Review

There’s a good story in here somewhere, but unfortunately this documentary about former Hole drummer Patty Schemel doesn’t seem to have much faith that it can reach very far outside Hole’s fan base. A lot of narrative polish it might have employed for the sake of the rest of us is eschewed in favor of making sure the fans get to hear about every last moment behind the scenes (and making damned sure everyone knows… See more →

Though he occasionally rises above it, Wes Anderson’s real great talent is in actively, counter-intuitively preventing an emotional connection between character and audience. I have never seen anyone work so hard to undermine his own ostensible goals. In spite of the delight his twee aesthetic elicits from his fan base, Anderson’s characters tend to be lifeless props populating meticulously constructed dioramas which were designed to be admired from the outside.

If being emotionally impenetrable truly… See more →

It is an election year, and as our president and other political incumbents across the country dust off their dirtiest tricks to retain their posts, so too do our returning regional air guitar champions. Of our first six cities this year, only Portland and Boston are sending new blood to the finals, and neither of their winners from last year returned to defend their titles. So as we pulled up to Washington, DC’s legendary 9:30… See more →

Boston’s air guitar faithful assembled at Brighton Music Hall on Friday night. They came to talk loudly over the judges’ commentary, and they stayed to marvel at performances that were by turns inspiring and reviling.

The air guitarists of Boston have long toiled fruitlessly in the glittery shadow of four-time champ McNallica (Erin McNally), whose charisma and fire was insurmountable even on the rare occasion she faced a worthy challenger. But with McNallica’s retirement came… See more →

There are two things that make New York City one of the toughest markets in US Air Guitar:

1. The staggering amount of top tier talent, both local and imported, and
2. The Daily Show’s Jason Jones, whose commentary has reduced all but the most thick-skinned competitors to quivering heaps in the backstage bathroom.

Alongside ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner and music biz free agent Leigh Lust, Jones returned on Thursday night to his perch in the… See more →

A little star-rating math:

Sergio Leone’s overall command of the medium has us beginning at four stars. Alas, his palpable misogyny throughout the film shaves off the fourth star. Toward the end, we lose most of the third star with the reveal of a plot twist that bears the odd distinction of being both predictable and thoroughly implausible. The remaining sliver of that third star is melted away by the bewildering prominence of Ennio Morricone’s… See more →

In the late 1980s, two recent college graduates in San Francisco began making audio recordings of their elderly neighbors’ loud, drunken arguments, eventually amassing over fourteen hours of material. If you find that material fails to transcend momentary amusement, the ensuing story will follow suit. As the recordings become a phenomenon throughout underground tape-trading networks and spawn albums, comic books, theatrical productions, and feature films, the cult obsession over such a mundane artifact grows ever… See more →

The Fly is iconic for its premise, but its execution leaves much to be desired. It tries to turn a typically feathery 1950s nuclear family idyll on its ear with a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong, but ultimately only reinforces the status quo with a wholly undeserved happy ending. With the hero trapped unnoticed in plain sight, and the heroine taking the fall for his murder, the story is ready to end on a note… See more →

Ken Burns was still finding his voice in 1985, and with Reagan in office, PBS was even more inclined than usual to document its federal benefactor through a few layers of gauze. So it’s not shocking that two thirds of The Statue of Liberty borders on peacetime jingoism, but it is disappointing. I had been hoping to learn about the marvel of engineering and diplomacy that was the statue’s origin, and I did. But in… See more →

Um holy shit Refused.

All @mSutters ever wanted from an @AndrewWk show was a bloody nose, and now I have given it to him.

Going into Crips and Bloods: Made in America, I was concerned that it would just be a sensationalist exposé on LA’s two most notorious gangs. But I was pleased to find that it has a genuine curiosity about its subject, which extends beyond the violence and traces the roots of African-American marginalization from the early twentieth century to present day. It is often a bit too stylish for its own good, and I wish it… See more →

The Swedish hardcore band Refused took a few years to get great, and shortly after it did, it imploded. Given its incendiary legacy, fans might expect fireworks from this “documentary” about the band’s final days and rather abrupt end, and sporadic live footage does offer a taste of what all the fuss was about. But for all Refused’s unique energy, its breakup story is pretty standard – the tour’s not going well, somebody has a… See more →

You don’t need to know anything about chess to enjoy Bobby Fischer Against the World, but you may well want to learn more about the game after you’ve seen the film – if you don’t take it as a cautionary tale.

Bobby Fischer’s story is a true American tragedy, and possibly the twentieth century’s most fascinating example of the tenuous divide between genius and madness, as this film makes abundantly clear. The pacing is a… See more →

Much of Life During Wartime initially led me to believe it was a postmodern prank whose genesis took this form: “What if I made a sequel to Happiness? God, what a pointless, stupid idea. I’ll do it!”

As Michael Haneke’s Funny Games charges audiences with being complicit in the real-life violence they flock to see fictionalized on screen, Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime seems to make a mockery of the compulsion to drag new and… See more →

The extraordinary devotion Bill Cunningham has for his work means that any film about him is worth a look, but it’s a shame this one is not a more illuminating portrait. Amiable though he may be, Cunningham has made a career out of being an observer rather than a participant, and his years behind the lens have trained him well in the art of evasion. No one interviewed in this documentary seems to know anything… See more →

There were at least two high profile odes to testosterone of the pull-the-superhuman-war-hero-out-of-retirement-for-a-suicide-rescue-mission variety in 1985: Rambo: First Blood Part II and Commando. Both traffic in the big, loud, and dumb of 1980s Cold War action tropes. But only Commando is actually fun, because it has the good sense not to take itself so seriously.

Each of Arnold’s one-liners in Commando is a winking acknowledgement that this is high octane escapism, a celebration of wanton… See more →

Apparently the myth of the American sleepover is that its volume can rise above a whisper. This film tries so hard for understated adolescent authenticity that it forgets those first tentative steps into adulthood tend to be just as clumsily vibrant as they are furtively awkward. For a story that spans several nocturnal teenage gatherings on the last weekend of summer, it is remarkably – and fatally – sedate. I have no lack of patience… See more →

Surely no one was more disappointed by Sarah Palin’s absence from the 2012 presidential race than Stephen K. Bannon, the director of this two-hour campaign commercial.

The Undefeated is a chore. With “tell, don’t show” as its storytelling mantra, it chronicles Palin’s public works in her own words (using excerpts from her audiobook) and the words of the people who helped her. And there are so, so many words, all of them black or white,… See more →

Someone left $20 in the ATM, so I’m getting paid to see Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter and The Sadies tonight. I like this arrangement.

When music is great, there’s nothing better.

Believe the hype about Fucked Up’s live show.

Let’s get this out of the way: I am not a Kevin Smith fan. He has always seemed more interested in hiring actors to recite his own self-consciously profane monologues than in creating living, breathing characters, and the results are reliably tedious.

For the most part, though, Red State avoids Smith’s usual pitfalls and just lets Michael Parks work his villainous magic. Parks plays a fringe fundamentalist Christian preacher in the mold of Fred Phelps… See more →

Following Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a week-long drive through the sights, sounds, and tastes of the northern English countryside, The Trip is equal parts tour documentary, buddy movie, and road trip flick. But more than anything, and in spite of its many laughs, it is a poignant meditation on aging.

Ostensibly playing themselves, Coogan and Brydon are a juxtaposition of insecure and self-possessed, of serious artist and happy-go-lucky entertainer. Their differences are sussed… See more →

A lot of foley artists and sound designers in the ’70s and ’80s seemed to have this fetishistic preoccupation with footsteps. In any scene where people were on the move, the soundtrack focused on footfalls to the exclusion of all else. The foley was produced with what I’m guessing was a maximum of three different kinds of shoes (loafers, heels, tennis shoes) on two different surfaces (asphalt, linoleum-tiled concrete). Despite being thoroughly unconvincing, it dominated… See more →

The Crazies arrived in 1973, five years after George Romero’s auspicious debut (Night of the Living Dead) and five years before his masterpiece (Dawn of the Dead). As a low-budget doomsday thriller, it lands directly between those two films as well, making great use of what he learned from Night’s confined space (paranoia, a winking cynicism, and subtle but devastating irony) while sketching out in long form what he would later condense into Dawn… See more →

Remember when Nirvana exploded and every major label scrambled to sign any band they could find that was even remotely similar? Well, if The Sixth Sense is Nirvana (and given how quickly M Night Shyamalan squandered whatever goodwill his breakout hit engendered, I hesitate to draw the comparison), then The Others is Bush.

The themes, tone, essential plot points, and even the color palette are all lifted directly. To its credit, this is not immediately… See more →

When I recently finally saw the first Hostel, I was surprised by how fun it was. Eli Roth’s first feature, Cabin Fever, had not endeared him to me, and that plus Hostel’s reputation for being a torture porn standard-bearer alongside the idiotic and gimmicky Saw films had done little to persuade me. But I had to admit Hostel was competently made and showed both the reverence Roth has for his influences and the glee… See more →

Staff at a new venue giddily pulled us off the street for the final moments of a Fred Frith performance. I ❤ Brooklyn. roulette.org

What is it about punk rock jocks five times your size that makes them think it’s cool to throw you into a pile of chairs?

Time for Tombs to blast the residue of this crappy day off me. @ Studio at Webster Hall gowal.la/c/4p8TJ

Holy shit, Tombs was fucking fantastic. A sound like theirs can easily turn into a murky mess live, but they brought it to terrifying life.

To my Philly people: I’m not saying I hadn’t been to an R5 show in ages, but the last time I saw the sound guy, he was clean shaven.

Today’s agenda: 1. Drive across the desert with @essl and @VictoriaMia. 2. yfrog.com/h0bjeifj

Indio’s Motel 6 is currently dirtbag central. We are home.

I'm at The Big 4 Festival in Indio, CA gowal.la/c/459Fh

A N T H R A X

S L A Y E R

For some reason, Twitter didn’t want you to know about M E G A D E T H and M E T A L L I C A .… See more →

Thin Lizzy without Phil always seemed like a bad idea, but holy hell am I glad I saw them tonight. He’s gone but certainly not forgotten.

By all means, bring your identity-starved girlfriend accessory to the metal show and clutch each other all night like junior high is ending.

Mixed feelings about Godspeed You Black Emperor tonight. Iffy setlist, but great to hear them live and insanely loud again after so long.

Tonight I danced my ass off to a live Dismemberment Plan set for the first time in seven years.

Feeling pretty sorry for those of you that didn’t see Man or Astro-man and Dex Romweber Duo on the tour they’re wrapping up tomorrow.

I became a fan of Mike Birbiglia after hearing a handful of his stories on This American Life and The Moth. But before I could get around to checking out one of his albums or seeing one of his performances, Sleepwalk With Me was published, so I picked it up expecting great things. And in some ways, it is great. Just not quite as great as I expected.

In the AV Club interview that persuaded… See more →

My earplugs were no match for Swans.

As expected, seeing Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter was worth every penny of that overpriced Sunn/Boris ticket.

Next time I am in a bad mood, remind me of tonight, when Cynic played the entirety of Focus, in sequence, a few feet away from me.

“Why did Red Hot Chili Peppers go ‘Under the Bridge’? There was a plate of shit there that they wanted to jack off into.” — Neil Hamburger

Last time I saw Faith No More, I didn’t know how to make a web site, and Limp Bizkit opened. Tonight’s was a better show for a better time.

Tonight's Futureheads setlist distribution: The Futureheads: 7, Area EP: 1, News and Tributes: 2, This Is Not the World: 3, The Chaos: 7.

The crowd here is reminding me of why it took me so long to bother checking out The National. — at House of Blues gowal.la/r/dNa

There are not enough dicks in the universe for House of Blues to suck.

Judas Priest toured through the summer of 2009, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the seminal metal album British Steel by playing it live in its entirety every night. Now fans can celebrate too by playing live versions of all nine tracks from the album in Rock Band!

Could Judas Priest’s landmark British Steel be the most metal album in history? Let us examine the facts. To begin with, the cover depicts either an ordinary man’s hand… See more →

Tonight, a handful of coworkers and I will lead a fully orchestrated Beatles sing-along with the Boston Pops. bso.org/bso/mods/perf_detail.…

"Sing onstage with the Boston Pops" has been added to the to-do list and checked off.

If it takes a Wednesday night metal show with five bands on the bill to prove I’m not really a grownup, so be it.

Has it really been twenty years already?

I still have that 90-minute cassette whose A-side contained my first copy of Megadeth’s Rust In Peace. Though I had already cut my teeth on other metal bands, I was wary of Megadeth at first. Their name alone seemed to embody everything that was supposed to be frightening and dangerous about heavy metal, and this particular 14-year-old Catholic boy was slightly less interested in rebellion than he was… See more →

Melt-Banana didn’t play the Devo song you loudly demanded throughout the show, but my only disappointment is that you’re still breathing.

Baroness was really great tonight, but they would have been better if I hadn’t started drinking at 3pm. They should work on that.