Dec 21, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
Seasons 4-8 of The Simpsons aside, it’s hard to think of much from the ‘90s that has aged well: Britpop, Saved by the Bell, shell suits, and Liverpool Football Club have ignominiously slid from pop culture icons into figures of fun since the turn of the millennium; even the laugh track on Seinfeld sounds dated now.
More
Dec 20, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
Dirty Projectors’ songwriter David Longstreth is reported to have written “70 new songs and beats” during the recording process for their wonderful 2012 release Swing Low Magellan.
More
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Dec 19, 2012
Cinema
Web Exclusive
Michael Haneke’s Amour—“Love” in English—rewinds an unspecified amount of time from its unshakable opening. The plot is sparse, lingering on scenes from the couple’s final months together.
More
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Dec 19, 2012
Cinema
Web Exclusive
A foregone conclusion has never been more mysteriously rendered than in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Like Bigelow’s Best Picture-winning The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty similarly leaves politics aside to look at the behind-the-scenes story of one person’s mission to serve their country in a most unflinching way.
More
(Mexican Summer/Software)
Dec 19, 2012
Music
Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin
There probably aren’t two electronic artists making music right now who fit together better than Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford & Lopatin) and Tim Hecker. On their solo albums, both men have made art out of surprising and sometimes uncomfortable reimaginings of ambient, drone, and trip-hop, albeit in different ways.
More
Dec 17, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
Dayve Hawk, aka Memory Cassette, aka Memory Tapes, has made his name over the past four years doing essentially the exact same thing as Toro Y Moi but making no attempt to shake the glib “chillwave” tag that became so omniscient in the later part of the last decade.
More
Dec 13, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
It must be tough to be Big Boi—OutKast looms over everything. He attempted to escape that shadow with 2010’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, a years-in-the-making album that showed Big Boi could create great music apart from OutKast. Now Big Boi is back with a follow-up, Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.
More
Dec 12, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
With thoughtfully crafted compositions so carefully rendered, Godspeed You! Black Emperor plays like a massed force that could show its mighty strength at any time, and can be equally compelling and unnerving when it does.
More
Dec 11, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
Five long years stretched between proper Sufjan Stevens albums, from 2005’s breakout Illinois to 2010’s heartbreaking The Age of Adz, but for those who believe that he is anything but prolific, Asthmatic Kitty presents the second compilation of Stevens’ Christmas EPs. Stevens somehow found time each year to explore the tensions between the garish commercialism and tradition and religious core of Christmas.
More