PHILIP MARTIN | OPINION: Robert Redford defined by balance between legend and authenticity

I keep circling back to my father when I think about Robert Redford. Not because the two men ever met, but because my father judged actors by whether...

latest 1

Philip Martin

False comfort

On the morning of Sept. 17, 1862, outside the sleepy town of Sharpsburg, Md.,

latest 30

Philip Martin

The banality of violence

I posted something on Facebook the other day which led someone to ask me whether it came from being bullied.I

previous day 10

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: How to not be a hack

Democrat-Gazette onlineThe very idea of compiling a list of "writing rules" is counterintuitive.

sunday 10

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: Big Bird in a bottle — something simple and strong

Mellow Corn is the whiskey aisle's yellow punchline.

13.09.2025 3

Philip Martin

POP NOTES | OPINION: ‘Thunder Road’ and the Cost of Escape — Springsteen’s first masterpiece wasn’t a single, but a proposition

"There's nothing like being young and leavin' someplace ..."-- Bruce SpringsteenThe first sound is a breath.

13.09.2025 8

Philip Martin

Self found

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

10.09.2025 5

Philip Martin

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...

08.09.2025 3

Philip Martin

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....

08.09.2025 4

Philip Martin

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.

07.09.2025 30

Philip Martin

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.

07.09.2025 4

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

The last movie critic

Michael Phillips is leaving the Chicago Tribune.

01.09.2025 4

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

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

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

‘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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

August always feels like a transitional month for music.

23.08.2025 3

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

Keep the Folk School alive

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

18.08.2025 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip Martin

The quiet desperation of Billy Joel

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

11.08.2025 10

Philip Martin

The name I remember

Murder used to be my beat.

11.08.2025 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip Martin

The secret sharer

"Even Donald Trump has got soul."I

28.07.2025 6

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

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PHILIP MARTIN | OPINION: Robert Redford defined by balance between legend and authenticity

Philip Martin

False comfort

Philip Martin

The banality of violence

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: How to not be a hack

Philip Martin

SPIRITS | OPINION: Big Bird in a bottle — something simple and strong

Philip Martin

POP NOTES | OPINION: ‘Thunder Road’ and the Cost of Escape — Springsteen’s first masterpiece wasn’t a single, but a proposition

Philip Martin

Self found

Philip Martin

Three specials ... three truths

Philip Martin

How bullies prosper

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

Finishing, nicely

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

American captive

Philip Martin

The last movie critic

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

The impossible outfielder

Philip Martin

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

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

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Something real

Philip Martin

‘Animal Farm’ at age of 80

Philip Martin

The tragedy of targeting journalists

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

The stubborn form

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

The difference

Philip Martin

Keep the Folk School alive

Philip Martin

ONBOOKS | OPINION: Carolyn Staley recalls 60-year friendship

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

MAGA is not conservative

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

Philip Martin

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

Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Talkin’ baseball

Philip Martin

The quiet desperation of Billy Joel

Philip Martin

The name I remember

Philip Martin

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