BLACKKKLANSMAN (Directed by Spike Lee, 135 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC BlacKkKlansman is the real-life story of how the first African American police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department infiltrated the Klu Klux Klan. Starring John David Washington (son of Denzel) as Ron and Adam Driver as his partner, BlacKkKlansman proves to be one of Spike Lee’ most ferocious social commentaries to date cleverly disguised as a hilarious buddy cop movie. Lee uses the very relevant narrative to comment both on the backsliding of race relations in America and how it wasn’t exactly an accident […]
Search Results for: tim eric
CINEMA: This Is America
THE FIRST PURGE (Dir. by Gerard McMurray, 97 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The Purge series has had an interesting trajectory throughout the last five years. While the first film was an interesting high concept meditation on race in a near dystopian future where one night of the year for 12 hours, any crime including murder is legal. The consistently profitable franchise now on its fourth outing has afforded writer James DeMonaco the ability to not so subtly comment the state of America. For example, the last film Election Year featured a blatant stand in for […]
CHILDISH GAMBINO: This Is America
This is America Don’t catch you slippin up Look at how I’m livin now Police be trippin now Yeah, This Is America Guns in my area I got the strap I gotta carry’ em #ChildishGambino #DonaldGlover RELATED: Five Things To Know About “This Is America” Video RELATED: Interview With Director Hiro Murai THE NEW YORKER: The Glovers were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They believed that Satan controls life on earth, that only a hundred and forty-four thousand anointed Christians will be saved to Heaven with Jesus, and that we are living out the last days before Armageddon. Stephen Glover said, “We were […]
Win Tix To A Super-Exclusive, Once-In-A-Lifetime Special VIP Advanced Screening Of The New Wes Anderson Animated Insta-Classic Isle Of Dogs
Wes Anderson is the two-word answer to the increasingly asked question: What good is a liberal arts education? There are times in this country’s history when we’ve had to take stock and ask ourselves: Do we really want to live in a world without English majors? And this is one of them. Let us rejoice, then, bundled up in our Blonde On Blonde scarves and winter beards, in this the darkest hour in American life since the rockets red glare and the twilight’s last gleaming, and check-in to The Hotel Andersonia where we will shelter in high style for […]
NUNES MEMO: The House’s Un-American Activities
POLITICO: The FBI issued an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, pushing back on the release of a partisan congressional memo alleging the bureau used improper evidence to obtain legal permission to surveil a Trump campaign adviser. We’ve never seen anything like it. “[T]he FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the bureau said. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” The memo, written by Congressman Devin Nunes and barreling toward public circulation at the president’s […]
WORTH REPEATING: American Hustle
THE ATLANTIC: Shortly before the announcement of his job inside Trump’s campaign, Manafort touched base with former colleagues to let them know of his professional return. He exuded his characteristic confidence, but they surprised him with doubts and worries. Throughout his long career, Manafort had advised powerful men—U.S. senators and foreign supreme commanders, imposing generals and presidents-for-life. He’d learned how to soothe them, how to bend their intransigent wills with his calmly delivered, diligently researched arguments. But Manafort simply couldn’t accept the wisdom of his friends, advice that he surely would have dispensed to anyone with a history like his […]
SMUS: The Sh*tholing Of The American Presidency
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY No doubt this nation does need to be made “great,” (as if we were ever really and truly “great,” but I will grant you that our WWII participation and follow-up Marshall Plan achievements were exemplary exceptions) but for reasons you are about to be made fully aware of, I am extremely reluctant to add the word “again” to any such plea, plan or plaudit. One thing we surely DO NOT need — nor should we EVER become dependent upon — is a bigoted, racist, Russia-hugging, Nazi/fascist-embracing, thieving, bankruptcy reliant, altogether phony, traitorous, money laundering, pathologically […]
INCOMING: Tim Heidecker Goes MAGAGAGAGAGA
FROM THE DESK OF TIM HEIDECKER: “Well here it is. About one year in the making, all my Trump songs in one place. Most of these songs were written and recorded quickly, with the blood still boiling from whatever indignity or absurdity had popped up on my newsfeed that day. Certainly, ‘Trump Tower’ was written in the rotten dawn, days after Trump’s win. Let’s hope I don’t write any more of these, but I probably will. Thanks to Davin Wood for playing piano on ‘Trump Tower,’ and thanks to Jonathan Rado, who produced and played on a good number […]
BEING THERE: Polish American Family Festival
One of the most famous relics of Polish identity is the painting of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa [pictured, above]. Poles who migrated to this country and longed for some aspect of their home, some celebration of their identity, set up a chapel in the 1950s up in Doylestown dedicated to the Black Madonna. These days, the shrine is impressively large, in fact it’s one of the largest monuments to the Polish identity around. Last weekend, Doylestown hosted the Polish American Family Festival & Fair celebrating diverse aspects of the Polish identity, from music to food to beer and dancing. […]
MODEST PROPOSAL: Set Made In America Free
EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay originally appeared in Philadelphia Magazine in 2012. It’s no less true today. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Time is short, and Labor Day weekend is almost upon us, so I will cut to the chase: Made In America, the genre-bending, two-day concert curated by Jay-Z and sponsored by Budweiser to be held on Ben Franklin Parkway on Saturday and Sunday, should be made a free concert, and all ticket holders refunded the full ticket price PLUS the $15 in service charges. Why? There are many good reasons, not the least of which is it would create the kind […]
CINEMA: Bedtime For Gonzo
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hunter Thompson would have turned 80 today. NEW YORK TIMES: HUNTER S. THOMPSON, who has been lionized in two feature films, served as the model for a running character in “Doonesbury” and is the subject of enough doctoral dissertations to build a bonfire, now has a documentary devoted to him, “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” by Alex Gibney. Thompson, who always seemed to keep one drug-crazed eye on posterity behind his ever-present shades, would surely be pleased but not surprised. But how to freshly document the life of a man who was his […]
REVIEW: Timber Timbre Sincerely Future Pollution
Timber Timbre fuckin’ rule. I should get that out of the way at the outset, I’m a huge fan and have been for years, ever since they put out Creep On Creepin’ On, an album I’d been waiting to hear my entire young-adult life. I heard them on a college radio station for the first time, driving through Vermont first thing in the morning with a fever developing. “Sparrows at your window / Starlings at your door / Magpies wherever we go.” Freak Folk. Blues. Psychedelia. These are the Wikipedia tags for what Timber Timbre do, but listening to […]
NOW PLAYING: The Rough Draft Of America
The United States Constitution, the global lodestar of liberal democracy, remains a work in progress. The first draft of the Constitution took over 100 days of furious argument and deliberation among the Founding Fathers to finally complete, and it has been amended multiple times since its genesis in 1787. Two hundred and thirty years later, constitutional lawyers, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, even the POTUS continue to debate the exact parameters and intended consequences of constitutional language such as “We the People,” the “Right to Bear Arms,” and “Equal Rights for All.” A new exhibit at the National Constitution Center […]