Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Flatliners at 25
Twenty five years ago a group of second wave brat packers starred as young doctors in what amounts to a Frankenstein story in reverse, where the living attempt to explore the realm of the dead without losing their lease on life. Of course, I’m talking about Flatliners. The film is sort of a cult classic [...]
Tom Again
I love the Blank on Blank project’s animated takes on archived interviews. In this episode Tom Waits waxes on Stonehenge, Hawaii and everything in between. Here’s the lowdown… Waits had just released the concert film, Big Time, when he was interviewed by Chris Roberts at a London recording studio; you can hear music playing softly [...]
Scream Stream
Now that October is upon us, my movie cravings have taken a dark turn: it’s all ghosts, gore, demons, detectives, silly spooks and serious scares. If you’re like me, the Halloween season inspires fright film bingeing like no other, and Netflix is a great resource for scary streaming this time of year. In next week’s [...]
Making a Monolith
In the late 1960′s, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke teamed-up to create what is generally acknowledged as the greatest science fiction film ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, Taschen has released their massive tome about the making of the film, and its pages capture all the spirit, effects, sets, costumes, concepts and the [...]
Lampoon Hunter
This weekend I watched a preview screener for Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead, the new National Lampoon documentary. I really loved it and it’s required viewing for any long time fans of Saturday Night Live. American humor of the last half of the 20th century would be drastically different without the impact that the magazine had [...]
Beat Booty
It’s Monday morning after a pretty fun weekend. I stayed in on Saturday night to watch the Deontay Wilder fight and to get a good night’s sleep before my show at Mad Donna’s last night. I had a ball at the East Nashville Songwriter’s club, sharing the stage with Rich Mahan and Lauren Farrah. Jean [...]
Celebrating Trane
More than a year ago, on this blog, I added a post about John Coltrane. It was a July entry, remembering the giant’s death in that month in 1967. Today I’m remembering Trane’s birth on September 23, 1926. Here’s the same post from last summer. Whether in life or in death, Coltrane looms large for [...]
Welcome To Leith
Welcome to Leith will screen in Nashville at Lipscomb University’s Shamblin Theatre, tonight at 6:30 P.M. The documentary tells the story of a group white supremacists who attempt to take over a small, North Dakota town to create a racist utopia. The flick wowed at Sundance before screening at the Nashville Film Festival. I previewed [...]
Cohen: 81
Leonard Cohen turned 81 on September 21. A year ago, on his 80th birthday, he released a great record called Popular Problems. Here it is. Happy Birthday, poet… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts
