menu_open Columnists
Philip Martin

Philip Martin

Arkansas Online

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Self found

Self found

I recently lost 131,000 emails. They vanished during an operating system upgrade--Mac OS Tahoe 26.0,

latest 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Three specials ... three truths

Three specials ... three truths

Stand-up comedy, at its most potent, works like Samizdat, the underground literature passed hand to hand in the Soviet years, typed and retyped on...

previous day 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

How bullies prosper

How bullies prosper

We like to tell ourselves that bullies don't win. We say "hurt people hurt people," as if cruelty is necessarily the product of insecurity or misery....

previous day 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FALL PREVIEW | OPINION: Autumn is Hollywood’s serious season

FALL PREVIEW | OPINION: Autumn is Hollywood’s serious season

Fall is the grown-up season at the movies — or at least it pretends to be.

sunday 30

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Finishing, nicely

Finishing, nicely

Democrat-Gazette online"Nice guys finish last." We've heard the line 1,000 times, sanded down into a proverb that sounds as old as competition itself.

sunday 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Grudges without borders — Jason Morphew’s Arkansas Elegy

POPNOTES | OPINION: Grudges without borders — Jason Morphew’s Arkansas Elegy

Jason Morphew is not exactly a household name in his home state, though he probably ought to be.

06.09.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Smoke, song and mirrors — ‘Don’t Look Back’

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Smoke, song and mirrors — ‘Don’t Look Back’

D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary “Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back” doesn’t explain Bob Dylan so much as trap him in a frame, turning the...

06.09.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

American captive

American captive

Czeslaw Milosz defected from communist Poland in 1951, carrying not just the memory of a ruined country but a diagnosis of how authoritarianism seeps...

03.09.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The last movie critic

The last movie critic

Michael Phillips is leaving the Chicago Tribune.

01.09.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Contradiction of ‘Baby Hawk’ and ‘Blue 42’

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Contradiction of ‘Baby Hawk’ and ‘Blue 42’

Tom Epperson has always been a writer of contradictions and of conscience.

01.09.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Bull rush — Elaine de Kooning’s painted verb

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Bull rush — Elaine de Kooning’s painted verb

Elaine de Kooning’s “Standing Bull” (1958) is a work of art that charges at you — soaked in light, saturated with muscular energy and visibly...

01.09.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The impossible outfielder

The impossible outfielder

Democrat-Gazette onlineYou can go to baseball games for more than 60 years and, on any given day, still be surprised.

31.08.2025 30

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Clerical terror — Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ turns 40

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Clerical terror — Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ turns 40

Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” doesn’t so much begin as stumble awake, like you’ve walked in on someone else’s nightmare at the exact moment it...

30.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POP NOTES | OPINION: A sprawling new boxed set of Elvis Presley’s 1972–75 rehearsal sessions finds the King still fighting to mean it

POP NOTES | OPINION: A sprawling new boxed set of Elvis Presley’s 1972–75 rehearsal sessions finds the King still fighting to mean it

In Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard,” Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) shuffles through her crumbling mansion like a ghost who refuses to...

30.08.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Something real

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Something real

Jay Duplass came to Arkansas to give a talk he called “How to Make Movies in the Apocalypse.” That sounds scary, but maybe that’s where we are....

27.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

‘Animal Farm’ at age of 80

‘Animal Farm’ at age of 80

"I will work harder."The line belongs to Boxer, the loyal horse in George Orwell's "Animal Farm."

25.08.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The tragedy of targeting journalists

The tragedy of targeting journalists

Journalism, often called the "Fourth Branch" of government, carries a sacred responsibility to truth, accuracy, and objectivity.

25.08.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: Fun and harmless? Flavored vodkas are still alcohol

SPIRITS | OPINION: Fun and harmless? Flavored vodkas are still alcohol

If you want to take the temperature of a culture, don't look at its laws or its literature.

25.08.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The stubborn form

The stubborn form

Democrat-Gazette online"Work's my middle name."--Guy Clark, "Dublin Blues"My editor won't like this one.Whether

24.08.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Cynthia Kresse’s ‘Chicken House in Orange and Blue’ — the space between light and dark

LONG LOOK | OPINION: Cynthia Kresse’s ‘Chicken House in Orange and Blue’ — the space between light and dark

Driving through the back roads of Northwest Arkansas at night, you’re bound to see them: long, low structures with light bleeding out of their...

23.08.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: The 30 best Southern films of the 21st century

POPNOTES | OPINION: The 30 best Southern films of the 21st century

It’s possible that “Southern cinema” is a contradiction in terms.

23.08.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Five releases not a bad haul for August

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Five releases not a bad haul for August

August always feels like a transitional month for music.

23.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The difference

The difference

Today is World Photography Day. That's my news hook, the artificial peg on which I'm hanging this column.

20.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Keep the Folk School alive

I should say up front that I'm a little biased.Back

18.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Carolyn Staley recalls 60-year friendship

One afternoon in the early ’60s, a boy with a saxophone knocked on the door of a Hot Springs parsonage and asked if the girl who lived there might...

18.08.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FIVE QUESTIONS: The music between them - “The Boy Next Door with Carolyn Staley”

You don't have to know Carolyn Yeldell Staley to feel like you're in her company when you read "The Boy Next Door: My Sixty-Year Friendship with Bill...

18.08.2025 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

MAGA is not conservative

Democrat-Gazette onlineThere's a growing tendency, even among the commentariat, to characterize the MAGA movement as a more aggressive form of...

17.08.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Mike Judge’s animated classic comes back in a louder, dumber world — and its quiet satire suddenly feels like a profound cultural counterpoint

After a 15-year absence, “King of the Hill” is returning to television. It’s a quiet resurrection, without much fanfare or frenzy — fitting...

16.08.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: William Wyler’s homecoming film cuts deep

There is an understated scene early in William Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives” that nevertheless carries the weight of 1,000...

16.08.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Talkin’ baseball

They knew 'em all from Boston to Dubuque/Especially Willie, Mickey, and the Duke ...--Terry

13.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The quiet desperation of Billy Joel

I was 14 the first time I heard "Captain Jack."

11.08.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The name I remember

Murder used to be my beat.

11.08.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: ‘River to Ridge’ — New AGFC book provides expansive view of state’s WMAs

If you spend appreciable time in Arkansas, you might come to know the sound of a wood duck cutting across flooded timber, the hush of pine needles...

11.08.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Now on Netflix, ‘Animal Kingdom’ the most pragmatic crime show of the prestige-TV era, offers not myth or meaning — but method

Let’s say you wanted to run a criminal enterprise — not in theory, but in practice.

09.08.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: The thunder of ‘Ran’ and the whisper of the mall

There’s something nearly impossible to explain to people who weren’t there, or weren’t there in that way: what it meant to walk into a mall...

09.08.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

‘From Arkansas’

A couple of weeks ago I opened an email from an address I didn't recognize.The

06.08.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Blood, memory and choice

They say family shapes us, confines us, molds us in ways we only recognize when something breaks.

04.08.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Taylor Swift is precise, narratively disciplined, emotionally legible

It’s not easy to talk about Taylor Swift to people who grew up with Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Bruce...

04.08.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Reissues and reinventions — these artists are taking risks

In a summer full of reissues and reinventions, three very different albums remind us how time changes not just the music, but the ears we bring to it.

02.08.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Taxi Driver,’ the end of the 1970s dream

“Taxi Driver” doesn’t unspool like a traditional narrative — it unfolds like a fever dream.

02.08.2025 9

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Shawn Levy’s ‘Clint: The Man and the Movies’ examines Eastwood’s long, mythic career with clear eyes and quiet restraint

There are movie stars, then there are monuments.

02.08.2025 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Stay gold, but …

A few months back, a box showed up on my porch from Simon & Schuster--plain cardboard, discreetly stamped "Children's & Young Adult."

30.07.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The secret sharer

"Even Donald Trump has got soul."I

28.07.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: Wine in a French Quarter cafe taught me about taste, memory, paying attention

In the summer of 1986, New Orleans felt thick.

28.07.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Netflix’s glossy NFL series offers access without insight, trading candor for control — and letting its stars shape the story they want told

Netflix’s “Quarterback” returns for its second season with three familiar faces — one more familiar than the others. Jared Goff, Joe Burrow...

26.07.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: 1973’s ‘The Last Detail’ and The Passion of Ashby capture a specific kind of pain

In the long dream of American cinema, Hal Ashby occupies a strange and haunted room — off the hallway of the greats, cluttered with forgotten...

26.07.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Ancient codes

On a hot July afternoon at Alberta Springs Golf Resort, a former NHL enforcer reminded everyone who he used to be.

23.07.2025 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Moral illiteracy

Nobody ever told us morality would--or should--be easy.

21.07.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: After decades locked out of his own catalog, John Fogerty is reclaiming his songs — with his sons at his side

Some folks inherit star-spangled eyes … ■  ■  ■ John Fogerty didn’t. What he inherited was older and stranger. A voice made from gravel...

20.07.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Records that haunt you into listening

Some records show up like postcards from someplace you used to live, signed by someone you still love.

19.07.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin