Google + Verizon = Bad News For Internet
As Google and Verizon made clear in their proposal, emboldening a publicly engineered alternative wireless Internet is going to be hard to do.
Reviews
Darth Vader Art Feeds Your Head
Stars Wars is no longer the haven of geeks who like to pretend they’re space-faring saviors. It’s gone viral for decades as a pop-culture cipher begging to be filled in […]
Avatar’s Cinematic Compression Implodes
M. Night Shyamalan’s compression of Nickelodeon’s stunning animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender has serious boots to fill. And it needs much more time to fill them.
Airbender Posters Whip Up Anticipation
High expectations for the film exist in a space apart from the trepidation found in some corners of the Airbender nation…
In Praise of Ralph Bakshi, Animation Pioneer
One of animation’s most influential artists, Ralph Bakshi made his mark on pop culture by refusing to sacrifice his singular vision to popular tastes and trends.
UN: Climate Crisis Attention Lacks Ambition
They would rather wait until the climate crisis has already ripped the roof off the world as they knew it, before doing anything significant about it.
What’s the Secret of Boba Fett’s Staying Power?
The bounty hunter has lately infused The Clone Wars with some much-needed threat, now that its main evils, such as General Grievous, have been unmasked as mostly comic relief.
Technocracy Blowback: Five Case Studies
“Why blame technology? It generally does what it is coded to do. It’s the human sentient understanding of how to take cruel advantage of human weakness that’s the problem.”
Adam Curtis: Meet the New Yemen, Same As the Old Yemen
Our current obsession with Yemen is anything but current, brainiac documentarian Adam Curtis argued in his BBC blog “The Medium and the Message.” In fact, it’s older than Osama. “What […]
Trip Out to 2009’s Best Unheard Music
From Trans Am’s revved jams to chilled hypnotics by Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin, there’s plenty of unfairly unheard music from 2009. Wrap your ears around a head-trip’s worth in the streams […]
Best Music of the Millennium (So Far)
What’s crazy is that few saw it coming.
The Prisoner: An All-Star Appreciation
Its revolutionary mix of geopolitics, sci-fi and psychedelia has influenced not just television, but also music, comics, film and more.
Reboot of Patrick McGoohan’s Spy-Fi The Prisoner Stripped of Sci-Fi
What gets lost in the remake’s dark dissection of human relationships complicated by ubiquitous surveillance and callous commodification is, simply put, ambition.
Superman + Batman = Public Enemies
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies packs more heroes, action and political satire into a couple hours of entertainment than either icon’s animated series did in the course of several seasons.
Cli-Fi: The Age Of Stupid Gets Smart
By the time The Age of Stupid‘s flashbacks are over and the viewer is stuck in a ravaged 2055, the urge to do something immediate is palpable and powerful.
Who’s The Greatest Lex Luthor Ever?
From Buckaroo Banzai to SpongeBob SquarePants, veteran actor Clancy Brown has brought a long string of compelling characters to life on TV and movie screens.
To-Do List For All Tomorrow’s Parties
Named for the famous Velvet Underground song and founded by Barry Hogan, All Tomorrow’s Parties has defiantly offered bleeding-edge music, comedy and more since its inception.
McCartney to Israel: Give Peace a Chance
“I’m bringing a message of peace, and I Think that’s what the region needs.”
Miyazaki’s Sweet, Surreal Ponyo
A fitting distillation of the filmmaker’s ecological awareness.
A Decade Later, The Iron Giant’s Weaponized Soul Still Stirs
The Iron Giant is beyond naivete or political correctness. It’s a hilarious, tear-jerking and sci-fantastic analysis.
After Watchmen, What’s Unfilmable?
This list of five books and comics that may now inherit Watchmen‘s mantle as what Alan Moore called the most “unfilmable” texts around was a popular read.
A Note From Pixies’ Black Francis
I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined.
Hip-Hop’s Good, Great and Not Great
Mos Def’s hyper-aware culture raps keep it smart the whole way.
Sonic Beacons: An Interview With Tortoise
Tortoise’s Beacons of Ancestorship, a potent dose of unclassifiable sound that veers from dub, funk and hip-hop to jazz, punk and rock without ever dissipating into incoherence, is the Chicago-based […]
Grand Duchy, Black Francis’ Family Affair
So I rapped with the pair for Rolling Stone and reviewed the disc for Metromix. All is well.