Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Grand Grace
After a long week slogging through a bunch of late night art installations I slept in on Monday before getting a bath and a shave and a big cup of coffee and wading back into a more normal week. I didn’t post a bunch in the last few days due to my topsy-turvy schedule, but [...]
Cartoon Crime
I spent some time at the Nashville airport last week where I discovered a paperback copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov sitting on a sectional near one of the gates in a bustling concourse. There was a boarding pass inside the book so I took to them both to the nearest gate in case [...]
Darko, Darker
I just read an article about Donnie Darko being re-released in 4K later this year. It might be fun to see that flick — and hear that soundtrack — in a proper theater as many of us only discovered the movie after its original theatrical flop. Here’s a look back at the film and a [...]
From the Abyss
Charles Stanfeld Jones was two men in one: On one hand Jones was a London accountant born in 1886. On the other, he was a brilliant ceremonial magician whom Aleister Crowley recognized as his “magical child” when Jones shared his brilliant insights into Crowley’s own The Book of the Law. Jones went on to found [...]
Hail Hicks
Bill Hicks is probably the greatest comedian of Generation X. The only competition for that title might be Chris Rock, and both of them are automatic candidates for any top ten list of all-time-best stand-ups. Yesterday we marked the 23rd anniversary of Hicks’ death from pancreatic cancer on February 26, 1994. Of course, Hicks was [...]
GoNY 15
When Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York debuted in 2002, I didn’t go to see it right away, and when I finally did I remember feeling like it seemed sort of silly, and that Cameron Diaz was terrible. Diaz is still a weak link for me, but a recent article on Medium got me interested [...]
Ra-Ra-Rafelson
Bob Rafelson directed some of the best films during the most important period in movies: flicks like Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens guarantee the director’s inclusion among the best of the New Hollywood auteurs, and his experimental send-up of The Monkees, Head, makes him a mad genius for the ages. Rafelson [...]
Black Spy Story
I love a tense spy story, and there’s always another take on the genre in the next book on the shelf or the next film on the screen. Of course, many of these books and films are based on real life heroes whose spycraft outed enemy spies, uncovered covert plans or even “eliminated” human targets. [...]
Shepard’s Heaven
I’ve been on a bit of a Sam Shepard jag lately, probably because I’ve been thinking a lot about what distinguishes the experience of theater from other performance arts or even movies and television. Here’s a great little interview I found featuring an unusually open and generous Shepard talking about director Terrence Malick, and the [...]
