BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Spider-Man: Far From Home is now Sony’s highest grossing film. Ever. And so Sony and Disney did what any well reasonable mega corporations will do. They argued about money and decided to end their business relationship. Because it is hard to share a billion dollars. Marvel Studios Executive Producer Kevin Feige, who produced the previous both Spider-Man: Far from Home and Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), will no longer be producing the web slinger, according to a report on Deadline. And frankly I am unsure what this means. Since Tom Holland portrayed the character in […]
KIM GORDON: Sketch Artist
This is easily the best thing Kim Gordon’s ever done. And I’m old enough to remember when buying Bad Moon Rising on vinyl wasn’t just a hip format choice, it was your only option. “Sketch Artist” is the lead-off track from her just-announced/first-ever solo album, No Home Record, to be released October 11th on Matador Records. No Home Record follows the recent opening of Gordon’s solo exhibition “She Bites Her Tender Mind” at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in Dublin and “Lo-Fi Glamour” at Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. The video for “Sketch Artist” was directed by Berlin-based artist and […]
INCOMING: Ziggy Played Guitar
PITCHFORK: The first picture of Johnny Flynn in Stardust is here. Check out the shot, taken by Paul Van Carter, above. The forthcoming, unauthorized film—which producers insist is “not a biopic”—depicts David Bowie’s life and transformation into Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s, as he embarks on a road trip to America. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Stardust, an upcoming film about David Bowie, has cast its leading man, as Deadline and Screen International note. The role will be played by actor-musician Johnny Flynn, and he will be accompanied by Marc Maron—portraying Bowie’s publicist—and Jena Malone (The Hunger Games) as Bowie’s first wife, […]
DRAMA: So Shines A Good Deed In A Weary World
Hamilton The Musical will be making 40 $10 tickets available via lottery for each Philly performance at the Forrest Theater (Aug. 27th-Nov. 17). Sign up HERE.
CINEMA: Re-Born In The USA
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (Directed by Gurinder Chadha, 118 min., 2019, USA) BY JASMIN ALVAREZ Recently, director Gurinder Chadha led a Q&A in Philly to discuss her new movie Blinded By The Light (2019) and the harrowing actuality of immigrant life during the Thatcherite ‘80s that impelled her to reimagine an upbeat and unifying cinematic alternative history. The screenplay is adapted from the memoir Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion, and Rock N’ Roll, written by journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, a second-generation British-Pakistani turned Springsteen-zealot who found shelter from the racist cruelties of Thatcher-fueled xenophobia in the music of The Boss. […]
ALBUM REVIEW: King Gizzard Infest The Rat’s Nest
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is an insanely prolific seven-piece from Australia that combines psychedelia, garage rock, jazz, prog and now thrash metal to create a sound that is wholly theirs over the course of 15 albums. In 2017 alone, they released a mind-boggling five uniformly great albums. After a relatively silent 2018, King Gizzard returned earlier this year with Fishing for Fishies, an LP of soft, environmentally-conscious blues rock with songs about feeling bad for the fish you catch and boogie-oogie-oogie-ing. Fishing for Fishies may have had a few duds buried in its tracklist, but it also […]
Tonite They Ride The Eternal Highways Of Valhalla
Artwork by THOMAS POLLART via Easy Rider VARIETY: The first significant step Fonda took in the path toward the success he would achieve through “Easy Rider” was a starring role, with Nancy Sinatra and Bruce Dern, in Roger Corman’s 1966 Hells Angels drama “The Wild Angels.” It was the first of a series of successful biker pictures produced by American International Pictures that screened at drive-ins across the country. The next step was the 1967 feature “The Trip,” directed by Corman and written by Jack Nicholson. This piece of what has been termed psychedelic cinema follows a young director of […]
CINEMA: Blackbird Singing In The Dead Of Night
THE NIGHTINGALE (Directed by Jennifer Kent, 136 minutes, AUS, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC After wowing Sundance in 2014 with The Babadook, Australian director Jennifer Kent had Hollywood knocking down her door. But instead of going more mainstream, Kent opted for a much darker, more personal take on a bit of Australian history largely unknown to most non-Aussie audiences. The Nightingale is a western set in 1825 that is bitingly relevant to present day America in the wake of the #metoo movement. Set in Tasmania during the brutal British colonization of The Land Down Under known as the […]
Q&A: Aisling Franciosi From Game Of Thrones
BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The Nightingale, director Jennifer Kent’s follow-up to her 2014 breakout hit Babadook, tells an intimate story about the history of her home country Australia. The gritty western takes place in 1825 during the ‘Black War’ with the British attempting to colonize the Island of Tasmania and drive out its Aboriginal inhabitants any way they can. The film stars Aisling Franciosi as Clare, a young Irish convict shipped to Tasmania to serve her seven-year debt to the British government, which when the film begins, she has just completed. The problem is the abusive British lieutenant […]
BACK STORY: The Complete Oral History Of Spoon
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the last 26 years, Spoon has gone from great white hype to major-label train wreck to “the most consistently great” band of the last decade, according to Metacritic. Algorithms can tell. They are the one band upon which we can all agree. The lion’s share of the blame and the glory rests squarely on the shoulders of singer/songwriter/guitarist Britt Daniel. Spoon is essentially a one-man band that’s had 11 members come and go or stay the course since 1993. MAGNET got all Spoon hands back on deck—not just the currently Spoon-fed, but the exiles and […]
CINEMA: Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life
This looks pretty great, due out December 13th.
ALBUM REVIEW: Bon Iver i,i
Illustration by MIKKEL SOMMER Twelves years ago, Justin Vernon emerged from a self-imposed isolation in the woods of Wisconsin and presented to the world his sadcore masterpiece For Emma, Forever Ago. Since then, Bon Iver has become a staple of indie-folk sound. His body of work always sounded to me like rustic lullabies, digestible background noise and easy to ignore. However, his latest album i,i breaks that pattern. Upon first glance, the tracklist appears senseless, made up of Biblical-sounding phrases and abbreviations. The song titles could be interpreted as poking fun at Vernon’s style of singing, the way he stretches […]
REST IN POWER: Kurt Wunder 1966-2019
PENNSYLVANIA BURIAL COMPANY: Upon realizing that his medications would never involve tequila, Kurt William Wunder acquiesced and peacefully surrendered his battle with glioblastoma and leptomeningeal disease on August 10th, 2019. He was the loving son of Dolores and the late William, youngest brother to Robert and William. Kurt was the devoted husband of Margo and adoring father to Georgia and Spencer. He is also survived by his faithful pets Shiloh and Parumpapumpum, as well as a hefty collection of sinks. Captain and founder of the Hatboro Horsham High School ice hockey team, Kurt imparted his great passion for the sport […]