December 4th, 2009 | 12:27 pm | Nathan Southern

Writer-director-producer Robert Mugge reasserts his status as a music documentary pioneer with the spectacular 2007 effort Deep Sea Blues. Mugge’s subject, on this occasion, is Legendary’s all-star Rhythm & Blues Cruise – a perennial at-sea tour on a luxury liner that finds a veritable who’s who of musical performers engaging in a week-long series of performances, accompanied by hundreds of fans. Mugge and his team joined the cruisers for the January 2007 event –which took passengers to such Caribbean locales as St. Barth’s, St. John and Grand Turk – and documented much of what transpired on board.
This subject may seem narrow and specific on the surface, but Mugge wisely uses the event as a springboard to broader concerns. In particular, he shows how Rhythm and Blues Cruise proprietors Roger Naber and Judy …
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August 6th, 2009 | 6:50 pm | Cammila Alberston

Filmmaker John Hughes, the director of such teen-centric classics as The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Ferris Beuler’s Day Off, died today at the age of 59. Hughes passes just as a series of celebrity deaths have reminded us how nothing inspires geyserous outpourings of nostalgia like the mortality of our former heroes. But I think it’s fair to say that Hughes’ work has continued to inspire the same steady stream of deeply personal affection from its viewers since day one.
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