Friday, September 24 2010
Director Spotlight: Oliver Stone
As Oliver Stone's update to the Wall Street hits theatres, PopMatters takes a look back at the influential and thought-provoking director, as well as examines the new film. We also examine the critical backlash Stone has faced in more recent years.
The PopMatters Fall 2010 Television Preview
All this week, PopMatters highlights the new shows premiering on cable and broadcast channels with in-depth reviews and trailers.
Friday, September 3 2010
The Best for Last?: PopMatters Fall 2010 Movie Preview
The next four months will determine is 2010 is a moviemaking "mystery date", meaning a possible dream, or a dismal dud.
Part 1: September 2010
Part 2: October 2010
Part 3: November 2010
Part 4: December 2010
Friday, August 27 2010
RiskTakers
What were the risks inherent in making these comic books, both creative, and commercial? And who were the industry leaders? Who were the creators who blended together the commercial and the creative to produce the titles and the characters we still read today?
Monday, August 9 2010
Essential Film Performances - 2010 Edition
PopMatters updates our annual best performances feature with 50 new performances and features interviews with five of the actresses selected, including Melissa Leo, Pam Grier, and Margaret Cho.
Monday, July 26 2010
Performer Spotlight: Sissy Spacek
It is with tremendous excitement that PopMatters shines the first-ever Performer Spotlight onto Sissy Spacek, a true revolutionary, a living legend and a completely cool lady who just so happens to have eyes that are so expressive they rival Bette Davis' legendary gaze in terms of just sheer impact.
Friday, June 11 2010
Director Spotlight: Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock's iconic Psycho turns 50 this week and so we're casting an in-depth glance at the entire career of the Master of Suspense over the next 11 days. There will never be another filmmaker quite like Alfred Hitchcock. His genius was singular and indelible.
Friday, May 21 2010
Forever Lost: Celebrating a TV Classic
As the beloved and bewildering Lost TV series comes to an end, we delve into what this show has meant to its fans over the last six years. This special section marks our last chance to get Lost!"
Thursday, May 20 2010
What’s the Write Word?
Over 100 music scribes are confronted with this not-so-simple question: "If an eager young writer cornered you and asked 'What's the best advice you could give me?' what would you have to say?"
Monday, May 10 2010
Retroactive Listening: Perspectives on Music & Technology
Technology has not only continually transformed the structure of the physical world, it has also radically altered the shape and sound of our audible world, which has lead to incredible, and sometimes questionable, modifications in our lives. An idealistic critic might call this modification progress; an evolutionary biologist might call it mutation.
Images and Distorted Facts: The 35th Anniversary of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks
Our look at Bob Dylan's classic Blood on the Tracks continues with how the album progresses through a Kubler-Ross model of grief and a look at Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Dylan's mid-'70s revival.
Monday, May 3 2010
Straight Down the Middle: The 2010 PopMatters Summer Movie Preview
More than likely, this will not be the best Summer season in recent memory. Nor will it be the worst. Unfortunately, it looks like the final assessment will be somewhere straight down the middle. Today: May films, including Iron Man 2 and Sex and the City 2.
Friday, January 29 2010
The Best Music Scribing Awards 2009
Covering the media now is like working in the obits section of a small town paper. Still, Gross finds plenty of music-related highlights for the eighth annual edition of his best music writing picks, sans PopMatters.
Wednesday, January 27 2010
Slipped Discs 2009
PopMatters is offering a look at those Slipped Discs, the ones that our writers dearly loved and thought were important, but simply didn’t draw enough votes to make the top 60. With that much great music to digest, we’re splitting these picks up over the next three days. So dive in and discover something new or revisit some of last year’s favorites.
Friday, January 22 2010
The Best of Books 2009
As you will see in the selections we present here, there were more than enough great books by great writers in the past year to more than make up for all the other shouters and malingerers.
Friday, January 8 2010
PopMatters Picks: The Best Film, TV and DVD of 2009
No, no fancy or fun subtitles. No all encompassing phraseology meant to delineate the entire 12 months in a particular medium. It was that kind of year -- 2009, the end of the new millennium's first decade. It was not a year where one filmmaker or film stood out. It was not a time when TV reinvented itself. DVD remains a strong, if starting to struggle format.
Friday, December 18 2009
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2009
Regardless of whether the past year lacked superstar moments or even a strong genre trend or two, we weren’t lacking for strong recordings. As ever, it’s a grab bag of styles, themes, and emotions, but this year proved to have a lot of quiet greats.
Wednesday, November 25 2009
Re-Meet the Beatles: PopMatters Salutes the Still Fab Four
Where do you begin? How do you encapsulate the legacy of a media myth that is still rewriting and refining its legacy some five decades after the fact? The influence is undeniable, entire generations of musicians and songwriters stumbling through their archive, marveling at the achievement and strident originality. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr set the benchmark for lasting pop stardom, a standard that to this day has the four lads from Liverpool earning the endearing tag of greatest rock and roll band ever.
Friday, November 20 2009
Director Spotlight: Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar is one of the most important directors currently working in film, a true legend. What is it about the great Spanish director that resonates so profoundly with spectators worldwide? His signature, colorful visual style? His keen awareness of and sensitivity to the issues of women? His audacity when portraying a large cross-section of sexuality in new, thrilling ways?
Friday, October 23 2009
PopMatters @ 10
It is this very week that PopMatters passes a milestone and celebrates our 10th Anniversary in existence: ten years of interviews, reviews, thorough features, and smart, analytical cultural commentary. From all walks of life with a wide sampling of global perspectives, PopMatters writers have spent the last ten years picking apart just about every aspect of popular culture and how it fits in -- and reflects -- with our modern-day society.
