Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Desperate Waters
Another post celebrating the movies of 1977, here’s John Waters’ Desperate Living — an experimental fairy tale that according to Rotten Tomatoes features Waters’ penchant for “nauseating set-pieces, such as a transsexual lesbian having her new penis cut off with scissors and fed to a dog, women being fed live cockroaches, and Peggy being assaulted [...]
Flynt V Falwell
Looking back three decades to 1987, this is the perfect time to remember that Supreme Court case that saw televangelist conman Jerry Falwell clashing with that sleaze slinging champion of the First Amendment, Larry Flynt. This case wasn’t really about obscenity, it was about libel laws, and the protections afforded to parody. In the age [...]
Suspiria 40
If you look up “movies released in 1977″ on Google, you’ll probably be just as amazed as I was at the amazing run of films that flickered to life on the screen 40 years ago. I’ve already been posting up about a few of them, and here’s another one: Dario Argento’s best-known film, Suspiria. The [...]
Brown Eyed Breakthrough
This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Van Morrison’s breakthrough solo hit, “Brown Eyed Girl.” Nowadays the song’s ubiquity and relative lightness have diminished its power in comparison to the rest of Morrison’s imposing catalog. But “Brown Eyed Girl” offers Morrison’s first great synthesis of imagery from Morrison’s Northern Ireland homeland with the propulsive [...]
Angola 3
PM Press sent me an email today announcing a Black History Month sale on DVD’s of the provocative prison documentary, The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation. Here’s the word from the PM site where you can buy the film for 50% off using the coupon code FEBRUARY… The Angola 3: Black [...]
Panthers 50
The Black Panther Party officially celebrated their 50th anniversary last October. With that remembrance in mind this Black History Month wouldn’t be complete without a look back at one of the most important civil rights organizations to ever take the streets. Here’s the word about an amazing PBS Independent Lens documentary about the power and [...]
Bowie’s Secret
David Bowie was always ahead of the curve. Even in the 1990′s, when it seemed like the entire music industry got blindsided by digital technology and the internet, Bowie was way out in front of the pack: in 1996 he was the first artist to distribute a new song — “Telling Lies” — as an [...]
Le Break Up
I love animation, and recently I’ve featured more than one Blank-On-Blank project here, bringing archived audio to life with moving drawings. This is a new series I just discovered that promises to document some of the biggest feuds in the world of philosophy. Here’s a bit about the first installment which covers the great friendship, [...]
50 Years of Love
This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967. During that auspicious season about 100,000 young Americans traveled west to the Fog City to twist in the gyre of a countercultural hurricane while similar youth movements blossomed in Canada an across Europe. Suspicious of government oppression, aligned [...]
Guns. Blood. Art.
Sitting down to get a week of blog posts started I turned to {R}emnants for some ideas and found this doozy that Ezra had left there. It’s an article written by a guy whose grandfather was a gun runner who ran with William S. Burroughs. It’s a great tale about history, genetics, and the people [...]
