Thursday, January 5 2012
Howard the Duck: Trapped in a World He Did Not Make
Howard smokes cigars, uses profanity, indulges in pornography, and drinks. Despite his downfalls, Howard is not a villain by any definition of the word. If anything, these imperfections make him more human than any of his Hollywood alien peers.
Tuesday, December 6 2011
The Beauty and the Horror: Peter Jackson’s King Kong - Part 2
Jackson's film is as unwieldy and difficult as it is gripping and moving, expanding upon the exotic spectacle of the original while simultaneously steering the tale into the realm of tragic lament.
Thursday, December 1 2011
The Beauty and the Horror: Peter Jackson’s King Kong - Part 1
This film is keenly aware of the myriad meanings embedded in its cinematic myth and sets about re-contextualizing and commenting upon the implied politics while offering extravagant thrills and tragic, classic romance.
Tuesday, November 29 2011
Money, Sex, and Power: Contemporary Adaptations in John Guillermin’s King Kong
The 1976 King Kong updates this modern myth’s meanings for a vastly different social, economic, and cultural milieu, but it does so with a leaden obviousness that undermines its conclusions.
The Past Is Calling: Reconsidering The Who’s ‘Quadrophenia’
Everything Pete Townshend did up until 1973 set the stage for Quadrophenia. It’s all in there: the pre-teen angst, the teenage agonies and the post-teen despondency.
Monday, November 28 2011
From Spectacle to Elegy: The Cinematic Myth of King Kong
Like many of the Hollywood blockbusters that followed in its footsteps, King Kong was a barometer for its troubled times, a clear crystallization of many lurking social anxieties in Depression-era America.
Friday, November 11 2011
Why Not Pink Floyd?
Pink Floyd is perhaps the first truly underground band that cultivated a sound that was too remarkable to remain obscure. They willed themselves to be huge, and their influence is undiminished today.
Monday, October 24 2011
Drag the Dream Into Existence: Reassessing Rush’s Masterpiece
Moving Pictures is, without any question, not only Rush’s masterpiece, but one of those rare albums that epitomizes an era. It's a template of sorts for the way rock albums were made in the early '80s.
Wednesday, October 19 2011
True to the Game: Ice Cube’s ‘Death Certificate’
It was during the period between the Rodney King beating and subsequent court verdict that Ice Cube cut Death Certificate, a chilling glimpse into the anger and frustration South Central Angelinos were feeling.
Tuesday, October 18 2011
‘Screamadelica’ and the Altered State
In the context of Primal Scream's prior and subsequent career, Screamadelica is a miracle.
Friday, October 14 2011
The Album That Changed Everything: Massive Attack’s ‘Blue Lines’
Even now with all our understanding and acceptance of genre-mashing, Massive Attack’s opening salvo remains as bold and eclectic, as utterly assured a musical message as it was upon release.
Thursday, October 13 2011
“Something in the Way”: ‘Loveless’ and the Un-Invention of Cock Rock
My Bloody Valentine's Loveless stands as an album of (at least) equal importance to Nirvana's Nevermind, garnering a great deal of its importance for the way that it offers a gender-bending sonic style that severed the entrenched connections between the electric guitar and masculine phallic power.
Wednesday, October 12 2011
It’s All Right, It’s All Right, Alllllll Right: U2’s ‘Achtung Baby’
Pretty much everyone under the age of 35 views U2 as a bunch of overzealous assholes, but this 25-year-old can't help but still blast the group's 1991 masterpiece.
Tuesday, October 11 2011
An Album Found in a Trashcan: De La Soul Is Dead
Listening to De La Soul Is Dead means immersing oneself inside a funny but terrifying universe, where brutality and self-destruction exist side by side with smart-ass jokes and sex talk and good music.
Thursday, October 6 2011
R.E.M’s ‘Out of Time’ Over Time
On Out of Time, R.E.M. wasn't too big to be cool -- yet.
Wednesday, October 5 2011
Exquisite Corpse: Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Use Your Illusion I and II’
If there was a gravestone for MTV-style '80s metal, it would probably be Guns N' Roses' 1991 opus Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II.
Tuesday, September 27 2011
Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’, 20 Years On
Released alongside Nirvana’s Nevermind, the importance of Pearl Jam's Ten has been somewhat overshadowed by that record. Here is a young band, barely together for a year, yet confident enough in it style and aware of its strengths to release a cohesive debut album that would serve as a fine indicator of its potential.
Friday, September 23 2011
Miles Davis: LIVE in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1
This essential box set from Davis's second quintet, represent the last purely jazz sounds we get from Miles, his final statement on the music he grew up on and would soon outgrow.
Monday, September 12 2011
The Strokes’ ‘Is This It’ Ten Years Later
After 9/11, the Strokes offered rock escapism, three minutes at a time and they were not just a rock band, they were a New York rock band.
Tuesday, August 30 2011
The True Call of Slacker: 20 Years Later
Richard Linklater's Slacker commemorates its anniversary and finds an audience outside of twenty-somethings.
Wednesday, June 22 2011
To Be Or Not to Be Isn’t the Only Question: The Nature of Being in ‘Synecdoche, New York’
By desperately trying to create an authentic piece of art, Caden Cotard, the central character in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, ends up dooming himself to live what Heidegger calls an inauthentic life.
Friday, May 20 2011
When Greed Is Good
The economic system has only one purpose, which is to create wealth. In the market’s language, this is the only “good". If evil exists, then it must be loss, which is the opposite of the good. For Gordon Gekko, this is the only morality which exists.
Friday, May 13 2011
Unity: Bob Marley’s Legacy and the Global Uprising
On the 30th anniversary of his death, has Bob Marley's activist legacy been overshadowed by a manufactured Legend?
Tuesday, February 15 2011
Defending The Trick of Disaster: Neil Young’s ‘Trans’, Reconsidered
Nearly 30 years later, Trans remains the most baffling, bizarre, and misunderstood project in Neil Young’s oeuvre. Here’s why it’s great.
Wednesday, February 9 2011
Spiderland: The Experience of Sleep
In an uncanny way, Spiderland expresses our experience of sleep and musically contains all of its characteristics as noted by sleep researchers, moving from the uplifting and bizarre logic of dreams through to the possible psychosis that sleep resembles, while on the way touching on its sensory and restorative aspects.
Monday, November 8 2010
Offensive to Muslims? Give Me a Break.
I didn't have much faith in something as colorful, fun and, yes, decidedly feminine as Sex and the City to begin with, and the reviews stubbed out any remaining hope I had for this movie. Not only was it purported to be bad, but it was also deemed unacceptably offensive to Muslims. How could they all be wrong?
Friday, February 26 2010
J.D. Salinger and Jethro Tull: The Coming of Age Story Soundtrack
I’m not certain if it says more about J.D. Salinger, Jethro Tull or me, that when I think of the ultimate coming-of-age treatise from the trenches, it’s not a novel but a trio of albums.
Monday, February 22 2010
Return to Piano Island: The Blood Brothers, Revisited
Emerging from the West Coast punk scene in the late '90s, the Blood Brothers helped redefine hardcore before abandoning the genre in favor of a damaged brand of art pop all their own.
Tuesday, October 20 2009
Magazine: The Correct Use of Soap
Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap is such a wayward, iconoclastic record, so willfully out of kilter with its own time, that its sound-world and emotional landscape remain unique in pop.
Thursday, October 1 2009
Hey Buddy, Got a Spare Time Machine? Ask Pepe Deluxé
The day will come when Spare Time Machine is revered as the masterpiece it is by the crowd it deserves. Luckily, Tomi Paajaanen and James Spectrum have this happy pill to keep them sane until that day arrives.
Friday, September 18 2009
No Sympathy for the Devil
Over time, "Sympathy for the Devil" has been treated with huge fanfare and has become the common denominator fan favorite, but in actuality "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" gets to the core of what the Rolling Stones were.
Tuesday, September 15 2009
In Circles: Sunny Day Real Estate Reconsidered
In anticipation of a reunion tour, the two albums produced by the original Sunny Day Real Estate lineup get remastered and repackaged with extra tracks and expanded liner notes. They are ripe for revisiting.
Wednesday, July 8 2009
Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um 50th Anniversary (Legacy Edition)
Mingus Ah Um sounds like the 20th Century: it is a self-portrait of a man who helped define the direction of post-bop jazz, commenting on the country that created him.
Wednesday, May 27 2009
Remembering the Orphan: Final Fantasy VIII
Warts and all, the ambitious push to expand video game storytelling found in Final Fantasy VIII deserves a closer look at this too-often neglected franchise entry.
Wednesday, May 6 2009
Who Needs an Oscar Anyway?: Mickey Rourke’s Homeboy
Dismissed as too depressing in 1988, Mickey Rourke's self-penned turn in Homeboy brings an aura of sorrow more nuanced and poetic than that of his celebrated performance in The Wrestler.
Monday, March 16 2009
Jigsaw Falling Into Place: Revisiting Radiohead’s ‘90s Output
With deluxe reissues of Radiohead's first three albums in stores next week, PopMatters takes a look back at Pablo Honey, The Bends and Ok Computer.
Thursday, February 26 2009
It Starts with an Earthquake: R.E.M.‘s Monster
I have spent half my life being an R.E.M. fan, and I’ve consumed just about every album in their catalogue. So, at this point, I feel confident saying that Monster is unfairly maligned, and truly stands as one of their best.
