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…]]>Stealing Kurt Vonnegut books? Getting choked up during M*A*S*H? Appleseed Cast frontman Chris Crisci talks about all of these things and more as his folk-affected side-project releases their second album.
Chris Crisci is no doubt a little bit bored with convention. Although Crisci is best known for fronting celebrated post-rock act The Appleseed Cast, he's devoted quite a bit of time over the years to one of his favorite side-projects: the upbeat alt-country sound of Old Canes, a group who -- until recently -- had only released one album (2004's Early Morning Hymns). That disc was recorded in his home on a simple eight-track machine,…]]>Film adaptations from black masterpieces -- and the Chitlin Circuit -- are rejuvenating America's Black Arts Movement.
When it was announced that Tyler Perry would direct the screen version of Ntozake Shange's seminal black womanist work For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, there was a collective moan of pain from black women all over America. Though I feel their pain, some of the sentiment's expressed over the blogosphere were sadly lacking in any form of analysis that connected the dots between the Black Arts Movement which…]]>Despite the efforts of some to dismiss it as a prank, Antichrist is a serious film and its disturbing extremes speak of broad and deeply felt moral, social, and ultimately, political anxieties.
Even for a Lars Von Trier film, the critical reaction to Antichrist has been unusually hostile. Met with derisive laughter, booing, and walkouts at Cannes, the film was dismissed by some as little more than arthouse 'torture porn'. Others questioned the film's sincerity, branding it a kind of hoax, the work of an attention-seeking provocateur having a joke at his audience's expense. The Guardian called it "a smirking contraption of a film", while for the…]]>In the second installment of his overseas correspondence, the Rockist gets robbed. And this time, not by an American corporation.
Jason Bourne and James Bond make navigating the winding narrow streets of continental Europe at high speed with a Mini-Cooper seem like an effortless joy-ride. On foot, attempting to make heads or tails of cities laid out with all the careful forethought of Middle Ages urban planning will inevitably transform you and your traveling companion into people too obnoxious for Road Rules, forget about The Amazing Race. I don't recommend getting completely lost together 20…]]>Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of Ghost Hunters have transcended the paranormal entertainment niche, become lasting pop-culture mainstays, and are busiest men in the ghost business.
After dealing with demons, ghosts and poltergeists, you wouldn't think the stars of Syfy's Ghost Hunters would be bested by group of Colorado kids. Still, while investigating the case of a little boy haunted by dead celebrities, Jason Hawes wet his pants -- and Grant Wilson, Hawes' co-star of the supernatural reality-TV show, experienced much, much worse incontinence issues -- before running out of the house screaming, all the way back to their homes in…]]>To paraphrase Nietzsche, when fighting monsters one should be careful not to become one, but that’s a major reason why many people fish: to slay the proverbial dragon.
Fishermen come in various shapes and sizes, especially in popular culture. Traditionally, they’ve been depicted in literature and film in ways that typically accentuate their positive characteristics. However, one of the more atypical depictions worthy of investigation is that of the fisherman-monster. Book: The Compleat Angler Author: Izaak Walton Publisher: BiblioLife Publication date: 2009-01 Length: 408 pages Format: Hardcover Price: $27.99 Image: http://www.popmatters.com/images/misc_art/j/justice-compleatangler-cove.jpgThe English writer Izaak Walton was mostly responsible for establishing the cultural prototype…]]>Chernikowski's 35mm black-and-white stills (a sampling of which is included in the Museum of Modern Art’s Looking at Music: Side 2 exhibit this fall) exude more than just an appreciation for the magnetic personalities they capture, but also a sense of discovery.
"My encounters with Jean-Michel Basquiat were frequently intense. We both rented from Andy Warhol and shared a courtyard, but we didn’t really know each other. I looked out the back window one day and saw Jean-Michel and his assistant in their doorway waving, so I waved back. They waved more frantically, so I opened the door. Jean-Michel said, “There’s a dead guy out here, what should we do?" I suggested they call 911. They did,…]]>Stealing penguins! A secret connection with Garfield! Dropping fruit pastille in the primordial ooze! Experimental UK noise duo Fuck Buttons discuss this and more.
When our own Dara Kartz reviewed Fuck Buttons' acclaimed debut album Street Horrrsing last year, she heralded the experimental British duo for being able to "put together an entirely unpredictable journey of sound here, [as] it masterfully lends itself to the group's intentions of mixing light and dark." That dichotomy -- the battle of light and darkness -- perfectly surmises the sound that Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung have been able to put together…]]>No matter the vercity of the tale, The Haunting in Connecticut has just enough creep quotient to keep me engaged, especially since I grew up a few miles from the house.
With Halloween around the corner, I've begun filling up my Netflix queue with scary movies of the haunted house variety, i.e., Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, and The Exorcist. As part of my scare fest, I recently re-watched The Haunting in Connecticut, not only because it's of the haunted house variety, but because I grew up in the town where the house is. In 1988, rumors about a haunted house across the street from the local…]]>With a new understanding of herself (and a new album to go with), the innovative singer Meshell Ndegeocello freely talks about some of her controversial lyrics, her deepest inspirations, and how she's reached a point where she doesn't need to prove anything anymore ...
To immerse oneself in the music of Meshell Ndegeocello is to be reminded that the spirits of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Jimi Hendrix still reside among the living. Truly one of the most innovative artists of her generation, Meshell has pulled off the remarkable feat of delivering one aural masterpiece after another for more than 16 years. Notwithstanding the pressures of working in an industry in which fans and tastemakers alike routinely confuse the…]]>From a balcony overlooking the flood of New Orleans to 'The Bubble' laundromat, where the city's characters come to wash it all out, award-winning author Barb Johnson talks with PopMatters 20 Questions.
“Except for the stink and the heat and the mosquitoes, it was beautiful at night. Like being out in the country,” says Barb Johnson of living on her balcony post-hurricane Katrina and working on her collection of short stories, More of This World or Maybe Another (Harper Collins, October) often by the light of a headlamp. None of the stories is about the hurricane, though. They are, instead, about the often chaotic lives of a…]]>If the furor surrounding Limbaugh's possible entrance into the league has to do with this political disposition, it's laughable to suggest that the rest of the owners don't share his views to a large extent.
Though it was never likely in the first place, Rush Limbaugh's failed bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams should have been allowed to go forward. Before the comments begin to fly, let me be clear. This is no way an apology for the conservative demagogue's ideological leanings, nor is it a defense of amoral free-marketry. On the contrary, I find Rush's megawatt opining to be distasteful, vainglorious, and just downright wrong. And while he…]]>Erlend Øye chats with PopMatters about the influence of French house music, his hatred of flutes, and why his dashing musical partner is such a hit with teenage Korean girls.
Before this month, Norwegian acoustic duo Kings of Convenience had released only two albums in eight years, spending much of their time apart pursuing electro-pop side projects and making babies. On the heels of their October 20 release, Declaration of Dependence, co-singer/songwriter Erlend Øye chats with PopMatters about the influence of French house music, his hatred of flutes, and why his dashing musical partner is such a hit with teenage Korean girls. +++ Perhaps no…]]>Profondo Rosso, the Dario Argento store in Rome, hints at a dramatic cultural shift taking place in Italy regarding the appreciation and analysis of classic Italian horror films.
Rome is among the most beautiful, fascinating, interesting, and intellectually stimulating cities in the world. Indeed, few places are able to bring together majestic structures of an ancient culture, marvelous medieval constructions, beautiful art works from the renaissance period, and the luscious amenities of modern day life. Personally, my most favorite sites are the Roman Colosseum, the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in the Vatican museum, Michelangelo’s Moses in San Pietro in…]]>Compared to the modern-day American, their dogs have the best of everything: questionable intelligence (i.e., happiness), poor memories (i.e., forgiveness), and low expectations (i.e., contentment).
As someone who’s written quite a bit about politics as a cultural phenomenon, I feel I’ve been remiss in avoiding the subject of late. Thus, an article about health care reform in the US. Now before you close the cap on your bottle of Ambien, thinking this is going to be a snoozer, rest assured that I’ll attempt to cleverly combine the topic with an infinitely more pleasing one: the benefits, health care and otherwise,…]]>Natalie Portman popped headphones onto Zach Braff's head and said, "This song will change your life." The resulting sound was not only that of carefully composed dullness, but of a million wealthy white kids investing in dull acoustic music to soundtrack their own romantic melodrama.
"I don't necessarily think 26-year-old white guys are that interesting. So why would I want to make another movie about their coffee shops and romantic pratfalls?" -- David Gordon Green, writer/director, All the Real Girls "I want everyone to be quiet for this next song. It's a really personal song to me. And no, I'm serious -- I want everyone to be quiet." -- Un-named Nashville singer/songwriter Turn on the TV at any given moment…]]>There were plenty of films in the New York Film Festival that captured similar redemptive moments and there is nothing esoteric, depressing or arduous about that.
This year’s New York Film Festival was quiet and unassuming, except for the fuss made by critics over it being quiet and unassuming. Jeffrey Wells wrote, “The NYFF selection committee has become a gathering of Trappist monks who've been slurping too much goat's milk with their granola.” In the New York Times, A.O. Scott called it “a panorama of pessimism notable for its exhausting rigor and relentless consistency,” while Stephen Holden said, “As it gazes…]]>When the author of a sitcom-styled novel about Mexican heritage cannot resist mentioning the modern-day carnage, then it's fair to assume that the murders have become a significant part of the national identity.
A valuable lesson was learned on the treacherous road that led to the creation of this month’s column, a journey that began as a review of Amigoland, the debut novel by Oscar Casares, and ended with the vow that I shall never again attempt to understand Mexico, not through literature and history and scholars, nor through the field and clinical data compiled by sociologists and ethnologists. The Mexican psyche and character is a slippery beast…]]>Prevailing wisdom is a funny thing, and the sense that people don’t have the time or patience to work through a complicated work of journalism has taken hold among many of the people and institutions that used to win awards for it.
Before I was a writer, I was a reader. I wouldn’t call myself the voracious sort of reader as a youth, but I do recall having a particular interest in reading about sports and music, interests not at all atypical for a teenaged boy (although I suspect that not many teenaged boys first encountered Norman Mailer through his account of the 1971 Ali-Frazier fight). By the time I was a senior in high school, I’d…]]>This is my story of how the new media world impacted my life, as a rural Victorian with a big dream. How it changed, and continues to change, my everyday life. How it made me a writer, gave me the confidence to undertake post graduate study, how it gave me the edge I needed to get the job I now utterly love.
“You gotta get out of Ky.” Since I was a kid, I’ve heard that phrase repeated by parents, teachers, siblings, and friends. In context, it means, simply, in order to succeed, to really achieve anything, you must leave home. And not just any home: this home, this tiny little enclave, this trap, where banality and boredom are the orders of the day. Tumbleweeds don’t roll by here, because even they have better places to be.…]]>PopMatters sends its weekly culture columnist abroad, with hopefully a one-way ticket.
One of the many benefits offered professional journalists is the opportunity to travel. Yes, for only the cost of a degree from a very selective university and an apprenticeship spent covering the minutiae of the Sycamore County Board, professional journalists enjoy a run of press junkets. Major media companies put them up at Ritzs in Venice or London. While Owen Wilson picks at his bandages, the professional journalist can ask soul-baring questions like, “When will…]]>The legendary Italian maestro is responsible for some of the most iconic film scores in history, and at 81 years old is still going strong.
It's unfortunate to be forced to re-edit this piece with the news that Ennio Morricone's first ever L.A. performance, scheduled for Oct. 25 at The Hollywood Bowl, has been postponed indefinitely. Speaking with Morricone long distance from his Italian villa, via a translator, was a truly unique and special experience. The legendary Italian maestro is responsible for some of the most iconic film scores in history, and -- at 81 years old -- he's still…]]>Two recent releases by leading saxophonists Chris Potter and James Carter raise the question of the utility—or the misuses—of virtuosity in jazz.
There was a time, perhaps, when playing jazz was much more a matter of soul than technique. But that time—if it ever truly existed—is decades gone. Today there are scores of jazz studies programs in colleges and universities in every region of the country. The most famous jazz schools—Berklee, North Texas State, New England Conservatory—have their own distinctive styles and proclivities. In short, jazz has become a kind of industry (if a low-paying one), and…]]>In the comics industry, the hit-driven economy was already decimated in the early ‘90s. It is in this way that comics' recent history becomes a roadmap for the navigations that await the major genre of the popular culture mainstream.
He'll leave me alone and in return I'll stay quiet. -- Frank Miller The Dark Knight Returns Hushmoney It is truly strange watching the Bonus Features disc to 2005's Batman Begins all these many years after. Truly strange because, viewing the assembled footage and various documentaries on this disc now, opens a vista on how very much meaning there was to the making this film. Engineers had built The Tumbler, the 21st century Batmobile, in…]]>Network TV will more likely than not remain the pagan idol of the American living room, and continue to produce the shows that most people watch on their laptops and handsets for the foreseeable future.
In the last decade, the medium for delivering video entertainment has gotten smaller and smaller and far more portable. Home televisions began to give way to computer screens and laptops. Cell phones became more than just phones, putting access to primetime television literally in the hands of millions of viewers. Streaming video has turned Hulu into a household name and has cable TV providers running scared as Netflix places itself to become a giant slayer…]]>Between the Internet, DVRs, and DVDs, television viewers have been almost completely freed from the vagaries of network scheduling. We can watch our favorite shows whenever we want.
It’s been 10 years since PopMatters opened its virtual doors as a website dedicated to covering all things pop culture. In those 10 years, plenty has changed on the popular landscape: books can now be read on handheld computer devices, movies can be seen projected digitally with no film involved, and the music business has imploded to the point where obscure indie rock bands can make the Top 10 of the Billboard album chart, frequently…]]>The Five Deadly Venoms are leading the charge of a thriving bluegrass scene in Brooklyn.
The afternoon smelled like mist and mountain as we drove into Floyd, Virginia. The previous night massive thunderstorms had ravaged the region. That our plane had even flown through from Chicago was an act of fortunate, albeit close call timing. Fabian and I had just DJ’d the Chicago World Music Festival, en route to meet up with our friends on the eastern leg of the Asian Massive tour. Policemen in Stetson hats and tight Levi’s…]]>Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap is such a wayward, iconoclastic record, so willfully out of kilter with its own time, that its sound-world and emotional landscape remain unique in pop.
Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap is such a wayward, iconoclastic record, so willfully out of kilter with its own time, that its sound-world and emotional landscape remain unique in pop. At the centre of this peculiar masterpiece is Howard Devoto, surely one of the most influential yet undeservedly obscure figures in pop history. As the original frontman in the Buzzcocks, Devoto graced the grooves of the seminal punk EP Spiral Scratch, but left the…]]>Jack Webb's glum radio series 'Pete Kelly's Blues' is a sigh of a tribute to the roaring '20s, a melancholic parade of blistering jazz and the pointlessness of its own nostalgia.
Pete Kelly's Blues, 'Dr Jonathan Budd' (September 19, 1951) One of the gloomiest openings to any series leads into Jack Webb's radio series Pete Kelly's Blues -- a sigh of a tribute, a melancholic shout-out, its needless repetition after a momentary pause seeming to demonstrate only the pointlessness of its own nostalgia: 'This one's about Pete Kelly. This one's about him'. A solo cornet kicks in, and a mournful voice drags us back into the…]]>We will always create it, always embrace it, and always find new ways to harness its power.
“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.” -- Aaron Copland In looking backwards, it's always the difference that dazzles most. We chuckle at the hairdos of old driver's license photos, and maybe think back to memories of old living addresses, but most of the important details (name, sex, date of birth) seem mundane because they remain the same. Nostalgia is based on change, an idea…]]>So much of our musical landscape has changed. Rarely do I invite someone over to listen to an album over coffee, rarely do I make a mix CD for a friend, and what used to be an exciting outing to an independent music store has increasingly become a distant memory, as these autonomous ventures continue to fold
In 1999, on the eve of PopMatters’ inception, I was an angst-ridden teenager, who had a tendency for ditching classes only to sit in the toilet reading back issues of Rolling Stone. By the end of the decade, my love for grunge music had sent me searching through expanses that spanned Punk & New Wave to classic rock, gospel, and soul. But despite my obsession with the retrospective milieu, I was always conscious that I…]]>Twitter has fast become a land of curators. But where does curation go from here, and do we really want it to go there?
At a major media conference in Times Square last month, the head of digital operations at the New York Times Company, Martin Nisenholz, was waiting for someone to bring him the clicker, that tiny, magical apparatus that lets a person give a presentation while strutting thoughtfully around the stage. A big draw of the two-day OMMA Global NY 2009, a gathering of marketing, advertising and publishing bigwigs and hopefuls, Nisenholz was about to launch into…]]>The "shower scene" in Hitchcock's Psycho has become woven into our pop cultural backdrop, but it's the “dinner scene” that shines a narrow light on the character of Norman Bates.
“We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?” innkeeper Norman Bates asks on-the-lam secretary Marion Crane with a boyish grin in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic, Psycho. If only she knew how mad the handsome young man was, perhaps she could have saved herself an untimely and undignified wet demise. A recurring theme used in several Hitchcock films is the notion that people aren’t always what they seem. In this particular case, Norman, whose name…]]>Pop matters because it is a reflection of how we collectively assign meaning and develop cultural responses to that meaning. Magazines like PopMatters give voice to those meanings and explore the natures of those cultural responses, allowing us all to share in them, and we open the doors for all who have the talent to express those ideas.
It's hard to believe that a decade has passed. Ten years is, in Internet time at least, a pretty long time. It's certainly enough to give pause, to make one stop and evaluate where you've been and where you're going next. And if a magazine taking the time to gaze in the mirror and examine itself seems narcissistic, well, sometimes a little self-reflection is healthy. Looking into the mirror now, I see signs of age…]]>Answer: it matters more now than it ever has before, as there is simply so much out there that it’s nearly impossible for one man, one publication, or one conglomorate to cover it all.
“Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.” -- Raymond Chandler When newspapers began feeling the squeeze of 2008’s economic downturn, one of the first cost-cutting measures that was implemented was simple: firing their movie critics. Though, yes, it’s easier to simply pull a review from a wire service rather than have their own in-house film…]]>20 Questions caught up with award-winning, international best-selling author Patricia Cornwell in a rare moment when her feet were on the ground.
Award-winning, major international best-selling author Patricia Cornwell has seen her meticulously researched crime novels translated into 36 languages across more than 50 countries. The former police beat reporter scuba dives, rides motorcycles and flies helicopters -- just like her characters do. “It is important to me to live in the world I write about,” she said. Her energy seems as boundless as her interests (read more about her on her website Patricia Cornwell: bio). Her…]]>With its narrow streets and dark and hidden infoldings, there’s a distinctly feminine, mysterious, and inexplicably magnetic aspect to Japan that exists in few other places in the world.
A Hole-in-the-Wall Land One of the most memorable moments of my life was nonetheless trivial, distinctly embarrassing, and a striking example of how intrusively clueless I can be. When I was single, I toured around Japan while between jobs, and early in my trip hooked up with a couple of fellow Americans -- a former college basketball player and multi-millionaire heir, and his girlfriend, an IBM salesperson. He was about 6'5"; she was 6'1", ponytailed,…]]>Loudon Wainwright III has recently undertaken the ambitious task of writing songs that Charlie Poole might have given voice to had he not sabotaged his own career trajectory.
Both Charlie Poole (the famed American banjo player and noted song interpreter) and Loudon Wainwright III enjoyed considerable acclaim after the release of a novelty song, both were born in North Carolina, and both performed deeply personal songs in signature acoustic styles throughout their careers. The only difference is that Loudon Wainwright III composed his own songs and Charlie Poole did not. Yet Wainwright III's deep fascination with Poole motivated him to the point of…]]>Did Obama calm the rash of criticism regarding his inaction on gay rights with his recent speech to the Human Rights Campaign?
On 3 April 1968, the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr., told an enthusiastic Memphis audience, "(God’s) allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!" While his words were hihgly inspirational and eerily prophetic. Yet, 41 years…]]>"When I die, I already know what my obituary will be, 'Frank’s daughter died with her boots on!' Ha.”
Nancy Sinatra is one of the most important and influential musicians in rock history, but she has never gotten the respect she deserves. The reasons for this are complex and reveal much about the times in which she emerged. Sinatra made her greatest impact on the charts during the late sixties. She had more than 20 charting hits between 1965 and 1972, a time when the role of women in society was going through some…]]>Still riding high off of the success of their acclaimed documentary (and likely Oscar-nominee), the founders of Canada's famed metal trailblazers Anvil sit down to answer 20 Questions about family, weed, and a surprising love of Star Trek ...
It’s been a long, strange trip for Anvil. Formed by lifelong friends Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner (singer/guitarist and drummer, respectively), these Toronto-based hard-rockers capitalized on a unique rock sound in the late-70s/early-80s that served as an inspiration for bands like Metallica and Guns N’ Roses. Yet while all of their followers went on to arena-rocking success, Anvil got sidelined in the Big Book of Rock History, becoming mere footnotes to a movement they…]]>With four landmark albums this decade alone, Converge has saved its best work for last. Vocalist Jacob Bannon talks with PopMatters about his music, his art, and his insanely talented band.
Of course it's foolish to ever think an artist partially responsible for some of the most imposing, cathartic, brutally intense extreme music this decade would be "on" 100 percent of the time, but still, hearing Jacob Bannon speak quietly and lucidly on the other end of the phone line is a bit jarring. Especially when you've spent the past week leading up to this interview listening to the Converge vocalist unleash line after line of…]]>Lost, indie music and Final Destination inspired Dan Chaon's latest novel, Await Your Reply -- all deal with issues of self-invention and how we conceptualize the self, he tells PopMatters.
If Dan Chaon were a filmmaker he’d probably be considered an auteur, someone whose work keeps touching on a list of private obsessions: sudden, unexplainable disappearances; kids who spend their time obsessing over elaborate fantasy worlds and are barely able to comprehend real life; faulty memories; people who are not who they claim to be; suicides; children trying to move on from the deaths of their parents. And above all else, the theme of identity,…]]>Warren Ellis, once thought of by many as comics’ resident Orson Welles, an angry, embittered artist, is actually the industry’s Kurt Vonnegut, sent here to make us feel as if "everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt".
"Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.” -- Harry Lime, The Third Man "Well, here we are, Mr.…]]>