This Tuesday, a couple of Humboldt University grad students will be presenting a seminar on the “Theory, Practice and Aesthetics of Horror.” Entrance is free. Sounds like a good time, though sadly I’ll have to miss the 19:30 slot discussing biological perspectives of the undead. From the email… Theorie, Praxis & Ästhetik des Horrors Liebe [...]

It’s that time of year again—the leaves are turning, the kids are going back to school and the blogosphere is making mixtapes for Halloween—just like clockwork. From this year’s crop, at the top of the list should be this work of love, the “Written in Blood” compilation by a fella named Nate Ashley. He compiled [...]

In March, Viggo Mortensen spoke at the occasion of Dennis Hopper getting his star on Hollywood Boulevard. In honor of Hopper’s fearlessness and honesty, he dedicated this poem by William Stafford, a fellow Kansan, whom he called “perhaps the finest and most honest poet that state has produced.” I thought it was pretty good, too. [...]

Some things are better unimproved, un-messed-with. Case in point: zombies. I prefer the old style, slow, lurching, shuffling kind. Sure, the new running zombies are scarier because they can catch up with you—whereas you can just walk away from a slow one—but, as Brent McKnight rightfully says, the slower ones are arguably scarier because they’ll [...]

Well, that was a crazy decade. Some are saying the Naughty Aughties were the worst decade ever, nearly as ridiculous as calling them the best ever. Without getting all Dickens out up in here, it really was the best and the worst of times—quite possibly my favourite decade personally even while it was my least [...]

Remember the movie The Matrix? Remember the creators, the Wachowski bros, the future of cinema? That didn’t quite happen (ah, 2000 was an innocent, hopeful time, wasn’t it?). Their output has been a little choppy since–but they did make the pretty good V for Vendetta (let’s not talk about Matrix II, III or Speed Racer). [...]

If anyone were primed to love Jim Jarmusch’s new movie, “The Limits of Control,” it should be me. Since the late 90s when I first encountered his films (first in an overwrought review of “Dead Man” by music critic Greil Marcus in an online column that no longer exists anywhere online) I’ve followed his output [...]

It’s not been all that bloggy round these parts, so much so that I’ve neglected to post my two most favourite musical objects gathered in the last two weeks for ye olde recurring feature here. So, in deference to limited time, gimmickry and twitter’s 140 characters, here are two tracks that, to quote David Foster [...]

1972 (c) Annie Leibovitz from the current American Photo magazine excerpting Leibovitz’s new photobook At Work. This relationship of sorts (and this shot) is covered in the film Gonzo, produced by Alex Gibney (Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) and one of the best documentaries of the year (trailer below). [...]

It was unfortunate that Amy Winehouse was too strung out to do the theme for the new James Bond movie, A Quantum of Solace. It was decidely less unfortunate when I heard the replacement, this banging jazzy snarly song from Jack White and Alicia Keys. I love it. The melody has been my Ohrwurm all [...]

One of the great things — perhaps the great thing — about last.fm is its built-in unspecificity, i.e. you can’t to exactly what you want, rather you get to listen to things similar to what you want, herein its indirect genius. So a few days ago, as this one played in living room ambience, Yuhang [...]

My neighbor was relating to me last week how he and his girlfriend and her family, eating at a popular Italian restaurant just under Viktoriapark in south Kreuzberg, spotted Quentin Tarantino — who’s been living in and prowling around Berlin these days (Zitty sez Bergmannstraße and Mehringdamm), shooting his new movie with Brad Pitt — [...]

I’ve been devouring Paul Trynka’s bio on Jim Osterberg aka Iggy Pop, Open Up and Bleed, which just came out on paperback (and I picked up in an airport in Stockholm last month). One thing evident in Pop/Osterberg’s Jekyll and Hyde persona, is there is little middle ground to be had. If he triumphed, he [...]

OHIO STATE UNOFFICIAL MOTTO: HI IN THE MIDDLE AND ROUND ON EACH SIDE Right now both US Presidential are swarming all over Ohio, the swingingest of the swing states, with McCain announcing his VP pick today in Dayton and Obama set to hold forth in Dublin tomorrow with his new trusty sidekick Joe “Biden His [...]

like I did — getting married and whatnot — you could do worse then read The New Yorker‘s movie critic Anthony Lane’s week one and week two Letters from Beijing. They’re rambling, irreverent, highly subjective, highly entertaining and, naturally, full of canny film references. “Even when Yao Ming, whose status in China is roughly equivalent [...]

The standard Olympic ranking method on American sites like TSN is uniformly by total medal count instead of gold, the Chinese preference, which has put the United States on top since the Beijing games began 12 days ago. Chinese sites like the portal 163 (中国 = China, 美国 = USA) prefer to count by gold [...]

He also tended toward outspokenness, and it soon undid him. After scorning the scientific work of the colonel who headed the institute, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was banished to a desolate penal camp in Kazakhstan called Ekibastuz. It would become the inspiration for “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” At Ekibastuz, any writing would be [...]

It’s out here on August 21 — weeks after UK, Korea and France. Pourquoi? (pie chart via)

I expected movie critics to take to the new Abba-scored jukebox musical Mama Mia! like hyenas to a crippled gazelle, but I didn’t expect the fun in reading about its horribleness to match the purported fun of the film itself. The best eviscerator in the biz, Anthony Lane at the NYer, describes what must be [...]