Blogcritics Author: Lou Novacheck

Book Review: The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles R. Morris

Lou Novacheck — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:05:02 EDT

Fasten your seat belts, folks. Rough landing ahead!
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown should be required reading for all people in public office. Further, all those people should be administered a test based on this book that, if not passed, would leave them without that feeding-at-the-public-trough job. This book is not an easy read, but neither is it particularly difficult for anybody with a reasonable...

Music DVD Review: The 2007 Newport Music Festival (Boxed Set)

Lou Novacheck — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:36:30 EDT

�Newport�the most festive of festivals,� says Bernard Levin of the London Times.
The Newport Music Festival is not just the icing on the cake, it’s the entire, too-many-courses-to-count meal of classical music in the US, and certainly the East Coast’s most elegant and anxiously awaited annual event. It brings together some of the most talented, cherished and sought after classical musicians from all over the globe...

TV/DVD Review: Rebus - Set 3

Lou Novacheck — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:26:42 EDT

Grandmaster Troublemaker strikes again.
Ian Rankin’s Rebus series of books is, without a doubt, some of the best police fiction on the bookshelves today. The BBC-adapted television series, as usual, takes many liberties, shortcuts, and total rewrites, but that doesn’t make them any less exciting and gripping. It also has an alluring soap opera quality that’s just soapy...

Book Review: Doo Wop by "Cousin Brucie" Morrow

Lou Novacheck — Sun, 6 Jul 2008 13:01:33 EDT

Watching the submarine races with doo wop.
Everybody who lived through the 1950s and 1960s knows Doo Wop. Doo Wop: The Music, The Times, The Era, by "Cousin Brucie" Morrow with Rich Maloof is for those who didn't have the privilege of listening to this music as it was being made, as well as for those who lived it, who lived through it, and danced to it. Or maybe you didn't dance to it;...

Music Review: Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - Gurrumul

Lou Novacheck — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 13:12:41 EDT

"Aboriginal music gets an angelic new voice," says The Sydney Morning Herald.
There’s only one word in the English language that could possibly describe Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s voice: Sublime. If it doesn’t reach inside and latch onto your soul, it’s because you don’t have one.This is the type of music that, as soon as you hear the first few clean, clear, high tenor notes, you get...

City Review: Milwaukee Food Tour

Lou Novacheck — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:15:53 EDT

Mwoky a food town? Who�da thunk it?
Milwaukee’s first and, so far, only food tour is a welcome addition to the city. A bonus is that the tour guide, Theresa Nemetz of Milwaukee Food Tours, also informs the group about much of the colorful history of the two areas covered, even though many of the actual physical traces no longer exist.Since Milwaukee’s downtown, as most...

Movie Review: The Free Will

Lou Novacheck — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:15:00 EDT

A lesson in how to destroy oneself.
The Free Will, a German-language production from director Matthias Glasner, quite deservedly won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and has gone on to wow audiences around the globe. Thought-provoking and intellectually satisfying, it is complex and engrossing without being over-acted or over-produced. Excellent casting, acting, writing...

Music Review: Funk Brothers Live in Orlando DVD

Lou Novacheck — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:48:05 EDT

Who really made the Motown Sound?
The Motown years were an exceptional time period in the musical history of the United States. The number of hits that poured out of Detroit was prodigious, and their quality was exceptional. It didn’t much matter what your social strata or color or religion were. Teenagers and young adults of this period, the mid-1960s through 1972, were,...

Book Review: Unknown Waters by Alfred S McLaren

Lou Novacheck — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:44:18 EDT

The equivalent of driving across the United States with no map, blindfolded.
Unknown Waters: A First-Hand Account of the Historic Under-ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish is a story of the first (in-depth?) exploration of the shallow waters off the then-USSR’s coast of Siberia. Can I call it groundbreaking, or icebreaking? Okay, I’ve made enough bad puns at the expense of this...

Music Review: Funk Brothers - Funk Brothers Live in Orlando

Lou Novacheck — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:13:38 EDT

Into the Snakepit
The Funk Brothers have played on more hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and Elvis … combined. Which is one hell of an achievement, especially compared to their relative obscurity. These guys were the musical backbone of so many of the hit Motown groups which came to prominence from the 1960s onward. They’ve won...