What could possibly be better than getting face time with one of the most legendary filmmakers of all-time? Getting face time with Almodovar and getting him to talk about some of Matt Mazur's favorite things: Jessica Lange, Ingmar Bergman, and actresses behaving badly. Generous, energetic and all-around amazing, Almodovar talks to PopMatters about his new film, Broken Embraces and much more.
Pedro Almodóvar’s newest feature film Broken Embraces is a beautiful homage to cinema, an amalgam of styles that finds Almodóvar's direction as graceful and strong as ever -- there is a mature ripeness to these new images, which hold a delicately hidden eloquence and heartache in addition to a profound strength. As is his usual custom, the director toys with linear composition and symmetry in his hybridized world, filling in each space of the frame…]]>In the 2008 presidential election, America crossed the Henson Point -- the point where we are a post-Baby Boomer society. The Rockist calls for a champagne toast.
Forty years on, where has Sesame Street taken us? As most of my Readistas know, I rather enjoy my role as a contrarian. When Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles died within a few months of each other a few years back, I told every one that Ray made a much more positive impact on society than Ronnie. A few months back, after the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Eunice Shriver, I told every one that…]]>Supergirl's summer costume change -- which included concealing shorts under her skirt as she flew about, kicking butt -- reveals a lot about our changing superheroes.
Last summer artist Jamal Igle caused a stir by making an addendum to Supergirl’s costume, adding compression, or bicycling, shorts underneath the traditional skirt. The debate over this choice has ranged from discussions of canon (“Have we ever actually seen Supergirl’s panties?”) to fashion (shorts and skirts are a faux pas) to the larger implications of the choice (namely, that the classic costume simply does not make sense for a teen-aged girl who flies). The…]]>Perhaps more so than any other artists, Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino defined the genre of horror comics in Japan, an influence that extends to the West, and also to the world of J-horror films.
A family of goblins rejects the newborn child of one of its own, a "nekomata" or cat-goblin, because the boy looks too much like a human. They set out to kill it immediately, but the boy is saved by a human who eventually goes insane (driven mad by the knowledge that his wife and child were also demons). The infant cat-demon eventually lands on the doorstep of a young woman longing to become a mother,…]]>One bad novel, gallons of cheap red wine, and spring-fed creeks of sweat.
“Rodger! It’s Mac again. I don’t know why you won’t return my calls,” the voice mail message began. “I mean, Jesus Christ, we grew up together. Look, here’s the deal: I’m starting a new art project. Don’t try to stop me. Ha! And, yeah, well, I need something from you. Okay? So just call me back. Alright? Fine. Bye.” Mac’s tone, as usual, is manic and tinged with a hint of malice. I try to…]]>Though Almodovar's work seems to have penetrated the xenophobic American critical monolith, winning Oscars and scoring major points with stateside critics, he has often been taken to task by the European press. Bringing a special insight into Almodovar's place in the world of European filmmaking is a correspondent from Madrid, who turns a microscope on Pedro's role in post-Franco Spanish cinema, and the importance of his work as a European auteur.
May 26, 2009: Pedro Almodóvar writes in his blog an entry titled “Black Chronicle of the Cannes Festival”, in which he analyses the chronicles published in one of Spain’s most important newspapers, El País, about the premiere of his last film, Broken Embraces, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The tone of the entry, as its title suggests, is not very happy, and it exhaustively details how such journal might have offered to its readers…]]>The former pianist for Antony & the Johnsons "awakens" with his most elaborate solo work yet.... and it features a plastic bag! Here's the story behind Reuben Butchart's boundless creativity.
"Make a left onto Head of Pond Road. You will pass over a small bridge. Follow Head of Pond Road, after about a mile and a half, you will see a miniature windmill. Go left at the fork in the road at the windmill and the center will be on your left -- #39 Watermill Town Road." Tacking on a two-and-a-half hour drive from Manhattan, these are the directions that lead to the Watermill Center,…]]>What many of the women in Almodóvar’s films do have in common, despite their characterization as victim or martyr or heroine, is that they are survivors.
Pedro Almodóvar’s career as a director has been inextricably linked with his filmic portrayal of women almost right from the beginning. His representations of gender roles, in general, and women, in particular, have led to both accusations of misogyny and conversely, admiration of his understanding and celebration of women in his films. These two distinct labels have been applied to Almodóvar throughout his career and while seemingly at odds with one another, both hold some…]]>Almodóvar’s insistence on pushing boundaries and transcending confining definitions of acceptability, gender, sexuality, and narrative structure place his body of work amidst (among others) a queer cinematic canon that acknowledges and appreciates his placement of queer bodies and characters in essential strands of the narrative structure.
Pedro Almodóvar is a cinematic auteur that refuses to abide by limitations (both preconceived and personal), whether they be limitations of the imagination, limitations of space, limitations of story or the limitations of gender and sexuality constructs. The panoply of characters that occupy his narratives is not particularly beholden to these limitations either. Assuredly, the most celebrated and critically acclaimed Spanish director of his generation, the 57-year-old director's work is celebrated amongst a number of…]]>What started out a back-to-basics project has turned into one of the coolest, most forward-thinking American metal bands of this decade.
Considering the other musical projects of Mick Barr and Colin Marston, it's not much of a surprise that the guitarists are taken aback by all the attention their band Krallice has received over the last year and a half. After all, these guys have never, ever specialized in any kind of music that would remotely fall under the description, "accessible". You've got avant-garde noodler Barr, who has lent his fleet-fingered shredding and tremolo picking to…]]>The ever-prolific producer/songwriter Butch Walker notes how live shows lack a genuine mystique these days, his secret for surviving a tour, and why he'll probably never see Third Eye Blind in concert again ...
See also "The Gospel According to Butch: Part 1—The Producer" It's often noted that the very act of performing -- be it in the realm of acting, music, dance, or any other artform -- can be an extremely cathartic experience. If this is truly the case, then, Butch Walker is in for one hell of a night tonight. Tonight, Butch Walker continues his run of shows at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles, where he's…]]>Hip-hop, as a culture and a musical genre, moves at lightning speed. Keeping up requires an awareness of our expectations and a willingness to revisit our assumptions.
Hip-hop, as a culture and as a musical genre, moves at lightning speed. Personalities, styles, and trends exit the scene almost as quickly as they appear, and the "next big thing" is always on the horizon. As speculative as it is, there's little hope of predicting what will be "hot" -- or what won't, for that matter. Remember Das Efx's 1990 debut album Dead Serious? It's marked by, among other things, Das Efx's style of…]]>A true passion for cinema is something that effortlessly shines through the work of the greatest filmmakers. We've seen homages to classic films, in this year alone, in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, Judd Apatow's Funny People and Lee Daniels' Precious, but no contemporary director references film history as commandingly as Almodovar.
Perhaps more consistently than any other contemporary filmmaker, Pedro Almodóvar’s ardent cinephilia is displayed throughout his movies. Alongside allusions to theatre, literature, dance, painting, television and advertising, references to film are central to the world that Almodóvar constructs on screen. From the very beginning of his career, the director has creatively incorporated allusions to the diverse range of movies that have inspired and influenced him; his work, as Jose Arroyo has noted, “borrows indiscriminately from…]]>Alison Brie, who plays Trudy on Mad Men and Donald Glover, who wrote for 30 Rock before joining the Community cast, indulge in a friendly, teasing, tête à tête of sorts, as they consider PopMatters 20 Questions.
Alison Brie, who plays Trudy on Mad Men and Donald Glover, who wrote for 30 Rock before joining the Community cast, indulge in a friendly, teasing tête à tête of sorts, as they consider PopMatters 20 Questions. Donald plays football jock Troy and Alison plays goody two shoes Annie on NBC’s new comedy, Community, which airs Thursdays at 8PM on NBC. The next episode of Community, “Environmental Science”, airs 19 November. Señor Chang (Ken Jeong)…]]>Content producers have the power to be whomever they want, but if they let themselves be dictated too much by factors like Google, page views, and ad revenue, they end up simply joining a droning, mundane chorus of mediocrity.
The Web is full of bad content and its dull cousin, mediocrity. What makes content “bad” is subjective, of course, but you know it when you see it. Someone’s idea of a blog might be blocks upon blocks of text ads, with the words of the so-called blog entry colored oddly and double-underlined. Beware clicking or even so much as hovering over these words because you might be transported to a site where images of…]]>Almodovar 101 takes a look at some of the Spanish auteur's greatest hits - from Pepi, Luci and Bom up through Volver, a crack team of PopMatters film writers/Almodovar experts from New Jersey to Madrid are on hand to guide readers through the vivid world of the director.
All About My Mother (1999) Mothers should die before their children. Or so the natural order would have you believe. But when a child is taken from a parent at a too-young age, what happens to the broken heart they leave behind? When the mother’s identity was virtually wrapped in a delicate tissue paper of their children’s needs and future, how do they move into their own future and go forward? The first step, according…]]>The popularity of the “pet memoir” can be traced to a lot of factors, ranging from honest sentiment to rank anthropomorphism. But our pets, and our books about them, reflect spirit of our age, as well.
Canine Crisis The current popularity of the “pet memoir” – John Grogan’s Marley and Me being the most well-known and successful example – can be traced to a lot of factors, ranging from honest sentiment to rank anthropomorphism. But I think our pets, and the books we read and write about them, reflect something of the spirit of our age, as well. Hemmed in on all sides by cultural proscriptions – the fear of giving…]]>Danish director Lone Scherfig spares audiences the trite clichés of a young woman's coming of age, directs a magnificent cast of actors, and defends her film against allegations of inappropriate sexuality.
“Coming of age”, is, generally speaking, something only boys transitioning into men are allowed to do onscreen. The very mention of this genre usually sends me into fits as these kinds of affairs are much like the paint-by-numbers “masterpieces” of my childhood: colorful enough but not entirely artistically credible. What can elevate such a time-worn trope are two things: an interesting directorial point of view and an intriguing cast that shines under the tutelage of…]]>They're not necessarily the “best songs” in their storied catalogue, but these are the songs through which (perhaps) we might gain the deepest appreciation for their popular genius.
We all know that compiling a list of the “best” Beatles tracks is a fool’s errand. For a band that has more admirers than Jesus (zing!), coming up with a list of 25 tracks that doesn’t overlook about 150 others is clearly impossible. A more fruitful endeavour might have been to try to compile a list of 25 lousy Beatles tracks -- at the very least, we might have stumbled upon something approaching consensus. Anyway,…]]>And, in the end... With the release of Abbey Road, the Beatles ceased to be a band. They became, forever more, an idea: the go-to example, the archetype, of the rock'n'roll group. How do we remember the Beatles? How do we pay tribute?
Abbey Road (1969) In the United States, Abbey Road has sold more copies than any of the Beatles' studio albums. Worldwide, only Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has sold more. When the Beatles' remastered albums were released in September 2009, Abbey Road was again the top-selling individual album. Why? Abbey Road rarely gets mentioned when the subject is the best Beatles album. Sgt. Pepper and Revolver usually slug it out for that title, with…]]>Certainly not!
There are people schooled in Western music and its culture who claim to flat out not like the Beatles. Those people, of course, fall into two categories. Serial contrarians and members of a secret race of human-cloning aliens that have been living among us for hundreds of years. Even Chuck D, the frontman for hip-hop's Public Enemy who once claimed "Elvis never meant shit to me", has admitted his fondness for the four lads from…]]>A touching, heartfelt meditation on identity and isolation in a small town, Jeff Lemire is able to redress an H.G. Wells classic and make it as timely and disturbing as ever.
“…Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” -- Stephen King “That man wears his skin like a dancer wears her veils. That man stalks his victims like a cancer stalks a cell. That man’s soul has left him, his heart’s as deadly as a rusty nail. That man sheds his skin like a veil.” -- Cowboy Junkies, “This Street, That Man, This Life” In Jim Jarmusch’s…]]>In the third part of his never-ending odyssey of late-night talkers, the Rockist endures Kimmel and bits.
I want to root for Jimmy Kimmel. Like Jon Stewart, I watched him develop step-by-step up the comedy ladder. I root for all comedians who don't send Lorne Michaels birthday gifts or watch NFL Sunday Ticket at Judd Apatow's place. In the increasingly vanilla American comic landscape, Jimmy is the refreshing mint chocolate-chip. Jimmy utilizes the same old-school joke building tools that Bob Hope and Milton Berle raised to an art form. He doesn't need…]]>The Prisoner's unapologetic payoff of surrealism and absurdism heads into that artistic realm where meaning is defined more by resonance than by immediately identifiable relevance.
The Prisoner: Fall Out, February 1968 With the 2009 remake of The Prisoner, the 'cultiest of cult TV', finally (or regrettably?) on the air (though still unscreened at the time of writing), it's perhaps worth a brief jaunt back into the heart of 'Fall Out', the final episode of the original 17 episode series, and one of the the most controversial series finales in TV history. The Sopranos' pout-provoking fade-to-black-ending is kids' stuff next to…]]>From 1968-1969, the Beatles went from being a fractious group to a merely fractured one. However, along the way, as they headed off in their different directions, they managed to come up with some of their most enduring material.
The Beatles | The Beatles 2 | Yellow Submarine | Let It Be | Let It Be… Naked The Beatles (1968) Once upon a time, there were two sides to every album. For “The White Album", there were actually two albums. The Beatles -- which was the original name of the album -- is a big record that has a lot on it. It was as a result of the public that it adopted its…]]>The Beatles managed to spend the morning of the next day, Feb. 8th, in relative quiet. On Sunday, they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and it was the night Beatlemania exploded.
Editor's note: This text is excerpted from the 2008 book, We're Going to See the Beatles: An Oral History of Beatlemania as Told by the Fans Who Were There by Garry Berman. The Beatles managed to spend the morning of the next day, Feb. 8th, in relative quiet. John, Paul, and Ringo avoided the mobs of fans awaiting them in front of the Plaza by using a side door, and took a stroll through Central…]]>The Yellow Submarine exists. It’s not a mirage, or a mind game. Someone, inspired by the Beatles, built the Yellow Submarine, and it exits to this day.
Yellow Submarine, the movie, is a great, great film for children and adults, and, in its own way, is as good a Beatles movie as A Hard Day’s Night. Released in November of 1968, the same month that The White Album came out, Yellow Submarine was produced with little involvement by the Beatles themselves. It was, in fact, at least at first, little more than an attempt to cash in on the Beatles’ success by…]]>The Beatles presented an outlet for people to express their emotions by offering musical and stylistic satisfaction. Listeners were united through a common cause: the music spoke to them and for them.
The 1960s are often glorified as a time of social, cultural, and political change. As the civil rights movement fought forward, the Vietnam War took a few steps backwards. Popular culture began to shift, and between the advertisement and entertainment industries a new breed was developing: the teenager. The idea of a grace period in life between childhood and adulthood was not recognized pre-World War II. Suddenly there was an age where people did not…]]>Rubenstein views dance much like his girlfriend watches a baseball game; the subtleties are lost on him.
Sunday night is typically my least favorite time of the week. The weekend’s over and the long work week looms ahead, with only a half-finished New York Times crossword puzzle and another depressing episode of Mad Men for distraction (I’m usually too burned out on football by that point). That was until, one fateful Sunday evening while flipping through the channels, I happened upon Can I Step With You?, a Chicago cable-access show featuring color-coordinated…]]>The psychedelic trilogy -- Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour -- stands as the artistic peak of a band that had retreated into the studio and found untold riches there.
Revolver | Revolver 2 | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | Magical Mystery Tour Revolver (1966) When they released their seventh album in August of 1966, the Beatles were distinctly restless. The rosy patina of Beatlemania was dulled, but its attendant expectations still weighed them down. Though their aesthetic palette had grown much richer with Beatles for Sale and Rubber Soul, it became increasingly clear that their fickle teenaged fanbase was not absorbing the…]]>“Never judge a book by its cover” is a good piece of advice.
Despite being North America’s only source for such great songs as “If I Needed Someone” and “I’m Only Sleeping” for nearly 20 years, the Beatles’ 1966 release Yesterday… and Today is mostly, if at all, remembered for its album cover. It featured John, Paul, George, and Ringo wearing white butcher’s smocks with various cuts of meat and partially burned plastic dolls strewn about them, all while the boys gleefully smiled. Various accounts say that the…]]>Comics have often used characters from Greek and Norse mythology to populate their books. What we see with the following examples is that the Beatles had, at the time, become the new mythology.
The 1960s were good for both the Beatles and comic books. The Beatles broke onto the scene in that decade, became an international sensation and left a path of screaming teenage girls in their wake. It was also the decade when comic books came back from the brink of annihilation and experienced a renewed popularity which insured its survival for decades to come. It is only natural that there would be a crossover between the…]]>Butch Walker talks with PopMatters about the music industry, the problems that young bands frequently succumb to in the studio, and why it's more important to write songs than design T-shirts.
Tonight, Butch Walker is going to tune his guitar, and he's probably going to crack a bit of smile. A knowing smile. One that says "I can't believe this is happening" and "it's about damn time" at the exact same moment. After all, Butch Walker has been at this for more than two decades, and tonight, Butch Walker gets to celebrate his success just a little bit. You see, Butch is in the middle of…]]>President Obama probably rattled and hummed in disbelief when he got his Nobel Prize. Ask Bono.
Is there anything Bono can’t do? He fronts the biggest and most enduring rock band in history, but has also established himself as a credible crusader against poverty and global warming. So long, Sting. As James Traub wrote in a 2005 New York Times Magazine profile, Bono is simply “the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture.” Now the New York Times has made Bono one of their own. At this…]]>From December 1964 to December 1965 -- re-meet the Beatles as they made the transition from the world's best bar band to the forerunners of folk-rock. Has any band ever had such an astoundingly productive 12-months?
Beatles for Sale | Help! | Help! 2 | Rubber Soul | Rubber Soul 2 Beatles for Sale (1964) Steve Earle was once asked what his “desert island pick” would be. “We're assuming I have a way to play records on the island?” he began (of course he did). “For me it would be Beatles for Sale.” Huh? He meant to say Exile on Main Street, or Live at the Old Quarter, or Nebraska, obviously.…]]>Aside from such obvious aspects -- including the difference between black and white and color film stock -- the back and forth between the films was also reflective of their burgeoning creative output.
It wasn't the biggest stretch for a suddenly successful rock band. Heck, Elvis had been doing it since 1956, and throughout Hollywood, DJ Alan Freed and his burgeoning rock and roll revues were getting some warranted big screen spit and polish. Yet for all their onstage savoir faire, the off the cuff cleverness and seemingly endless energy, the Beatles were not a motion picture given. They had funny accents. They played a progressive pop music…]]>While innovation is important to help push music forward, it is ultimately less important than elusiveness.
One of the most enduring Beatles legacies is the myth of innovation. Briefly stated, the myth of innovation suggests that the Beatles remain important to the history of music because of the innovation that went on in their music. I want to briefly outline the enduring legacy of this myth and then suggest that elusiveness is more important in long-term appreciation of the Beatles. The Beatles were innovative on every level. Musically, they invented backward…]]>PopMatters talks with Ed Falco and his niece, actor Edie Falco, about their life in the arts and Ed's gritty new novel, Saint John of the Five Boroughs.
Remember that cool uncle you idolized when you were growing up? You know, the one with the long hair, the motorcycle and enigmatic lifestyle? Well, Edie Falco has one of those uncles. In fact, the onetime Carmela Soprano, current Nurse Jackie, and three-time Emmy winner has an uncle who’s still cool, even if he is a little older. His name’s Ed, and he’s an award-winner in his own right, having won honors for his work…]]>The impressive part of 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t what they have in the future, it’s what they don’t have: clutter.
Once upon a time, before the acronym revolution that brought us VCRs and DVDs and CD-roms, before the Internet made so much information and creativity so easily accessible, Hollywood was the oracle. People would commune in darkened theaters or living rooms and revel in a fictional future flickering on the screen. For those of us born in the '60s, Hollywood told us that the future was only a few decades away, and that a shining…]]>Meeting the Beatles for the first time, what did we hear? Did we know? Could we have ever known? Today, we will look at the first three shots from the Fab Four, from 1963-1964. To Re-meet the Beatles, start here.
Please Please Me | Please Please Me 2 | With the Beatles | Meet the Beatles | A Hard Day's Night Please Please Me (1963) For North Americans of a certain age, the album newly remastered as Please Please Me was a prequel. We purchased it in 1964 as Introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay Records -- after we’d been set aflame by Meet the Beatles and unattached 45s like “She Loves You” and “From Me…]]>The Beatles were the first band comprised of four distinct personas. This aspect would take them on a long and winding road that would eventually splinter them in four separate directions. The very thing that made them so special was what ultimately deigned their end.
When the Beatles first arrived on the world music scene, no one could have predicted how the quartet would revolutionize popular music and set a precedent for all other bands to follow. Prior to the Beatles, many singular musical artists of the ‘50s and ‘60s, (with the notable exception of Elvis Presley) were almost all invariably associated with a particular decade, forever intertwined with a specific time and place. The Beatles, however, transcended several decades…]]>In 20 years, we've seen Revolver replace Sgt. Peppers as The Beatles' greatest statement. How long before it gets replaced?
If you grew up in the '80s, you were told Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was the Beatles' best album. One reason for this was the "It Was 20 Years Ago Today" nostalgia factor when the album celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1987. But other more intangible factors also elevated the album to the top. The '80s saw the emergence of the compact disc, a medium that boasted enormous sound quality and enabled bands…]]>Researchers have largely ignored the pop cultural value of the H1N1 virus: hours on the couch catching up on DVD.
I’ll tell you one nice thing about the H1N1 virus, it opens up a lot of time for home entertainment. After getting virally stomped recently, I spent an alarming amount of time parked on the couch digging into the DVD stack. At one point, I formulated an awesomely complex theory regarding Marxist-feminist subtext in the John Hughes oeuvre. But that was probably the cough suppressant talking. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone goes to the…]]>Ayn Rand set out to remake reality as if it were an ill-fitting dress: by sheer will, she tried to fashion a Balenciaga gown from a housedress.
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters Born in St. Petersburg in 1905, Alyssa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, later Ayn Rand, belonged to a family of medical Jews: pharmacists, dentists, doctors. But Judaism in turn-of-the-century Russia was a great misfortune, one author Anne C. Heller builds on in her excellent biography, Ayn Rand and the World She Made. Heller, amazingly, didn’t come to Rand’s work until her 40s, while working at a business magazine. Suze Orman, of all…]]>Can Gen X parents bond with the newest generation of gamers given the ways that cooperative gameplay has changed over the years?
No one needs to convince kids to play video games. The Millenials are a group that easily embraces the medium of video games. But since there are quite a few 30-somethings that play games targeted towards mature audiences, there isn't necessarily a clear bridge between the games that we like to play and the ones that our kids are playing. Worse, most modern multiplayer games are not designed to play alongside a small human in…]]>The Next Iron Chef is not a show about cooking. It is a show about people freaking out; cooking just happens to be what they’re doing while they’re freaking out.
By the time you’re reading this, Holly Smith has been eliminated from contention in the second season of Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef. That's a shame, but also a bit on the predictable side. I say this not as a reflection on Smith’s skill as a cook: The winner of numerous accolades including the 2008 James Beard Foundations’s Best Chef Northwest, Smith doesn’t need me to talk about what a fine cook she is…]]>These five films from the golden-era of the legendary Nikkatsu studio shows off the never-ending ways Japanese filmmakers were able to combine the best elements of pulp and epic Japanese storytelling.
Oh, the Criterion Collection. In a world where every conceivable artifact of every type of media is readily available thanks to cheaper production methods and the 'long-tail' effect of Internet-based retail and distribution, and where any arm-chair critic can find a ready audience thanks to the explosion of online venues (*ahem* Thank you Popmatters.com!), the good folks at Criterion play a valuable role, carefully curating a collection of films of quality and cultural value that…]]>The Rockist attends his most eagerly anticipated metal show in over a decade only to find... the Banana Splits?
Volume is every child's ultimate weapon. Betrayed by even their own bodily functions, powerless children wield a very limited arsenal. But they can scream. And they can yell. Fill your diaper? Howl. Get something shiny taken from you? Rend eardrums. The war between the oafish adult empire and the wily upstart child most often hinges on which side controls noise. At home, the big knob rotates clockwise, until the parent/ guardian/ property owner scolds “Turn…]]>Neil Patrick Harris is riding high these days. But in years past, if the average person sitting in his or her Barcalounger knew a TV star was gay, it would have been disastrous for both series and star.
Neil Patrick Harris' career is red-hot. He's won rave reviews as the host of the Tonys, the Emmys, and the TV Land Awards, and this year he received nominations from the Television Critics Award, the Golden Globes, the People's Choice Awards, and the Emmys (his third consecutive) for his portrayal of uber-heterosexual Barney Stinson on CBS' How I Met Your Mother. PopMatter's own Samantha Bornemann called his performance as the bed-'em-and-leave-'em womanizer "scene stealing." (How…]]>Starting with Nevermind, Kurt Cobain intentionally simplified his compositions in order to emphasize their pop components. Less song-focused than later Nirvana works, Bleach acts as an interesting showcase of the band’s musical chops.
It’s amazing to note that it’s now been 20 years since Nirvana released its first album. It only seems like yesterday that the grunge group emerged from the American indie scene to knock Michael Jackson off the top of the Billboard album charts, in the process bringing mass acceptance to the alternative rock genre and underground music in general. Despite this milestone, Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary Deluxe Edition reissue of the band’s debut album Bleach…]]>Using Ben in Leaving Las Vegas as a gauge to measure myself against, my life wasn’t anywhere close to as bad as it could be, but people who thought they had better control of their drinking than me still fuck their lives right up, so....
In May of 2001, I was 21, I’d dropped out of college a couple months earlier, and I was spending all my time and money on whiskey. I was a fuckin' mess: I’d broken up with a wonderful girlfriend; tried and failed to get her back; was still wrapped up with another ex who served as the enabler from hell; was powerfully infatuated with yet another woman; and because of my self-involved, self-centered, and self-propagated…]]>In the late '30s and '40s, Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys were the biggest stars in country music, but when he appeared onstage at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, he did so after a number of years spent toiling in relative obscurity.
The 1963 Newport Folk Festival boasted a roster filled to the brim with up and coming young performers including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Ian and Sylvia. Though the folk music revival was, of course, the main focus of the three-day event, other forms of traditional American music were present as well, including the Delta Blues of Mississippi John Hurt. Next, four men in suits and Stetsons stepped on stage, accompanied by a well-dressed lady…]]>Nicholson Baker writes from his enthusiasms, which are many and ever changing. Among other things, his books have focused on sex, John Updike, public libraries, and pacifism and World War II. His latest, The Anthologist, is his love letter to poetry.
Nicholson Baker has enjoyed one of the oddest careers as a writer in recent memory. Trained as a musician (a bassoonist!) and composer, he turned to writing in the '80s. His long short story, "Playing Trombone", published in the Atlantic Monthly (March, 1982), was a brilliant, funny, and fantastical description of life in a symphony orchestra. His first novel, The Mezzanine, took place on an escalator, and his second, Room Temperature, was about a father's…]]>With the recent passing of Bruce Wayne, can the Batman character escape the tragedy of Bruce Wayne's life that originally birthed it?
Batman holds a place in the popular mind so strongly, it might seem that the character emerged out of the mythological ether of the Olympians without beginning or end; never born and never to die. Like Baudrillard’s simulacra, it is easy when considering icons such as Batman to forget that they are the products of human imagination and therefore not mere copies of, in this case, the archetypal that have no existence apart from their…]]>The Rapture may whisk the Saved up to Heaven ... leaving all of their corporeal assets untended. For the business-minded, earth-bound heathen, there’s money to be had in the leavings.
As a non-believer who is nevertheless endlessly fascinated with the concept of the pre-tribulation Rapture, I have to confess to having gone to some trouble to view the movie Left Behind. This film, based on the popular series of Christian books of the same name, stars none other than Kirk Cameron as a character named “Buck Henry”, a cynical journalist who eventually finds redemption in the End Times. The Rapture, by way of introduction, is…]]>Upon the release of the Mountain Goats' latest album, the band's founder and songwriter talks about the literary influences on his prolific output and the biblical theme of his latest opus.
There is much about the work of John Darnielle that is potentially imposing, but sitting down to prepare for an interview with him I found the thing most daunting to confront is his generosity. Not the generosity of his vast body of work, necessarily, though there is that (since debuting his main musical outfit the Mountain Goats as a home recording project in 1991, he has consistently managed an album-a-year average even while eventually expanding…]]>More surprising than the still-impressive special effects and the jokes that hold up to modern scrutiny is the fact that there are moments throughout Ghostbusters that are legitimately scary.
“Let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area…” -- Egon, Ghostbusters Since the '80s, the closest I’ve come to caring about the Ghostbusters franchise was when I giggled at Spike the vampire during a 2003 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when he innocently asked Buffy, “Who ya gonna call?” and then mumbled, “God, that phrase is never gonna be usable again, is it?” But some friends…]]>Though several bands demanded double-takes, and many impressed, there were no obvious standouts at this year's CMJ. Instead, our writers found bands that exemplified standards for success, and failure, putting together ten rules on how to sink or swim at CMJ.
For an aspiring artist the CMJ Music Marathon used to be the opportunity to make it or break it, to land that exalting record deal, to meet that catalytic publicist, or to simply generate the resounding buzz that would launch a career into the next stratosphere. It was a must—because A and R scouts stalked it and, for some, success followed it. But we all know what happened next: the internet came, saw, and conquered…]]>At a time when country music was shining like a new dime, John Hartford and his collaborators were digging into old time music to find something new.
At the turn of the millennium or so, when country music found its way back to the ramshackle cabin where some of its oldest roots in bluegrass had been kept for years, they found there’d been a light left on. And sitting on the porch, banjo on his lap and fiddle at his side, was John Hartford. Born in New York City but raised in St. Louis on the Mississippi River he loved so dearly,…]]>In the world of "edgy" young adult fiction, there's a tendency to either bury real world consequences, or exploit the darker material for all it's worth. But where does that leave the young readers grappling with the content?
Few of us are immune to the sensation that is Stephenie Meyer. She dominates the bestseller lists, reduces teenage girls to catatonic wrecks, and has the entire literary world talking. Readers choose labels such as “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob” with the aggression of soldiers preparing for battle. Even I, a snob with a natural aversion to the subgenre of supernatural fiction, could not deny the sudden rise of the enigma that was Twilight. Journalists…]]>