Television & Film

Grade B+ The story of someone pursuing their dreams and achieving stardom with sheer talent and determination is one of the most romanticized tales told. If that weren’t true, they wouldn’t have remade A Star Is Born four times, and the whole reality/competition TV genre as we know it wouldn’t exist. The thing is, the […]

The new documentary takes on the realites of superstardom.

While the adaptation is as yet incomplete, what we’ve got so far has potential.

Last week, Inglourious Basterds was released in 4K for the first time, offering up a fuller remastered take on Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 WWII grindhouse epic. Though the film has lived on, thanks mostly to anti-Nazi memes bolstered in big part by the election of 2016 – it didn’t quite become the cultural sticking point like […]

Grade B+ Whenever you sit down for a movie starring Nicolas Cage, particularly one made during his steadily intensifying baroque period, there’s always a chance you’ll see a testicle explode. An outside chance, mind you, but still a much greater chance than one would expect from a movie where he doesn’t get top billing. Okay, […]

Writer/director James Gunn taps into the limitless potential of ‘The Suicide Squad’

On July 9th, The Rolling Stones released another epic concert video from their bottomless pit vault. Titled The Rolling Stones A Bigger Bang: Live On Copacabana Beach, the twenty-song extravaganza takes us back to February 8, 2006 when the Stones played Rio to some 1.5 million fans in front of the Copacabana Palace Hotel; it’s […]

[*Warning: Mild spoilers below for VREID’s film Wild North West.] On April 29th, the pioneering Norwegian Metal band VREID premiered a very special project internationally, streaming their Wild North West album film via Facebook and Youtube. The viewing marked the release of their album on April 30th via Season of Mist. The film project is […]

When Jacksonville’s favorite sons took the stage at the Knebworth Festival in August of 1976, they were clearly in their prime, touring behind the Gimme Back My Bullets album. They were phenomenal live, so much so that they were likely giving festival headliners the Rolling Stones some cause to be concerned that day. Just over […]

Originally available on Netflix in 2019, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is now available on both DVD and Blu-Ray through The Criterion Collection. Most prominent among the usual assortment of bonus features in this ‘Director’s Cut’—digital restoration, trailer, 5.1 Surround Sound– is additional performance footage from the mythic 1975 tour, […]

20 film and TV moments that helped define 2020, the year we rarely left our couches

It can be argued that perhaps no other band has done a better job of making the best out of the COVID-based restrictions on live music that have seemingly become the new normal in 2020 than the Connecticut-based Indie-Groove outfit Goose. While other groups were, at best, spending their summers primarily booking sporadic single-night live-streaming […]

The 1987 romcom classic gets the Criterion treatment in an excellent new release.

Well, it’s about time The Rolling Stones got around to this tour in their archives. It was big in every way you could imagine: big stage, big setlist, big dance moves by Jagger, big juicy guitar licks by Richards, big harmonies and big celebrity guest stars. It was their first tour after a long hiatus […]

“Being in the right place at the right time,” is how Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood sums up his good fortunes in the Mike Figgis directed documentary, Somebody Up There Likes Me. Releasing on September 18th as a Virtual Cinema Event in the US, with DVD and Blu-Ray to follow in October, the film chronicles […]

The horror classic is reimagined in one of 2020’s best films so far.

[rating=8.00] Given his output over the last decade, with Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, and Aladdin, it’s easy to forget that Guy Ritchie came up in the film game in the post-Tarantino resurgence of crafty crime cinema. That period of the mid-90s after Pulp Fiction took over the world created the perfect storm of opportunity and […]

Watching Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is a refresher course in perspective. The Ron Howard co-production is both entertaining and provocative for most of its duration, but, in working with the former guitarist and songwriter for the iconic group, director Daniel Roher intentionally or unintentionally reaffirms the fact some objects of fascination […]

The opening sequence for Do U Want It? is a ready-made thesis: percussion and ambient swells set to a panoramic city skyline on the opposing shore of the Mississippi River. Braids of stratocumulus purl through the twilight as an American flag agitates in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Then, cut to a pile […]

The Rolling Stones have been releasing live DVDs for quite some time now. From different eras, they run the scope of why they are the greatest rock & roll band in the world, and have been for many years. Showcasing their glitzy seventies shenanigans, their bluesy Hyde Park tribute to recently departed bandmate Brian Jones, […]