of gender and…

  • Corporate Welfare.10: Wrestelmania

    I just read an incredible article by Dan O’Sullivan in Jacobin magazine about the abuse of wrestlers by their promoters, and in particular, by Vince McMahon and the WWE, (World Wrestling Entertainment.)  I recently wrote about the film The Wrestler as a depiction of how wrestling performs the abuse of workers outside the ring by amplifying…

  • Corporate Welfare.9: Markets and Chains

    Today I’m posting a link to an article from the blog CivilEats.com by Adrien Schless-Meier called “Why Grocery Store Workers Are Making Less While Big Chains Make More.”  It’s a topic on my mind because one of the songs on the record I’m working on is about the economics of supermarkets.  The song is called “King Piggly…

  • World on a Wire

    As I keep track of the unfolding struggle over the FCC’s proposed creation of a corporate “fast lane” on the internet that would regulate non-corporate media to second class status online, I’m reminded of the film World on a Wire by Rainer Fassbinder, which I watched on DVD a couple of months ago.  Despite being…

  • New video released today for “Masoch” on OWS anniversary

    Today marks the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and to celebrate the occasion, we’re proud to announce that director Michael Galinsky has taken the time to make a video for the song “Masoch” from the forthcoming album “Spare Parts.” The video incorporates footage of OWS taken from an excellent short film he made called…

  • Top 40 Over 40.13: Weird Al’s “Party In the CIA”

    I can think of few more unlikely candidates for creative growth after 40 than Weird Al Yankovic.  Back when I was in grade school, he came on the pop culture radar with “Eat It,” his parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”  His string of similar Dr. Demento style hits willfully sucked all of the sexual…

  • Top 40 Over 40.10: Bill Dixon

    In this series of posts on artists who inspired me to start recording again by doing first-rate work on or after their 4oth birthday, Bill Dixon is an anomaly.  Most of the folks I’ve written about were known for an early body of work done in their 20’s, and managed a “return to form” after…

  • Top 40 Over 40.8: Scott Walker’s hat trick

    Sometimes pop artists you associate with youth surprise you with a new vocal persona that suits them as they get older.  (Think Robert Plant on Raising Sand.) But in the case of Scott Walker, he never really sounded like a young man to begin with.  Sure, he was a teen idol back in the late…

  • Reading Yvonne Rainer today …