Tag Archives: Jim Jarmusch
Celebrating Pop
Iggy Pop released Post Pop Depression last year, claiming that it would be his last album. Next month, Pop celebrates his 70th birthday. Unlike with his buddy Bowie, we have a chance to celebrate Pop’s music while the man himself is still here to enjoy it. Yesterday I found this fun rundown of Pop’s 18 [...]
Ghost Dog Day
In conjunction with England’s Black Star celebration of black actors in film and televison, BFI published an article in praise of Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai on Monday, and I couldn’t agree with its assessment of the genre-bending hip-hop-hit-man flick. This piece focus’s on Forrest Whitaker’s performance as the title character. [...]
Back to Hell
I recently found Straight to Hell with Spanish subtitles on YouTube. Like Blue Velvet and River’s Edge, Straight to Hell was released in 1986. Three decades haven’t dulled this whacked-out western which married MTV to the wild west with a cast of rockers including the Pogues, Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Elvis [...]
Mystery Train at 25
It’s hard to believe, but Jim Jarmusch’s film Mystery Train debuted at Cannes 25 years ago in the spring of 1989. The first of the director’s anthology films, Mystery is also the first film Jarmusch shot in color. The film features three separate but interconnected stories about foreigners who find themselves crossing paths at the [...]
Spellbound: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
Before Alice Cooper, before KISS, before Rob Zombie there was Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The original shock rocker, Screamin’ Jay’s performances combined outrageous theatrics and costumes with sophisticated songwriting that combined exotic borrowings with elemental rhythm and blues — take the Eastern European waltz tempo of Jay’s classic “I Put a Spell on You” as the [...]
