Good Grief!

Very busy on super-secret skunk works project! In summary:

2005 Animation Show: not as good as the 2004 version. Don Hertzfeldt is possibly losing his mind and should return to the days of Billy’s Balloon. My favorite piece was Jonathan Nix’s Hello, It’s online, and it’s worth 10 minutes of your time.
Complain […]

Finally, the 2005 Animation Show is coming to Philadelphia. And by Philadelphia I mean the ‘burbs, but you have to take what you can get:

Monday, November 7th: Doylestown, County Theater
Wednesday, November 9th: Bryn Mawr
Thursday, November 10th: Ambler

All shows are at 7 PM, and as far as I know, these theaters are accessible by […]

An exciting announcement from Bloodshot Records, a kick-ass label out of Chicago: they have just released For a Decade of Sin, a two-disc compilation that celebrates eleven years in the business. Forty-two songs of new and previously-unreleased material for $18.
I have several Bloodshot compilations, including Down to the Promised Land, the five year […]

On Thursday night I was in a post-convention foul temper, putting sad songs on the Internet, when the phone rang. “Go to the front room,” said the mysterious caller, “and pick up the freakin’ New Yorker that’s been lying on your coffee table since August.”
Well, I never. People phoning up and bossing me […]

It’s a special day here at Good Grief. Is it Halloween? The end of Ramadan? Viggo Mortensen’s birthday? No, no, and no. It’s time for the bi-quarterly mix of the week. I’m suffering from a case of post-road-trip-convention blues, so today’s theme is sadness and despair. Stream it […]

Finally, I finished Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity. Isn’t that a great title? The book is about two friends, Will and Hand, who embark upon a week-long trip around the world to give away $32,000. Why? Something about the recent loss of their friend Jack, who was killed when […]

I’m not trying to hate on those who make documentaries (documentarians?), but surely it’s obvious that the world has far too many of these films. Were there always so many bad documentaries, or are there more now because digital technology has lowered the barrier to making them?
Regardless, this madness should stop. Do people […]

Thumbs-ups to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit! Shorter-running cartoons don’t always translate well to full-length features, but the Wallace and Gromit movie is a welcome exception.
The movie is Beauty and the Beast meets Inspector Gadget meets Godzilla, with a lot of bad puns and good music. The story begins with […]

Even though I read plenty of Shakespeare in high school, my real relationship with the Bard didn’t begin until college, when I was lucky enough to spend a semester in London. Every Tuesday afternoon we scarfed cheese sandwiches and ran across the seemingly endless Southwark bridge to the site of the still-being-reconstucted Globe Theatre, […]

Today’s arts pick is inspired by the 2005 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. These stretchy plastic bags transform a pair of feet into instant performance art.
The dueling symbolism of this piece thrusts a tremendous amount of tension onto the viewer and leaves many questions unanswered. The plastic medium evokes the material commonly used to store […]