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Albums

Jugodefatuo – Bijù Bazar

Albums March 14, 2025 0

A Principino whose body dissolves and recomposes perpetually, leads...

Patrick Shiroishi & Dylan Fujioka – Left up on the Tree

Albums February 28, 2025 0

For several years now Patrick Shiroishi and Dylan Fujioka...

Nina Garcia – Bye Bye Bird

Albums February 27, 2025 0

Working for almost a decade as Mariachi after getting...

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Albums February 22, 2025 1

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Albums February 21, 2025 0

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

American Cinema May 25, 2017 2

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Themes and References in Joanna Newsom’s Sapokanikan

Art August 12, 2015 21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc In the music video for 'Sapokanikan', Joanna Newsom saunters...

Behind the Song: Leonore Overture, ‘Farewell Amanda’, ‘One Night’

Behind the Song October 19, 2014 2

Ludwig van Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 1, Op....

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Behind the Song June 25, 2015 0

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’

Behind the Song July 20, 2016 2

Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an elegy for the pioneering jazz saxophonist Lester Young, who died in March 1959, two months prior to the recording sessions for what would become Mingus Ah Um. A darkly elegant ballad with a lone dissonant note full of pathos...

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Tracks of the Week January 22, 2025 0

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Tracks of the Week January 15, 2025 0

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Tracks of the Week January 7, 2025 0

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Tracks of the Week August 21, 2024 0

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

Tracks of the Week August 14, 2024 0

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

Hard Eight (1996)

American Cinema July 21, 2018 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A black and blue semi-trailer truck passes by a coffee shop whose exterior lights are askew, and a man in a dark overcoat waits for the truck to pass, pauses for a moment more, then crosses the road towards coffee. Outside the diner a young man sits on the ground, bedraggled and bestubbled, knees up, arms crossed and looking despondent...

Pickpocket (1959)

The Movie Review January 26, 2025 0

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Michel the titular character of Robert Bresson's snappily downcast Pickpocket is a renegade, a nihilist, one of cinema's Nietzschean Übermensch and most of all a real churl. He is the surliest of apostates with the hint of a bad boy persona that might suggest Marlon Brando or James Dean in blocking or on the amateur stage, for as is Bresson's wont the lead Martin LaSalle was a rank novice...

The Assassin (2015)

Movies February 18, 2016 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - In 9th century China, the weakened Tang Dynasty struggles to retain control over its militarised province of Weibo. Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) has been trained by the nun Jiaxin (Fang-Yi Sheu) to assassinate corrupt government officials, but though she possesses all of the art, she cannot bring herself to kill a man as he sits cradling his sleeping son. So Jiaxin, who has raised Yinniang from the age of ten, sets her charge a more personal task...

How to Steal a Million (1966)

Movies September 9, 2015 0

★★½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of an art forger, who has gathered so many supposed masterpieces in his private collection that he has won considerable renown in the world of art. Approached by the Kléber-Lafayette Museum, he proudly loans to the illustrious Paris institution (which for the sake of the film occupies the building of the real-life Musée Carnavalet) his most prized possession, his Cellini 'Venus'...

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Movies November 9, 2019 0

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - On the morning of Saint Valentine's Day, 1900, the schoolgirls boarding at Appleyard College prepare for a day picnicking at Hanging Rock. In raptures they recite poetry from the Valentine's cards they have presumably sent one another; they put on their muslin dresses, and in a cross between a balletic embrace and an evolutionary procession, they awkwardly help each other with their corsets; and then they are off, but at the rock three of them vanish...

World Cinema

The Blind Side (2009)

American Cinema February 11, 2018 0

★ (1 out of 4 stars) - The Blind Side purports to tell the real-life story of Michael Oher, depicted here as a poor oversized black kid from the ghetto. He's in and out of foster homes thanks to an absentee father and a drug addict mother, until the father of one of his friends - on whose couch he has been sleeping - brings him to the attention of the football coach of a local Christian school...

Risky Business (1983)

Movies October 25, 2015 0

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Joel (Tom Cruise), a teenager coming towards the end of his time in high school, lives with his parents in a leafy Chicago suburb. He is good-looking and his parents are wealthy, but they are also demanding, and he subsumes a fluent strain of existential angst with worry over schoolwork and his future prospects. Beyond a litany of tests, he is involved in a Future Enterprises programme...

Parasite (2019)

Movies February 4, 2020 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A family of four live in a cramped and roach-infested banjiha, a semi-basement apartment in Seoul. They crib free Wi-Fi from unsuspecting neighbours and a nearby coffee shop, and their only source of income, procured by the mother Chung-sook via WhatsApp, comes from the folding of pizza boxes for a local delivery service, a task at which they are only moderately successful...

Adam’s Rib (1949)

American Cinema February 17, 2021 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Adam and Amanda Bonner, a couple of happily married lawyers who live in an upper-floor apartment in New York, begin to clash when they land on opposite sides of a trial for attempted murder. Adam views the matter in black and white, believing that Doris Attinger broke the law and deserves to be punished, while Amanda delights in teasing out some of the nuances of the case, perceiving an opportunity to rail against gender imbalances...

Don Jon (2013)

American Cinema August 30, 2019 0

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In Japan grown adult men - thirty, forty, fifty years old or more - lie prostrate in their childhood bedrooms, which they never leave, as their ageing parents push parcels of food beneath the door. On their beds they clutch plush life-sized cartoon figures, somehow prepubescent but boasting ginormous boobs, and between the heaving and moaning they not only cry but orgasm into their pillowcases...

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

Earthy Anecdotes April 21, 2021 1

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

American Cinema October 21, 2020 0

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

Earthy Anecdotes November 23, 2016 0

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

Earthy Anecdotes May 29, 2015 0

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

Art February 14, 2013 0

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

‘Silentium!’ by Fyodor Tyutchev

Literature January 4, 2013 3

Silentium! Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal the way you dream,...

Fyodor Sologub – ‘At Times There Comes a Strange Smell Wafting’

Literature October 6, 2014 0

Fyodor Sologub was born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov on 1...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Art March 7, 2013 2

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Literature September 5, 2015 0

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

James Joyce

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

James Joyce March 14, 2013 1

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov and Homer in Maps

James Joyce February 15, 2016 2

When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

James Joyce January 12, 2015 0

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

American Cinema May 25, 2017 2

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Face of the French New Wave, Dies At the Age of 88

Cultureteca September 7, 2021 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbAMIHLciGk Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor whose crooked nose and raffish...

Dean Stockwell, Star of Blue Velvet and Quantum Leap, Dies at 85 Years Old

Cultureteca November 11, 2021 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhPosL3UAN8 The actor Dean Stockwell died of natural causes on...

Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Nashville, and Network Actor, Dies at the Age of 83

Cultureteca June 16, 2021 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwyrAS2lU8 The actor Ned Beatty died of natural causes on...

Norm Macdonald Used To Think His Life Was Incomplete. Now It’s Finished.

Cultureteca September 16, 2021 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7K-kaelQEs Norm Macdonald, the comedian whose mischievous glint and deadpan...

Subscribe to Culturedarm

A monthly subscription supports Culturedarm while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

placeholder text

€

MonthlyAnnually

Albums

Jugodefatuo – Bijù Bazar

Albums March 14, 2025 0

A Principino whose body dissolves and recomposes perpetually, leads...

Patrick Shiroishi & Dylan Fujioka – Left up on the Tree

Albums February 28, 2025 0

For several years now Patrick Shiroishi and Dylan Fujioka...

Nina Garcia – Bye Bye Bird

Albums February 27, 2025 0

Working for almost a decade as Mariachi after getting...

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Albums February 22, 2025 1

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Albums February 21, 2025 0

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

Behind the Song February 9, 2016 0

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’

Behind the Song May 4, 2015 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaKy1vM9hs 'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Behind the Song June 25, 2015 0

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

American Cinema May 25, 2017 2

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Themes and References in Joanna Newsom’s Sapokanikan

Art August 12, 2015 21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc In the music video for 'Sapokanikan', Joanna Newsom saunters...

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Tracks of the Week January 22, 2025 0

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Tracks of the Week January 15, 2025 0

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Tracks of the Week January 7, 2025 0

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Tracks of the Week August 21, 2024 0

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

Tracks of the Week August 14, 2024 0

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

Risky Business (1983)

Movies October 25, 2015 0

Amazing Grace (2018)

American Cinema October 15, 2019 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - At the height of her powers, Aretha Franklin went to church: to the New Temple Missionary Baptist in Los Angeles for two nights in January 1972, where she intended to return to her roots with a live recording of gospel music. The ensuing double album, Amazing Grace, would go double platinum, and it remains the best-selling record of her long and storied career. The acclaimed film director Sydney Pollack was tasked with shooting the performance for a feature...

The Switch (2010)

American Cinema September 17, 2019 0

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...

Cactus Flower (1969)

American Cinema March 13, 2018 0

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - More than mere confection, which by nature lies there enticingly and dwindles the more that we eat, and just like the titular cactus which sits on dental assistant Stephanie Dickinson's desk, cannily marking her transformation, Cactus Flower positively blossoms. The third film in three years from director Gene Saks - hot on the heels of two resounding Neil Simon success stories...

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

American Cinema May 23, 2019 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - From a modern perspective, the original and best film version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three almost seems to lack a final act: when the shakeout comes and the criminals attempt to make their getaway, there is no major chase sequence, limited gunfighting, and the villains for the most part - faced with the ambling steeliness of Walter Matthau's Lieutenant Zachary Garber - prove their own undoing...

World Cinema

Kalifornia (1993)

American Cinema February 3, 2021 0

★★½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Brian and Carrie plan to drive from their home of Louisville, Kentucky to the golden state of California, stopping off at renowned murder spots along the way. Brian hopes to gain material for his book, with Carrie providing the photographic illustration. To top up their gas-guzzling Lincoln Continental, their notice for a ride share is answered by a curious couple, the childlike Adele Corners and her ragged minder Early Grayce...

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Movies November 9, 2019 0

Hard Eight (1996)

American Cinema July 21, 2018 0

High Noon (1952)

American Cinema January 19, 2018 0

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Will Kane (Gary Cooper), the marshal of a small frontier town in New Mexico Territory, gets married in a small civil ceremony to his beautiful young wife Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), a Quaker whose imminent plans include a family and a convenience store someplace else. Fully intending to play the doting husband, to that end it is also Kane's last day on the job, and he hands in his badge...

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

American Cinema October 3, 2019 0

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In February 1969 in Hollywood, fading television star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) frequents bars and gets ferried around by his old stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Booth lives in a trailer with his pit bull Brandy, in an empty lot behind the drive-in in Van Nuys, but Dalton keeps up appearances with a luxury home in Beverly Crest overlooking Beverly Hills...