FRESH AIR Comic Louie Anderson has had a hugely successful stand-up career for the past 30 years, but he admits he wasn’t a very good actor early on. “I didn’t know who I was or how to do it,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. Now, at 62, Anderson is delivering a standout performance on the FX comedy series Baskets. In it, he plays Christine Baskets, the mother of an embittered rodeo clown (played by Zach Galifianakis). Christine is both exasperated by her son and deeply supportive of him. “I feel like this part gave me an opportunity to […]
CINEMA: The Man Who Died Wolf
Logan (2017, directed by James Mangold, 137 minutes, USA) BY RICHARD SUPLEE It has been 17 years since the first X-Men movie introduced the world to Hugh Jackman’s razor-clawed Wolverine. Saying that Jackman’s solo Wolverine films “are a mixed bag” is probably too generous of a compliment. The first spin-off, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is a film only talked about in conversations about “the worst comic book movie ever.” The film is so toxic that it made Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool nearly impossible to make. It was just a bunch of fight scenes, random forgettable mutants, and CGI powers jumbled […]
THE FASCISM SURVIVOR’S HANDBOOK: Twenty Lessons To Learn From The 20th Century
Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century by Timothy Snyder Housum Professor of History Yale University “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today . 1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to […]
HOT DOCUMENT: What’s Good For The Goose…
…is good for the gander. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the floor of the Senate circa 2000 stressing the importance of prosecuting perjury.
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Don’t
FRESH AIR: Despite ordering an “influence campaign” to help Donald Trump in last year’s election, the Kremlin is scrambling to respond to a win it didn’t expect, New Yorker editor David Remnick and staff writer Evan Osnos tell Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. Remnick, who lived and worked in Moscow from 1988 to 1992, and Osnos say Trump’s victory has created unintended consequences for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “This was like a bank heist that, instead of blowing the doors off the safe, they blew the safe up entirely,” Osnos says. Remnick adds that Russia’s state-controlled media, which was full […]
Q&A: Strand Of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter
Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ BY MAX ABRAMS Always opting for honest emotion over perfect execution no matter how raw or abrasive the results, Strand of Oaks unspoken motto is ‘don’t worry about getting it right, get it real.’ From Philly by way of Goshen, Indiana, Strand Of Oaks started out as the one-man band of one Timothy Showalter, slowly evolving from ponderous sad sack acoustic folk ballads to hard partying power chords, badass riffs and gruff vocals. SOA’s fourth album, 2014’s Heal, was their breakout release, winning over critics and listeners with non-stop touring and strong radio play. In […]
TRAILER #2: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2
In theater’s May 5th. PREVIOUSLY: Trailer #1
BEACH SLANG: Roadrunner
Great Modern Lovers cover from this five-song mixtape of Beach Slang covering songs by The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Adverts, Tommy Keene and The Candyskins. They play Union Transfer March 25th with Potty Mouth, Dyke Drama and Positive No.
MUST READ: How Big Data & Bots Are Reverse Engineering The Hive Mind Of American Voters
THE GUARDIAN: Billionaire Robert Mercer very rarely speaks in public and never to journalists, so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl; a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich man’s plaything – the disruption of the mainstream media. […] But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to […]
STR8 OUTTA ARDMORE: Local Boy Makes Good
PHILLY.COM: Ardmore native and Friends Central grad Benj Pasek took home the Academy Award for Best Song for “City of Stars” from La La Land. He, along with co-writer Justin Hurwitz (who also won for Best Score) and Justin Paul, were actually nominated twice in the category; the other nod went to “Audition.” […] “I want to thank my mom who is my date tonight. She let me quit the JCC soccer league to be in a musical. This is dedicated to all the kids who sing in the rain and all the moms who let them,” Pasek said […]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Down
It’s been 12 years since CYHSY first blazed across the night sky of the blogosphere, leaving behind of phosphorous tail of spent Pitchfork hype and Brooklyn hipster cache and exactly one great debut writ incandescent by those twinkling gyroscopic guitars, martial drum thwackery, hooky bass thrum and Alec Ounsworth’s slurry adenoidal yelp. An ill-conceived follow-up and a protracted hiatus, not to mention various side projects and an Alex Ounsworth, along with the inevitable passage of time and the eventual departure of everyone but Ounsworth and drummer Sean Greenhalgh, has let much of the air out of the CYHSY balloon. But […]
CINEMA: Catmandu
KEDI (2017, directed by Ceda Toron, 80 minutes, Turkey) BY JOANN LOVIGLIO CAT FILM CRITIC Kedi is the cat movie we need now: A master class in empathy, a reaffirmation of the human capacity for kindness, and CATS. Lots of cats — some we come to know by name, others we briefly meet in passing, all of them scruffily, scrappily adorable. Director/producer Ceyda Torun spent her childhood in Istanbul. Like many of the people we meet in Kedi, she says the city’s street cats made her life less lonely and shaped her into the person she is. It’s clear […]
FREAK FOLK REVISITED: Q&A With Philadelphia’s Shadow Band, Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic
BY JAMES M. DAVIS How do you explain the unexplainable? Who knows what darkness lies, hidden deep in the heart of man? The Shadow knows. Or, more accurately the Shadow Band know, but they’re not giving away too much. Although recently signed to Mexican Summer, they have been recording in their South Philadelphia Sanctum Sanctorum for years years. before that individual members could have been witnessed bouncing around Detroit and New Jersey respectively, waiting for winged destiny to descend. The music is primo folk-psyche, conjuring hope in ruined landscapes, evil underground rivers and the ghosts that haunt the New […]