Wednesday, November 22 2006
Looking for the Perfect Off-Beat
This one is for the Afro-punks and black rockers and everyone else who doesn't see their hearts and minds reflected in what passes for mainstream black music nowadays.
Tuesday, November 21 2006
Bridesmaids Revisited
Take it from someone who knows, really knows; bridesmaiding is not glamorous work, but a hard slog at buffering the bride and groom in the social occasion war zone -- you are putting your body on the line.
Monday, November 20 2006
Talk of Two Cities
In this final installment of Arabesque, Ursula Lindsey tries (and fails) to say goodbye to Cairo.
Thursday, November 16 2006
Gay Icons: Judy Who?
Our choice for icons is about more than just high camp and melodrama; it's about who we are in a fundamental way.
Wednesday, November 15 2006
Analingus and the Borat Antidote for Cultural Thin Skin
He's the most polarizing figure in recent pop culture history, and our mainstream movie maven is here to tell us why that's a good thing - for comedy and for society.
The Profound Consolation: The Use of Bach’s Music in the Films of Ingmar Bergman (Part 2)
In the second installment of an ongoing discussion of Bach and Bergman, Jenkins examines the communicative power of Bach's sarabande in Through a Glass Darkly.
Tuesday, November 14 2006
The End of Your Life of One-Size-Fits-All Web Content
Web 2.0 technology and its current, epitomized representative, Second Life, is the beginning of the end of your first life.
Monday, November 13 2006
Freedom from Choice
Thanks to an ever diversifying market, our consumer choices are supposed to reveal precisely what we prefer. But is all this choice overwhelming our personal preferences and sweeping us up into futile overconsumption?
Sunday, November 12 2006
Feel Better than You’ve Ever Looked Before
There's a quiet revolution happening in self-improvement: rather than addressing our lives from the inside-out, we're now addressing them from the outside-in.
Thursday, November 9 2006
There is No Spoon
Trick photography? Optical experimentation? The purposeful playing with the cinematic language? Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov was doing it all, decades before a certain sci-fi film challenged the notion of perception vs. reality.
Wednesday, November 8 2006
Open Wide, the Gates of Hell
The enigmatic Danes in Mercyful Fate took such a straight-faced, deadly serious approach to its satanic themes that we were unsure whether it was all a big piss-take, or if they really meant it.
Tuesday, November 7 2006
Fear Factoring: Part 2
In this second of a two-part examination on the roles that fan appreciation, critical consideration, and subject matter play on categorizing horror film, our resident macabre master argues that unlike other cinematic genres, the basic tenets of the terror experience can change from year-to-year, generation-to-generation.
Monday, November 6 2006
Party Train: The Gap Band Story
Bringing the heat and creating refrains that still haunt brokenhearted romancers to this day, the Gap Band's potent mixture of party and pain was stunning.
Sunday, November 5 2006
Please Call It a Comeback
That scene in Superman III, with the boy yelling words of encouragement to the struggling protagonist? That's how I feel when I think of Lauryn Hill.
Friday, November 3 2006
From the Mop-Top to the Walrus: Some Funny Sides of the Beatles
Manifested in child-centered humor, the Beatles offered candy for the kids, tapped into the regressive escapist instincts of the arrested adolescents of the hippy subculture, and offered "seemingly" unthreatening fare for adults.
Thursday, November 2 2006
A Reluctant ‘Jazz’ Hero: An Interview with Trumpeter, Composer, and Arranger Steven Bernstein
The prolific trumpeter talks shirking musical definitions, finding challenging middle ground between 'fake jazz' and 'real musicianship', touring with They Might Be Giants, and turning down Jay-Z.
Wednesday, November 1 2006
Salvador’s One-Note Music Scene
In Brazil's third-largest city, thanks to the curse of Carnival, there is only one sound to be found.
Tuesday, October 31 2006
Vamping It Up
From folklore to fright icon, a certain naughty neckbiter remains one of literature -- and film's -- most fascinating fear factors.
Monday, October 30 2006
Kids’ TV: A Vast Stygian Wasteland
Kinder, gentler, and thoroughly creepy, today’s children’s television is no match for the classics.
Friday, October 27 2006
Gay and Gray
Due to AIDS and homophobic violence, many LGBT souls who fought so hard for the things we take for granted today never expected to reach old age... but they have.
