By Phil Dellio On the second-last day of school this year, I showed my grade six class American Graffiti. Pop music and film already exert some influence on most of my 29 kids, though clearly not as much as television, the Internet, or Digimons. My hope was that this would be the first time they’d experience pop music used expressively in a film (as opposed to … Continue reading From the Archives: Strange Magic: The Pop-Music Soundtrack From American Graffiti to Sofia Coppola

Natural Born Plumbers: John Cazale and the Character Actors of the 1970s By Phil Dellio American cinema in the 1970s will always be remembered first and foremost as a legendary decade for directors (the familiar litany of Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, and company) and secondly as a time when a new generation of lead actors superseded the Waynes, Newmans, and McQueens of the ’60s (Nicholson, De … Continue reading From the Archives: John Cazale and the Character Actors of the 1970s (2001)

Two For the Road: Reinventing the Double-Bill By Phil Dellio  Inside every rock critic, there’s supposedly a frustrated musician. Those who can, do, and those who can’t, write about it. This commonly held view is buoyed by the number of critics who made the transition from writing to performing: Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Ira Kaplan, Neil Tennant, etc. Greil Marcus once addressed the issue by … Continue reading From the Archives: Double-Bills