James Taylor seduced me when I was 16. Okay, not “seduced” exactly. It was more like an epiphany–a revelation tantamount to the one in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. I was sitting on the lawn at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater when Taylor opened the show with “Shower the People.” It was 1982, and my music collection was limited to a compilation of INXS, Duran Duran and The B-52’s. My … [Read more...] about Talking Story With James Taylor Before His April 12 MACC Show
James
Oz The Great And Powerful New Movie Review
In this prequel to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz books and the timeless 1939 musical, James Franco plays Oz as a ramshackle, womanizing, traveling magician. A tornado whisks him away to the land of Oz, where, due to a prophecy, he is declared king. But there’s a catch: he will become ruler of the land and in possession of piles of gold only after he kills the … [Read more...] about Oz The Great And Powerful New Movie Review
Killing Them Softly New Movie Review
The key to any great gangster flick is to let the audience in, a quality that The Godfather and Goodfellas both have in common. Those films gave us a cluster of criminals who, despite their efficiently vile methods on the job, were family men and women who were flawed but recognizably, endearingly human. We root against them and admire them at the same time, cringing at their … [Read more...] about Killing Them Softly New Movie Review