Posts tagged as Culture and TV
31 Days of Horror: "Hardware"
Hardware is a movie about a cyborg that hunts a woman relentlessly, murdering everyone who gets in its way. It had the misfortune to be released as the hype was building for the return of the robotic Austrian weightlifter who redefined emptiness of expression and creativity in parking. This inadvertently invited inevitable, illogical comparisons and doomed it to obscurity along with the rest of the rubbish killer robot knockoffs released off the back of the Terminator hype. This is a shame, because Hardware is probably the best sci-fi slasher movie ever made. And sure, its competition is basically the psychedelic Jason X and probably some "Doctor Who" episodes, but that's still an achievement worth honoring, right? READ MORE
New on DVD: The Human Tautology, or, The Branding Centipede
When the first announcements surfaced on the Internet in the late summer of 2009, it sounded like a low-budget, energetic, insane Japanese special-effects flick, a la Yoshihiro Nishimura, of Mutant Girls Squad and Tokyo Gore Police semi-fame. A couple festivals in midnight or horror series and it could head to DVD, where it'd get passed around by Takashi Miike fans and brought up on forum threads by gorehounds playing that game where they try to out-cite each other as to who's seen the most outré flick. READ MORE
Prada Unveils New Shoes of Great Monstrous Evil!
First I hated the Prada camouflage line, which, to be fair, grew on me! A little. It was still obviously ugly and the worst thing is, you know, you're wearing those clothes and everyone's like, "oh there's those Prada camouflage clothes." It's too much on you. And now? And now? BUT AND IF AND? Here. THE "CREEPER WINGTIPS PLATFORM" SHOES.
The Dark Bloom On Young Axl Rose
Reflections on youth at a moment in time: "He isn't pretty yet, he hasn't begun to think of himself as a rock star. He's a boy-man, with a trace of fear in his pugnacious stare. I can't remember what he'd done, that time. Stolen another kid's bike, I think. Or destroyed another kid's bike. When I first saw his hair, I understood something Dana had told me hours before, at a bar: that when they were children, Axl was Raggedy Ann in the Christmas parade. Looking longer, a person could understand something else, too, about the Midwestern darkness in his voice."
In Defense of the Season Finale of "Mad Men"
According to the always-reliable Internet, many people were unhappy with this season's finale of Mad Men. Most of the criticism seems to be either one of two things: first, that it was just too nonsensical, too fast: the sudden engagement, Don's off-putting happiness, or just the general tenor of LA and its aftermath. The second complaint seems to be that "nothing really happened." (There's a third complaint, from "Lost" creator Damon Lindelof, that it wasn't made clear that the whole cast has been dead through the entire show, but he was pretty much the only one to raise that objection.) Well let's get the first, and seemingly the most ridiculous, out of the way. READ MORE
31 Days of Horror: "Blood Diner"
Of all the movies we're discussing this month,Blood Diner is the most divorced from reality. It makes an incredibly consistent argument for its own distance from verity. While most films take place in somewhere at least tangentially relatable, Blood Diner drives across that line it in a flaming Cadillac. A Cadillac made of cannibalism, Nudie suits and wrestlers called Eddie Hitler. READ MORE
Twista And Raekwon, "The Heat"
Here's the video for Twista's new single, which features some dynamite production from the veteran Chicago team of No I.D. and Traxster (I don't know what that sample is, but I wish I did) and a cooled-out guest verse from Raekwon. Twista, who was original known as "Tung Twista," and, as you might know, was named the world's fastest rapper the Guiness Book of World Records, delivers a typically complicated and impressive staccato rhyme. Ignore the part where he says that he's "as good as Pelican Brief is..." (Because, really? Was The Pelican Brief that good? A matter of opinion, I suppose.) And listen to rest of the song, which is even better than The Pelican Brief.
Mystikal Featuring Lil Wayne And Fiend, "Paper Cuts" And The Amorality Of Art
Despite the fact that he has one of the most distinctive voices hip-hop has ever known, it's hard to root for Mystikal. Recording for Master P's No Limit Records, the Operation Desert Storm veteran played a major part in putting New Orleans rap on the map in the late '90s-remember "Here I Go," or "It Ain't My Fault" or "The Man Right Chea?" Then, even as No Limit went into decline, he rose to greater stardom with a string of hits produced by Neptunes that more effectively channeled the spirit of James Brown better than any rapper ever did before or since. "Shake Ya Ass" is one of those songs that have you remembering exactly where you were the first time you heard it. (Nowhere interesting in my case, just in a car, parked in front of a friend's house in Massachusetts. But still, I remember it very well!) And "Danger," and "Bouncin' Back." He really caught something special there for a while. READ MORE
Footnotes of Mad Men: Full of Demands, Empty of Offerings
Don's right-about one thing, at least: teenagers are sentimental. The cynicism with which adults rebel comes from the nihilism of doing what you know is bad for you because you're old enough to understand that these things usually go unpunished. The kind of joyless self-indulgence that adults traffic in doesn't exist for teenagers. For the young, it's unfathomable that act of self-indulgence can bring anything but joy. In the twilight of childhood, you're not sure what's like to be an adult but you know what it feels like to not be a child. Every brush with adult behavior-anything from smoking, to sneaking out, to driving, to fucking-is wrapped in a gauzy, loving haze. (It's bittersweet though: as the twilight of childhood dims, there is within the heart of every teenager a dull throb that comes with the mourning of lost innocence.) What's alarming, then, is when grown-ups act like teenagers: denying themselves nothing, cherishing their transgressions like merit badges, constantly chasing the beginning of something, unable to parse the sensations of joys from despair. READ MORE
Actress From The Pre-Irony Era Dies
"Her catchphrase — 'Ward, I'm worried about the Beaver'– became a slogan for an age without irony, before the social revolutions of the 1960s would change the way TV portrays the nuclear family forever. READ MORE
