I read an article yesterday in Deadline by Carl Kurlander, the co-writer of the 1985 Joel Schumacher film St. Elmo’s Fire, in which Kurlander reflects on his time before, during and after the film's writing and production, and the affects it maybe had, good and bad, upon the culture of young, urban, professional America. And I got super nostalgic. I was 9 when it came out. The movie was a social phenomenon to my age group. At least in my little part of the world...
Anime is anime. If you think you’re just watching a “cartoon,” or mere, over-sexualized, hacky sci-fi nonsense…well, sometimes you are, but that’s never the alpha and the omega of any series. You’re always going to find a surplus of literary goo-gaws involved—those things which make you cry, thrill you, grip you or inspire you in ways you couldn't have been otherwise...
Coming into my first listening of Van Morrison’s vengeful, untitled studio bird-flip of 1968 (referred to, since its official release in 2017, as The Contractual Obligation Session), there was only one thing of which I was knowledgeable: Morrison wrote all thirty-one of these songs solely to get out of a contract with his record label at the time, Bang Records...