Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Mano Y Solo
I spent the evening at the media preview for Solo: A Star Wars Story. I’ve seen a few dissenting reviews pointing out that this Han isn’t cynical enough or that this movie lacks a plot with drive. I don’t completely disagree with these criticisms, but I also think this movie was always going to upset [...]
Return to Red Line
In 1998 two legendary directors released World War II films that couldn’t be more different: Stephen Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is considered a masterpiece of the genre and the film’s arrival was treated like a national event when it first hit theater screens. Audiences hailed the realism of the film’s battle sequences while Spielberg was [...]
First Impressions: Infinity Wars
I just got back from seeing the media preview for AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR in Nashville, TN. It’s a massive cosmic comic book opera. It’s as psychedelic as DOCTOR STRANGE if not more so. It’s also an amazing culmination of stories since the MCU launched with the first IRON MAN film. I suggest you see all [...]
An April Season In Hell
Celebrating National Poetry Month, here’s a rad radio production of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell which was published 145 years ago this year. Even though it might not be immediately evident Arthur Rimbaud had a lot in common with William Blake: both saw the benefits of altered states on literary vision and both were [...]
TRUST: EPISODE THREE
The third installment of Trust set FX ablaze last night with an opening sequence that included cocaine snorting, twin sister models making out at a photo shoot, an out of control antiwar protest, public fountain sex, and the return of Harris Dickinson’s John Paul Getty III. Last week’s episode focused on the beginning of Brendan [...]
Red Redo
Back in the late 1990s one of the most impressive sites in Nashville’s art scene was the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel. The kiddie ride was designed by Nashville artist Red Grooms and it featured whimsical and even grotesque chimeras like Captain Tom Ryman fused with his own steamboat or H.G. Hill monstrously combined with one [...]
TRUST: Episode Two
The second episode of TRUST debuted on Easter Sunday night. Honestly, was caught up watching JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR LIVE before I switched over to TRUST and started it over to catch it from the beginning. SUPERSTAR was about as good as any bad musical might be — Alice Cooper’s Pontius Pilate stole the show. But [...]
Trust: Episode One
The premiere episode of Trust begins with a scene of John Paul Getty III running through a sunflower field in a panic. The scene cuts to a Hollywood party at the Getty mansion in 1973 where a band is playing Pink Floyd’s “Money” before George Getty kills himself with a barbecue fork to the chest [...]
The Future is Southern
The 20th century was the age of the specialist: Henry Ford pioneered the division of labor, and fields across the sciences to the arts subdivided into increasingly limited industries. But the new century is much different from the last: old hierarchies are toppling, the line between art and craft is being erased, and technology is [...]
Flint Town Lowdown
In 2016’s T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold directors Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper profile Flint, Michigan-based Olympic-gold medal boxer Claressa Shields. While they were shooting the fighter in her hometown, the filmmakers found themselves in the midst of a man-made disaster and its aftermath when Flint disconnected from Detroit’s water system in 2014 and started [...]
