Surfers are dangerous. They have their own language. They carry automatic weapons. They look like the grunge-rock children of hippie communists. They do a mean Reagan impression. These are but a few of the lessons learned in Point Break, this week’s video-store necessity. (We are discussing it in honor of fellow bank robbery flick Takers.) Directed by Hurt Locker auteur Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break is a great action movie…and an even better romance. Read More...
This past season, Conor McPherson received torrents of praise — from this writer included — for his most traditional work to date, The Seafarer (one of this year’s Tony nominees for Best Play). Since the young Irish scribe had made his name as a monologist (The Weir, This Lime Tree Bower, St. Nicholas), it was a thrill to see him go beyond his comfort zone with a full-length, two-act play, a tense spiritual drama laced with a surprising amount of light-hearted comic banter. Read More...
Payola — bribing disc jockeys to play records — first became a public issue in 1959, when a Congressional subcommittee announced an investigation of the practice. Before it was over, this probe would all but end the career of Alan Freed, a man widely credited with inventing if not a new genre of music then the popular term for it: rock & roll. That Freed’s business practices were shady few would dispute, and yet he has entered pop history not as a crook but as an admirable maverick nailed by frightened old pols for bringing the glad tidings of black music to white kids. Read More...
