Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of
slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on
everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs
might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dram
Everybody loves year-end top 10 lists except me—at least when it comes time to reflect on the year in movies just ended. It’s a frustrating task. The majority of films reviewed in the New York Times will never reach Milwaukee cinemas and the number of non-Hollywood movies shown on local screens declined in 2008 from past years. Also, two Oscar contenders won’t open here until January: Revolutionary Road and Grand Torino. I haven’t had time in the holiday rush to drive to Waukesha for Frost/Nixon (why isn’t it being shown elsewhere in the area?). And when will The Wrestler enter the ring?
Fact is I don’t know what are my top 10 films for 2008 and may never see some of them until years from now—when I discover the more obscure titles on disc. Meanwhile, the calendar has run out of days, obligating me to issue a preliminary list, subject to revision over the next few weeks as the remaining big name releases from 2008 trickle into town. Check the Shepherd Express Jan. 22 edition for an updated roster of the year’s best.
For now, here goes:
1. Doubt
2. WALL-E
3. Appaloosa
4. Burn After Reading
5. Vicky Christina Barcelona
6. Slumdog Millionaire
7. The Dark Knight
8. The Pool
9. The Strangers
10. What Just Happened
Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,
an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions
for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello
intended one s
You wouldn’t expect to find T-bone and sirloin dinners at a place with stool seating and a location next to a shop hawking cell phones and cigarettes. But one of the city’s most evocatively named eateries, ZaZa Steak & Lemonade (4919 W. Capito
The enduring fantasy of older men is that a gorgeous
young woman will fall in love with them, find them sexually arousing
and long to imbibe their wisdom while sitting at their feet. That
fantasy is the spring driving Woody Allen's often-hilarious f
Away We Go, a droll comedy-cum-drama by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty),
perceptively explores the lives of more-or-less ordinary 30-somethings
lost in a world without much meaning. Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Bu
