Wildflowers, released in 1994, was Tom Petty’s fastest-selling album. It went triple platinum in just nine months and became the album Petty cited as his best. And considering the personal turmoil Petty went through during the making of Wildflowers, its success … Continue reading TOM PETTY, SOMEWHERE YOU FEEL FREE
Tall, skinny, blond, and lonely, Connie wants to meet someone and go somewhere. Where really doesn’t matter, and who she doesn’t know yet—maybe someone who looks like James Dean and sings like James Taylor. She’s only 15, so there’s a … Continue reading SMOOTH TALK
A woman in a scarlet dress with a large hoop skirt strolls around an empty soundstage. On the stage is her spacious apartment. The apartment has several rooms, each one decorated with bright colors and paintings of nude women. Thanks … Continue reading THE HUMAN VOICE
History has a nasty little habit of being reductive. Life unfolds with such a multitude of specificity it’s damn easy to be overwhelmed by it all. So we generalize, we categorize. Anything that doesn’t fit is extricated. Then, after enough … Continue reading WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR
Born Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, Poly Styrene picked her stage name out of the phone book because she wanted something that sounded plastic. This was Britain in the 1970s, and the cultural landscape was changing. Punk music was taking the scene … Continue reading POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ
The Inheritance opens with a static image: A diagram of a notched wheel labeled, “African/American Ritual Mode.” Under the wheel, a legend depicts the icons for preachers, sacred images, congregation, chorus, and elders. All icons are represented in the diagram, and … Continue reading THE INHERITANCE
It was just over a year ago, on March 6, 2020, when South By Southwest (SXSW) pulled the plug on its film, music, and comedy festival. It was the first time in 34 years that the Austin, Texas, show wouldn’t … Continue reading Play These Movies Loud: 2021 South By Southwest Film Festival
Five hundred years ago, the world broke. Life was beautiful back then; all the souls of Kumandra lived in harmony with each other and with the dragons. Then greed and avarice reared their ugly heads, and strife was born in … Continue reading RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON
It took only two movies for Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang to establish his trademarks: Slow-paced storytelling, scarce dialogue, alienated characters. And that was back in the mid-’90s; today, Tsai’s movies fit comfortably into the category of slow cinema, a burgeoning … Continue reading DAYS (日子)
Michael J. Cinema 
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