***1/2 I’ve never been a fan of John Wayne and I know that Clint Eastwood has been reduced to little more than a raving lunatic in his old age, but I must admit that I’ve become quite a fan of Westerns. A lot of that can be attributed to some of my favorite video games like…
**** Delving deeper into the heart than any of their works prior or sense, Pixar created a magnum opus of over a decade in the making with Toy Story 3, a masterpiece so grand that not only can it likely never be topped, it’d be damn near impossible for it to even be attempted. In…
*** I can understand why people hated this movie. The plot’s premise is nonsensical at best, Nicolas Cage’s performance is hilarious almost to the point of being tongue-in-cheek, and the rather anti-climatic ending understandably didn’t leave the best taste in many viewers’ mouths. I’ll further admit that the reasons I thoroughly enjoy National Treasure probably have…
*** When I watched the original Toy Story, I was struck by how fresh it felt. The movie is short, yet refined and covers a lot of ground in its running time. While its sequel (which was released to great fanfare four years later) is still a good movie, it doesn’t retain the same sense…
***1/2 The movie that started the famous relationship between Disney and Pixar is often looked back upon so fondly that I couldn’t imagine it’s as great as everyone says it is. If you ever find a children’s movie on a list of the greatest movies of all time (which is often) it’s going to be…
If you’ve been around this site enough, you know that I didn’t really get into music until 2009, when I was about fifteen years old. That was when I got my first iPod and it’s when I discovered Rolling Stone magazine, which was a big influencer for me as I became an avid music listener.…
10 Though I grew up with a Playstation in the mid-’90s, I was one of the few underage Playstation owners that failed to be granted a copy of Final Fantasy VII. I was well-acquainted with the classic Sony mascots like Crash and Spyro, and I was even aware of more mature games for the system like…
My favorite songs this week include a blast from my own musical past, two Hip-Hop classics that sound just as fresh today as they did in the ’80s, two joyful Folk Rock romps, and Stevie Wonder. Because everybody loves Stevie Wonder. “I and Love and You” – The Avett Brothers I can’t remember exactly how…
I’ve diversified the music I’ve listened to since running through Aerosmith’s discography, but my playlist this week is dominated by Alvvays, who delivered what has become one of my favorite albums of all time in 2014. Three of the LP’s nine songs are featured in Burnes’ Turns this week, and they are accompanied by a…
****1/2 Arctic Monkeys had been the kings of British Indie Rock for a decade upon AM‘s 2013 release, but this was the album that really exposed them to a significantly wider swath of the American audience selling 500,000 copies in the states alone. It’s no secret that the band controversially “Americanized” their sound for this…
The Soundtrack Online 