Hooray for Schlock: the Coen Brothers’ “Hail Caesar!”
(Caution: mild spoiler alert)
The films of Joel and Ethan Coen are very attentive to mood – plot, characterization, setting, all seem to be geared toward establishing a strong mood that commands and demands our attention more than anything else. Fargo and No Country for Old Men …
I Can’t Give Everything Away: on David Bowie’s Final Song
I had heard snippets of “Lazarus”, the third song on David Bowie’s new release “Blackstar”, on the radio last week. The announcer described it as part of Bowie’s newest “jazz album”, although the strongest connection I could detect with jazz was the omnipresence of the saxophone as a lead instrument. Whether the album was “jazz” or not did not concern me all that much. I thought the song was excellent …
