Just to be clear, I don’t expect summer blockbusters to be “art”. As long as they entertain me, and do so with efficient purpose, I’ll go along for the ride. That said, the truth about X-Men Origins: Wolverine is that it’s awful. The movie takes the worst part of the comic book movie form and amplifies it, making you feel stupider for having wasted your time.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil starts with an annoying series of talking heads, metal heroes like Scott Ian from Anthrax and Tom Araya from Slayer, all asking the same stupid question: Why didn’t Anvil make it big?
The evolution of Mastodon has been an odd and winding thing of beauty. Since the Atlanta band started in 1999, they’ve released four albums of uncompromising heavy metal, been heralded as the place where “Rush meets Metallica,” and, miraculously, only got weirder after signing to a major label.
Sometimes it’s necessary to be manipulated by a film, to be creased and folded into submission; to be shocked and awed; to be emotionally terrorized. Hunger does all of these and then some. If you choose to see this powerful movie—and you should—it will shake you to your core.
The ’90s were a time for noise rock. Look at it as the caustic response to the grunge boom—heavy, screaming and groovy with little concern for commercial appeal. Look at it as the angry B-side to the ennui of ’90s indie rock. Look at it as nothing more than the sum of its distended parts. Whatever you do, just look.
How would you confront the specter of your own impending death? If you’re Walt White, the main character in AMC’s fantastic Breaking Bad, you turn your life on its head, transforming from a straight-laced high school chemistry teacher into an aspiring meth dealer, all in the hope of leaving at least a little of the good life behind for your family.
Professional cover bands are kind of like music vampires, they suck and suck and suck, getting money and a shard of fame from a bloated corpse found in rock ‘n’ roll’s past. I can’t, and won’t, get down with this nostalgia trip.
There’s a problem facing all short films, and it’s one the three directors of Tokyo! fail to solve. It is that the films’ subject matter needs to fit its timeframe.
When you talk about the recent history of Northwest hip-hop, you have to talk about Oldominion.
Che Guevara’s legacy is one of confusion and idealism, morphed into a single indeterminable mass. He’s not just a man, he’s an idea, and the forces of history’s gaze have ripped him apart, making him both a lion of revolution and martyr of noble yet impossible conviction.
The search for authenticity may be the most impossible and misguided goal in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s impossible because authenticity isn’t something you can achieve—you either are or you aren’t.