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Philip Martin

Philip Martin

Arkansas Online

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GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ and the end of an era

Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” (1975) is a meditation — an elegy told in slow, flickering motion, drifting across the screen like smoke from...

previous day 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Springsteen at 75 and the Gospel According to ‘Tracks II’

Bruce Springsteen has always been a haunted man. Haunted by his father’s silence and the black dog of depression. Haunted by his country’s sins...

friday 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Love your country

We're told, from the first day we stand shoulder to shoulder with fidgety classmates, one hand mashed over our hearts, we're supposed to love America.

02.07.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Ghost in the machine

Ghost in the machine

"The machine itself makes no demands: it is the people who create it, and use it, that demand the sacrifices ..."--

30.06.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ON BOOKS | OPINION: ‘Fulfillment’ looks at class, sibling rivalry in dying town

ON BOOKS | OPINION: ‘Fulfillment’ looks at class, sibling rivalry in dying town

Some novels want to dazzle you with fireworks; Lee Cole's "Fulfillment" does something trickier.

29.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Pop music’s outliers and how the light gets in

POPNOTES | OPINION: Pop music’s outliers and how the light gets in

Over the past week, I've soaked in James McMurtry's new album, "The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy" (2025), the way I once soaked in a new Jackson...

28.06.2025 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

At world’s end

South of Houma, La., where the land forgets to be land and instead gives up, blade by blade, to the Gulf, my mother waits.

25.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Law, not loyalty

On June 22, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Act to Establish the Department of Justice into law. On its face, it was a bureaucratic...

23.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Ruth Taylor White painted her maps with a light brush

It started with a click. I was searching for a birthday present for my mother — born in 1937, raised on a tobacco farm, rode a mule to school —...

23.06.2025 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: What we hear when we listen years later

In a year crowded with deluxe boxed sets and algorithm-friendly vinyl drops, a handful of records reminds us what music is for: memory, reckoning, and...

21.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘Jaws’ at 50 — Shark that ate the movies

When the summer of 1975 cracked open its jaws — on June 20, to be exact — a 27-year-old Steven Spielberg gave us a perfect monster: sleek,...

21.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Small crimes, big heart and the last honest drifter

There are shows that remind you how to watch television — and then there’s Peacock’s “Poker Face,” which reminds you how to look at America....

21.06.2025 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Cost of progress

"They don't make 'em like they used to."This

18.06.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Brian Wilson and Sly Stone had their demons, but never surrendered to them

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: Brian Wilson and Sly Stone had their demons, but never surrendered to them

June 2025 will be remembered for what it took away: two of American music's most visionary architects, Brian Wilson and Sly Stone. Wallace Stevens...

16.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The contrary nature of two fathers

The contrary nature of two fathers

This year, Father's Day and Bloomsday arrive back-to-back: June 15 and June 16, Sunday and Monday, sentiment and myth, the Hallmark and the heretic...

16.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Strength in isolation

Strength in isolation

Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak ... He's unsure of himself ... He's a coward. Clark...

16.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Robert Graves’ forgotten feminist novel

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Robert Graves’ forgotten feminist novel

The conceit of this column is simple: I write about books I’m reading. New, old, obscure, overrated — whatever’s on the nightstand is fair game....

16.06.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: Experiencing the quiet fire of Scotch

Thirty years ago, I turned my back on Scotch. Not out of spite. More like economic realism, a philosophical tilt toward bourbon as the people’s...

14.06.2025 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: ‘Stick’ finds its groove when it stops sermonizing

There’s a scene in “Stick,” Apple TV ’s new entry in the Feel-Good-But-Also-Broken-Dad genre, when Owen Wilson’s character — washed-up pro...

14.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

American belief

It takes wishfulness to believe a $5,000 check is in the mail because Elon Musk took a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy.

11.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Ink-stained wretches

There was a time when newspapers stained your hands. The ink bled into your fingertips, rubbed into your palms; you carried it with you all day,...

09.06.2025 3

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CONSUMABLES | OPINION: The baseball glove — so much more than just athletic gear

The mark of a true professional is the ability to remember where you left your glove.

09.06.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

FILM | OPINION: The best of 2025 — so far

I don’t do many opening-day movie reviews anymore, but old habits die hard. I still keep up. I still watch. Maybe not at every Thursday-night sneak...

07.06.2025 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Holy Blasphemy! ‘Dogma’ turns 25

A quarter-century has done strange things to “Dogma,” Kevin Smith’s controversial fourth feature. What once felt like provocation now feels like...

07.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Struggle for peace

A quiet menace lurks in Tim O'Brien's fiction, coiled within seemingly decent men.

04.06.2025 8

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Bentonville becomes Electra

BENTONVILLE -- About 20 years ago, not long after Alice Walton announced plans to build a world-class art museum here, we were strolling through this...

02.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Children of the corn

In the wake of Major League Baseball’s remarkable recent decision to lift the lifetime bans of Pete Rose and the Chicago Black Sox, we find...

02.06.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Revisiting ‘Andromeda Strain’ — a virus of fear

I was in eighth grade when I saw “The Andromeda Strain.” It terrified me more than any horror movie ever has. I’ve seen slashers, zombies,...

31.05.2025 30

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Hardest hitter

We tend to believe that athletes improve over time.

28.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Dream team

Somewhere deep in the attic of the American soul, there's a dusty reel spinning. Baseball lives there. Not as a game. Not in the clinical parsing of...

26.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

CRITICAL MASS | OPINION: ‘Relic’ guitars for players who never had gigs

Joe Strummer's guitar is for sale -- if you can afford it.

26.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘The Apartment’ — Hollywood finally grows up

In 1960, America stood on the edge of a transformation it could not yet fully name.

24.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

RECORDINGS | OPINION: Catch up on new releases and old classics

There's something alchemical about a good record -- how it captures not just sound but spirit, distilling moments and memories into grooves and...

24.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The luxury of belief

"Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally." -- David Gaider A  quiet tension settles...

21.05.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

What weowe Benny

"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."

19.05.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Resurrecting the essay in an age of algorithmic brevity

The essay is an endangered form. In a hot take/"too long; didn't read" era dominated by algorithmic brevity and the ceaseless churn of instant...

19.05.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘The Apartment’ — Hollywood finally grows up

In 1960, America stood on the edge of a transformation it could not yet fully name.

17.05.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell transformed country music — and helped a divided nation hear itself anew

In the cultural landscape of midcentury America, few transformations were as subtly seismic as the slow, sometimes reluctant, elevation of country...

17.05.2025 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Little and broken, still good

I am the custodian of the upstairs of our house--keeper of clutter, curator of memory.

14.05.2025 5

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Echoes of the Blitz

We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together ... -- T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" Sometimes it feels like "Tommy" never ended. It just...

12.05.2025 50

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Playing the piano in the closet

I have a copy of Joan Didion's new book "Notes to John" sitting on my desk.

12.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘Shampoo’ and the end of ’60s dream

There’s a moment in Hal Ashby’s “Shampoo” (1975) where the camera floats with a detached observational air over Beverly Hills; it captures not...

10.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

The benefits of baseball

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, blossoms in the summer, and fades away in October." -- Bart...

07.05.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

Stitched,not severed

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -- Annie Dillard, "The Writing Life" There's a strange TV series called "Severance,"...

05.05.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Yoko Ono’s story retold as long-overdue act of attention

I've always felt sorry for Yoko Ono.

05.05.2025 10

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

GREAT MOVIES | OPINION: ‘Monty Python’ film offers laughter from a place born of desperation and sorrow

"Who controls the past controls the future.

03.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION: Zevon, the Hall of Fame, the Los Angeles that was

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked ...''

03.05.2025 20

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

POPNOTES | OPINION: Identity theft not for gain but stealing just to exist

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

03.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Wings of wax and string

Townes Van Zandt would have turned 80 earlier this year.

30.04.2025 6

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin

What theriver took

There are disasters you remember because they are too big, too loud, too public to forget. Then there are the ones that vanish, not because they...

28.04.2025 7

Arkansas Online

Philip Martin