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20 articles
Wesley Willis DVD Coming Out Next Week
22 hours ago
Wesley Willis wrote songs to fight off his demons. And not in the typical, heart-on-sleeve, singer-songwriter sort of way. No, these demons weren’t ex-lovers or repressed memories. They were actual demons. With horns. The diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic wrote purposefully outlandish tunes (“Casper the Homosexual Friendly Ghost,” “My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks”) as an escape from what he described as “torturous hell rides.” Willis spent much of his life selling detailed ink drawings on the streets of Chicago and furiously recording albums; he once recorded four in 36 days. He liked to greet people with a friendly head butt.... »
Win Cormac McCarthy's Typewriter
22 hours ago
Cormac McCarthy has a charmingly old-school method for penning his Putlitzer Prize-winning work, considering the ever-more-digital age in which it’s published. It all happens on a rickety, old Olivetti typewriter, one that he bought in the fall of 1958 for $50 at a pawnshop in Knoxville, Tenn. That’s right, No Country For Old Men, The Road, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing were all clacked out like gunshots on the very same machine.... »
Catching Up With... Richard Linklater
2 December 2009 5:15 AM, PST
Few modern directors have displayed the sheer range and adoration of filmmaking as that of arthouse luminary Richard Linklater. After spending the last decade offering fare as diverse as rotoscoped sci-fi dirge A Scanner Darkly, yellow-journalism parable Fast Food Nation, a remake of nostalgic kids’ romp Bad News Bears and Jack Black comedy School of Rock, Linklater’s latest, Orson Welles And Me, is just as captivating and surprising as should be expected. In the period piece, Zac Efron plays an aspiring actor thrust into the world of egomaniacal showman Orson Welles, who, at 22, was directing and starring in “Julius... »
Guns N' Roses Plot South American, Canadian Tour Dates
2 December 2009 3:40 AM, PST
Generally speaking, bands tour to support albums. Generally speaking, said tours occur around the time that said albums are released. But when you’re Guns N’ Roses, such rules need not apply. After all, this is the band that wrote “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” What have you done with your life? These dudes do whatever they want, and in this case, apparently, what they want is to launch a tour more than one year after the release of their last record. But not just any tour. A tour of South America, Southeast Asia and Canada.... »
A Boy and His Blob (Nintendo Wii)
2 December 2009 2:16 AM, PST
Developer: WayForward Technologies Publisher: Majesco Platform: Nintendo WiiWhat About Blob? A Boy and His Blob sounds like a film you’d watch in health class, but it’s actually a charming new game for the Wii. Despite it being a remake of a notoriously hard Nes game from 1989, the two don’t have much in common aside from the name and the general premise. You're still a boy, you've still got a pet blob, and you still feed him jellybeans that cause him him to morph into various useful shapes you can use to solve platform-based environmental puzzles. The blob has a great... »
Them Crooked Vultures: Them Crooked Vultures
2 December 2009 1:00 AM, PST
Logically rocking result from three-piece puzzle Has a supergroup ever lived up to its classification? The best (Traveling Wilburys, Dead Weather) have been great at times, but to say that they were ‘super,’ better than the bands from which they came, would be foolish. “Handle with Care” was good, but one of those Wilburys wrote Blonde on Blonde all by himself. And another one was a Beatle.... »
Start Press: Rated “I” For Infants
2 December 2009 12:00 AM, PST
Recently my wife and I discovered that we’re pregnant. Obviously there are the immediate concerns: finding a doctor; checking out pregnancy books from the library; perusing the list of off-limit foods that, if ingested by my wife during pregnancy, will cause the baby to grow antlers; etc. Just because I’ve sired a whole litter of kids in Fable II doesn’t mean that I have any more of a clue what I’m doing. Still there are no books or experts or BradyGames strategy guides that can tell me how long it will be before the new arrival and I will be... »
The 30 Best Fight Scenes in Movie History
1 December 2009 11:00 PM, PST
I haven’t been in a fight since 10th grade (unless you count an attempted mugging in Kenya where I fended off some unarmed teenagers with a bag of water bottles), and I’d very much like to keep that streak alive. But at the heart of every good story is a struggle, and some times that struggle gets physical. We devoted a whole issue to exploring violence in the arts last year with philosophical nuance, but this list just celebrates a good fight. Sometimes it’s good vs. evil, sometimes it’s more complicated. We celebrate the underdog, the outnumbered and outsized finding... »
Fox Orders Up Animated Sitcom Bob's Burgers
1 December 2009 8:08 AM, PST
Although primetime animated programming first started getting big a while ago with a certain bug-eyed Springfield family, Fox is especially flush with nighttime cartoons these days, still hosting the reigning champion, The Simpsons, as well as Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, American Dad and the upcoming Rooster Tales. It’s a hefty batch, no doubt, but apparently not quite hefty enough for Fox. They network’s got yet another cartoon series in the works, as it ordered 13 episodes of Bob’s Burgers, according to a recent Reuters report.... »
Catching Up With... John Hillcoat
1 December 2009 6:00 AM, PST
Despite a long career directing numerous feature films, shorts and music videos, John Hillcoat's debut film in America arrived only just last week. The Road is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel and stars Viggo Mortenson as the father. But McCarthy has had a larger influence on Hillcoat than just this one film. Hillcoat spoke with Paste about his long relationship with Nick Cave, the fortuitous circumstances that brought him to The Road, and the difficulties in adapting a work by one of his favorite authors.... »
Gift of Gab: Escape 2 Mars
1 December 2009 1:00 AM, PST
Skilled Mc dons space suit once again, but remains Earthbound Never tell Gift of Gab the odds. If the languid Mc suddenly found himself navigating the asteroid field in Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon’s every evasive maneuver depending on the bob and weave of his flow, he’d fly the ship to safety like a hip-hop Han Solo.... »
High Definition: The Apocalypse Will Be Televised
1 December 2009 12:00 AM, PST
Sci-fi television is often full of storylines about heroes who prevent the destruction of humanity, but post-apocalyptic visions have mostly been reserved for the big screen. From Mad Max to The Road and every zombie movie before and in between, we’ve seen our worst fears come to fruition and looked for hope beyond them. But these same dystopian dreams have begun to pop up in TV, as well.... »
House Review: "Wilson" (Episode 6.9)
30 November 2009 12:06 PM, PST
The aptly titled episode puts Wilson into the role of main character. Wilson must diagnose the obscure ailings of a patient, and the familiar rhythm and formulas of the episode center on him and his ability to solve the medical puzzle in place of House. Wilson even briefly heads up House’s reassembled team (Foreman, Chase, Thirteen and Taub) in one scene.... »
Cyber Monday: A Brief History
30 November 2009 8:18 AM, PST
A long time ago, back in the pre-broadband dark age known as the 20th century, Black Friday was that magical day after Thanksgiving when we came together as a country to celebrate the true meaning of the holiday season: consumerism! Once technology enabled us to do all that shopping on our couches, in blankets with armholes, marketing gurus scrambled to find the perfect cutesy buzzword for the online equivalent of the U.S.’s busiest retail shopping day.... »
Industry Chat: Bob Boilen of NPR Music
30 November 2009 5:44 AM, PST
When Paste Magazine came on the scene back in 2002, we couldn’t honestly say there was anyone else out in the world of music media with sensibilities that seemed in common with our own. Closest might have been the music coverage of NPR’s All Things Considered, where we first noticed the excellent curation that producer Bob Boilen brought to the proceedings—most vividly through All Songs Considered online component of Atc’s music coverage. Later, the NPR music vision reached its full flowering with the November 2007 launch of music destination website NPR Music. So we wanted to go straight to the... »
Watch Brandi Carlile and a Puppet Rock "Folsom Prison Blues"
30 November 2009 5:00 AM, PST
Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” has seen as many renditions as those holiday standards we’ll be hearing ad nauseum during the next month or so, but there’s something about songstress Brandi Carlile hearty yodeling that makes the country classic all the more timeless…even when she’s accompanied by a keyboard-playing sheep puppet named Rufus. His muppet features keep the rather morbid themes kid-friendly, especially when belting, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” This clip below is taken from her October Pancake Mountain dance party:... »
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
30 November 2009 4:35 AM, PST
Release Date: Nov. 27 (limited) Director/Writer: Rebecca MillerCinematographer: Declan Quinn Starring: Alan Arkin, Robin Wright Penn, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Maria Bello, Blake Lively Studio/Run Time: Screen Media Films/98 mins. In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller adapts her own novel of the same name in order to tell the overly melodramatic story of its title character’s life. As she’s grown older, Lee and her husband have slowly been breaking down but in order to understand Lee’s current situation, we have to start at the very beginning of her life and learn about what it’s taken to end... »
New Thermals Album Coming in September 2010
30 November 2009 3:35 AM, PST
Death Cab for Cutie may not be the first name you’d associate with descriptors like “bratty,” “snarling” or “3-chord punk anthems,” but Dcfc guitarist Chris Walla has been working with bratty, snarling punk anthem-ists The Thermals for years. This December, Walla will set up camp in Portland’s Jackpot Recording Studio for his third time with The Thermals for the band’s fifth album, to be released on Sept. 7, 2010 on Kill Rock Stars.... »
Listening to My Life: Michael Azerrad on Punk Rock and Michael McDonald
30 November 2009 3:00 AM, PST
I never thought I’d quote former Doobie Brother and McI pitchman Michael McDonald, but he recently said something interesting to Paste about recording with Grizzly Bear: “The punk movement swung towards being as primitive as possible, but now it’s back to where these guys are good musicians. I never thought that would come back around, but it has.” Of course, punk was about tearing down what people like McDonald had built, and putting up something better. It’s just that punk’s legacy has finally gotten to the point where Mr. Yah Mo Be There himself gets it.... »
Russian Circles: Geneva
30 November 2009 1:00 AM, PST
Instrumental band runs in loops on third album More than most bands saddled with the vague “post-rock” label, Russian Circles effectively pares down its sound to two basic elements: thunderous riffs and tight rhythms. No vocals obstruct its instrumental onslaught—which, on the band’s third album, Geneva, is mighty but repetitive. Each track traces the same loud/soft dynamic, which makes the songs both thematically cohesive and redundant.... »
20 articles
