In the summer of 1170, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, royally pissed off King Henry II. (Pun intended, obviously.) Tired of listening to Henry whine, a group of his loyal followers rode off to Canterbury Cathedral and murdered poor Thomas, mid-Vespers. Fast-forward a couple hundred years, and Canterbury Cathedral had become the hot destination for European travelers….
The Song: “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” 1986 tune performed by the band Wang Chung, and written by Jeremy Ryder, Nick Feldman and Peter Wolf; three men who were, quite literally, ahead of their time. The Culprit: “I’ll drive a million miles to be with you tonight!” We know from Mickey Thomas in the first Lyricbuster…
So there’s this hobbit. You may have heard of him. He is unwisely chosen to venture beyond the gates of hell to destroy a powerful ring on which the fate of Middle Earth depends—a quest that should ABSOLUTELY kill him but doesn’t. He’s joined by a few burdensome, incompetent fools, mainly to emphasize that these are unlikely heroes (like most British protagonists), and…
The Song: “I Heard it Through The Grapevine.” 1966 song by Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield, who had a number of Motown hits which avoided the entropic mayhem they unleashed with this number, sung most memorably by Marvin Gaye in 1968. The Culprit. “People say believe half of what you see, son, and none of what…
“The lead character, Sandra, played uncomfortably well by Marion Cotillard, starts the film by telling herself not to cry. She pops a Xanax. Then she cries, pops more Xanax, and teeters on the verge of crying again in a non-stop cycle of self-pity for the next 90 minutes.” Nick Honeywell reviews Two Days, One Night.
The full title of John Bunyan’s 1678 masterpiece is The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream; Wherein is Discovered the Manner of his Setting Out, His Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired Country. It has been translated into more languages than any book, ever, except for…