How do you write about a movie when you barely understand it? Do you just not? Do you wait for the smarter folks to swoop in and explain everything that you weren’t smart enough to glean? If you’re me, you give yourself a lengthy pep talk to remind you that your own opinions are valuable, […]
Archives for August 2014
Adventures in the Floating World: Gyo
Once a month, Nick Hanover educates himself on manga by going on Adventures in the Floating World, learning about series he has missed out on over the years. Up now is Gyo, a bizarre horror manga by legendary artist Junji Ito, best know for his incredible series Uzumaki. Gyo was first published in the seinen (young men’s) magazine Big Comic Spirits […]
The Problem of Respect: A Question of Entitlement
In the latest issue of Poets & Writers, Steve Almond contends that young writers have a Problem of Entitlement (he claims it’s “A Question of Respect”), and despite the title of his article, I was intrigued enough to give it a read. I probably should have known better, but having spent a semester in […]
Video of the Week: Busdriver “Ego Death (Ft. Aesop Rock and Danny Brown)”
I once got in all kinds of shit for giving a Busdriver album a perfect score (it was Jhelli Beam, I still stand by that score, editors be damned). I’ve been a sucker for Busdriver’s manic flow and convoluted wordplay for ages, and I get that he’s not an emcee for everyone, but if he’s […]
Fossil Records: Peter Ivers’ Terminal Love
Sometimes, for whatever reason, great art slips past audiences and remains woefully underappreciated. Which is why we’ve created an essay series called Fossil Records, devoted to helping people discover work that never got its due. A frequent point of similarity with lost albums and artists is being a little too forward thinking, but few artists have been […]
Advance Review: Pop #1 is the Most Fun You’ll Ever Have with a Meta-Deconstruction of Celebrity
How fucking weird is it that Pop Art has morphed from a seemingly disposable movement to one of the most prophetic social commentaries in the modern era? Today Andy Warhol’s purposefully hollow replications of celebrity iconography look a whole hell of a lot like memes and his prediction that in the future everyone would have […]
Advance Review: Liz Prince’s Tomboy is Required Reading
No one can reliably predict when a piece of media is going to be a classic; no matter what you choose—books, movies, music, whatever—there are simply too many variables to know when the staying power of an album like Weezer’s Pinkerton will outlast its almost universally wretched initial reviews or whether an initial financial success […]
You’ve Got Trench Foot, Charlie Brown! or: Why Valiant Hearts Just Didn’t Do It For Me
Remember This is America, Charlie Brown? The cartoon where the Peanuts gang informed us about the Mayflower while also unmistakably being the Peanuts gang? It’s a solid teaching tactic, the core of edutainment: give us a familiar narrative juxtaposed with real historical events, and in the process teach us something while still entertaining us. Kids love […]
Sex, Lies, and Celluloid: The Fade Out is a Tragic Love Letter to Hollywood, Warts and All
You don’t have to dig too deep to find the seedy underbelly in any portion of Hollywood history. Charlie Chaplin features prominently in the mystery of early mogul Thomas Ince’s death, spurring on the jealous rage of William Randolph Hearst and causing Ince to take a bullet meant for Chaplin, depending on which story you […]
Fiction: This American Life-On-Closed Circuit by Shea Hennum
The pocket knife Allison Squibb had carried since she was thirteen was dull, and she strained as she cut into her arm to remove the small ident device lodged in the musculature, pressed tight against the skin on the underside of her elbow. Allison carved around the zit-sized bump and pulled out a small blinking […]