CINEMA: The Banality Of Evil

  EVIL DEAD (2013, directed by Fede Alvarez, 91 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It is not unusual for aging pop artists to remake their early hits to take advantage of new recording technology, a new publishing deal, or some lingering impulse of perfectionism. Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tappert, the director, star, and producer of the 1981 cult-horror hit The Evil Dead have come together again to produce this modern reboot of the demonic franchise, and it is far superior to the original in nuanced acting, realistic effects and production design. Yet unsurprisngly, this new Evil […]

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EARLY WORD: In The Air Tonight

  Today, well-known Philadelphia musician and sound designer Michael Kiley releases the first in a series of immersive, iPhone app-directed “sound walks.” Presented under Kiley’s moniker The Mural and the Mint,The Empty Air: A Rittenhouse Square Sound Walk combines music, environmental sound and mobile devices for a new kind of music experience. The location-based composition was designed for Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square and will be available via iTunes beginning today. The Mural and the Mint will also perform live at The Empty Air’s opening-night party, 8 p.m. tonight (April 5th)  at Rittenhouse Tavern at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. To create the experience, […]

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Win Tix To See The Black Angels @ UT

  Dag, this is da bomb-diggity! (Not even sure what that means, but I’ve been assured it’s a compliment and all the kids talk that way these days.) These Texas psychonauts play Union Transfer Sunday in support of the just-released brain-melting-ly wonderful Indigo Meadow. Now just have to figure out how to clone myself so I can violate the laws of space and time see them without missing Redd Kross (at Kung Fu Necktie Sunday night). But the good news for you, dear reader, is that we have a pair of tickets to give away. To qualify all you have […]

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CROSS-POSTED: Q&A With Tim Blake Nelson

  How me met the Coen Brothers, making O Brother, working with Clooney on Syriana, working with Spielberg on Minority Report and Lincoln, studying classics at Brown, growing up Jewish offspring of Holocaust refugees in Tulsa and why Katherine Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty got bamboozled by craven politicos and cowardly liberals. All that and more. MORE RELATED: O Brother, Who Art Thou?

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EARLY WORD: Run Zombie Run

  The Zombie Run is a 3.1 mile racecourse of gut-wrenching, blood-pumping, sweat-dripping fear, which will come to town on Sunday, April 7, as part of a 16-city nationwide infestation, for the most exhilarating 5K of your life… if you survive. The Zombie Run is not your typical hometown 5K run, unless of course, your hometown is infested with an army of marauding Zombies. By using the popular Zombie theme, The Zombie Run creates a running narrative on a racecourse designed like a Hollywood Apocalypse movie-set, where participants either run through the course as Zombies, or living Zombie prey. Participants […]

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Huey Lewis Gleefully Axe Murders Weird Al Yankovic In This Brilliant American Psycho Parody

American Psycho with Huey Lewis and Weird Al from Huey Lewis RELATED: Huey Lewis and the News joined that rarefied strata 30 years ago with SPORTS, the group’s third album — a 10-times-platinum, chart-topping smash that spawned five Top 20 singles, four of which (“Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug,” “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” “If This Is It”) went Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. The slyly humorous SPORTS videos were MTV staples. It was a phenomenon that took the San Francisco Bay Area group, which just the year before was defiantly “Workin’ For a […]

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Anthony Jeselnik On Banning Assault Weapons

“You’ll get my assault weapon when you pry it out of my curious six-year-old’s cold dead hands.” — ANTHONY JESELNIK RELATED: President Obama’s campaign for new federal gun control laws takes him to Colorado on Wednesday, and next week back to Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre renewed the nation’s fraught conversation about guns. Though his trip to Connecticut was designed to coincide with the start of gun control debate in the U.S. Senate, that even further, and the president’s push for comprehensive federal legislation appears to be in jeopardy. “People assume the demise of this [Senate gun […]

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WORTH REPEATING: The King Of New Jersey

  PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: In a story this profane, a story about power and legacy, fathers and sons, a story in which F-bombs rain down in a kind of grid pattern designed to make sure offense is taken, it’s probably best to warm up, first, with an inappropriate reference to the female anatomy. In this bit, George Norcross III, one of the new owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, calls Bill Ross on his cell phone and asks him to put out a press release. “I want you,” he says, “to condemn the Teamsters.” There was an inflatable […]

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ARTSY: This Is Jack Kerouac’s Brain On Drugs

  SALON: From 1953 to 1963 — a period that corresponds with the publication of his most celebrated works — Allen Ginsberg snapped photographs of his cohort of soon-to-be famous friends. These shots weren’t intended for exhibition; they were mementos, thrown in the back of a drawer. He unearthed them two decades later and had copies made, in the borders of which he scrawled relevant details in felt-tip pen. It is these photographs, amended with shots from the ’80s and ’90s, that are on display at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. […] the pictures from the ’80s and ’90s greatly […]

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