Hey again, Son of Griff. Sorry it took me so long to respond. My computer's monitor harakiried a couple of days ago, and I was an unintentional Luddite for a while. Luckily, I found a replacement monitor at Goodwill (for $29.99 and no tax!). Solid points all around, particularly Altman's white, kitschy, conservative…

Very enjoyable conversation going on here, Son of Griff. Many thanks for your responses. Nashville is fun to kick around because it’s one of the greatest fatally flawed films I’ve ever seen, right at the top of the pantheon of glorious but fucked-up classics such as the Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will, and…

I may be mistaken, but as far as I can tell, Ebert never wrote music reviews, whether of Dolly Parton or Nino Rota or, for that matter, the Sex Pistols (and if he did, I'd very much like to read them). However, for what it’s worth, Ebert was once the focus of the full force of Parton’s supernatural charisma. From his…

I'm with you 100%, Son of Griff, except about the music. Certainly, Nashville is no more about Country music than M*A*S*H is about mobile army surgical hospitals or McCabe & Mrs. Miller is about early 20th Century frontier life. But in all of Altman's other films (at least in the 10 or 12 that I've seen), he respects…

Not to bag on Altman, the greatest misanthrope in film history (followed hot on his heels by the Coen brothers), but Nashville is a golden doughnut: a unique and alluring treasure with a void at its core. The film's treatment of Country music is simply a contemptuous misrepresentation of reality. In 1975, not only was…

Speaking of riot grrrls and their progeny, can anyone help me out with info on a Portland band called Panties? I found an eight-song self-titled cassette demo, dated July, 1996. It's pretty damn good, but I can't find one word about it anywhere, which is doubly odd since the first side was recorded by Calvin Johnson…