Monthly Archives: September 2018

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Song of the Day #3,715: ‘You & I’ – Twinsmith

If you drew a venn diagram of the first two movies I wrote about this week, with Crazy Rich Asians in the “romantic comedies with an Asian-American lead actress” circle and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in the “NetFlix Original films with long titles” circle, the overlap is where you’d find today’s featured film: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

NetFlix has stepped up its game in the rom-com genre, with Set It Up earning strong reviews earlier this year, The Kissing Booth emerging as an unexpected favorite, and now this adaptation of a 2014 YA novel by Jenny Han, easily the best of the bunch.

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Song of the Day #3,714: ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ – Alexandra Harwood

In case anybody thinks my lavish praise for Crazy Rich Asians means my affection for Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again has waned, rest assured that is not the case. My heart has room enough for two crowd-pleasing entertainments.

While counting the days to Mamma Mia‘s DVD release, I have sought out other work by the incomparable Lily James. That includes The Darkest Hour, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and a new NetFlix release with a mouthful of a title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

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Song of the Day #3,713: ‘Yellow’ – Katharine Ho

I haven’t had a chance to chime in on the astronomically stupid decision by the Motion Picture Academy to introduce a “Best Popular Film” Oscar to the Academy Awards lineup. How about you just broaden your definition of what constitutes excellence and allow that a movie people actually enjoy can also be award-worthy?

And don’t get me started on what I suspect was the genesis of this idea — lack of trust in the membership to give Black Panther a legit Best Picture nomination. As the astute film journalist Mark Harris put it on Twitter, “It truly is something that in the year Black Panther, a movie made just about entirely by and with black people, grosses $700 million, the Academy’s reaction is, ‘We need to invent something separate…but equal.'”

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Song of the Day #3,712: ‘Thirsty Boots’ – Bob Dylan

Here’s a cut from Bob Dylan’s 2013 Bootleg Series release Another Self Portrait, which compiled alternate and discarded takes from the sessions for his most loathed album, Self Portrait. It’s a fine collection, and one that makes you wonder how Dylan ended up with such a dog of an album given the source material.

However, even more entertaining than the music on Another Self Portrait is the comment section of my initial post about this album back in 2013.

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Song of the Day #3,711: ‘Just a Man’ – Los Lobos

The L.A.-based rock band Los Lobos has released nearly two dozen albums over the past 40+ years, but none has been more celebrated than 1992’s Kiko. It also happens to be the only album of theirs I own, so I guess I chose right.

Kiko is full of off-kilter rock and blues songs, tracks that sound like long-last classics. Today’s random SOTD is one of the most straight-forward cuts on the album but it’s a great listen as well.

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