Feb 14, 2010 TV Web Exclusive

"If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere." Frank Sinatra's statement in "New York, New York," sums up HBO's latest show, How to Make It in America, from the producers of Entourage. A group of 20-somethings, led by the lackluster Ben (Unscripted's Bryan Greenberg) and the terrier-like Cam (Raising Victor Vargas' Victor Rasuk), are chasing their dreams, and being tripped by their foibles. More

Feb 12, 2010 Comic Books Web Exclusive

In a thoroughly modern genesis, Danica Novgorodoff's Refresh, Refresh is based upon the screenplay of the same name by James Ponsoldt, which in turn was adapted from the short story by Benjamin Percy. Refresh, Refresh follows three boys in rural Oregon whose fathers have been sent off to war. More

Feb 12, 2010 Music Issue #29 - Year End 2009 - Best of the Decade

For their third studio album In This Light and On This Evening, Britain's Editors have swapped guitars for synths and pessimism for nihilism. However, in their attempts to procure an oppressively dark ambience, they have bypassed heroes Depeche Mode and New Order, landing straight in standard-issue mall-Goth territory—a place with little thematic variance. More

Feb 11, 2010 Comic Books

Simon Dark Vol. 3 collects the final issues of the series of the same name. The story centers on a mysterious youth living in a strange, Bat-Family-absent corner of Gotham City, and is far from a typical super hero tale, even as it incorporates its fair share of slugfests and action. More

Feb 10, 2010 Music Issue #29 - Year End 2009 - Best of the Decade

"I'll lock the world away/Haunted by my better days," Mark Oliver Everett, aka E, wheezes dejectedly on "Nowadays," exhibiting the dignified sense of resignation that colors End Times, the second Eels album in less than 10 months, and light years away emotionally from his most recent, Hombre Lobo. Lobo found E assuming the fictional werewolf character "Dog Faced Boy," waxing rapturously of unrequited love and desire. Here, he seems enmeshed in memory, consumed with the inevitable deterioration of relationships across time and distance, while still fitfully yearning for redemption. More

Feb 10, 2010 Comic Books

The several plots in Forgetless swirl around an event: some sort of epic club in New York that's about to open its doors for the last time. The book is rife with modern pop culture-isms—such as texting, tweeting, and viral video provocateurs—and age-old truisms—such as disaffected youth in search of counterfeit identification for the purposes of obtaining alcohol and such. Those elements, especially the pop culture stuff, can pretty easily muddle a story, let alone when you mix in the kickoff plot—that of a down and out model-turned-assassin coming to the event to commit her first kill. More

Feb 10, 2010 Music Issue #29 - Year End 2009 - Best of the Decade

She was a sultry blues singer. He was an internationally admired beat-maker. They said it couldn't work. They were right. More

Feb 09, 2010 Music Issue #29 - Year End 2009 - Best of the Decade

How quickly they grow up. On their sophomore full-length, Fullerton, CA band Cold War Kids embraced their dance-rock side, shrieking for all who would hear, "something is not right with me." Now, two years later, the wrongs have been righted and the "kids" are busy making their bid for VH1 immortality. More

Feb 02, 2010 Comic Books Web Exclusive

These days, Geoff Johns' work for Green Lantern (vol. 4) is almost beyond reproach in comcidom and even eclipses DC's Batman and Superman series. Agent Orange is no exception. It stopgap miniseries further illustrates the blockbuster scribe's adeptness for the comic medium after successful runs for 52, Infinite Crisis, Justice Society of America, and Teen Titans. And even as a prelude to the still continuing Blackest Night tentpole event, it is well written and expertly visualized space opera of the emotional spectrum. More