The “supergroup” label—which critics and fans first applied to such late 1960s outfits as Cream, Blind Faith, and Crosby, Stills & Nash—has arguably since been overused. But if ever an outfit deserved the supergroup tag, it’s the Traveling Wilburys, whose members’ reputations loom so large that it’s difficult to believe their collaboration actually took place. The membership included Tom Petty,...
Bentley’s Bandstand: July 2016
Joseph Arthur, The Family. Have mercy. How does someone like Joseph Arthur continually top himself? He’s one of the most free-range rockers the world has seen the past 20 years, and just when you think Arthur can’t take it any farther, wham. There he goes again. Joseph Arthur turns his laser soul on his past this time around, and while...
Bentley’s Bandstand: Best of 2016 (The First Half)
Eric Clapton, I Still Do. It’s highly likely that if Eric Clapton was only allowed to play one style of music (as if such a thing were ever possible), it would be blues. There is something about his past that makes blues the salve for all that ails him. When he tears relentlessly into songs by Leroy Carr, Skip James,...
Album Review: Bob Dylan – Fallen Angels
Bob Dylan’s Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), which contain covers of old folk and blues tunes, should have come as no surprise to anyone who’d paid attention to his career. Way back on his eponymous 1962 debut, after all, he had headed pretty much in the same direction. Last year’s Shadows in the...
Blu-ray Review: The Revenant
Viewed purely from a technical standpoint, The Revenant is a staggering jaw-dropper. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki each won an Oscar for their work here, as they did for 2014’s Birdman. Though they couldn’t be farther apart in terms of setting and tone, The Revenant and Birdman are unusual cousins. Both films are dazzling and daring in...
DVD Review: The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar
It was something of a children’s-oriented broadcast TV event: The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar on the Disney Channel. Of course, the original 1994 The Lion King remains one of the most cherished of all Walt Disney Animated Classics. That blockbuster has spawned a pair of direct-to-video sequels (The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride in ’98 and The Lion...
Blu-ray Review: Togetherness: The Complete First Season
HBO’s series Togetherness debuted in January of 2015, garnering enough of a following to justify a second season. With the second season set to debut on the premium cable network on February 21, HBO has issued Togetherness: The Complete First Season on Blu-ray on February 16. With only eight 29(ish)-minute episodes, it wouldn’t be too challenging to binge on the...
Blu-ray Review: The Last Detail – Twilight Time Limited Edition
The only thing that really dates director Hal Ashby’s 1973 character study The Last Detail is the era’s lack of cell phones. Otherwise, the Oscar-nominated Robert Towne screenplay, a portrait of a pair of Navy lifers tasked with escorting a young sailor to military prison, works as perfectly today as it did 40-plus years ago. The film contained, for its...
DVD Review: He Named Me Malala
Malala Yousafzai is the focus of He Named Me Malala, a documentary currently available on DVD and Digital HD via Fox Home Entertainment. The now-18-year-old Yousafzai, a Pakistan native, became a global representative for female education rights in 2012 when the Taliban shot and nearly killed her. During the years leading up to the assassination attempt, Yousafzai had risen to...
Album Review: Fleetwood Mac – Tusk (Deluxe Edition)
Though Tusk received generally positive reviews when it appeared in 1979, the prevailing view seems to be that it paled alongside its huge-selling immediate predecessors, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac and 1977’s Rumours. The consensus was that Lindsey Buckingham had taken over the group and buried its shimmering pop under layers of less-accessible experimental music. Fleetwood Mac’s label was reportedly not happy...