VULTURE: Today, we are all a man named Jojo from Tucson, Arizona. Sharing the first footage from his upcoming Beatles documentary Get Back, director Peter Jackson gave us something far better than a trailer of the boys fighting about Yoko: It’s a five-minute montage that embodies “the spirit of the film,” and it overflows with facial hair and just about every pastel button-up imaginable for the era. Jackson pored through over 55 hours of previously unseen studio footage of Paul, John, George, and Joe Walsh’s best friend as the band recorded their final album, Let It Be, in 1970, giving […]
CINEMA: Citizen Mank
MANK (Directed by David Fincher, 131 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Based on the essay by film critic Pauline Kael, David Fincher’s Mank digs into the controversy behind just who wrote one of the greatest films ever made: Citizen Kane. While Orson Welles famously directed, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, Welles split the screenplay credit with one Herman J. Mankiewicz, AKA “Mank,” a crumbling genius with one foot in the grave and one on the bottle. While both men walked away with a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1942, it’s long been debated just how much […]
CINEMA: I Spit On Your Gravy
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (Directed by Emerald Lilly Fennell, 113 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Director Emerald Lilly Fennell (Killing Eve) merges the arthouse with the grindhouse with this shotgun-wedding of the rape/revenge sub-genre to the #MeToo movement. Promising Young Woman begins by introducing us to Cassandra Thomas (Carey Mulligan), a beautiful young curmudgeonly barista by day, and by night an avenging angel who lies in wait in bars and clubs pretending to be over-served and incapicated. This trap is meant to ensnare the “nice guys” who attempt to take advantage of her only to have the tables […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re Kinda Sorta On Hiatus
EDITOR’S NOTE: Regular visitors to this web site might have noticed a distinct scarcity of updates lo these last few months. That’s because I’ve been hard at work on a six-hour docu-series I’ve sold to television that’s slated to air in the spring. Not at liberty to get into the details at the moment, but there will be a big reveal in a few months. In the mean time we will be publishing at a greatly reduced pace, but look for the occasional movie review by film critic Dan Tabor or yet another Dad-Rock rant by folk music editor […]
WIRE FROM THE BUNKER: Meet Billie Joe Shaver
BY JONATHAN HOULON FOLK MUSIC EDITOR Now that THAT is resolved — and remember, folks, that over here in the C&W ghetto of Phawker, we have absolutely no intention of reaching across the aisle to racist fascists — I would be remiss not to acknowledge the recent passing of Billy Joe Shaver, one of finest songwriters to ever emerge from the Lone Star state. And that’s saying something as that list includes late great Texans Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark as well as the still very much alive Butch Hancock and Willie Nelson, the latter of whom declared that Billy Joe was, indeed, the […]
CINEMA: Hellraiser
I AM GRETA (directed by Nathan Grossman, 97 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC I Am Greta isn’t looking to change any minds about the teenage climate activist, or further educate anyone on the issue of climate change. Instead this Hulu Original documentary looks to do one thing, and it does that extremely well – humanize its subject through intimate portraiture. Granted unrestricted access to his subject, director Nathan Grossman takes his camera behind the scenes of the fire-breathing take-no-shit public personae and her #FridaysForFuture movement to reveal the humble origins of Greta’s crusade, her family life and […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SEZ: The Original Sin Of Originalism
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Our latest SCOTUS associate justice–along with 99% of Republican justices appointed or elected to state and federal benches since January, 2016–refers to her judicial philosophy as “originalism” or “textualism.” Actually, Dinosaurism would be a far more honest and accurate description. So, precisely what is this “originalism” and “textualism” these supposedly “unbiased, unprejudiced, nonpartisan and objective” justices and judges claim as the foundation upon which they construct their decisions? Well, in their Alice in Wonderland of fact vs. fiction, it’s a postulation by “conservative” judicial swamis that they possess the otherworldly gift of being able to divine what […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Deadbeat-In-Chief
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY What does the American taxpayer have to look forward to regarding the untold mega million$ in back taxe$, interest charge$, penaltie$, and a $400,000,000+ personally guaranteed debt owed to corrupt banks and dictatorial foreign governments by the current president of the United States? Answer: he/she/me/you will be paying ALL of it off if the notorious deadbeat, tax cheat, known thief and traitorous Putin ass-kisser, Donald J. Trump, is re-elected. Why? Because Donnie is, for all intents and purposes, DEAD BROKE and has literally NO MEANS left to obtain the funds necessary to pay off these debts other than to surreptitiously steal them from the United States […]
OPEN LETTER: A Pennsyltucky Man’s Final Appeal To The Better Angels Of His Trump-Voting Family
BY DAnon Just after the 2016 presidential election I wrote an open letter to family members expressing my disappointment in their selections. With that letter I asked each of you to express your perspective in a response to my letter. I waited for a while and received no response from any of you. So, I reached out. Here’s what I heard—from my sister, “Well, the other side,” from my father—“Yes, he’s going to make American great again,” and from my mother—“Well, I didn’t know about any of this stuff. I don’t pay attention to the news.” Now four years […]
CINEMA: Why The Caged Bird Sings
Billie Holiday had one of the greatest voices of all time. She was a woman of breath-taking talent and global popularity while also stirring controversy. She started a notable rebellion singing “Strange Fruit” which exposed the realities of Black life in America and earned her powerful enemies. Raw, emotional and brutally honest, Billie is filled with incredible, unheard testimonies from musical greats like Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie.” Then in the late 1960’s journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded […]
WIRE FROM THE BUNKER: Meet Susan Werner
BY JONATHAN HOULON FOLK MUSIC EDITOR Susan Werner is a helluva songwriter. Just ask octogenarian British heartthrob Tom Jones or Canadian folk giant Garner Rogers, both of whom have recorded Werner’s stunning composition “Did Trouble Me.” [Note: there will be a forthcoming Wire on Garnet and his late brother Stan cuz let’s face it, you’ve never heard tell of ‘em and you shoulda done, mmmmmmmmmmkkkkkkay?] But this Wire does not concern Werner’s storied songwriting past — rather, we welcome her newest long-player, Flyover Country and it’s incredible lead-off track, “Long Live.” Hometown songs often represent a sand-trap for songwriters: they […]
BRIAN WILSON GOES TO THE MALL: An Appreciation Of Edward Lodewijk Van Halen RIP
BY BILL HANGLEY JR. Eddie Van Halen dies, and the word that comes to mind is “joy.” That’s m’lady’s word for his music, and she’s right. She’s a huge fan, and many are the nights we’ve spent with a bottle of wine and the pounding rubbery cartoon violence of 1984. What Eddie embodied, she always said, was “pure, male joy.” Not the meathead glower of your modern vomit-vocal metal. Not the prosthetic-penis fakery of your day-glo hair bands. But instead, from Eddie Van Halen, godfather to them all, true joy; the jolly roar of a chainsaw crossed with an […]
CINEMA: Chelsea Girl
ON THE ROCKS (directed by Sophia Coppola, 96 minutes, USA, 2020) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Sofia Coppola’s followup to 2017’s The Beguiled has the director once again returning to the themes of isolation and alienation that echo throughout her filmography, but this time exploring they hit a bit closer to home. Like 2010’s Somewhere, On The Rocks, which is both written and directed by Coppola feels very autobiographical as it explores the disorienting and dispiriting sense of psychic dislocation that can often creep into both marriage and motherhood. The film focuses on Laura (Rashida Jones), a successful author suffering […]