Peggy Lee and Judy Garland Duet
With a slew of new Peggy Lee releases due out later this month, I’ve been listening to the upcoming Lee releases and drawn back to one of my other personal favorites, Judy Garland. Miss Garland often said how much she admired Peggy as a singer/songwriter and Peggy expressed her admiration for Judy in kind. In […]
Music Review: Peggy Lee – The Lost ’40s & ’50s Capitol Masters
As a long time music collector in my thirties, I’ve always had an appreciation for what I like to call “pure vocalists”–singers who seem to be able to belt out any song and make it their own. This talented group tends to cross musical genres: standards, jazz, pop–their tremendous vocal range gives them a vast […]
DVD Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – Special Edition
I’m very little! You cheat very big! –Short Round After the colossal success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Speilberg and George Lucas teamed up again in 1984, to create yet another Indiana Jones adventure. Maligned by fans and critics alike, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a much darker film than […]
DVD Review: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark – Special Edition
Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes? –Indiana Jones On the beaches of Hawaii in the summer of 1977, George Lucas and “director for hire” Steven Spielberg decided to make an adventure movie that hearkened back to the old, cheaply made adventure serials of the 1930’s. George Lucas had a story idea for an adventurous […]
Movie Review: Surfwise
As a fan of documentary film, I have long admired the work of writer/director Doug Pray. His 2001 film, Scratch is still the best documentary on DJing I’ve ever seen, and Infamy, his feature-length documentary about graffiti culture was utterly fascinating. So, when I read a little blurb about Surfwise in Vanity Fair (the magazine’s […]
Music Review: Carole King – Tapestry – Legacy Edition
As a long time music collector, it is always impossible for me to come up with one of those “Twenty-Five Best Albums of All Time,” type lists that magazines, blogs and other media outlets are so fond of creating. While I could never put my favorite albums of all time in any sort of numeric […]
DVD Review: Juno
When Juno was released in December of 2007, I paid very little attention. Knee deep in the throes of yet another Christmas season, a movie about a pregnant teenager wasn’t registering very high on my must-see list. Though I was thoroughly amused by director Jason Reitman’s 2005 film, Thank You For Smoking, I just didn’t […]
DVD Review: The Waltons – The Complete Seventh Season
Growing up, The Waltons was always a television favorite around my house. I’m not really sure why; After all we were kids living in the disco crazed, polyester draped seventies. Yet, every week, we would turn off the music to see what the gang on Walton’s Mountain was up to. As simplistic as the show […]
DVD Review: Bette Davis Collection – Volume Three
In over one hundred years of film making, Hollywood has seen a lot of stars come and go. A lot of them burst on to the scene, make a few films and fade away as quickly as they appear. That’s how celebrity works a lot of the time; we worship someone for a few years […]
DVD Review: Laverne & Shirley – The Fourth Season
The fourth season of a series can sometimes be the danger zone. Even great shows have a tendency to, as the phrase goes “jump the shark” as they begin to approach that one hundred episode milestone. Actors get restless, jokes get stale and the same scenarios get repackaged as fresh, new episodes. However, some shows […]