Great Expectations 2010: Breaking Bad

By Kate Kiefer at 8:30 AM on February 17, 2010

On paper, high-school chemistry teacher Walter White is despicable...  read more

Found in: TV, Features

Great Expectations 2010: Tim Burton in Wonderland

By Jeffrey Bloomer at 8:30 AM on February 11, 2010

Collectively, every contemporary film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland has been one long practice round for the inevitable Tim Burton version...  read more

Found in: Movies, Features

Lindstrøm & Christabelle: Real Life is No Cool

By Brian Howe at 9:00 AM on February 4, 2010

Masterful techno producer buffs up his pop chops on new collaboration Norwegian producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s thrilling space disco is endlessly versatile. On 2008’s Where You Go I Go Too, it stretched out for psychedelic miles. On recent Prins Thomas collaboration II, it contorted into prog and funk. And on Real Life is No Cool, with vocalist Christabelle (familiar to fans as Solale from a couple Lindstrøm singles), it compresses into baroque electronic pop....  read more

Found in: Music, Reviews

Great Expectations 2010: Lost

By Soyia Ellison at 7:30 AM on February 2, 2010

Destiny, to borrow a phrase from Benjamin Linus, is a fickle bitch...  read more

Found in: TV, Features

Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fifth Season Review

By Stephen M. Deusner at 3:00 PM on January 27, 2010

DVD Release Date: Dec. 1 Creator: Lorne Michaels Starring: Bill Murray, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Harry Shearer Studio: NBC Still not ready for primetime By its fifth season, SNL needed a shot in the arm—instead, it had the limb lopped off completely. In 1980, producer Lorne Michaels and the Not Ready for Primetime Players quit over a contract dispute and were replaced by a new cast that included Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo and, um, Charles Rocket? The shakeup ushered in the first dark period in the show’s long history, but in retrospect it was completely necessary—SNL had sunk...  read more

Found in: TV, Reviews

Paris, Texas Review

By Andy Beta at 5:00 PM on January 25, 2010

DVD Release Date: Jan. 26 Director: Wim Wenders Writer: Sam Shepard, L.M. Kit Carson Cinematographer: Robby Müller Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell Studio/Run Time: Criterion Collection, 147 mins. Cinematic masterpiece reminds of Wenders’ bleak, unique vision of America “You look like 40 miles of rough road,” esteems Walt Henderson (Dean Stockwell) after picking up his estranged brother in a Texas border town. That rutted, haggard visage belongs to Harry Dean Stanton’s Travis Henderson, who has stumbled out of the desert after abandoning his family four years earlier....  read more

Found in: Movies, Reviews

Final Fantasy: Heartland

By Corey duBrowa at 9:00 AM on January 13, 2010

A year in the making, Owen Pallett emerges with a rock opera You couldn’t invent a musical project with a bigger dweeb pedigree than one whose previous work includes albums based on the “eight schools of magic codified by Dungeons & Dragons,” or a new work “concerning a young ultra-violent farmer named Lewis and a supreme deity named Owen.” And yet, that’s just what Toronto composer and Polaris Music Prize-winner Owen Pallett—the man behind solo string project Final Fantasy (its name a nod to the popular video game series)—does on Heartland....  read more

Found in: Music, Reviews

Best of What's Next: The Soft Pack

By Steve LaBate at 6:00 AM on January 13, 2010

In college, Soft Pack frontman Matt Lamkin had a film professor...  read more

Found in: Music, Features

Salman Ahmad: Rock & Roll Jihad

By Jessica Hunt at 10:00 AM on January 12, 2010

Rocking the casbah In Rock & Roll Jihad, Salman Ahmad—once an unassuming teenager playing guitar in a suburban New York garage band—chronicles his transformation from Pakistani medical student to world-renowned musician....  read more

Found in: Books, Reviews

Laura Veirs: July Flame

By Rachael Maddux at 9:00 AM on January 12, 2010

Woodsy, wonderful seventh LP by Portland singer/songwriter Laura Veirs’ seventh album, set for release in the blustery throes of January, takes its name from a kind of peach that finds its way into farmer’s-market bins in the hottest weeks of the year—a peach, the story goes, that cured her of a nasty bout with writer’s block one steamy Portland afternoon a few summers back. Still, it’s hard to imagine a better soundtrack to the chilly months of wood smoke, crackling leaves, deep Vs of geese honking overhead and squash simmering on kitchen stovetops than this collection of heady, steady,...  read more

Found in: Music, Reviews