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Stories by Philip Martin
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Angel dust In February 1992, the White Collar Criminal's son told me there was a Pulitzer Prize in the dozens of file boxes he dropped off at my office. I went through the boxes, and couldn't find it.So ... July 5, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Unpopular opinions Baseball would be a better game if we moved the outfield fences back another 50 feet or so. It would make out-of-the-park home runs much rarer while giving us lots more singles, doubles, triples and i... July 3, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: A glimpse at 9 of the best films thus far in 2022 Consider how everything changed in the late '70s and early '80s when cable television suddenly (it seemed to most of us) put 40 or more channels at our disposal. Baby boomers grew up in an era... July 3, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/71onfilm <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gpRb31J50... July 1, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Courtly politics The judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power ... it can never attack with success either of the other two ... [it] has no influence over either the sword or the pur... June 28, 2022
OPINION | ON BOOKS: Did a man write Ferrante’s books? "Relationships between women don't have solid rules like those between men." — Elena Ferrante to Vogue magazine in 2014No one knows who Elena Ferrante really is — the au... June 26, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Elvis Presley still haunts us after all these years Baz Luhrmann's new Elvis movie is out. My sources in the industry suspect, more for reasons of logistics than quality, that it might have the biggest opening weekend of the summer. I've heard ... June 26, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The first insurrectionist Daniel Shays was nothing before the war, a landless laborer on someone else's farm.So when in April 1775, 700 British troops set out from Boston for supplies stashed by the Colonial militia in Lex... June 26, 2022
Attending film fest virtually The section is stuffed this week, so here are just a few housekeeping notes.I had every intention of making it up to the Bentonville Film Festival this year; but you know what they say about God laugh... June 24, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm624 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kFA_-SmV... June 24, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The Arkansas connection NEW YORK -- There is an Arkansas connection.That's why we said "yes" to an invitation to attend a party in the Crosby Hotel adjacent to the Tribeca Festival. It wasn't the Wagyu chee... June 21, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: A father’s mark The original version of this column appeared on Father's Day 1999.Facts slide through my mind reluctantly, heavy as mercury, nagging yet reticent. I remember old houses, sharp smells of wet dog an... June 19, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/617onfilm <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_M72TlMV... June 17, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: What's wrong with Watson Something is wrong with Deshaun Watson.According to The New York Times, over the course of 17 months, from fall 2019 until spring 2021, he visited at least 66 female massage therapists.I don’t k... June 14, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: ‘Madman Across the Water’ hits 50 I've remarked in this space before that if I wanted to, I could write a column about some cultural artifact celebrating its 50th anniversary every week. That's how the early '70s were, or ... June 12, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Ch-ch-changes I find myself talking--and thinking--a lot about change these days.Some people are really resistant to it. It's not hard to understand why. It feels difficult because it causes us to have to think... June 12, 2022
Returning to Tribeca for festival This is a getaway column; we're headed to New York for the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend.We haven't been there in a couple of years -- the 2020 festival was canceled and we weren't up... June 10, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm610 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YTXOVOBv... June 10, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Running man "When I first met you, you were larger than life."-- Charlie (Kelly McGillis) to Maverick (Tom Cruise) in "Top Gun" (1986)One of the reasons they don't often let me speak to th... June 7, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Al and Socrates Alcibiades was born with pretty much everything.He was young and handsome and rich, the scion of one of Athens' most distinguished families, the Alcmaeonidae, who could trace their lineage back to... June 5, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: A brutal reality — the state of violence in cinema We all have our articles of faith.Some people believe in the quasi-sacredness of guns, that they are more often the solution than the problem and, besides, like the poor, they will be with us always a... June 5, 2022
OPINION | ON BOOKS: ‘The Damage Done’ depicts the duality of mankind Why is it so much easier to write a sad story than a happy one?The simplest answer is that happy people are more likely to be out and about, getting on with their lives, instead of being holed up in s... June 5, 2022
OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Missing ‘Crimes of the Future’ at Cannes Film Festival I've never been to the Cannes Film Festival.We had a chance to go, back in the '90s, when the media landscape was way different than it is today, but we declined on the grounds that it was too... June 3, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm63 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y2FEYbVAH... June 3, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Here comes a regular I don't know of a game that's changed more in the past 50 years or so than golf. I've been playing since the late '60s and honestly don't believe I could go out and play a round to... May 31, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: The Momentary, a Crystal Bridges sister museum, puts American art in conversation BENTONVILLE — Think of the Momentary as the kicky younger sister to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Maybe like Princess Margaret was to Queen Elizabeth in the '60s and '70s. Whil... May 29, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Old news By now, it's old news to most of us.We've been through a couple of cycles--the arguments have rinsed and repeated. It's just to do with mental health and culture. Gov. Greg Abbott says &qu... May 29, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm527 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tNQ__xTi... May 27, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Nick wept College football coaches are important people.In some states, maybe the important-est. They get paid a lot of money, so much that they are often the highest paid wage-earners in the state.For instance... May 24, 2022
Raitt, Williams: Long may they run Traditionally, you don’t retire from the blues. Bobby Rush is still out there at 87. (He won a Grammy when he was 83.) B.B. King gave his last performance when he was 86. Cedell Davis was tourin... May 23, 2022
OPINION | ON BOOKS: Big bands recollected in ‘My Life’ The disc jockey was born in January 1935 when Martin Block, a $20-a-week announcer employed by New York’s WNEW 1130-AM, began playing records between updates on the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, acc... May 22, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Trigger warning Murder is banal.You tell yourself it's beyond your ken, but given the right circumstances, you could do it. Anyone could do it.The Army says it takes five pounds of pressure to pull a trigger. Som... May 22, 2022
‘Pleasure’ "Pleasure" is not a porn movie, it is a movie set in the porn industry about a young woman who aspires to be a porn star.No really. Maybe its trailers and poster make it look like a porn mov... May 20, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: This old house America is a young country without ruins, constantly remaking itself. Some civilizations have been around for millennia; if you accept July 4, 1776, as the national birthdate, we aren't even 250 y... May 17, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Graduation day I received an invitation--Karen says it's more properly called an "announcement"--to my grand-niece's high school graduation in the mail the other day.It looks a lot like the notices... May 15, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: (108) Days of Summer movies in theaters this year Summer can be defined in a number of ways.There's astronomical summer, in which the start and end dates of the season coincide with, respectively, the moment of the June solstice and the moment of... May 15, 2022
OPINION | REVIEW: French abortion film ‘Happening’ takes us back to the future Had it arrived a year ago, French director Audrey Diwan's plausible horror film "Happening" -- about a young unmarried woman in 1963 France desperate to obtain an illegal and dangerous a... May 13, 2022
Production costs low, enabling filmmakers I've had conversations with people recently where I've felt the need to stress the fact that at any given time in Arkansas, there are dozens if not hundreds of films in production.Most are ear... May 13, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm513 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qogvfHL3... May 13, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Little Texas A few weeks ago I saw a social media post that purported to demonstrate the relative smallness of the state of Texas by superimposing the state's silhouette over a map of Manhattan. I forget the e... May 10, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Trout Fishing tackles covid, isolation in new album "When it stops hurtin', it'll be all right."— Trout Fishing in America, "Safe House"One afternoon in 1982, in the downtown YMCA in Shreveport, Ezra Idlet must have fe... May 8, 2022
OPINION | ON BOOKS: Indigenous novel merits rediscovery Greg Sarris is a focused writer who has created a small cosmos, a fictional disestablished tribe of American Indians who live in Sonoma County, Calif.That tribe is the Waterplace Pomo, and we might be... May 8, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Hot takes, trash columns I know this is Mother's Day, and I love my mother and reserve the right to write about her at some point in the future. But the last thing we need is another sappy Mother's Day column.What fri... May 8, 2022
Arthouse film ‘Petite Maman’ recommended Celine Sciamma's "Petite Maman" is opening theatrically today. Go see it; it's terrific.It's about 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) who, after the death of her maternal grandmot... May 6, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm56 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-HlTRBhbd... May 6, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Duke’s heroism "It helps, I guess, to have something in your file other than the fact that you sold classified advertising."-- Duke TullyAn accomplished academic and writer of my acquaintance took to socia... May 3, 2022
OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Older motion pictures introduce us to our ghosts Movies began for me in the 1960s.The earliest film I recall is 1962's "Safe at Home!," a baseball quickie made in the wake of the historic 1961 season in which the New York Yankees' ... May 1, 2022
OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Might as well be love By our reckoning, Paris and Dublin will turn 14 years old this week.May 5 is their designated birthday--Cinco de Mayo--because it's easy to remember and a good guess based on when we took them hom... May 1, 2022
Arkansas Cinema Society hosts film conference At a visitation the day before the funeral of filmmaker Brent Renaud last month, I talked to several people about the lasting influence of the Little Rock Film Festival he had co-founded. A common the... April 29, 2022
ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s On Film column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm429 <center> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OsqB1FOZ... April 29, 2022
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