Batman vs. Mad Men - Batman vs. Mad Men Dissecting the big fictional dramas of the moment By Steven Rosen From Cincinnati CityBeat 08/17/2008 I can mark my life as a Baby Boomer -- and maybe, too, our changing society -- by the ongoing waves... (08/19/08)

A Political Rallying Cry: Blogs for Everyone! - How's This for a Campaign Issue? Blogs for Everyone! By Steven Rosen (adapted from Cincinnati CityBeat) A friend of mine, a Democrat who believes "free trade" has been a giveaway of American jobs with little to nothing in return, scoffs... (07/28/08)

Concert/CD Reviews - A Concert and CDs Worthy of Attention By Steven Rosen Ponderosa Stomp House of Blues, New Orleans, LA April, 2008 If you could stop dancing to the sinewy, organ-pumping, garage-rock rhythms of Question Mark & the Mysterians' "I Can't Get... (07/18/08)

Return of the Movie Theater Balcony - The Balcony is Open, and It's Really Lux By Steven Rosen After all these years in decline, somebody has figured out a way to make the movie theater balcony hip again. Not just hip, but -- to use the... (07/08/08)

Shining a Light on a Forgotten Rolling Stones Concert Film - Shining a Light on a Forgotten Film New Rolling Stones concert film brings back memories of Ladies and Gentlemen By Steven Rosen (This originally ran in Cincinnati CityBeat) In Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese's new IMAX film featuring the... (07/02/08)

Cash Prizes Growing at Film Festivals - Film Fests Bring the Cash by Steven Rosen (This article ran June 19, 2008, on Variety's The Circuit Web site.) Film festival awards, like those for the current Los Angeles fest, are about the honor and the exposure, true. But... (06/30/08)

Art Movies Might Be Struggling, But Opera Movies Are Thriving - Art Movies Might Be Struggling, But Opera Movies Are Thriving BY STEVEN ROSEN (from Cincinnati CityBeat; www.citybeat.com) If you follow news about art/independent films, you know they're struggling. The "classics" divisions of the studios have been cutting back because of... (06/27/08)

Charles Manson's Specter Haunts 'Apocalypse Now" - "Manson specter stalks 'Apocalypse Redux'" ("Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier" was released on DVD this past August. This story originally appeared in The Denver Post in August, 2001, when "Apocalypse Now Redux" was released.) By Steven Rosen "Apocalypse Now." "Helter... (09/27/06)

Remembering a "Lost Movie" of the 1970s: "Payday" - "Payday" on the money as superb "lost movie" By Steven Rosen Everywhere you look these days, people are honoring the greatest movies of all time. There are books, newspaper columns, video-store racks, film series and American Film Institute-sponsored television shows... (08/31/06)

Requiem for a Day: Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" - Requiem for a Day Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" Review By Steven Rosen From Cincinnati CityBeat August 9, 2006 There's a perfectly good reason why disaster movies focus on just a handful of characters. It's a way of injecting intimate... (08/16/06)

Remembering Robert Moog - IN THE MOOG Celebrated by a new film, the inventor reflects on his synthesizer’s role in modern music ~ By STEVEN ROSEN ~ (This story ran in Los Angeles CityBeat on Nov. 11, 2004. Moog died Aug. 21, 2005. The... (08/06/06)

"Tiny Tim: The Harry Smith of Adult-Standards Singers" - “Tiny Tim: The Harry Smith of Adult-Standards Singers” (This is a posting of a paper delivered at the Experience Music Project Pop Conference in Seattle on April 28, 2006.) By Steven Rosen After my first direct experience with Tiny Tim... (07/28/06)

"Eat the Document" - "Eat the Document" By Steven Rosen The "radicals-on-the-run" theme of Dana Spiotta's second novel, "Eat the Document," puts her in heady literary company. Philip Roth's "American Pastoral" and Russell Banks' "The Darling" both have dealt with a similar topic -... (07/27/06)

Nick Cave on "The Proposition," Pop Music and Leonard Cohen - Nick Cave on "The Proposition," Pop Music and Leonard Cohen By Steven Rosen The Proposition, director John Hillcoat's solemn and violently unsentimental Australian western, has its fair share of stars in the cast. Guy Pearce plays Charlie Burns, a member... (06/12/06)

D.A. Pennebaker on the 1966 Concert Footage in Dylan's 'No Direction Home' - By Steven Rosen (this originally ran in the Denver Post in Oct. 17, 1998) It's 1966 all over again in the world of pop music - and the Denver International Film Festival, which just concluded, was in the center of... (09/27/05)

Comparing "Thumbsucker" with "Grizzly Man" - By Steven Rosen (This originally ran on IndieWire's Sundance Blog in January. Both films are now in theatrical release.) When you see as many movies in as short a time as one does at Sundance, you start to make odd... (09/19/05)

Museum Shows How Sergio Leone Conquered the Western - "How the Western Was Won Sergio Leone's spaghetti legacy celebrated at a Los Angeles Museum" By Steven Rosen It would be fitting if Los Angeles' Autry National Center called itself the Museum With No Name. For that name, or lack... (09/12/05)

What Exactly Are Broken Flowers? Jim Jarmusch Explains That and More About His New Movie - Indie icon Jim Jarmusch returns with "Broken Flowers," another ode to mysterious characters with deadpan deliveries By Steven Rosen LOS ANGELES -- "Broken Flowers," the contemplatively quiet, quintessentially indie film by writer/director Jim Jarmusch, has the kind of cast you... (08/29/05)

"Dick Cavett: Rock Icons" on DVD: Janis Joplin Meets Gloria Swanson - The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons DVD package revisits the music of the Woodstock generation Review By Steven Rosen A wonderful television moment -- and immortal one, maybe -- occurs midway through the June 25, 1970, Dick Cavett Show when... (08/19/05)

Did Hollywood Create Rock 'n' Roll? - Book Review: "Rock Around the Clock: The Record that Started the Rock Revolution" By Jim Dawson Backbeat Books $16.95; softcover Review by Steven Rosen Did Hollywood create rock 'n' roll? That sounds like a strange, ridiculous and even offensive question... (08/09/05)

School's Out Early (Forever?) for "Rock School" - What went wrong with "Rock School"? Despite a high-profile marketing/advertising campaign by the new Picturehouse, which made the film its first release, the critically praised documentary was dead on arrival in theaters after an early June release. It was thought... (06/16/05)

Werner Herzog on Man and Nature - "Werner Herzog on Man and Nature" By Steven Rosen Werner Herzog knows when he?s found the right subject for a film. But don?t ask him to explain; he just knows, that?s all. And he instantly knew he was destined to... (06/02/05)

Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda" - By Steven Rosen Like an answered prayer, "Melinda and Melinda" finds Woody Allen coming through his most fallow period creatively - the curdled, anemic genre spoofs made for DreamWorks SKG - with his storytelling talent and directorial skills with actors... (03/25/05)

I Left My Heart With "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" - THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL by Steven Rosen "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" is as lovely a tribute to America's most beautiful and inspiring city as Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." In Judy Irving's... (03/16/05)

"Deadwood" Tells New Tales - As the show's second season begins, creator David Milch shares his vision of the blood-soaked Old West town that struggled for order without law By Steven Rosen Newhall Calif. Sunday, March 06, 2005 - It's a good day to die... (03/10/05)

Henry Rollins: Punk Film Critic - Henry Rollins: Punk Film Critic On his new show, Henry Rollins proves to be a surprisingly intellectual film critic -- with an edge Punk Rock singer Henry Rollins turns film critic with his new show, Henry's Film Corner, on the... (02/18/05)

Book Review: American Folk Ballads from Burl Ives to "Dead Man's Curve" - America, shaped and reflected in song Writers explore ballads in "The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad" By Steven Rosen Recently on CBS's "60 Minutes," Ed Bradley was flummoxed by Bob Dylan's refusal to... (02/07/05)

There Is a "Classy" Side to Oscar Campaigning, But It's Controversial - It's not always a shill factor for Oscars Films illuminated via screenings, talks with stars, directors By Steven Rosen Los Angeles - Hype and more hype - that's what most people think Oscar campaigning is all about. But there is... (01/14/05)

The Portrait of a (Lady) Boxer - Hilary Swank takes on another serious, typically male role in "Million Dollar Baby" Interview By Steven Rosen Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank in "Million Dollar Baby" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. -- Hilary Swank stops eating her shrimp pasta at the... (12/31/04)

American Culture in the Stoned Age: Martin Torgoff's Book "Can't Find My Way Home" - Dawn of a drug culture Beats sought spiritual alternative to the post-war world By Steven Rosen Since the U.S. government long has been engaged in a war on drugs, with mixed results at best, it is critical to know where... (12/23/04)

Overlooked But Unforgotten: Documentarians Refuse to Let the Figures and Events of the Age of Unrest Fade from History - By Steven Rosen Shola Lynch, director of the new ?Chisholm ?72: Unbought and Unbossed? documentary, has had an ongoing discussion about the nature of remembrance with her father, a retired history professor at Columbia University. Why does history so quickly... (12/06/04)

The TAMI Show Remembered on its 40th Anniversary - Chronicle of a mythic concert Like the 1964 TAMI Show that it documents, the film has the aura of rock legend lost in time. By Steven Rosen The Rolling Stones were there, along with James Brown, the Beach Boys, the... (11/18/04)

An Oscar Playoff System? Why Not? It Sure Works For Baseball - Time For An Oscar Playoff System By Steven Rosen The just-ended baseball playoffs were so great ? so exciting, so suspenseful and so much fun ? that it?s a shame we can?t also have Oscar playoffs. Well, actually, we could.... (10/22/04)

It's a "Dirty Shame" About John Waters' Latest Movie - By Steven Rosen LOS ANGELES -- Leave it to John Waters to see the sexual possibilities of a blow to the skull. The debonair and perversely witty director of such films as "Pecker," "Hairspray," "Cry-Baby" and "Serial Mom" just happened... (10/06/04)

Terry Southern, As Well As the Beatles, Changed Everything in 1964 - It Wasn't Just the Beatles Who Changed Everything in 1964: Remembering Terry Southern's "Candy" By Steven Rosen This year, we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in America - the appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show," the... (09/14/04)

Long Day's Journey Into The Ramones - "Long Day?s Journey Into The Ramones? On the new Ramones documentary ?End of the Century? By Steven Rosen Hey! Ho! They?re gone. Somehow, it?s hard to accept that the Ramones are over ? broken up for more than six years... (09/01/04)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Shark? "Open Water" as Relationship Drama - The team behind Open Water emphasizes drama as much as scares By Steven Rosen Beverly Hills -- There was a strange quality, surreal enough to impress Salvador Dali, to the media-day activities for the suspense film "Open Water." Publicists had... (08/25/04)

Michael Mann and Randy Newman -- Loving L.A. - Night vision By Steven Rosen Los Angeles - Although it isn't featured on the somberly urgent, pulsating score, the theme song for Michael Mann's new film, "Collateral," could be "I Love L.A." But not the L.A. of sun-drenched dreamers, Beach... (08/14/04)

Before Sunset 9/11 - COUNTERPUNCH Not enough hours 'Before Sunset' to mention 9/11 By Steven Rosen Since we're living in a post-9/11 world - it's the equivalent of year zero on our new psychic calendar - we assume our serious contemporary arts will reflect... (08/03/04)