RSS Feed On The Corner
With Israel and the Hamas engaged in yet another bloody border skirmish on the Gaza Strip, documentary filmmaker Ari Folman's acclaimed Waltz with Bashir, an animated meditation on his country's involvement in the 1982 Christian Falangist massacre of Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps after the assassination of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, is particularly timely.
More | 1 Comments
Yet another Internet-spawned phenomena, Bon Iver’s 27-year-old singer-songwriter Justin Vernon holed up in his parents’ hunting cabin in northern Wisconsin after a romantic break-up, with a desktop computer, recording software, a three-piece drum set and a guitar, then posted the results on his MySpace page.
More | 0 Comments
As several critics have pointed out, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonForrest Gump, the magic realism of Argentine writer resembles screenwriter Eric Roth’s sprawling, picaresque epic Jorge Luis Borges or the surreal fantasy of Tim Burton’s Big Fish more than it does the satirical F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which it is reputedly based.
More | 0 Comments
No matter how big they build those flat screen televisions and no matter how good they make digital sound, there is still nothing to beat the concert experience, which is why the business had another record-breaking year at the box office...
More | 0 Comments
"Rock and roll's a
loser's game/It mesmerizes and/I can't explain" Ian Hunter, "Ballad of
Mott."
I'm a lifelong fan of the underdog, which is why I got so much
satisfaction over Mott the Hoople unexpectedly making it in
America just as
they were ready to give up.
TV
1. Mad
Men (AMC): The year's
must-see TV, Matthew Weiner's series about Madison Avenue found the links
between the '50s and the present-day, as well as the vast differences, in a
study of middle-class disaffection that rings every bit as true in 2008 as it
did in 1963.
1. Duffy,
"Mercy": Bringing Lulu and Dusty Springfield together in one Welsh rare
bit.
2. Kanye
West, "Love
Lockdown"/"Heartless": Pain sweetened in the
studio.
1. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (ATO): Jim James and his Louisville, KY, cohorts located the heart of rock and roll in their thrilling distillation of guitar jams and heightened emotions...
More | 0 Comments
I saw a film last night, oh boy... On the night before Paul McCartney appeared in the press claiming once again that he was the real force for revolutionary political change in the Beatles (who knew he took counsel from Bertrand Russell?)...
More | 1 Comments
It's like I've been saying, a recession is when all your friends lose their jobs; a depression is when you lose your job. Now, that hasn't happened to me yet, but you can't help but read the handwriting on the wall, or the computer screen, for that matter.
More | 0 Comments
For those of us who came of age in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the aftermath of Watergate was a defining moment, a catharsis that drove our favorite bogeyman, Richard Nixon, out of office, resigning the Presidency in disgrace in August 1974.
More | 0 Comments
1. John Mayer at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live: "Am I living it right?" asks the soccer mom heartthrob in "Why Georgia," one of the hits on his 2001 major label debut, Room for Squares, he performs solo at his annual benefit for Toys for Tots...
More | 0 Comments
It's a crazy world out there, folks. The Tribune Company, which publishes the L.A. Times, files for bankruptcy amid rumors the venerable N.Y. Times is also bleeding money. Can you imagine if our only source of information was Perez Hilton...
More | 0 Comments
I have seen the future of rock & roll and it's the past. Rock & roll will never die, it will just get thick around the waist and plug their ears. What's noise pollution to some is a Wagnerian symphony to others.
More | 0 Comments
With the rise of the Internet has come the corresponding necessity to redefine the concept of copyright, which was originally created in a world of (limited) mechanical, not (unlimited) digital, reproduction.
More | 0 Comments
Cadillac Records is yet another music biopic, a genre that has become familiar with the success of Ray, I Walk the Line and Dreamgirls, this one about the origins of the Chicago blues label Chess Records, started by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess...
More | 0 Comments
1. Smashing Pumpkins at Gibson Amphitheatre, Universal City: "I don't want to be alone," sings Billy Corgan in "Tarantula," a song from Zeitgeist, the band's last major label album for Warner Bros.
More | 0 Comments
I’m no Larry David when it comes to things that make you go Oy, but it certainly seems as if civilization has been grinding to a halt for the last seven years, maybe starting with 9/11, the ultimate society malfunction.
More | 0 Comments
My college roommate e-mailed to say how disappointed he was that Boomerangst has recently been filled with stuff about TV, movies and albums, when I promised a daily, more personal “gripe.”
More | 0 Comments
Director Baz Luhrmann grew up in rural Australia hooked on old Hollywood films, and his first four features reflect his skewed take on genre films from romantic dance (Strictly Ballroom)...
More | 0 Comments
Intelligent discussion about music on television is pretty rare, so I approached Sundance Channel's new Spectacle: Elvis Costello With..., a 13-part series premiering this Wednesday (12/3) with a certain degree of trepidation, which turned out to be unfounded.
More | 0 CommentsALBUM OF THE WEEK
PAST PRINT
