Look for REWIND 2010: The Year In Music tomorrow at a Phawker near you.
REWIND 2010: The Year In Cinema
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC 2010! What a confounding year politically-speaking, and a similarly confused, bleak and exciting year for film as well. I can never quite get into movie critic character, striding down from the mountaintop and proclaim “The Twelve Greatest Films of the Year!” But here’s a dozen films I’d like to remember from 2010, realizing that the market ubiquity of successes like David Fincher’s The Social Network and Aronofsky’s Black Swan (both of which I really liked) will make those films unavoidable for the next decade. What could be more universal than a depiction of life after […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
WIKILEAKS: Glenn Greenwald Vs. Wired.Com
FOREIGN POLICY: I love a good blog fight as much as anyone, but after reading several thousand words of accusations and counter accusations being slung between Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and Wired‘s Evan Hansen and Kevin Poulsen, I’m left scratching my head trying to figure out what, exactly, this particular dispute is all about. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, first of all: congratulations. Second, here’s a quick synopsis: MORE BOING BOING: The smackdown started a few days ago with Greenwald reiterating his demand that Wired.com reveal more of the chat logs in which Pvt. Bradley Manning, […]
REWIND 2010: The Year In Phawker Interviews
Talk is cheap on the Internet, but at Phawker it’s totally free, baby — at least for you, dear reader. Trolling through the vast and dusty Phawker archives, we have dug up fat sack of conversations worth re-visiting: the always prickish-but-worth-it Will Oldham on authenticity, Americana and his testicles; the inimitable Black Francis susses out Doolittle for us; graphic artiste extraordinaire Charles Burns on the darkness within; author Hampton Sides discusses the banality of Martin Luther King assassin James Earle Ray’s evil; Dave Bielanko discusses Marah’s last chance power try; folk/rock legend Richard Thompson discusses Fairport Convention and reuniting with […]
Feds Launch Criminal Probe Into Christine O’Donnell
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A person with knowledge of the investigation says federal authorities have opened a criminal probe of Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell to determine if the former Senate candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the identity of a client who has been questioned in the probe. The case, which has been assigned to two federal prosecutors and two FBI agents in Delaware, has not been sent to a grand jury. O’Donnell, who set a state record by raising more than $7.3 million in a tea […]
TRUTHY GRIT: The Case Against Billy The Kid
CBS NEWS: Descendants of Old West lawman Pat Garrett and New Mexico Territorial Gov. Lew Wallace are outraged that Gov. Bill Richardson is considering a pardon for Billy the Kid, saying Wallace never offered a pardon, and a petition seeking one is tainted because it comes from a lawyer with ties to Richardson. Sheriff Pat Garrett’s grandson J.P. Garrett and Wallace’s great-grandson William Wallace submitted their objections after Richardson set up a website last week to take public comment on the possibility of a posthumous pardon for the Kid on a murder indictment. The governor plans to make a decision […]
THE STINK AT THE LINC: Vikes Bag Birds 24-14
THE EAGLETARIAN: Eagles coach Andy Reid pulled no punches after his team’s shocking, 24-14 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Tuesday night at Lincoln Financial Field. “It was a pathetic job. It was a complete tail-whipping” Reid said. “Terrible, terrible job. It wasn’t only the players. It was the coaches. It was me. It was terrible, in every phase. It was terrible. The whole offense was awful. “They [Vikings] came to play. We didn’t come to play. You gotta play, at all positions. You gotta play. [We had] penalties, missed assignments, too many people on the field, missed substitutions. Terrible. Absolutely […]
CINEMA: Crime And Punishment
TRUE GRIT (2010 directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, 110 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Every director who is in love with the history of movie making seems to have a desire to mount a classic Western, so it is more than a little surprising that it took the Coen Brothers twenty-six years and fifteen features to get around to it. With the cast and talent assembled, True Grit seemed like one of the few sure bets of the holiday season, and sure enough, it is a finely-detailed, confidently-plotted piece of old-fashioned entertainment. Part of the reason True […]
THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Astronomy Domine
BY SAINT JOHN BARNED-SMITH I’m not quite sure when Christian, 27, first invited me to go on a pilgrimage. But, in the spirit of “Why not,” – in which I’ve also learned how to help cows give birth, eat raccoon, and kill pigs – I agreed. I assumed we would go to the shrine of the Virgin of Caacupe, the main site of pilgrimages in Paraguay. But the shrine of Itape, located about 40km east of Potrero Pucu, is closer, and (more importantly) walkable. The night we left, I packed a couple of soggy empanadas my host mom had cooked […]
SEASONS GREETINGS: Happy Holidays!
Look for our Year In Review next week!
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
WORTH REPEATING: A Christmas Carol
BY CHARLES DICKENS Chapter 1 – Marley’s Ghost Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece […]