HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: New details about Hail, Caesar! — the Coen brothers’ upcoming “musical comedy” — have been revealed, thanks to their oft-collaborators: composer Carter Burwell and sound mixer Skip Lievsay. During the “Dolby Institute: The Sound of the Coens” Master Class, part of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, Dolby director Glenn Kiser asked the two to describe the early parts of their process with directors Ethan and Joel Coen. “We’re doing one now,” said Lievsay of Universal’s 2016 release, with an ensemble cast that includes George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson and Jonah […]
COMMENTARY: Sound & Fury Signifying Nothing
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY The latest American butchery in Afghanistan (a hospital for Christ’s sake?!) is but a replay of yesterday and the day before and the decade and a half before that. And, for all the blood and treasure expended, we’ve accomplished little or nothing unless you’ve become sufficiently jaded to accept the enriching of every Afghan politician, tribal leader, and a bevy of enterprising plain old Afghan citizens beyond their wildest dreams as a victory for the benevolence of good old-fashioned American capitalism. This time we “accidentally” bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital killing and maiming dozens including patients and staff. Never mind […]
WORTH REPEATING: Being Nicki Minaj
NEW YORK TIMES: In another era, Minaj’s sexuality, expressed semi-parodically — pretending she’s a Barbie doll; glorifying women dressed as prostitutes and set in red-light-district windows — might have given feminists pause. But in the 2010s, we have entered a different world in pop culture, one in which sexual repression is perceived as burdensome and perhaps even an inability to holistically integrate the body and self. Young people are identifying and exploring formerly unknown, or at least unlabeled, frontiers of sexuality and gender. And the fact that Minaj is in charge of her own objectification (describing her vagina with […]
Q&A: Kyle Dunnigan, Emmy-Winning Comedian, Inside Amy Schumer Writer, Billy Joel Superfan
BY JONATHAN VALANIA For the last three seasons, comedian Kyle Dunnigan has worked as a writer/performer on Inside Amy Schumer, where he just won an Emmy for the boy-band pastiche “Girl You Don’t Need Make-Up.” In Trainwreck, he played “Kyle,” the obnoxious staff member of the equally obnoxious S’Nuff magazine that Schumer’s character writes for. He does a weekly podcast with fellow comedian Tig Notaro called “Professor Blastoff” which premiered at #1 on iTunes Comedy Podcast Chart, and consistently remains as one of the top comedy podcasts. He had a recurring role on Reno 911 as ‘Craig’ a.k.a The […]
BILLY JOEL: Piano Man
From Old Grey Whistle Test circa 1973. Haters gonna hate. Fuck ’em. More for us. Like it or not, the man was The Bard of Long Guy Land Working Class Sadness in the 70s. The song is deathless, this is the performance of a young man who still has something to prove, and that mustache was punk as fuck at least four years before anyone even knew what that means. Hat tip to Kyle Dunnigan for pointing it out.
ROMANCE, APOCALYPSE & MOON LANDINGS: A Q&A With Experimental Filmmaker Kate McCabe
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Though she currently resides on the high plains of the Mojave Desert near the “rock n’ roll heaven” of Joshua Tree, acclaimed filmmaker Kate McCabe was born and bred in the Northeast, went to school at Girls’ High and attended University Of The Arts. It was a U Arts project — a Russ Meyers pastiche called Go Go Rama Mama, told from the perspective of a go-go dancer making the rounds for tips, shot through with all the low-rent tragedy and comedy such venues engender — that marked her coming out as a filmmaker. From there […]
FICTION: The Death Of My Twin
BY SHARNITA MIDGETT The light flickered in and out as the tinny sounds leaking out of a crappy little Macbook speaker interrupted my sleep, and I caught a glimpse of Charlotte hunched over her laptop under her blanket. She was up all night watching YouTube videos. Again. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since her ear buds broke a week and a half ago. If I squinted my ears, I could almost make out what was being said: If only people believed in themselves as much as they believe in Lil Wayne and Beyoncé and them. Charlotte always […]
TRAILER: Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl
ESQUIRE: The new series Vinyl arrives from three essential voices: director Martin Scorsese, Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire writer Terence Winter, and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. A new trailer for the series appears to fuse their strengths. Following Bobby Cannavale’s record label president Richie Finestra as he wades through the music scene of 1970s New York City’s, a convergence of punk, disco, and hip-hop, Vinyl channels the suave-as-fuck energy of Goodfellas. The hunt for “a song that makes you want to kick someone’s ass” is smothered in debauchery straight out of Scorsese and Winter’s Wolf of Wall Street. MORE
Win Tix To See Luna @ The Troc On Monday
While it is inarguably true that there would be no Luna — and for that matter no Galaxie 500 — without the Velvet Underground, Dean Wareham’s ’90s alt-rawk jawn was never so much a Velvet Underground cover band as it was a lovely green shoot growing out of VU’s “Pale Blue Eyes”/”Femme Fatale” side, eschewing the noise and transgression of the first two VU albums for the lyrical, languid jangling pop meditations of the last two VU albums. Poor bastards had no more commercial luck with Lou Reed’s sound cloud than Lou Reed did, which is to say none, […]
#UCC SHOOTING: ‘Beta [Male] Uprising’ Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, Not Even To The /b/tards Of 4chan
TAIWANESE ANIMATORS: The night before the Umpqua Community College shooting near Rosenburg, Oregon, a post was made on 4chan warning others of malicious intent. Other anonymous users called his bluff, and a few told him to not to do it, but some jokingly posted, “beta uprising.” The term “beta uprising” is a joke referring to “beta males” who may feel jaded by society and unwanted by the opposite sex. The jokesters purport that beta males may resort to violent actions in their futile search for significance. Therefore, the term is often associated with mass murderers. The random 4chan boards “/r9k/” […]
BOOKS: The Origin Of Monsters
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Ahmad Fadil was a high school dropout, a video store clerk and a petty gangster who got tattoos, drank alcohol and sold drugs as a youth in Zarqa, his hometown in northeast Jordan. His mother was so alarmed she sent him to a Muslim self-help class, and he soon found another calling. By the time a U.S. airstrike killed him in 2006, Abu Musab Zarqawi — Fadil’s nom de guerre — had led the Sunni insurgency in Iraq that killed tens of thousands of people and humbled a global superpower by miring it in a vicious […]
CINEMA: The Revolution Will Be Serialized
Final poster for HUNGER GAMES: Mockinjay 2 just released. You’re welcome.
BEING THERE: Bully @ Boot & Saddle
Photo by TOM BECK If you ask me, it wasn’t until the turn of the century when Nashville really started earning it’s stripes as the country’s “Music City.” It really wasn’t until 2000 when the city started pumping out great bands that weren’t country artists. Since that time, Kings of Leon, The Dead Weather, Kopecky, Diarrhea Planet, and a slew of other bands added to the diversity of the Nashville scene, which, up until that point, was mostly just a country scene. Both Jack White and The Black Keys left their respective hometowns of Detroit and Akron, Ohio to move […]