Osmos (PC)
Developer/Publisher Hemisphere Games Platform: PC The motes on the screen go ’round and ’round If you’ve ever played Spore (Will Wright’s playful, ambitious sim blending elements of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design), you might remember the first stage, in which you control a tiny single-celled organism. As you whip your little flagella to swim around a prehistoric tidepool, your job is to gobble up any creatures that have the ill fortune of being smaller than yourself. As you manage to eat and grow larger, so does the menu. Now Hemisphere has built an entire casual game around this simple... read more
Found in: Games, ReviewsTrine Review (PC, Playstation 3)
Developer: Frozenbyte Publisher: Southpeak Interactive Platform: PC, Playstation 3 Beautiful but frustrating A depressing trend in sci-fi and fantasy video games is developers’ over-reliance on grim, brown-and-grey visuals to present a world in decay. Sometimes it seems as though art directors’ reference points began with Alien and end with Aliens. So whenever a game like Trine—downloadable for Windows and the Playstation Network—embraces a vibrant color palette and an appreciation for the wondrous as well as the grotesque, you have to take notice. Trine’s high-fantasy milieu is drawn with rich colors and fantastical backdrops: Deep green vegetation grows upon purple rocks,... read more
Found in: Games, ReviewsFaux News is Good News
Over the last decade, the newspaper industry has buckled. Three of network TV’s longest-running and most trusted news anchors (Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather) have disappeared from the airwaves. And cable news has become consumed by talking heads paid to eternally bicker as if trapped in some earthbound Purgatory, a place where opinion and hearsay are subtly suggested to be fact, and where it’s policy to cut away from coverage of the day’s most important issues to follow a live car chase on the L.A. freeway.... read more
Found in: Culture, FeaturesJames McManus: Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker
Go all-in on this one James McManus parlayed an assignment for Harper’s at the 2000 World Series of Poker into a fifth place finish in the Main Event. His new history of the game traces poker from its roots in China, the Middle East and Europe to today’s cultural phenomenon of nonstop televised Texas Hold `Em.... read more
Found in: Books, ReviewsHarmonia & Eno '76: Tracks and Traces
A few more relics excavated from the tomb of “lost” Krautrock classic Krautrock has become synonymous with a steady motorik pulse, but the German electronic-music vanguard of the 1970s was more diverse than that. Cluster, for instance, had more in common with Brian Eno than Kraftwerk—and, after Cluster became Harmonia, the band collaborated with Eno in an epic jam session that remains mostly mythical. The recordings weren’t released, and Eno’s masters were lost. But one Harmonia member, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, edited together an album from the plentiful four-track material and released it in 1997 as Tracks and Traces. This reconstituted version... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsTed Gioia: The Birth (and Death) of the Cool
Mourning an old friend Cool is dead. For those of us who missed the funeral, Ted Gioia offers a probing eulogy, reminding us of the cool we once knew—that intangible tangle of image and irony, artifice and fashion.... read more
Found in: Books, ReviewsEl Perro Del Mar: Love Is Not Pop
Sweden’s duchess of the doldrums contemplates our sour times El Perro Del Mar is the nom de triste of Swedish pop chanteuse Sarah Assbring, whose fourth LP is filled with an almost unbearably melancholic, lovelorn pop that wafts through chilly grey air. It also features a distinct modernization of Assbring’s sound—but when you listen to the album’s seven tracks (plus three club-minded remixes) and begin sifting through the musical lineage (Sundays, C86, Bettie Serveert) comprising low-key odes to heartache such as “Change of Heart” and “L is For Love,” it becomes apparent that she’s still a pretty far cry from... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsThe General
Blu-ray Release: Nov. 10 Director/Writers: Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman Starring: Keaton, Marion Mack, Jim Farley, Charles Henry Smith Studio/Run Time: Kino International, 78 mins. A true classic The irony of Buster Keaton’s The General being the first silent feature to be released in America on Blu-ray is that—despite its current status in the pantheon of film classics—it initially bombed. And not just with audiences. It was also critically reviled for its inconsistent tone and lack of plot, not to mention Keaton’s performance.... read more
Found in: Movies, ReviewsSufjan Stevens/Osso: The BQE/Run Rabbit Run
Sufjan Stevens: The BQE – 92/100 Osso: Run Rabbit Run – 76/100 Stevens remakes the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — and gets a makeover himself Though we’re nearing the five-year anniversary of his last proper studio album, Sufjan Stevens has stayed active since his landmark Illinois. In November 2007 he debuted The BQE, a multimedia tribute to the seemingly mundane Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that included an orchestra, three simultaneously projected films and live hula hoopers, and that was performed over three nights at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ever the perfectionist, Stevens took two years to record and edit this combination... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsBroken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos)
Release Date: Nov. 20 (New York) Director/Writer: Pedro Almodóvar Starring: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo Run Time: 128 mins. Celebrated director explores life through movies Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film is an anthology of his previous obsessions—its haunting score (courtesy of long-time collaborator Alberto Iglesias) and deep hues evoke the melodramatic aesthetic that has defined his work since 1997’s Live Flesh. This is a movie about seeing and being seen, a fact that is evident from the dazzling opening sequence that begins with a close-up of a woman’s eye, in which you can see the reflection of a newspaper.... read more
Found in: Movies, Reviews
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