Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Long Gone John
When it comes to the arts, quantity and quality both matter. One of the reasons Pablo Picasso became the embodiment of modern art in Europe is because of his ceaseless production, and ability to master and destroy whole schools of painting before creating his own. That said, a poet like Walt Whitman essentially spent his [...]
Damned Detroit
I was born in Detroit. I lived in the city for a decade and spent the first 21 years of my life in southern Michigan. I saw Detroit go from being a place where skilled workers raised families on one income, and strong unions insured good health care and retirement benefits to becoming a city [...]
Tessering Time
I went to a preview screening of the new A Wrinkle in Time film last night. I first found out about Madeleine L’Engle’s book when I was about 8 or 9 and reading stuff like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit. Honestly, Wrinkle didn’t really stick with me — it’s sort of more of [...]
Decrypting Black Code
Some events have impacted American culture with such force that the periods before and after they occur become defined as eras separated by the unprecedented – the Pearl Harbor and 9-11 attacks immediately come to mind as does the assassination of President Kennedy. But a new film about secrecy – and the lack of it [...]
40 Years Of An American Prayer And Jim Morrison’s Lost Paris Tapes
Across the days that marked the overlap from the 1960s to the 1970s Jim Morrison recorded the poetry readings that would eventually be featured on the 1978 release An American Prayer. This year we’re celebrating 40 years since the album’s 1978 debut, but the project has always been a difficult one for fans of the [...]
Midnight Express at 40
The high point of cinema so far has been the American films made between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. Roughly speaking, these dates constitute the New Hollywood period when failing studios turned to young, maverick directors influenced by the anarchistic re-making of genre cinema by European directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. [...]
Nobody Writes About Art
This blog is specifically targeted to my readers in the Steemit community. If you’re a talented content creator or your just tired of the toxic Facebook scene, please consider bringing your voice to our blockchain. Today I’m taking a break from esoteric movies, fringe drugs, rock revolutions, crypto-zoological mysteries, and UFO conspiracies to touch on [...]
Forever Idaho
I saw My Own Private Idaho in the theater when it was released back in 1991. I mention this because the seemingly-timeless ‘Idaho simultaneously feels like a movie of its time, and of my time. In the 1990’s Generation X took over the culture: Nirvana, Bill Hicks, Tarantino. Anna Nicole Smith brought back the bombshell, [...]
Kink Kill Crane
This June 29 we will mark 40 years since the murder of Hogan’s Heroes television star, Bob Crane. Crane was a successful leading man on the small screen, and the conservative head of his small town, American family. The only thing that seemed odd about the Crane clan was that dad was famous for making [...]
Halloween 40
So last week I posted about John Carpenter’s 70th birthday and his films like They Live and The Thing. Carpenter’s Halloween isn’t 70, but the film is celebrating its 40th birthday and the slash-terpiece will get re-booted by David Fincher this October. Despite sequels/prequels and remakes/reimaginings, nobody has been able to rekindle the magic of [...]
