Good spin-offs are exceptionally rare. Great spin-offs are basically non-existent. Yet, AMC’s tremendously heartbreaking Better Call Saul is not merely the exception to the rule: it’s proof that lightning can strike twice in peak television, and that the brilliant minds…
Album Review: Big Boi — “BOOMIVERSE”
Typically, when you’re reviewing music, you need to tread lightly with albums with direct puns in their titles. Unless you’re “Weird Al” Yankovic, it’s dangerous territory. It sets your album with a loose, goofy tone. It sucks the pretension out…
Movie Review: Cars 3
In Pixar’s esteemed lineage, the Cars movies are curious oddities. Old-fashioned in its morals and perplexing in its automobiles-living-and-acting-as-humans mythology, the brainchild of Pixar’s head honcho/gearhead/Hawaiian shirt enthusiast John Lasseter is, comparatively, the animation company stuck in second gear. They’re…
Album Review: Roger Waters – “Is This The Life We Really Want?”
Nobody seems happy these days. I know I’m not. Neither does Roger Waters, the singer and bassist who once led one of the most influential bands of all-time (it’s Pink Floyd, in case you needed a hint). Now a solo…
Album Review: Todd Rundgren – “White Knight”
The 2016 U.S. election inspired many. Quite a few were shaken, rightfully so. Others were hurt. More than a handful were angry. And many artists took those feelings of angst, despair, bleakness, hopelessness, the thirst for empowerment and vengeful justice…
10 Years of ‘Once’
John Carney’s benevolent, lightly-touched Once is practically definitive indie. Made under a meager €112,000, which rounds out close to $124,000 in U.S. dollars, under the Irish Film Board, it’s as shoestring as films come. And it’s made all the better…
Album Review: Willie Nelson – “God’s Problem Child”
At 84, Willie Nelson is a legend with a mortality complex. He isn’t withered, by any means, but he’s contemplative and heavy-hearted with God’s Problem Child, his 61st(!) studio album and, almost certainly, his most pensive collection to date. Mellower…
