Philip Martin | Stories

‘Loudmouth’ In evaluating a movie, it's fair, if not absolutely necessary, to consider the filmmakers' goals and how well the film accomplishes them. Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will"... December 9, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm129 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zyu0wfkhdmI" title... December 9, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Speaking up for Harvey "I wanted to die. It was disgusting. It was humiliating, miserable. I didn't fight. I remember how he was looking in the mirror and he was telling me to look at him."-- Jane Doe No. 1, t... December 6, 2022

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: The passion of Tár and the morality of artists Todd Field's provocative power study "Tár" opens with a clever scene in which New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, playing himself, introduces a fabulous woman named Lydia T&aacut... December 4, 2022

Opie on the school steps I'm not of the opinion that we all need to disclose everything all the time.Everybody makes mistakes. And most of us evolve. I think about some things differently than I did 10 or 20 or 50 years a... December 4, 2022

OPINION | REVIEW: ‘Johnny Cash: Redemption of an American Icon’ is a spiritual bio-pic The Nickajack Cave story is familiar to most people who have a personal relationship with Johnny Cash.By "personal relationship," I mean a relationship deeper than what you get by simply smi... December 2, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm122<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZJ5r6V5J7OU" title=&quot... December 2, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Our stupid problem I was raised to believe that ignorance is a remediable condition.People who used certain racial epithets, I was told, did so out of insecurity of their own place in society. They were telling on thems... November 29, 2022

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: When memory wants to speak, movies can really make us listen In his production notes to "The Glass Menagerie," which opened on Broadway in 1945, Tennessee Williams called his work a "memory play," and wrote that as such, it could "be pr... November 27, 2022

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Grinding out some novel ideas with Haruki Murakami and Cormac McCarthy Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto guy whose business model just blew up, said he figured that anyone who ever wrote a book failed. If they had something to say, they should have done it in a six-paragraph... November 27, 2022

Good enough people When you were younger, you might have thought there was a regular order to the world. For this is the way it is explained to us, in history books and fables passed down from one generation to the next... November 27, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: 11/22/63 One of the things that makes us human is the conviction that we are more than our biologies. It takes a mind of Nietzschean steel to utterly dismiss mystery as the tickling of neurons beneath a cupola... November 22, 2022

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Ken Burns’ ‘Our America’ a history in photos "The need to reflect on our history through photography is one that seems ever more urgent."— Sarah Hermanson Meiste, in an essay included in Ken Burns' "Our America: A Photog... November 20, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Ordinary murderers You probably believe you can pick them out.A writer I know hired a neighborhood kid to do some yard work this summer. He didn't do a great job, but if you want a great job you don't hire some ... November 20, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1118 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AwJau8rJ1ZY" titl... November 18, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Not good at Wordle I started playing The New York Times online Wordle game around the first of the year. It's part of my early morning routine--I do stretches, play Wordle, and read the newspaper.(Wordle is similar ... November 15, 2022

OPINION | ON BOOKS: ‘Song’ a book you can judge by its cover One thing you don't do is begrudge an old man his position or his place.It makes you look like a begrudger, like maybe you're jealous of his stately pleasure dome with the hammered copper roof... November 13, 2022

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Newly expanded ‘Revolver’ shows Beatles’ maturity If you are the sort of person who reads newspaper essays about record albums released in the 1960s, you might already be aware of the newly mixed and expanded special-edition packages of the Beatles&#... November 13, 2022

The crack-up It wasn't as dramatic as I'm about to make it sound, but I cracked up last week.I came home from a movie screening Wednesday afternoon and told Karen I was blowing off the screening that was s... November 13, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1111 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rhRsyHAddMo" titl... November 11, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Voting isn’t fun I remember when election day was fun.That was more a function of my age than anything else; when you are young doing anything adult is exciting. Whether it’s ordering a beer or voting a straight... November 8, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Dice life I just finished reading a novel by Penn Jillette--magician, atheist, provocateur and storyteller-- who possesses one of the liveliest minds operating in a public space. Just-published "Random&quo... November 6, 2022

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Jerry Lee Lewis, the original outlaw, outlived them all "There has never been another American pop musician with Lewis' particular mixture of egotistical self-confidence, innate taste and sensitivity, eclecticism ... formidable and entirely idiosy... November 6, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm114 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SxP9Evtfumc" title... November 4, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: An avatar of love I want to thank everybody.Our terrier Audi died last week. She was at least 12 years old, and until a few days before she died she was joyous and vibrant. Her passing was unexpected but peaceful, and ... November 1, 2022

OPINION | SPIRITS: Boycott Russian vodka; we have our own In solidarity with the people of Ukraine, all the Russian vodka is off the shelves of my favorite liquor store.Maybe that's an admirable gesture, but it seems unlikely to impose a hardship on most... October 30, 2022

OPINION | ON BOOKS: ‘We Spread’ — reading into a failing mind They say that old trees just grow stronger,And old rivers get wilder every day,But old people, they just get lonesome ....— John Prine, "Hello in There"What will happen is scarier than... October 30, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: A short history of fear Once upon a time when we were small and scared of nothing, we would go out into the October dusk and beg for candy from strangers.The pretext was that we weren't begging for candy but that we were... October 30, 2022

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: ACS’ Filmland 5 features a few standouts The Arkansas Cinema Society's Filmland event (this year it's called "Filmland 5") returns next week.Looking over their schedule, the film that I might be most anxious to see is Krist... October 28, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Bush doctor So there'll beNo more smokin' and feelin' tenseWhen I see them a'comeI don't have to jump no fence-- Peter Tosh, "Bush Doctor"My neighbor is in the cannabis business.His ... October 25, 2022

CRITICAL MASS: Finding the thread — Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ hits 20th anniversary "Everything is recycled and rerun and comes back — first as camp, later as classic."— the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, on Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," April 2002It... October 23, 2022

Watching the defectives The mayor used to hang out at the air base golf course where I learned the game. He was a retired USAF colonel who had been commander at the base, and you'd see him sometimes sitting out with the ... October 23, 2022

‘Banshees’ screams to top of list I don't like to make grand pronouncements about movies -- it irritates me when a critic writes something like "Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' is the greatest movie ever and if yo... October 21, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1021 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J9wLrYCtA90" titl... October 21, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Missing the parade There was a parade over the weekend.I'd forgotten about it, though earlier in the week we had talked about maybe taking our dogs down to watch. They love parades and street fairs and the like; the... October 18, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Sins of the father "Till was hung yesterdayfor rape and murder with the trimmings ..."-- Ezra Pound, "Canto LXXIV"Not every story need be told.Though I am in the business of telling stories, I wish m... October 16, 2022

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Poetry not as simple as it seems Tell him to be differentfrom other peopleif it comes naturaland easy being different.— Carl Sandburg, "A Father to His Son"Most people can learn to do most things adequately.Ben Hogan ... October 16, 2022

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Is David Gordon Green’s ‘Halloween Ends’ really the end of an era? I wasn't going to write this column this week because I'm at least ankle deep in award season screenings (they've started -- "Till" is well-made but problematic in one area I pla... October 14, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1014 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/h-Gbmy44Cmc" titl... October 14, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: What it was, was football I was just over a month old when my parents took me back to the hospital on a Sunday afternoon. Not to exchange me, I have been assured, but because as young first-time parents, they over-reacted to m... October 11, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: So much winning I don't pay much attention to Twitter because I'm a sane adult attempting to keep some equilibrium between my professional and private life. Yet every now and then something will pop up on the... October 9, 2022

OPINION | REVIEW: ‘Anvil’ doc band mates still aiming for the sky "The music lives forever. Maybe the debt does too."-- Steve "Lips" Kudlow, "Anvil! The Story of Anvil"I think everyone should, at some point in life, be part of a team.Ev... October 7, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm107 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HTaVMi5F5rg" title... October 7, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Baby shoes The legend is that Ernest Hemingway once bet a table full of literary types that he could write a complete short story that was only six words long.As recounted in literary agent Peter Miller's 19... October 4, 2022

CRITICAL MASS: ‘Fashioning America’ at Crystal Bridges shows us what clothes mattered, and when — a dream journey for style fans BENTONVILLE — One thing we know about art is that it endures.Like that statue of Ozymandias that Percy Bysshe Shelley went on about, art aspires to immortality; it means to speak to generations ... October 2, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Voice of Harold There is a social media profile a friend of mine and I monitor for fun. It's not the finest thing we do.The guy behind the profile--I'm going to call him Harold--is someone both of us knew lon... October 2, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm930 <iframe width=""560"" height=""315"" src=""https://www.youtube.com... September 30, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: 61* and the passion of Roger Maris "They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something. Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing."-- Roger Maris, 1980My... September 27, 2022

OPINION | ON BOOKS: How wife exploited Jim Thorpe On Nov. 9, 1951, Jim Thorpe, who had been voted “Greatest Athlete of the Half-Century” a year earlier in an Associated Press poll of nearly 400 sportswriters and broadcasters, had a cancer... September 25, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Goodbye, Norma Jeane "I don't like to say this, but I'm afraid there is a lot of envy in this business. The only thing I can do is I stop and think, 'I'm all right, but I'm not so sure about them!... September 25, 2022

Stories by Philip Martin