"Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir" Reviewed in The Washington Post

Rolling Stone’s first issue, from December 1967.

Turns out you can’t say “starfucker” in the Paper of Record, even if you spell it “starf***er.” So I subbed in “starstruck to the point of myopia.”

There’s lots else I could say about Rolling Stone co-founder and longtime editor Jann S. Wenner’s new memoir Like a Rolling Stone, but the Washington Post kept me to 1,000 word or so. It was a genuine honor to write about this very superficial and self-serving book by a man who created a magazine I loved.

"The Outsider" at Keegan Theatre, reviewed

Michael Innocenti and Zach Brewster-Geisz are principled pols in The Outsider. (Cameron Whitman)

As satire, it’s yesterday’s news, but as farce, it works. My Washington City Paper review of Paul Slade Smith’s The Outsider at Keegan Theatre is here.

"HEAT 2" Reviewed in The Washington Post

Michael Mann’s 1995 crime epic HEAT gets a new prose sequel.

HEAT 2 is—like The Godfather, Part II—both prequel & sequel. It is also—unlike The Godfather, Part II—a novel and not a movie. One that preserves little of what made HEAT, the movie, a classic. I’m a Mann’s Man. It pains me to air my disappointment in the Paper of Record.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Bullet Train"

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brad Pitt can’t just get along. (Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures)

Bullet Train, director David Leitch’s strangers-on-a-fast-train-fight thriller, is way less diverting and way more confusing than it oughta be. Letich and Chad Stahelski made John Wick together, and Stahelski stayed on for the subsequent Wicks while his old creative partner went off to make Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde, the hilariously double-ampersand-packin’ Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and now Bullet Train. Stahelski is fairing better, I reckon. Anyway, it was fun to talk Bullet Train with Glen Weldon, Aisha Harris, and Mallory Yu.

A Degree Absolute! episode forty-one: "Brass Target" with Keith Phipps

Our guest Keith Phipps is not just a sterling critic and a dad — an essential component when we cover a movie as openly paternal as 1978’s post-WWII espionage thriller Brass Target . He is also the author of new book examining the career of a singularly idiosyncratic actor. A Degree Absolute! endorses Keith’s book Age of Cage absolutely.

And Brass Target? Well, minute-for-minute, it has the most undiluted Patty McG purity rating of any film we’ve covered save perhaps for Braveheart. It’s much harder to find but worth the hunt for those such as we. Invest in physical media, people.

Brass Target

Screenplay by Alvin Boretz, adapted from Frederick Nolan’s novel The Algonquin Project

Directed by John Hough

Released December 22, 1978

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Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Gray Man"

Ryan Gosling did a lot of hahaha training for the not-so-colorful thrillerThe Gray Man. (Paul Abell/Netflix)

Look, I cohost a podcast about The Prisoner. When a new international espionage-themed thriller appears with a lead character named Six, I have to pay attention. The Netflick The Gray Man is one of two new releases this month containing what I believe to be a deliberate Prisoner reference. The other one is Marcel, the Shell with Shoes On.

I loved Captain America: Civil War and The Nice Guys and Blade Runner 2049 and Knives Out. I appreciated No Time to Die. I wanted to love, or at least appreciate, The Gray Man. I tried to.

A Degree Absolute! episode forty: The Prisoner 2009 (second half) — Darling, Schizoid, & Checkmate

It's More Talk About A-Frames and Holes as we slog dutifully through the back half of The Prisoner's 2009 Jim Caviezel-and-Ian McKellen-starring update. It turns out Chris did review Serenity, the Steven Knight film he referes to 54 minutes into this episode. Read that review if you wish!

Darling, Schizoid and Checkmate

Written by Bill Gallagher

Directed by Nick Hurran

Initial airdate: November 15 & 16, 2009

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Write or send a voicemail to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

Hail to "The Hot Wing King"

Derrick Sanders III, Michael Kevin Darnall, Bjorn DuPaty, Brian Marable, and Blake Morris. (Jati Lindsay)

Wherein I beat my farm-to-table breast and yell at artisanal clouds about foodie folderol having summited the arts-and-culture food chain, and then eventually find my way into talking about how terrific Studio Theatre’s production of Katori Hall’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hot Wing King is. For The Washington City Paper.