David Luhrssen

Milwaukee

Art and Entertainment Editor at Shepherd Express

Author, Critic, Historian, Speaker. The original founder and Entertainment Editor of the Shepherd Express, Wisconsin's largest independent weekly newspaper.

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Articles

Film Clips: June 19, 2025

1 week ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen |Lisa Miller

(In Theaters June 20) In 2002, director Danny Boyle popularized zombies that ran and chased down their victims. Five years later, the franchise released 28 Weeks Later, and now, 23 years after the original, 28 Years Later. As before, the zombies are more lethal. One group of survivors remains safe by holing up on a small island, hundreds of feet from shore. Needing supplies, a male survivor decides to search the nearby mainland with his girlfriend’s 12-year-old son.
Milwaukee’s Day of Action, Anger and Joy

1 week ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

The approving roar of the crowd was audible two blocks away as Saturday’s “No Kings” Day of Action got underway in Milwaukee. Thousands of people packed Cathedral Square Park in the city’s Downtown and overspilled onto surrounding sidewalks. Passing motorists honked in support. Milwaukee was among many locations where events took place on June 14—1,500 cities and towns according to No Kings’ website.
George Thorogood and The Destroyers

1 week ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

George Thorogood and The Destroyers weren’t a punk rock band, but they played some of the same venues when they emerged in the late ‘70s (memorable shows at The Palms) and pointed toward the already half-forgotten music that became the roots for The Blasters and many other bands coming from the ‘80s. At a time when Johnny Cash resigned himself to twee evangelical tunes, Thorogood reminded us that Cash had once sung “Cocaine Blues,” covered on the Destroyers’ second album, Move It On Over (1978).
English Beat

1 week ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

The ska revival swept out of the UK in the late ‘70s and introduced the fast-paced predecessor of reggae to American audiences. The English Beat were one of the genre’s top bands, racially mixed and multigenerational. Their sound was fully formed before the 1980 release of , an album of original songs and unusual covers that testified to the English Beat’s depth and breadth. They turned Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” into ska without skipping a beat.
Monument to Black History Installed at Vel Phillips Plaza

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

In 2020, Thomas J Price’s sculpture Within the Folds was displayed on East Wisconsin Avenue, part of Downtown’s annual Sculpture Milwaukee outdoor exhibition. On Thursday, June 12, Within the Folds will be reinstalled in the Vel R. Phillips Plaza (401 W. Wisconsin Ave.), but that will not be its final destination. After June 2026, Within the Folds will be on the move again.
Lunkers, Keepers, and Ones that Got Away by Jerry. Apps

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

They say that every fisherman has a fish story and Jerry Apps shares many in his latest book. The lifelong angler and beloved Wisconsin essayist recounts four generations of family fishing memories—starting with his Depression era childhood on a Wisconsin farm. With cows to milk and gardens to tend, fishing on a warm summer evening was a treat, a time to relax and enjoy time together. Finding that time can be challenging nowadays but finding fish in Wisconsin shouldn’t be hard.
Speaking in Tongues by J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimopulos

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

Speaking in Tongues is a dialogue between two writers, South Africa’s Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee and Argentina’s Mariana Dimopulos, a novelist and translator who had previously collaborated with Coetzee. The hard to surmount challenges of translation are one theme of Speaking in Tongues—what if there is no right word for something in another language? And why does the German kaputt sound more final, more definitive than anything English or Spanish?
Drop by Soft Machine

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

Soft Machine were many things during their long existence as one of Britain’s most interesting … well, hard to even call them a group given their ever-changing lineup. Soft Machine endured as a name for a series of musical adventures that assumed different forms at different times. The previously unreleased Drop finds the British ensemble on tour in Germany in 1971. Founding drummer Robert Wyatt had recently left Soft Machine, replaced by Phil Howard.
Wisconsin’s Jewish Community Targeted by Antisemitism

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen

In April of this year, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was firebombed with the state’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, and his family, asleep inside. In May, two Jewish Americans were murdered in Washington, D.C. as they exited an event promoting tolerance. On June 1, 12 Jews including one Holocaust survivor were injured when a march to remember the hostages in Gaza was attacked.
Film Clips: June 12, 2025

2 weeks ago | shepherdexpress.com | David Luhrssen |Lisa Miller

(Red Arrow Video Blu-ray) A suave young man picks up a fashionable young woman at a dance club—and when two other guys plant themselves in the backseat of his car, trouble is around the corner. The Hitman: Dangerpoint (1991) shows a graphically disturbing rape scene—a gang rape aborted by the emergence of a man from the shadows in a long black leather coat. He’s hard-faced, laconic, and gets down to business, killing all three men with his handgun.