Celebrating Community
Written, directed, and music by Jean-Christophe Klotz Opening in New York January 27 and expanding to select cities in January/February Unrated 58 minutes I think a lot about history, historical memory, and historical literacy. (After all, it’s kind of my job.) It is critical that we ensure the recognition of humanity’s errors and crimes, uplift those who subverted them,, […]
2-Tone in 2023. In December, the voice of the British ska revival was silenced. The wave began with the Specials in 1979, brilliantly conceived not as a band so much as a movement by Jerry Dammers, whose ouster not long after led to the splintering and eventual demise of the greatest of the 2-Tone bands. Dammers was the mastermind and […]
Near the start of this current stretch of my life, when I somehow—by circumstance, accident, and desperation—became a freelance writer, I wrote an article for a classical music publication (that still exists but is no longer a place for writing) about how there’s no such thing as difficult music. Except for typing out the words coherently, it was easy to […]
What compels a master of his craft — at the height of his powers — to walk away, to say “finito”? That question haunts Bruce Weber’s documentary The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di Paolo, and it’s one the filmmaker spends 105 minutes not answering. It’s easy to be taken in by the film because it’s […]
Review of No Filter: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, by Paulina Porizkova Review by Michael Quinn Books by authors whose first language isn’t English are always interesting to read. You often “hear” something unusual in the rhythm of the sentences. It has nothing to do with the writer’s command of the language. My guess is it’s a kind […]
Todd Field’s Tár begins, essentially, with the end credits: dozens of names in white scrolling over a black background. It could be taken as an indication that it’s time to go home. Once the credits are done, things don’t pick up. The first third of the movie is belligerent in its boringness. It sets up the titular, successful orchestra conductor […]
Review by Michael Quinn Like the Ghost of Christmas Past in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, I’m taking you back in time. Come. Hold my hand. No need to be afraid. We’re flying out your apartment window, and heading toward Manhattan. Look at all those people down there. So much hustle and bustle. Why, it’s Christmastime! There’s the tree in […]
With Dry Cleaning’s second album released in October—building on the unexpected success of their infectious 2021 debut New Long Leg—and the subsequent (and harder to fathom) popularity of Wet Leg’s chatty single “Chaise Lounge,” it seems what I want to call the talkcore movement’s got, you know, legs. Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. and Yard Act out of Leeds are more closely […]
Just in time for your shopping lists, and just before you might, I hope, have some time off and can spend some of your evenings these dark days listening to fine music, here are my choices for the best jazz albums of 2022. I make this list because I think lists are useful, and year-end ones help focus the mind […]
Review of TV Snapshots: An Archive of Everyday Life, by Lynn Spigel Review by Michael Quinn For a long stretch of years, I lived without a TV. What do you do at night?, people would ask me, more concerned than curious, as if there was only one thing you could do and one thing you needed to do it. As […]