TV Detail: Life on Mars review—series premiere on ABC
The latest British import to hit American network TV is a cop show with a twist. In the original Life on Mars, which aired Stateside on BBC America the last two years, detective Sam Tyler is hit by a car in the year 2006 and wakes up in his beloved Manchester, U.K., in 1973, not knowing how or why he got there, whether he's traveled through time, lying in a hospital bed in coma and dreaming of the past, or just plain crazy. Like AMC's Mad Men, the show explored sexism and abuse of power, but Life on Mars was... read more
The Hold Steady studio diary - Stay Positive - #10
“Stay Positive”, November 29th through February 19th I love mixing. It’s really a lot of fun taking all the sonic info and putting it into the right spaces. It’s fun mixing with The Hold Steady. They all have different viewpoints of the mixing phase of a record and they all complement each other. ... read more
Watch amazing Oscar-nominated short I Met the Walrus
In 1969, 14-year-old Beatles fan Jerry Levitan tracked his idol, John Lennon, from a Toronto airport to his room at the King Edward Hotel. Inside, he convinced Lennon to do an impromptu interview. Thirty-eight years later, Levitan teamed with director Josh Raskin to create and edit a five-minute short film entitled I Met the Walrus based on the interview. Amazing, right?... read more
TV Detail: Will Kath & Kim be any good?
We've been seeing previews for NBC's Kath & Kim for nearly two months now (ever since the Olympics, remember those?!). But tonight's the night, folks: At 8:30 p.m. Paste time, we will finally know for certain whether this show is a really big piece of crap, or just a regular-sized piece of crap.... read more
Low vs. Diamond - Tour Diary
I never understood that when you are on tour you really don't get a chance to write new ideas. You are in essence, a traveling salesman. You drive across Uncle Sam all day... Set up your booth ....Eat.....Say Hi....Show the people what you got...drink your whiskey...Drive...Sleep, and then do it again the next day. I've been able to fantasize a few concepts during the drives, that I'll work on at some point, but that is far from actually coming up with anything worth a damn. I'm a Cutco salesman,and that's fine because I like the knives I'm selling! take careLPS... read more
TV Detail: Pushing Daisies review. Episode 2.02—"Circus, Circus"
My fear with Pushing Daisies from the start was it would become stale. How many times can Ned, Chuck and Emerson sleuth around and solve murders before it becomes, well, boring? Each episode is essentially the same—transposing one exotic locale for another (like say a beehive-shaped office for a vibrant three-ring circus) alongside an array of colorful characters (and possible murderers), interspersed by the witty repartee between its lead characters. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be a recipe for longevity. And as much as it pains to say, the second episode of the season—"Circus, Circus"—was even more lackluster than its... read more
Sitges Film Festival 2008: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
All that is mondo melts into Sitges. Brain-eating zombies! Samurai assassins! Spooky children with spookier smiles! Post-apocalyptic clones! Robot monsters! Naked babes! Dead naked babes! Dead naked babes that bite!... read more
Genesis 1970 - 1975
So this is it, the Mother of All Prog Box Sets, the one that will send the snarling punks scurrying to buy mellotrons and shimmering wizard robes. The bare details: 7 remastered CDs, 6 DVDs, and a book. Skipping the forgettable Genesis debut album From Genesis to Revelation, this box chronicles the Peter Gabriel years, and the Peter Gabriel albums: Trespass, Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, and the 2-disc The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and adds a seventh disc of previously unreleased rarities and outtakes. It presents five video hours of the band in 2007 Boring... read more
Jenny Lewis - New York, NY - Apollo Theater - 10/5/08
Photos taken at Apollo Theater by Sean Edgar... read more
Ratatat - New York, NY - Terminal 5 - 9/27/08
Photos taken at Terminal 5 by Sarah Hajjar... read more
Call+Response: The most important film you'll see this year
OK, I'm not usually one for hyperbole, but I'm sure the 27 million people living in slavery right now might forgive a little drama. Call+Response is a wonderfully entertaining and enlightening film about the plight of modern-day slaves, from child soldiers in Uganda to child sex workers here in the U.S. It includes musical performances by Moby, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Switchfoot, Rocco DeLuca, Justin Dillon, Talib Kweli, Emmanuel Jal and Five for Fighting—and Dr. Cornal West steals the show. If you live in Atlanta it's showing at Midtown Cinemas and Le Font Theaters Oct. 9 - 16.... read more
The Everybodyfields cover the Everly Brothers in Chattanooga, Tenn.
I was half-passed out on a couch in Austin when the Everybodyfields played in my hometown two weeks ago, so I missed Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews' incredibly sweet cover of the Everly Brothers "All I Have to Do is Dream." The population of Texas should thank YouTube user billfive for taking this video. Had he not, I'd be trading all y'all and your tacos and barbecue for a time machine so I could zap back in time, battle I-75 up from Atlanta and crash at my parents' house to see it myself. (Watch out, I still might.)Vague personal threats... read more
TV Detail: Dexter Review. Season Premiere and Episode 3.02
The first two episodes of Dexter’s third season open with the kind of uncharacteristically contrived setups that brought the first two seasons to their hasty conclusions. In the premiere, Dexter (Michael C. Hall) is briefly at the cheeriest we’ve seen him in some time after he avoided detection late last season with the kind of dumb luck he’s been taught his whole life to avoid. His escape was liberating in that sense, with the mythology surrounding his father apparently settled and a new sense of possibility ahead of him. ... read more
Your Wednesday Morning YouTube Break
Courtesy of Paste senior contributing writer Reid Davis, here are three of the mostest awesomest videos in all of YouTube-dom...A modern-day update to the Airplane scene, "I speak jive," but with an unfortunate conclusion.... read more
Top 10 new band names, per the 2008 Vice Presidential debate
Much to our suprise, Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin's debate last Thursday yielded far fewer ridiculous band names than did their top-of-the-ticket counterparts' parley the week before. We pulled out ten pretty servicable ones (seriously, someone please start one of these bands, we'll put you on the Sampler or something*), though we're resigned to this being, at best, only the second-funniest thing to be inspired by the 2008 election's first and only Vice Presidential debate. ... read more
Live Review: The Avett Brothers @ Georgia Theatre, 10/3/08
Before last week, I'd only seen the Avett Brothers live in festival settings-- all rife with dust, sweat and unsuspecting patrons about to have their notions of the banjo's hokey limitations fully obliterated-- so maybe a certain trend I noticed Friday night in Athens is a long-standing, midsize-venue-specific one that I just never had the opportunity to witness before. Or maybe, like the Grit and the Polish Sausage Man and the Dawgs, it's just unique to that great little town. Either way, hanging in and around the Georgia Theatre that evening was a notable number of young gentlemen dressed in... read more
Eddie's Attic Open Mic Night
I'm wired with a sometimes inexplicable optimism. It's what makes me check what's on the radio before popping in a CD in my car or visiting some band's MySpace page if the press release they emailed me looks interesting enough. So, from time to time, I enjoy a good open mic night, and in Atlanta, that means Eddie's Attic. I went last night to support my friend and Paste's books editor Charles McNair. Dressed in all black he sang his pair of literate, heartbreaking songs with all the passion and intensity an arena performance might have warranted. So did many... read more
TV Detail: Heroes review. Episode 304 "I Am Become Death"
The star of Season 3 definitely seems to be the hubris of our heroes. First Hiro, bored without a mission, creates one of his own by ignoring his father's single command as clearly as Adam in the garden of Eden. Now, it's Peter Petrelli's turn to play Anakin Skywalker. With all his constant whining, I'd always figured him for a Luke. But in Epsiode 304, he recklessly veers towards the dark side in an effort to save the world. Like Henry Paulson or Ben Bernanke, when catastrophe looms, the hero urge makes "doing something" irresistable, even if the cure might... read more
Paste-apalooza: Recent performances at the Paste Studios
Today, Matt Morris stopped by the studio at our Paste headquarters here in Decatur, Ga., around 11 a.m., followed an hour later by Joan Osborne (above), who played a powerful rendition of The Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace" as well as three of her originals. This feels about par for the course over the past few weeks, as our multi-media producer Kevin Keller has been working like a madman.... read more
Current Events: Phish for non-phans, a reunion playlist
An introduction to the loved—and loathed—jamband, on the occasion of its recently announced reunion...Sure, some of their fans are obnoxious, stoned idiots. Rich-kid runaways strung out on MDMA and just enough misconstrued New Age philosophy to make them unbearably self-righteous. And, yes, the band’s hour-long atonal vamps on a song called “Tweezer” make most people want to take said grooming tool and remove their ear drums.... read more
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