Philip Martin | Stories

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Just like Ronnie sang — Spector as a bad girl Veronica Bennett presented as a bad girl.Which she might have been, growing up as she did in Spanish Harlem with an Irish-American father and a mother half Black and half Cherokee. "Half breed&qu... January 23, 2022

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Novel drops concept of family lore Philip Larkin's most famous poem, "This be the Verse," cannot be printed in a general interest newspaper.It begins:They [eff] you up,your mum and dad.They may not mean to,but they do.The... January 23, 2022

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Critic’s top movies of all time Over the past few years that I've been following him on Facebook, writer-director Paul Schrader (2017's "First Reformed," 1976's "Taxi Driver") has developed into one o... January 21, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm121 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y1FNWsBv... January 21, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Speak, Mnemosyne You can't keep all of the past in a backpack or purseall of the time. It's heavy and what's worse,it wouldn't leave room for much else ...--Miller Williams, "Memory"Funny how... January 18, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Give us some Slack We use Slack around our shop.It's not something I think about a lot. Then, recently I read a clever, funny novel called "Several People Are Typing," by Calvin Kasulke, written entirely i... January 16, 2022

Kung fu craze comes home in 8 DVD set Carl Douglas was born in Jamaica and spent some time in Southern California before his family moved to London when he was a teenager. Gifted with a smooth tenor voice that he honed in his church's... January 14, 2022

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm114 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uyaQLZo5... January 14, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Here come da judge I'm procrastinating.By close of business this Friday, I'm supposed to submit a list of winners in a contest for the [redacted state] Press Association. I will make that deadline because I don&... January 11, 2022

OPINION | SPIRITS: Much ado about bourbons — the Old Tub legend On the last night of 2021, we had the Lawyer and his wife the Deacon over to the house for an early-evening cocktail hour.This is something we've been doing these past 21 months: maintaining some ... January 9, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The college football quandary Karen is a stickler; she tells me when you are faced with a choice you don't feel prepared to make you are properly in a quandary. It's only when each of your options lead to the violation of ... January 4, 2022

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Taking stock While we all have the capacity to change, I think we are who we are by the time we reach adulthood--if we ever reach adulthood. I still feel about most things the same as I did when I was 17 years old... January 2, 2022

Two critics' Top 10 film lists of 2021 Civilization is the process through which the miraculous becomes routine. That's probably too big and obvious a statement for a column about movies but it seems true and I'm technically on vac... December 31, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1231 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/73Zq-1O... December 31, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Saint Joan Everyone who works in the editing trade knows the feeling.A story falls through--maybe you lose your faith in a writer or a source, or someone just flat blows a deadline--and you are faced with a hole... December 28, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Movie masterpieces — the best films of ’21 I haven't seen Steven Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story," but it is the subject of my favorite movie hot take of the year. "A rich and famous artist spends $100 million to ... December 26, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Just a football A few people have requested I rerun this story, which was first published in December 2018. Merry Christmas.The other day my mother told me a Christmas story I'd never heard before.My father was b... December 26, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1224 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_mYEyvG... December 24, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Fortuitous reading — a list of fiction, nonfiction novel suggestions from 2021 In Samuel Johnson's last great work, "The Lives of the Poets," there is a fascinating passage about the intellect and reading habits of one of Johnson's most important literary model... December 19, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Hear the year T Bone Burnett once said it all went wrong when the record companies figured out how to sell music to people who didn't really like music.People have tried to commoditize music since before we fig... December 19, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Gyms I've known We stopped going to our old gym when the pandemic descended and it shut down. When we were ready to return, we shopped around and found a new place.Karen likes the kickboxing and yoga classes and imag... December 19, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: SEFCA's film lists vs. mine I'm not surprised that Jane Campion's "The Power of the Dog" won The Southeastern Film Critics Association's poll for the best movie of 2021. I am a little surprised that it is s... December 17, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1217 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TktJkWh... December 17, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: All hope proffered A homeless man charges across Broadway against the light, causing cars to squeal to a stop and horns to stutter. The drivers see him, I think uncharitably, at least well enough not to hit him, well en... December 14, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Time and memory — no use arguing aesthetics In 1962, a French speleologist — a scientist who studies caves — named Michel Siffre spent two months living in total isolation in a subterranean cavern in the abyss of Scarasson in the Li... December 12, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The future is now Circa 1950, Katherine Anne Porter read a magazine article about what someone should do "if and when we see that flash brighter than the sun which means the atom bomb had arrived." She was di... December 12, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Time for year's best film lists As soon as I finish this column, I'm going to fill out my official Big Shot Movie Man ballot for the best films of 2021.It's a responsibility I take seriously, even as I recognize how little m... December 10, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1210 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UKAXaTB... December 10, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Remember Pearl Harbor Dick Schimmel was from Allentown, Pa., an encyclopedia salesman's son--the fifth of eighth children--and a lousy student. He wanted to travel, so he joined the Army in 1940. He told his recruiting... December 7, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Democracy for dummies Everyone who has written for publication has had the experience of being misapprehended. Nearly every week I'll get an email or a letter from someone who has completely misunderstood what I was tr... December 5, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: 'Tall Men' a memoir of Goliath "You notice how little [Wilt Chamberlain] smiles. That's not because he's angry all the time. It's because he's lonely. An outsider."— Bill Russell, 1968Wilt Chamberlai... December 5, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: ‘Get Back’ like being there with The Beatles Like probably almost everyone else who was inclined to watch it, I've been transfixed by Peter Jackson's three-part docu-series "The Beatles: Get Back" on Apple TV.It is better, at a... December 3, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm123 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rcx2AJBo... December 3, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Trash like them A couple of weeks ago, my Aunt Lois had an errand to run in Brunswick, about 80 miles from where she lives in Savannah. She asked her older sister, my 84-year-old mother, to come with.So the girls The... November 30, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Shohei Ohtani and the decline of civilization You would think it would have been a bigger deal when Shohei Ohtani unanimously won the American League's Most Valuable Player award last week.It is a measure of how things have changed that I hav... November 28, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Memory on screen We are in that time of year where we see a lot of movies. In a couple of weeks Karen and I will fill out ballots for various end-of-the year polls. I take my ballot more seriously than I take the poll... November 28, 2021

ON FILM  Philip Martin’s On Film video column will return next week.  November 26, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: America is a Gun England is a cup of tea.France, a wheel of ripened brieGreece, a short, squat olive tree.America is a gun.-- Brian Bilston, "America is a Gun"America begins with the firing of a rifle in the... November 23, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: A great American novel about an ordinary man In the 1960s my uncle kept a large library, housed in a room he called "his library," facts that seemed both marvelous and exotic to me as a boy. When I visited him in the summers, he would ... November 21, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Watching 'Succession' I'm thinking about what Roman Roy's new watch might mean.Roman is a character on HBO's "Succession," a soapy series about the miserable lives of a family of billionaires who, lik... November 21, 2021

To have and hold onto DVD I've been trying to get this column back in the newspaper proper for a couple of weeks; we've been overstuffed with reviews of new films and other features that take priority.I still get to ho... November 19, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1119  <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e... November 19, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The problem of pain I woke up Sunday morning and my right arm didn't hurt.I was stretching, and grabbed my right wrist with my left hand and pulled it above my head the way my doctor showed me. For the first time sin... November 16, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Billy Bob Thornton — our man in Hollywood We just finished watching the fourth and final season of Amazon Prime Video's "Goliath."I don't know if I'm prepared to argue that "Goliath," created by David E. Kelley... November 14, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Serving those seeking truth A friendly correspondent points out that about six percent of Arkansas' population subscribes to a newspaper.I don't doubt it for a minute. According to the Pew Research Center, only three per... November 14, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm1112  <inline type="text-show" title="" align="left" >D5ZUGbwTuaI</inline&... November 12, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: All the young dudes Some of you think Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero. He's not; he's more of a victim. Not as much of a victim as the people he shot, who can't be referred to as victims in the courtroom where Rittenhouse i... November 9, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Getting back to 'Let It Be' A couple of weeks ago I got a copy of the newly remixed version of the Beatles' "Let It Be." It's a handsome package: five CDs and and one Blu-ray. The list price is around $150, but you can find it f... November 7, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Involved in Anderson's vision, world "Maybe we can express ourselves best if we say it without words." — Anjelica Huston in Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited" (2007) It is obvious a movie is not a book or a song or a poem. A... November 7, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: 'The Storyteller' a glimpse at Grohl I lamented to a friend that I had once again gotten sidetracked off my serious programmatic reading. I had picked up the autobiography of rock star Dave Grohl, "The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Musi... November 7, 2021

Stories by Philip Martin