Features - July 2007 Browse archives by month...
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Books The Boy Who Lives On: Harry Potter’s Place in Popular Culture By Patrick Schabe [31.Jul.07] :. Harry Potter flew so high in popular cultural consciousness not by some force of magic, but by the simple, sometimes thrilling machinations of pop culture.

TV Longford: Next to Godliness By Boyd Williamson [31.Jul.07] :. If Longford were just the story of a flawless saint, it wouldn’t be very interesting. Instead, we see a nuanced portrait of a complicated and imperfect man.

Film Film Fete: The Best of Short Ends & Leader By Bill Gibron [30.Jul.07] :. PopMatters' film blog looks back at its first 12 months of reviews, previews, scandal, and scholarship, presenting all the best moments along the way.

Music The Essential Selection: An Interview with Beth Ditto By Robert Collins [30.Jul.07] :. Beth Ditto from the Gossip unveils the music that made her the woman she is today, calls L.A. girl punks, Mika Miko, "the best thing ever", and describes her kinship with Missy Elliott.

Culture Confidence Games on Canal Street By Vince Carducci [27.Jul.07] :. Consumers of counterfeit branded products may be dupes or they may be shrewd shoppers, but they are also communicators; people who demonstrate literacy in the meanings attached to certain symbols in the marketplace both of goods and ideas.

Multimedia “Technology for the Masses”: An Interview with Nolan Bushnell By Ryan Smith [27.Jul.07] :. "The games got too complex and violent. The complexity lost the casual gamer, and the violence lost the women."

Music The Depreciation Guild [New York] By Nathan Meunier [26.Jul.07] :. For the two breathing members of the Brooklyn-based band The Depreciation Guild, a love of intense rock music and the vintage video game sounds of the 1980s have melded into something powerful.

Books A Darwin Descends on Dover ID Trial: Conversation and Criticism with Matthew Chapman By Lyra Pappin [26.Jul.07] :. Chapman's latest book, 40 Days and 40 Nights succeeds in unearthing optimism in America's roots and finds their original faith: Freedom.

Music Saving Humanity: An Interview with John Vanderslice By Joe Tacopino [25.Jul.07] :. "I am in general very anti-government." John Vanderslice brings his political and economic sides to the fore in taking on the world's crazies.

Music Karen Dalton: In My Own Time By Terry Sawyer [25.Jul.07] :. Just as the ambiguous details surrounding Nick Drake's death led people to exhaustively make his sorrow sacred, Karen Dalton was soul country's undiscovered Ophelia.

Culture The Transformation of Generation X By Charles Moss [24.Jul.07] :. The fascination with the shape-shifting toy may have something to do with a metamorphosis this nostalgic cohort wants to forestall -- the change to adulthood.

Books A Lost Cause: Tim Weiner’s History of the C.I.A. By Chris Barsanti [24.Jul.07] :. Deep down, most of us probably know that the Central Intelligence Agency can't be nearly as cool as our popular media would have us believe.

Culture Carrying the Water: On Michael Eric Dyson By Mark Anthony Neal [23.Jul.07] :. It is Dyson’s ability to make himself and his work accessible to lay audiences -- ironically much like grassroots activists -- that makes him a target for those folk within the academy and elsewhere, who don’t believe that his work is rigorous enough.

Music PopMatters Picks: Say It Loud! 65 Great Protest Songs By PopMatters Staff [20.Jul.07] :. There's no time like the present for protest music. PopMatters has scoured the musical spectrum for the best examples of the protest song form, including anthems of great popularity and obscurity alike.

The End of the Potterverse By J. Peder Zane, Carlin Romano, Chauncey Mabe... [20.Jul.07] :. On the eve of the publication of the final Harry Potter book this Saturday, we offer a multitude of essays on the Harry Potter phenomenon from some of America's best book critics.

Music Master P: Ghetto D By Tim O'Neil [19.Jul.07] :. You'd be hard pressed to make an argument for Ghetto D as one of the great rap albums of the '90s, or even, really, a very good album at all.

Film Spaghetti War Flicks: World War II Brought to Life, Sort of By Chadwick Jenkins [18.Jul.07] :. I love Spaghetti Westerns, even the not-so-great ones. I even like the bad dubbing.

Books Work, the Sequel By Vince Carducci [17.Jul.07] :. Most people don't have the luxury of choosing to bail from a high-paying job to live the stressed-out, pizza-scarfing life of a grad student.

Music The Sunny Side and More: An Interview With John Carter Cash By Jason MacNeil [16.Jul.07] :. John Carter Cash talks to PopMatters about his mother's life and the process of creating the new June Carter Cash tribute album and biography.

Music The Last Cowboy in Town: Chris LeDoux By Dave Heaton [13.Jul.07] :. The rodeo songs of bronco-riding champion Chris LeDoux may seem like the work of one man, but they offer a window into Country & Western mythologies, old and new.

Books Nerdfighter Lit: Interview with John Green By Jodie Janella Keith [12.Jul.07] :. "I would also argue, and no one agrees with me on this but I will argue it anyway, that not all "young adult" novels are about teenagers." PopMatters talks to John Green about literature, pop culture, and all those Katherines.

Music Pretenders: Learning to Crawl By Adam Besenyodi [12.Jul.07] :. Their cathartic third proper album was really the last one under the Pretenders banner that could be considered something more than just a vehicle for frontwoman Hynde -- which is remarkable considering the ashes from which the album rose.

Music Je Suis France [Athens, GA] By Jennifer Kelly [11.Jul.07] :. Now ten years into its rule as one of Athens, Georgia's best-loved party bands, Je Suis France has broken out its most professional album ever in Afrikan Magik. But don't worry that they're turning into squares -- the big hit is still an eight-minute space-rock epic... about a whale's erection.

Music Charles Mingus: Tijuana Moods By Michael Keefe [11.Jul.07] :. This newly remastered version of the Mingus classic still sounds crazy after all these years -- crazy good!

Film The Head Trauma of Independent Filmmaking By Brian Holcomb [10.Jul.07] :. PopMatters' interviews Lance Weiler, Director of The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma and who, along with his former partner Stefan Avalos, is one of the real pioneers of digital filmmaking and distribution.

Music Quirk Rock: An Interview with They Might Be Giants By Adam Besenyodi [9.Jul.07] :. John Linnell of TMBG reflects on 25 years of music-making, the joy of reading and eating at the same time, and the removal of Hillary Duff's soul in an expansive interview with PopMatters.

Film A People’s Historian By Chris Robé [9.Jul.07] :. Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train serves as an important reminder to anyone academia-minded that professional advancement and the goals of education do not always converge.

Music Been Caught Healing: An Interview with Perry Farrell By Robert Collins [6.Jul.07] :. Perry Farrell already saved rock from the tyranny of hair metal. Now he’s back to save the world.

Music Carry on Compressing!: Joe Meek and 1960s Britain By D.M. Edwards [5.Jul.07] :. Joe Meek’s pioneering genius will not be forgotten, but overexposure to his work is like living in a hall of mirrors, on four hours sleep, tequila, and cotton candy.

Film Die Hard Neocon By Michael Serazio [3.Jul.07] :. In yet another Die Hard film this summer, Bruce Willis will reprise his role as John McClane. But can the public stomach the implicit politics that animate him?

Music More Than One Story Out There: An Interview With Henry Rollins By Chris Catania [2.Jul.07] :. "I just don't think we know the whole story... and for America that is very dangerous." The seminal hardcore rocker and sage spoken-wordist chats with PopMatters about Iraq, Iran, music and activism, and how contemporary culture profits off those who defy it.

Visual Arts The Master of Light and Shadow By Chadwick Jenkins [2.Jul.07] :. Rembrandt reaches into the dark spaces of his subject and exposes the subject's inner self, thereby confronting the viewer with the somewhat unsettling presence of another human being.

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