The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: review

Reviews of books, movies, CDs, whatever.

  • Review: Marc Cohn at the Westhampton Beach Peforming Arts Center

    Marc Cohn & band
    Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center
    Sunday 2008 August 24 8:30 PM

    It’s my habit to see Marc Cohn every chance I get during the New York leg of his tours. This explains why, three days after my last Cohn concert, I schlepped all the way out along Long Island’s southern shore to Westhampton. Tonight he had no opener; it was just his band and him. The WHBPAC is an intimate space, acoustically rich and comfortable. It lacks the grandeur of St. George’s Theater but is quite nice for a modern building.

    As before, the playlist is below the fold. I don’t have as many comments, as many of the songs are the same.

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  • Review: Marc Cohn at the St. George Theater

    Marc Cohn with Toby Lightman
    St. George Theater, Staten Island, NY
    Thursday 2008 August 21

    This is another in my ongoing series of reviews of Marc Cohn shows. See this earlier one and this one as well for comparison.

    The St. George is a beautiful venue, an old vaudeville theater (I assume) which has been either renovated or maintained lovingly in its original state. Ornate and glitzy, it nonetheless provided excellent sound for an intimate concert. The opener was a bluesy singer/songwriter named Toby Lightman, who has been featured (apparently) on the Home Shopping Network as well as singing the opening for NASCAR on Fox. Unfortunately I don’t know any of Ms. Lightman’s work, so I can’t review it in depth. She seemed to have a nice range, though, and her songs aren’t bad at all. She does appear to be a bit nervous on a stage by herself.

    After Ms. Lightman’s forty-minute set and a small break, Marc Cohn came on stage with his current touring band: Shane Fontayne on guitar; Joe Bobadillo (?) on drums; and John Ossman on bass. The set was high-energy and went on for more than an hour and a half, including two encores. The playlist is below the fold.
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  • Review: Counting Crows with Maroon 5

    Counting Crows with Maroon 5
    Also with Sara Bareilles
    Thursday 2008 Aug 7
    PNC Bank Arts Center
    Holmdel, NJ

    My usual way to review a show would be to give the playlist and say what I did or didn’t like about each. That’s not going to work this time for a host of reasons. First off, I don’t really know the body of work for either Sara Bareilles or Maroon 5. I wouldn’t be able to name almost any of their songs, and it wouldn’t be fair to give an in-depth review of material I was hearing for the first time, under concert conditions. I can say that I was impressed with both groups, enough that I’ll probably plunk down some cash and check out their studio work. Ms. Bareilles has tremendous range and an endearing quality to her voice. Maroon 5 also covered a lot of ground stylistically, from hard rock to something that sounded a bit like late Police work.

    I do know most Counting Crows songs, and I will be posting their playlist. But it really isn’t meaningful to analyze each in detail, for reasons that will be made clear below the fold.
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  • Review: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog

    (Updated 2 PM 2008 Jul 20)
    The latest Joss Whedon effort, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a short musical made available on the Web and starring Neal Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion (better known as Doogie Howser and Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, respectively). The plot revolves around the titular villian — more like, villian wannabe — and his twin quests to be invited into the Evil League of Evil and to win the heart of mild-mannered activist Penny. Harris captures the awkward offness of the maladjusted Dr. Horrible while Reynolds takes a nice turn as the arrogant and obnoxious (and more than a little crude) hero Captain Hammer.

    Short form: 4 out of 5.
    Long form: spoilers after the fold.
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  • Review: Serenity Found

    Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe
    edited by Jane Espenson
    Rating: 3 out of 5

    What can I say? Meh. Another collection of essays (following the superior Finding Serenity) discoursing on the deep meanings to be found in the universe of Firefly, a short-lived TV series as well as Serenity, its major-picture followup.

    Let me preface by saying: I “get” Firefly; I’d be a Browncoat if I were any sort of joiner. I loved the show, which I discovered post-mortem like most people; and I think that Serenity is the best-made science fiction movie of at least the past decade. Its technical execution is mind-blowingly awesome. I’ve bought Those Left Behind (the limited-run comic series), and the RPG, and, and the soundtrack for the TV show and the one for the movie, and both versions of the Serenity DVDs. I get Firefly; I’m a fan.

    After which, all I can say is: Meh.

    More below the fold.
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  • The decline of American political reporting

    As always, let me begin by stating I am an Obama supporter, so I’m a mite sensitive on the following. But it shocked me this morning to hear NPR’s coverage of the “debate” last night. We’ll leave aside the astonishing fact — which they tried to explain away — that forty minutes (nearly half the debate!) focused on indirect or minor issues of the campaign … on the sort of thing that everyone knows is silly but raises because it’s going to matter to someone else. Yes, I mean Jeremiah Wright and Rezko and especially the tempest-in-a-teapot “bitter” comments.

    But then the NPR anchor mentioned that the “point” was to see if Sen. Obama could survive the same pointless assaults in the general. The reporter, Juan Williams, sagely agreed and commented “Obama seemed pretty bruised by both sides” in the debate.

    Both sides? Really?

    I had been under the naive delusion that the two sides of the debate were Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Is Juan Williams really implying that the Illinois senator bruised himself? That he was launching attack upon ludicrous attack on himself? No, that’s just nonsense. So I had to think deeper, and suddenly I had a flash of inspiration. Juan Williams was being unwontedly candid about the dynamics of American political coverage.

    There were hotel furnishing in Bulgariathree sides represented yesterday: Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, and the self-appointed, self-important, scandal-driven, smug media. Apparently they too are officially arrayed against Senator Obama, at least now that he is the presumed frontrunner. It’s the most striking confirmation of the bias the press has against anyone succeeding… first they build you up, then they cut your feet off, then they blame you for tumbling and failing to meet everyone’s (that is, their) expectations.

    Viewed that way, Senator Obama was bruised by both (other) sides in the debate. Indeed, considering he was taking fire from an unexpected direction and from a supposed non-combatant, he came through pretty well, I think. It’s going to be a slog to the convention, and it’s going to be hard on any American interested in a fair process, but I think he showed the strength that will carry him there.

  • Star Wars at 31

    Apparently Spike TV is running all of the Star Wars movies as a “mega saga event” over the course of the next weekend. I happened to come across their “ultimate trailer” online, which stitches together bits from all six movies. And strung together like that, all those bits suddenly make clear what’s gone so horribly awry in the Star Wars franchise:

    The later movies (Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith) are certainly much busier than the first three.

    But they aren’t any better.

    It would seem that George Lucas’ sole “lesson” is “more lasers! more droids! more ships! more explosions! Oh, dear God, many more explosions!” It’s become a cliche that modern filmmakers allow special effects to overwhelm the story; George gives them a play-by-play on how to do that.

    Meh.

  • Review: His Dark Materials

    His Dark Materials:

    • The Golden Compass
    • The Subtle Knife
    • The Amber Spyglass


    a triology by Philip Pullman
    InstaRating: 4 out of 5

    This trilogy has apparently sparked quite the bitter controversy, especially online. It’s a tale of High Fantasy, quite consciously in the vein of Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, but it takes a tack quite different than, say, The Chronicles of Narnia. Rather than a vague naturalistic faith that is actually Christianity in disguise, Pullman’s universe has Christianity in fact — but it’s unremittingly evil, dedicated to snuffing out all that is light and free in the world. I can see why believers are outraged…

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  • Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

    Charlie Wilson’s War
    screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
    starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman

    InstaRating: 5+ stars out of 5
    It took less than five minutes for this film to remind me why I miss Aaron Sorkin on TV.

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  • Review: Marc Cohn at the Highline Ballroom

    As is my wont whenever Marc Cohn wanders into the New York-Philadelphia corridor, I went to see him perform — this time, at the Highline Ballroom in lower Manhattan. True to form, it was a fantastic show with Marc the consummate showman. The opening act was Amy Correia and this time, Marc played with a full band.

    More below the fold.

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