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Barrett Strong, the Motown artist who sang the label’s first major hit “Money (That’s What I Want)” and wrote songs for the Temptations and others, has died. He was 81.

“Barrett was not only a great singer and piano player, but he, along with his writing partner Norman Whitfield, created an incredible body of work, primarily with the Temptations,” Motown founder Berry Gordy said in a statement. “Their hit songs were revolutionary in sound and captured the spirit of the times like ‘Cloud Nine’ and the still relevant, ‘Ball...

David’s Quick Take for the tl;dr Media Consumer:

Mr. Freedom begins with a wail of sirens as Chicago cops swarm in to crack the skulls of rioters and looters. It ends with a catastrophic explosion that levels a city block in Paris and mutilates the body of the movie’s titular hero. In between all that, against a backdrop of Cold War intrigue and superpower paranoia run amok, we see scenes involving overt racist mockery, rape as a spectator sport, sacrilege, poisoning, prostitution, assassination, the sexist degradation of women and a pervasive attitude of unmitigated cynicism and ridicule toward the aspirations of the USA as a bulwark of liberty, democracy and decency against the forces of tyranny and oppression around the world. All the necessary ingredients for a robust satirical take-down of good old fashioned patriotism, American-style! The politics are radical, the humor is often guttural, and the...

When I went to see Captain America: The First Avenger this past weekend, I enjoyed it immensely. It was a fun, nostalgic look at 1940′s America and with enough of the Second World War as to not paint it too beautifully. It was corny, but in a way that you don’t mind. Like how a grandfather is corny, which in turn makes you think fondly and just shake your head and smile. Not offensive in any way, just the way Captain America has always been. And I even read the comic book when he was turned into a werewolf (he was known as Cap Wolf, turned into the beast by Nightshade. Don’t believe me? Look it up.).

It also had me thinking of other patriotic heroes through the years and ultimately had me come right home and give William Klein’s 1969 Mr. Freedom, a hilarious look at a...

By Michael Atkinson

Like a missing-link hominid stepping out of the jungle, famous photographer William Klein emerges on 21st century DVD as the great bullgoose Art Film-era satirist we never knew we had. Hallowed for his still images and his documentaries, the Paris-based Klein also made three furiously hostile lampoons that were nominally released, ignored and then forgotten. Until now, you could only find "Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?" (1966), "Mr. Freedom" (1969) and "The Model Couple" (1977) in scruffy bootlegs from pro-am vendors like Pimpadelic Wonderland . and given the movies' paucity of reputation, you would've had little reason to do so. A busy '60s shutterbug for the French Vogue, Klein more or less fell in with the Left Bank New Wavers (Resnais, Demy, Marker, Varda) and the Panic Movement (Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor both show up in "Polly Maggoo"). But his perspective was New Yawk pugilistic, his humor was mercilessly...