ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The preview sketches the film’s themes and conflict without ever spelling out the plot. SPOILER ALERT! The trailer begins with a boy launching into the national anthem at a football game. It’s a flourish that signals the beginning of a high-stakes game — and a drama about the current state of the union. As “The Star Spangled Banner” plays, we hear some dialogue about replacing Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) — he’s a “war hero” in a time of peace. And in perhaps the trailer’s most loaded moment (not counting the various beats of gunplay), we see Anne Hathaway’s […]

[Photography by GRAHAM TOLBERT] The War On Drugs really like Bob Dylan. They also like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and the Grateful Dead. If you’ve seen any of those acts live (personally, I’ve seen Dylan, Springsteen, and Dark Star Orchestra), then you know that can’t be a bad thing. Philly’s own W.O.D. played a 105-minute show Saturday night that lit up Union Transfer with the spirit of the aforementioned American rock originals, playing fifteen songs, mostly from their latest LP Slave Ambient and a few from the first Wagonwheel Blues. Like a jam band show, a constant, pleasant vibe resonated […]

SALON: This is how the average day proceeded: I’d arrive in the morning around 9-ish. The phone would soon start ringing—with calls for Hitchens. I’d tell the callers he was not yet available, and they would leave messages: “Tell him, that was a wonderful dinner last night.” Or, “Mick was so pleased to meet him.” Or, “We may all get together again this evening.” Within an hour or so, the nature of the messages would shift to cover plans for lunch that day: “Tell Christopher we’re all meeting at the Spanish place.” About this time, Hitchens would saunter in. He’d […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69. Kim’s death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media. The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease. The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary […]

So, I walked into a.k.a. Music, and grabbed a copy of the new two CD re-issue of Some Girls by The Rolling Stones. My first thought was of the time I bought the original release 33 years ago at Third Street Jazz, which was located just one block away from a.k.a. Secondly, I recalled that when the Stones went into the studio to make Some Girls, and how they ended up recording nearly 70 songs, the bulk of which formed the nucleus of the albums that would come after, namely Emotional Rescue in 1980 and Tattoo You in 1981. I […]

Phawker contributors dish on whatever music is blowing up in their own minds right friggin’ now. Look for it later today.

THE GUARDIAN: Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of “a war that appears to have no end”. The law, contained in the defence authorisation […]

FRESH AIR As protesters in the Middle East use social media to organize and communicate, the regimes they’re battling are using sophisticated technology to intercept their emails, text messages and cellphone calls.On Wednesday’s Fresh Air, journalist Ben Elgin talks about a Bloomberg News series, “Wired for Repression,” which details how Western companies are selling surveillance technology to regimes including Iran, Syria, Bahrain and Tunisia. Those regimes have then used the information obtained from those technologies to torture protesters and dissidents, Elgin tells Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies. “[One Iranian engineer] became caught up in the protest movements after the election […]

GREG KOT: Hunt is a former major-label up-and-comer who has found a new kind of freedom and confidence doing things on his own. His third album ventures across genres, touching on everything from country twang to sci-fi psychedelia. The glue is Hunt’s acuity as a songwriter; he knows how to drop hooks and turn a smart phrase, and this album brims with surprises. MORE

BY ZIVIT SHLANK Bassist/Composer Keith DeStefano is uniquely quixotic.  As a musician, he’s a curious combination of manic focus and reckless composure; sort of a mad, musical scientist. Largely self-taught on guitar and bass, Keith got hooked on jazz early on by the urging of his guitar teacher. A self-proclaimed weirdo, Keith was grooving to the sounds of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme while most kids were listening to rock and pop. Performing alongside local legends (and sidemen to Max Roach) bassist Tyrone Brown and saxophonist Odean Pope opened him up to the different textural possibilities of […]