Songs and the City

A horse is a horse, until he gets a song of course

Pine Valley Cosmonauts' "The Executioner's Last Songs"
"Jukebox" by Cat Power
Hank Williams
Cowboy Junkies

"When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes." — William Shakespeare from "Henry V"

A cowboy ain't a cowboy without a horse. And that's a fact. It's time to forget the rider for a change and pay tribute to the cowboy's best friend.

"A Horse in the Country" by Cowboy Junkies

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This love letter to the narrator's horse is really a song of regret, a rumination about the loss of passion in a fading marriage, the increasing humdrum of the daily routine, and the dreams of escaping it all .While "these cold fall mornings seem to bite just a little bit harder," our protagonist takes comfort in knowing her trusty horse is ready when she calls. "One day I'll saddle up and the two of us will ride away."

"Silver Stallion" by Cat Power

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Originally recorded by the Highwaymen in 1990, Cat Power (aka Chan Marshall) gives "Silver Stallion" the haunting treatment it deserves. Like the Cowboy Junkies song above, the horse represents freedom and limitless possibilities: "I'm gonna chase the sky forever/with the man, the stallion and the wind/The sun is gonna burn into a cinder/before we ever pass this way again."

"My Rifle My Pony and Me" by Rick Nelson and Dean Martin

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A duet by silky voiced teenage hearthrob Ricky Nelson and the King of Cool, Dean Martin, this gem from Howard Hawk's 1959 Western Rio Bravo perfectly embodies the independent spirit of the American cowboy: "Purple light in the canyon/that is where I long to be/With my three good companions/just my rifle, pony and me."

"That Buckin' Song" by Robert Earl Keen

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Not all horses are a cowboy's best friend, as evidenced by this rollicking Robert Earl Keen track. A horse named Bad Luck is destined to deliver nothing but trouble: "If ya got a bucker, don't ever buck around/that buckin' mother bucker'll buck ya on the ground."

"The Pale Horse and His Rider" by Hank Williams

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Speaking of trouble, a horse that's even scarier than Robert Earl Keen's "Bad Luck" is one that's pale and mounted with a rider named Death. As the fourth horse of the Apocalypse, he is followed closely by Hades, ready to "kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."

Hank, in this posthumously released gospel cut from 1951, warns sinners to change their ways or prepare for the arrival of the evil steed. Unfortunately, old Hank would witness the pale horse riding by just a few years after recording this foreboding track.

"New Pony" by Bob Dylan

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Taken from the vastly overlooked 1978 album "Street Legal," "New Pony" is a wicked blues number that pulses with life. Seemingly a straightforward ode to the narrator's horse, the overt eroticism makes it pretty clear that the pony is merely a stand-in for some wicked lover: "Come over here pony, I, I wanna climb up one time on you/Well, you’re so bad and nasty/But I love you, yes I do."

"Horses" by The Pine Valley Cosmonauts

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A man getting ready to meet his maker on the gallows dreams of his freedom. As is a common theme on this list, that freedom is represented by the horse: "I'd be riding horses if they let me/Sleeping outside at night and not take fright/I would ride the range and never worry/I would disappear into the night."

"Chesnut Mare" by The Byrds

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The Byrds are best known for such jangly folk rock hits as "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "Mr. Tambourine Man," but in my opinion the band really hit its stride when it veered into country rock territory in the late '60s. Written for a planned country rock musical, the song features Roger McGuinn's chiming 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and some stellar country-style picking from the vastly underrated Clarence White. Lyrically, the song tells of one man's attempt to tame a wild horse, a creature that's the ultimate embodiment of nature and freedom.

"Ballad of a Runaway Horse" by Emmylou Harris

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This Leonard Cohen-penned track is pure poetry, a beautiful song that expertly captures the connection between a woman and her beloved steed. As usual, Emmylou's crystalline voice takes center stage, wrenching every ounce of emotion out of Cohen's breathtaking words.

"Buckin' My Horse" by Sir Mix-A-Lot

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Umm, I have a feeling this song isn't really about a horse.

Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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