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(04/10/18 9:01am)
There's a scene about halfway through "Ready Player One" in which the story's hero, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), is approached by the villain, corporate CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn). Both parties are after the same thing: total control of the virtual reality technology Oasis, which has become the most important economic resource in their dystopic future, as well as an amount of shares which equates to nearly half a trillion dollars. Wade wants to preserve the Oasis as a fun playground for geeks and everyday people alike, while Sorrento and his company, IOI, want to litter the platform with advertisements and monetization.
(04/10/18 9:00am)
Song of the Week
(03/29/18 5:03am)
Song of the Week
(03/13/18 12:00pm)
Song of the Week
(03/06/18 11:32pm)
"Red Sparrow," the latest Jennifer Lawrence vehicle, is an espionage thriller with a bland plot and very little in the way of thrills. It's a film with a lot of production value that merely puts a glossy sheen over a story so trashy it ranks with gorefests like "Hostel" and other smut. Mindless and limitlessly cynical, its only saving grace is that eventually, it ends -- though it makes us wait an excruciating 140 minutes for the sweet release of credits.
(02/13/18 1:00pm)
On Super Bowl Sunday, two organizations pulled off miracles: the Eagles beat the Patriots, and Netflix made people interested in "Cloverfield" again.
(02/06/18 10:00am)
Picture the group that might utter a line like "best boy band since One Direction." Do they look like One Direction, or the biggest boy bands before them? Young men with features sculpted by the gods themselves, seemingly placed on this earth to make teen girls cry and record labels rich? Or do you imagine a ragtag group of young and largely black music nerds that met on the internet and crash in the same house?
(12/07/17 2:55am)
Here are the 20 best albums of 2017 (so far).
(11/28/17 2:00pm)
Bjoerk may be from Iceland, but she wants us to believe she's from somewhere much farther away. Her aesthetic is anything but consistent; the only aspect tying together her alt-rock band The Sugarcubes, genre-hopping early solo projects and her more thematic and ambitious post-1997 projects is her unmistakable vocal delivery.
(11/14/17 2:00pm)
Early in "Thor: Ragnarok," the third film entry of the Norse god's solo adventures, Loki (disguised as Odin) is watching a play featuring fake Thor, Loki and Odin. It's an exact recreation of Loki's fake death scene in "Thor: The Dark World," rendered hilarious here by surprising celebrity cameos. Director Taika Waititi is sending a clear message: this is not like the underwhelming, super-serious movies that came before. In fact, it's exactly the opposite.
(10/17/17 1:00pm)
"Colors" is a well-crafted, poppy return to Beck's goofier roots
(10/17/17 1:00pm)
Science fiction stories tend to fall on the more epic side. Typically, a creator imagines a strange new world or future and sets their characters off on sweeping adventures, often with the fate of countless lives on the line. What makes Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic "Blade Runner" so special is its more personal, introspective storytelling. In it, humans have created Replicants, androids that mirror us in obvious physiological ways, making the perfect slaves. However, some Replicants begin to rebel against the system, escaping captivity and longing for a life of freedom. Harrison Ford plays Deckard, whose role as a Blade Runner is to hunt down and "retire" rebelling Replicants. On his journey, Deckard learns more about the emotions that Replicants are designed to feel, how their manufactured humanity is not at all unlike the "real" kind. He even falls in love with one named Rachel.
(10/03/17 1:00pm)
The ultimate allure of the spy movie lies in its fantastic elements. When you strip the genre down to its essentials, you have colorful villains with ludicrous plots facing off against suave gentleman armed with classic good looks, charisma and ultra-hi-tech gadgets. In other words, you have "Kingsman."
(09/15/17 9:30pm)
Rap and EDM. Those two things go together like peanut butter and spaghetti; I suppose you could convince me that it's a good combo, but only if you change one or the other until it's almost unrecognizable. Hip-hop and electronic music have always gone hand in hand, but you almost never see a full-fledged rap over a full-fledged, techno dance beat. Kanye West rapped over industrial beats on "Yeezus," but the result was more rage-fueled than danceable, and Drake has incorporated two-step and Afro-electro beats on the likes of "Passionfruit" and "One Dance," but he switches to his sing-song voice while doing it.
(09/15/17 9:08pm)
If the age-old concept that sadness has a physical presence, a sort of heaviness that weighs on your shoulders and could sonically manifest itself, the result would probably sound a lot like The National. Their songs seem bent on pressing down on you in the same way that pop music wants to lift you up; the piano and bass draw rich, long chords over you like a blanket, synthesizers and strings emit hauntingly mournful moans and lead singer Matt Berninger's signature baritone is the vocal equivalent of a defeated, weary sigh. Decidedly sorrowful since their 2001 debut, The National seems the rightful inheritor of that "Depressing Indie Rock Band" label that Coldplay has seemed so desperate to escape.
(09/15/17 8:47pm)
Certain artists manage to stay recognizable, if not relevant, as time passes. Everyone knows a Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston or Bee Gees tune, and some of them manage to fulfill the same purpose they had decades ago -- to get people on the dance floor. At the same time, generations of people can sing along to iconic choruses from the Beatles or big-hair bands like Journey and Bon Jovi. Those were popular bands that can be recognized as such now.
(09/05/17 1:00pm)
Television, which was once condensed to weekly programs on three or four channels, has expanded so vastly in recent years that it's impossible for a person to watch every show of note. In such a diluted market, the TV series-as-a-cultural-event, where, for the course of an hour, a large swath of viewers has their eyes on the same program, has essentially died.
(05/02/17 9:00am)
There's no way to unpack a Kendrick Lamar LP in one listen. From his major breakthrough "good kid, m.A.A.d city," presented as a time-jumping short film, to his ambitious, eclectic follow-up "To Pimp a Butterfly" which garnered 11 Grammy nominations -- one short of Michael Jackson's record for "Thriller" -- a Lamar record is guaranteed to come loaded with multi-narrative character arcs, history-spanning musical cues and some of the most stunning vocal acrobatics in hip-hop. Even last year's comparably small TPAB companion piece "untitled unmastered." was among the best rap releases of the year.
(04/11/17 6:07pm)
Looking for some new music?
(04/11/17 9:00am)
In the past few years, superheroes have taken television by storm. The CW has a DC show for almost every day of the week, and Marvel has partnered with ABC and Netflix to broadcast a handful of popular shows like "Daredevil" and "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Just when it seemed like the formula for a comic book show was obvious, FX's "Legion" arrived to turn everything on its head.
