America’s noisy last stand: Christian nationalism a sign of decline

"Extinction boom" is a term in evolutionary biology describing the paradoxical surge that sometimes occurs just before a species disappears.

previous day 4

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Two female authors offer takes on the aftermath

Two new books by female writers consider what endures after upheaval.

previous day 10

Philip Martin

The aftermath

He is a courtly man, touched by gray at the temples, genteel and kind when he can afford to be kind.

03.11.2025 7

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: Larry Rottmann on ‘Face of Vietnam’ exhibit

Through Nov. 12, the Fayetteville Public Library hosts “Face of Vietnam,” an exhibit of 100 post-war photographs by Larry Rottmann.

03.11.2025 4

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: “Mr. Scorsese” explores filmmaker’s life, faith and obsession with truth

Start with the assumption that heroes are not nice.

02.11.2025 3

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: ‘Coyote,’ ‘Contradiction’ reconsider American story

Two new books take up that most durable of American subjects -- the uneasy space between what we imagine ourselves to be and what the record shows.

02.11.2025 6

Philip Martin

When honest journalism feels like an attack

Democrat-Gazette onlineThat the world is not what you wish it to be is not the fault of your eyes and ears.We

02.11.2025 3

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: How Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ Taught Me to Write and Listen Again

What you hear first is the hiss, the high frequency “sshhh” produced by analog magnetic tape recordings.

01.11.2025 9

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Films that truly frighten aren’t about monsters

Every October, the world fills with ghosts: masks, monsters, haunted houses, streaming-service categories labeled “Scary Favorites.”

01.11.2025 4

Philip Martin

The hidden cost of sports betting: Why in-pocket gambling could be America’s next addiction crisis

Gambling on sports has always been with us. People have wagered on horses, cards, even on who could hit a rock with a stick the farthest. The urge to...

29.10.2025 20

Philip Martin

When it was a game

When I was 16 I coached a kids' baseball team--technically a minor-league team, made up of players who weren't good enough to be drafted into the...

27.10.2025 2

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Diane Keaton — a generation’s face

Bill Murray joked in “Stripes” (1981) that jazz percussionist Tito Puente “is gonna be dead one day, and you’re gonna say, ‘Oh, I’ve been...

26.10.2025 4

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: ‘Milk & Catfish’ pairs rumor, reality

Thule Taaffe's "Milk & Catfish" takes place in Arkansas on the cusp of the 1980 deer season, when the mornings are cool, the coffee's strong and the...

26.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

The test is here

Democrat-Gazette onlineThere was a time when I believed the future would be kinder.

26.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Mirror in the Sky — Kae Barron’s “Pale Blue Dot” Portal

Kae Barron's 2025 painting "Earth, #1," part of her Pale Blue Dot series in an exhibition opening Friday evening at Little Rock's Cantrell Gallery,...

25.10.2025 4

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: On the radical quiet of ‘Tender Mercies’

I wasn’t a film critic when I first saw “Tender Mercies,” and can’t remember the circumstances of that first viewing.

25.10.2025 5

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: The sound of time passing — from Little Feat to Taylor Swift

Rock history is full of albums that mark turning points -- not just for the artists who made them, but for the eras they came from.

24.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

Waving the flag

On still nights, the whir of a helicopter can sound like a memory returning.

22.10.2025 10

Philip Martin

The weather of grief

Grief is a collision between the tenderness of loving what's gone, and the shame of showing that love in a world that mistrusts emotion.

20.10.2025 10

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: Old man bourbon is waiting for us to mature

When my beer-drinking father drank whiskey — it wasn’t often — he toggled between Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s, as if they were the same drink...

19.10.2025 20

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Elmore Leonard at 100

One hundred years after his birth, Elmore Leonard still sounds like America talking to itself — dry, funny, and perfectly in time.

19.10.2025 30

Philip Martin

America is out of tune

Democrat-Gazette onlineYou don't have to be a musician to hear when something's off.

19.10.2025 2

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘The Usual Suspects’ — the devil’s trick and the age of doubt

Our archive isn’t perfect, but apparently I didn’t review “The Usual Suspects” when it opened in August 1995.

18.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Filmmaker Brent Renaud died doing what he loved to do

Russian soldiers killed my friend.I don't know why -- except that in the fog of war, when you give scared boys guns and license to shoot, bad things...

18.10.2025 7

Philip Martin

A way back

When the world feels brittle, reading a poem can become a radical act.Lately

15.10.2025 4

Philip Martin

Come together, side by side

We like to think of artists as singular geniuses. But often the richest stories emerge when two of them are displayed side by side—when their...

13.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: The hard grace of Jack Butler

I did not fall into Jack Butler's 1993 novel "Living in Little Rock With Miss Little Rock" easily.

12.10.2025 10

Philip Martin

Performative patriotism cheapens real sacrifice

Democrat-Gazette onlineI grew up with the smell of jet fuel in the air.

12.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Rediscovering ‘Buckingham Nicks’ album

The first thing you notice, before the harmonies or the precise lattice of acoustic and electric guitar filigree, is the audacity of the cover: two...

11.10.2025 4

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: ‘One Battle After Another’ — joy in the ruins

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film “One Battle After Another” arrives as spectacle and a provocation, an improbable blend of action-movie...

11.10.2025 8

Philip Martin

Ordinary kindness

My dog Savannah loves everyone. Everyone.

08.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

Cultural interpretation is presented in a unique multimedia exhibition at Bentonville.

BENTONVILLE— Sports have always been devotion and delusion, and even after living a large part of life in them, I still don’t know how seriously...

06.10.2025 6

Philip Martin

The end of the affair

On her porch in the thinning dusk, Sunny sensed that hollow stillness you get when the neighbors have gone off to Taos or Greece for a week.

06.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Three Arkansas voices, three measures of endurance

Literature at its best is less a single voice than a chorus.

05.10.2025 2

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: AI algorithms equal music as content

The digital revolution was supposed to free us.

05.10.2025 10

Philip Martin

The chill and the silence

Democrat-Gazette onlineA curious thing happens when governments decide they must protect us from ourselves: Liberty contracts, trust evaporates, and...

05.10.2025 7

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: Huismans contrast decoration, preservation

Walk into almost any older McDonald's and look at the art.

05.10.2025 20

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Neighborhood grooves, and big-band swagger, all in week’s listening

These columns aren't surveys of the marketplace so much as dispatches from whatever happens to be on the turntable, in the headphones, or rattling...

04.10.2025 10

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Tulsa noir — chasing corruption in ‘The Lowdown’

Created by Sterlin Harjo, the Seminole/Muscogee filmmaker who gave us “Reservation Dogs,” and fronted by Ethan Hawke, “The Lowdown” barrels...

04.10.2025 6

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ — how trash, glam and gay camp crashed the mall

The miracle of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” isn’t that it exists — cinema has always had its curiosities, midnight follies and trash...

03.10.2025 4

Philip Martin

A dangerous time

Once upon a time, hypocrisy was the price you paid to belong to polite society.

01.10.2025 3

Philip Martin

Mourning Margaret

I saw a social media post recently where a man explained why he was shaken by the murder of Charlie Kirk but felt nothing like the same outrage at...

29.09.2025 10

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: John and Yoko — eavesdropping on an unfinished argument

I spend a lot of time listening to music or watching movies from 50 years ago.

29.09.2025 10

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: ‘Dogs’ — circling, then spiraling, in the small-town dark

There were high school nights I never told my mother about.We

28.09.2025 5

Philip Martin

The joyless efficiency of baseball

Democrat-Gazette onlineNostalgia may be a cataract, but baseball really did look better when a workhorse like Bill Hands could throw 300 innings.

28.09.2025 3

Philip Martin

HOME MOVIES | OPINION: ‘Unicorns,’ ‘Coddling’ — romance and anxiety

For years we ran a column called Home Movies -- a place for talking about what was new on DVD, or, later, what had just landed in the digital ether.

27.09.2025 5

Philip Martin

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Dog with guitar — does absurdity tell the story?

I’ve known John Sykes for more than 30 years.

27.09.2025 5

Philip Martin

Cool reflection

"Sadly that is the laziest column that I have ever read written by you.

24.09.2025 10

Philip Martin

Erasure of the human hand

Not long ago, I came across a post by Brooklyn painter Graig Kreindler, whose work I admire. He creates astonishingly detailed oil paintings of...

22.09.2025 5

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: How ‘Mystery Train’ showed me pop songs were maps of America — and that criticism could be art

I learned the truth at 17 ...-- Janis IanFifty years ago, when Greil Marcus published "Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music," I was...

22.09.2025 10

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America’s noisy last stand: Christian nationalism a sign of decline

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: Two female authors offer takes on the aftermath

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The aftermath

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FIVE QUESTIONS: Larry Rottmann on ‘Face of Vietnam’ exhibit

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CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: “Mr. Scorsese” explores filmmaker’s life, faith and obsession with truth

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ONBOOKS | OPINION: ‘Coyote,’ ‘Contradiction’ reconsider American story

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When honest journalism feels like an attack

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RECORDINGS | OPINION: How Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ Taught Me to Write and Listen Again

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POPNOTES | OPINION: Films that truly frighten aren’t about monsters

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The hidden cost of sports betting: Why in-pocket gambling could be America’s next addiction crisis

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When it was a game

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CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Diane Keaton — a generation’s face

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ONBOOKS | OPINION: ‘Milk & Catfish’ pairs rumor, reality

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The test is here

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LONG LOOK | OPINION: Mirror in the Sky — Kae Barron’s “Pale Blue Dot” Portal

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GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: On the radical quiet of ‘Tender Mercies’

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RECORDINGS | OPINION: The sound of time passing — from Little Feat to Taylor Swift

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Waving the flag

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The weather of grief

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SPIRITS | OPINION: Old man bourbon is waiting for us to mature

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CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Elmore Leonard at 100

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America is out of tune

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GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘The Usual Suspects’ — the devil’s trick and the age of doubt

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POPNOTES | OPINION: Filmmaker Brent Renaud died doing what he loved to do

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A way back

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Come together, side by side

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ONBOOKS | OPINION: The hard grace of Jack Butler

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Performative patriotism cheapens real sacrifice

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RECORDINGS | OPINION: Rediscovering ‘Buckingham Nicks’ album

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POPNOTES | OPINION: ‘One Battle After Another’ — joy in the ruins

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Ordinary kindness

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Cultural interpretation is presented in a unique multimedia exhibition at Bentonville.

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The end of the affair

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ONBOOKS | OPINION: Three Arkansas voices, three measures of endurance

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CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: AI algorithms equal music as content

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The chill and the silence

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FIVE QUESTIONS: Huismans contrast decoration, preservation

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RECORDINGS | OPINION: Neighborhood grooves, and big-band swagger, all in week’s listening

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POPNOTES | OPINION: Tulsa noir — chasing corruption in ‘The Lowdown’