Thursday, October 26 2006
Face-Painters, Cheese Heads, and Other Revolutionaries
Fans who show up sporting a wedge of plastic cheese on their heads, or wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders, or dousing themselves in purple paint are really just the modern-day, class-defying equivalents of flatulent giants, cross-dressing jesters, and juggling scullery maids of the Renaissance.
Wednesday, October 25 2006
Sailing Rough Waters
Taiwan's legendary The Clippers are smart, edgy, and very adaptable. But when charting beyond their own sea, their sound is not always as well received as maybe it should be.
Tuesday, October 24 2006
Food of the Clods
As food becomes more and more sophisticated, today's home cook is faced with a daunting dining task. Too bad Laban and Larry aren't around to bring simplicity back to supper.
Monday, October 23 2006
Thursday, October 19 2006
Gay TV: Making Same-Sex Marriage Safe for America
At the same time that gay TV is shaping the culture, the culture is also shaping gay TV, containing it and restricting it from going "too far".
Wednesday, October 18 2006
Reel Australia
Hummel used to dread, simply dread, Australian-made films. But a number of recently discovered intelligent, evocative films have her singing her creative countrymen's praises. Here are some movies you shouldn't miss.
Monday, October 16 2006
The Great Wait for Oscar Bait
If there's anything to be learned from a review of the year so far, it's that 2006 will either go down as a terrible movie year or a tremendously back-loaded one.
Friday, October 13 2006
The Profound Consolation: The Use of Bach’s Music in the Films of Ingmar Bergman (Part 1)
In Bergman's films, Bach's music functions to give access to a rarified atmosphere of revelation and emotional depth; it reveals something previously inaccessible within a character.
Thursday, October 12 2006
Cooking Up a Fuss
The arrival of the celebrity TV chef is parallel to the rise of the techno DJ: both feed upon our hedonistic fin-de-siècle desires. The rave scene gave us mass love-ins driven by repetitive beats and illicit substances. The chefs do it by teaching us how to knock up cordon bleu dishes in only 20 minutes between the moment we get home from work and the moment we head out again to get blotto.
Wednesday, October 11 2006
Walking Away From It All: The New Great American Fantasy
Walking away from it all to pursue a quieter, less complicated life is an oft-recurring theme in American culture, from Henry David Thoreau's 1854 Walden to the 1932 Scarface and countless other sagas of the underworld – right up to the present day's Dave Chappelle and Aaron McGruder.
Tuesday, October 10 2006
Fascist, Fascist, Who’s A Fascist?
The term "fascism" is being appropriated, inappropriately, by a range of political interests in the US – including the Republican Party.
Monday, October 9 2006
Virtual Utopia
Utopias we can recognize as such are doomed to failure, forever resigned to fantasy. Is online universe Second Life such a place, where one experiments harmlessly with fantasy, or is it an organic necessity, an inevitable outgrowth of an intolerable present?
Friday, October 6 2006
Or Are You Just Glad to See Me?
This month, our cinematic classicist looks at the human love of firepower, and how one forgotten film noir in particular encapsulated everything good and bad, appealing and appauling, about this obsession with guns.
Thursday, October 5 2006
Blind Guardian’s Twisted Myths
For Hansi Kürsch, lead singer of Germany's Blind Guardian, there's no Justin Hawkins flash, no DragonForce pub chants, no hipster-pandering irony. If he's going to sing about faeries and orcs, he's going to do so and mean every damned outlandish lyric.
Wednesday, October 4 2006
Skunk Ape Confidential
From his humble roots as a woodland myth to his starring roles in several '70s monster movies, Bigfoot remains the Me Decades most misunderstood manbeast -- and most unlikely cultural icon.
Tuesday, October 3 2006
When Harry Googled Sally
A terrifying glimpse of what can happen when modern technology meets Happily Ever After.
Monday, October 2 2006
Unsung Heroes: The Band of Extraordinary Women
Huff fantasizes about wielding Diddy-like power to create a supergroup of underrated, under-the-radar female musicians. Danity Kane, eat your heart out.
Friday, September 29 2006
The Saga of Sagi Society
We ReDotPoppers find ourselves in the moment of con, in an age of deceit, trapped within the epoch of cheat, run-through by an ideology of insincerity. It is definitely time for a new Emperor, a Hisato, whose name includes virtue.
Thursday, September 28 2006
Fear Factoring: Part I
What elements categorize a horror film? Monsters? Murders? Mood and atmosphere? In this first of a two part examination on the subject, our resident macabre master argues that unlike other cinematic genres, the basic tenets of the terror experience can be difficult to clearly delineate.
Wednesday, September 27 2006
It Shall Be Released
Rubenstein looks back at the release of a number of highly anticipated albums to contrast his opinions then and now. How much does personal expectation factor into our ultimate enjoyment of music?
