Animated Albums

Not to wax all nostalgic, but one of the biggest and most lamentable casualties of the digital age is album art. Sure, artists are still making great album covers, but only vinyl enthusiasts (I’m one, I admit) see those masterpieces in glorious 12-inch form. But some people clever with the Photoshops have illustrated just what the digital age can...

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Sam Peckinpah:"Straw Dogs" (1971)

Upon its release (within a month of Stanley Kubrick's similar meditation on ultra-violence, A Clockwork Orange), Straw Dogs sharply divided critics and audiences over whether it exploited and glorified macho bloodshed or commented on the violence that had become a fact of 1960s American life. Peckinpah proclaimed his own distaste for violence, suggesting...

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Tindersticks:"Tindersticks" (1993)

A thrilling, revelatory debut, Tindersticks is a chamber pop masterpiece of romantic elegance and gutter debauchery. Within the framework of a remarkably consistent and mesmerizingly dank atmosphere, the group covers a stunning amount of ground -- "Her" is a crashing flamenco number, "The Walt Blues" is a tipsy organ instrumental, and "Paco de...

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Cinemagraphs: A Truly Digital Art Form

It’s official: pictures are old school. Who wants to look at a picture when you can look at one of these? These animated GIFs, or “cinemagraphs,” are the work of photographer Jamie Beck and graphic designer Kevin Burg. These seamless animations capture individual moments of beauty and everyday life and pause them indefinitely. Cinemagr...

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Drinkify

Drinkify, the newest Internet app to use the power of streaming services like Last.fm, gives you a suggested drink to go with whatever you are listening to. Looking for something to waste hours on? See what drinks Drinkify suggests to go with your favorite arti...

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Clint Eastwood:"Gran Torino" (2008)

A racist Korean War veteran living in a crime-ridden Detroit neighborhood is forced to confront his own lingering prejudice when a troubled Hmong teen from his neighborhood attempts to steal his prized Gran Torino. Decades after the Korean War has ended, ageing veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is still haunted by the horrors he witnessed...

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PJ Harvey:"To Bring You My Love" (1995)

Following the tour for Rid of Me, Polly Harvey parted ways with Robert Ellis and Stephen Vaughn, leaving her free to expand her music from the bluesy punk that dominated PJ Harvey's first two albums. It also left her free to experiment with her style of songwriting. Where Dry and Rid of Me seemed brutally honest, To Bring You My Love feels theatrical,...

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Liz Phair:"Exile in Guyville" (1993)

If Exile in Guyville is shockingly assured and fully formed for a debut album, there are a number of reasons why. Most prominent of these is that many of the songs were initially essayed on Liz Phair's homemade cassette Girlysound, which means that the songs are essentially the cream of the crop from an exceptionally talented songwriter. Second,...

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Todd Solondz:"Happiness" (1998)

Easily one of the 1990s' most controversial films, Happiness evoked a broad range of opinions and emotions. Writer/director Todd Solondz, who debuted with Welcome to the Dollhouse, a portrait of suburbia as the site of a young girl's misery, followed it up with this troubling and thought-provoking exploration of the unhappiness that lurks behind...

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Luchino Visconti:"Death in Venice" (1971)

Toward the middle of his life, after having worked in a series of thankless comedies for Rank, which nevertheless made him a household name in England, Dirk Bogarde struck out on his own to make a stunning series of films with American expatriate Joseph Losey, most especially The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). While much of his earlier work...

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Johnny Cash:"At Folsom Prison" (1968)

Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash's legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted...

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UrbanDictionary

Hilarious (and practical) 100% user-maintained dictionary where users provide and vote on definitions for urban words (slangs). Urban Diction...

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Mike Leigh:"Naked" (1993)

Both hailed and criticized for its bleakness and its basically brutal treatment of women, Naked is an intensely powerful and disturbing motion picture experience. Director Mike Leigh is making a pull-no-punches statement about late 20th century Britain, specifically about the manner in which social systems enable (and allegedly encourage) the strong...

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Depeche Mode:"Violator" (1990)

In a word, stunning. Perhaps an odd word to use given that Violator continued in the general vein of the previous two studio efforts by Depeche Mode: Martin Gore's upfront lyrical emotional extremism and knack for a catchy hook filtered through Alan Wilder's ear for perfect arrangements, ably assisted by top English producer Flood. Yet the idea...

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Sylvia Plath

Born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath published her first poem when she was eight. Sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted, she was, on the surface, a model daughter, popular in school, earning straight A's, winning the best prizes. By the time she entered Smith College...

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Russ Meyer:"Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1966)

"Welcome to violence!" The sinister voice-over that begins Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! warns its presumably all-male audience that a new breed of woman exists, feral females that hide deceit and murder under their soft seductive skins, and apparently, these women are everywhere. This bit of misogyny leads directly into an equal-opportunity tale...

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The Shangri-Las:"Myrmidons of Melodrama" (1994)

Until the release of this import, there had never been a truly satisfactory Shangri-Las anthology; in fact, the group had been subject to worse piecemeal mangling than almost any other significant act of the 1960s. This 33-track production finally sets the record straight, including all of the significant A-sides, B-sides, and album tracks they...

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Bryan Singer:"The Usual Suspects" (1995)

A slick triumph of casting and wordplay, The Usual Suspects was one of the most fiendishly intricate American films of the 1990s. Relentlessly stylish and growing more convoluted by the frame, the film invited its audience to take part in the confusion, to attempt to discern illusion from reality as if watching a magician's act. What makes The...

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George Jones:"I Am What I Am" (1980)

I Am What I Am announced that George Jones had officially returned to form artistically and, in the process, it became his biggest hit album ever. It's easy to see why -- the production is commercial without being slick, the songs are balanced between aching ballads and restrained honky tonk numbers, and Jones gives a nuanced, moving performance. "He...

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Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012) was a French comics artist, working in the French tradition of bandes dessinées. Giraud earned worldwide fame, predominantly under the pseudonym Mœbius, and to a lesser extent Gir (used for the Blueberry series), the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings. Esteemed by Federico Fellini and Stan Lee among other notables, he was one of the few francophone comic strip artists to receive international acclaim. Among his most famous works...

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Lars von Trier:"Dogville" (2003)

Master provocateur Lars von Trier divided audiences with this formally daring film about a woman on the run who finds a worse fate at the hands of her rescuers. Set in Depression-era America, Dogville was filmed on an empty soundstage à la Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, a mounting that literalizes the movie's metaphoric baring of the American...

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Yes:"Fragile" (1971)

Fragile was Yes' breakthrough album, propelling them in a matter of weeks from a cult act to an international phenomenon; not coincidentally, it also marked the point where all of the elements of the music (and more) that would define their success for more than a decade fell into place fully formed. The science-fiction and fantasy elements that...

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Edward Hopper

EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967) – Hopper is widely known as the painter of urban loneliness. His most famous work, the fabulous "Nighthawks" (1942) has become the symbol of the solitude of the contemporary metropolis, and it is one of the icons of the 20th century A...

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Shameless US Series

When I think of dysfunctional family dramedy, I tend to think of upper-middle-class shows like “Parenthood’’ and “Brothers & Sisters.’’ Well-preserved grandparents regret screwing up their adult kids, who are busy over-correcting those mistakes with their own kids. Meanwhile, the furniture is fabulous, and the wall colors are so perfect they...

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Royal Trux:"Accelerator" (1998)

Not long after they received Sweet Sixteen, complete with its notorious cover of an excrement- and vomit-filled toilet, Virgin Records realized Royal Trux may not be a crossover act. They were willing to let the band go, giving them severance pay and the master tapes to their recently completed album, Accelerator, which was then released on their...

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Ethan Coen,Joel Coen:"Burn After Reading" (2008)

The opening shot of the Coen Brothers' new black comedy Burn After Reading takes the viewer from outer space to inside CIA headquarters. The last shot takes us out of that building, back up into space. This device makes it clear that Joel and Ethan are...

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Get High Now

This is probably not what you think (there is no website for that, yet). Get High Now is a science site disguised as mind-expansion. There are 40 audio and visual illusions (or, if you must, "hallucinations") to be experienced and, after reading about the brain science that explains them, understood. Risset rhythms seem to get faster and faster,...

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Spike Lee:"Do the Right Thing" (1989)

Provoking both substantial praise and fierce criticism for its "inflammatory" content, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) examined racism in all its complexity, eschewing simple answers for an ambiguous, artistically ambitious mosaic. The action is confined to one Brooklyn block on the hottest day of the summer, and the Bedford-Stuyvesant location...

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Jonathan Wilson:"Gentle Spirit" (2011)

Warm, fuzzy and unashamedly long, this gloriously languid debut solo outing puffs into view seemingly all the way from the late Sixties, with little interest in breaking new ground. Wilson has learnt his craft impeccably, having previously played for Elvis Costello, Jenny Lewis and Jackson Browne amongst others, and 'Gentle Spirit' serves to unleash...

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Movieclips

Need to find a scene from your favorite film? With more than 12,000 film snippets, Movieclips has one of the most comprehensive collections available on the Web — and there's no need to wade through duplicates. You can search by film title, character name, actor or keyword. Searching for "fight" yields an interesting library of Rocky moments, period...

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8tracks

Algorithm-powered "personal radio" services like Pandora are all very well. But they don't feel nearly as personal as 8tracks, a music site where real people do the choosing of tunes. Members pick at least eight songs (hence the name) from their own collections, upload them and share them as handcrafted mixes that seem like a happy throwback from...

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Nicolas Winding Refn:"Drive" (2011)

Ryan Gosling is a Steve McQueen-style knight in tarnished armor in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, a slick urban fairy tale punctuated by shocking bursts of graphic violence, and distinguished by its stylized, yet uncompromisingly classical approach to material that could have easily become clichéd and forgettable in the hands of a lesser filmmaker....

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Gil Scott-Heron:"Pieces of a Man" (1971)

After decades of influencing everyone from jazz musicians to hip-hop stars, Pieces of a Man set a standard for vocal artistry and political awareness that few musicians will ever match. Scott-Heron's unique proto-rap style influenced a generation of hip-hop artists, and nowhere is his style more powerful than on the classic "The Revolution Will...

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Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 198...

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Charles Bukowski:"HOW TO BE A GOOD WRITER"

HOW TO BE A GOOD WRITER by Charles Bukowski you’ve got to fuck a great many women beautiful women and write a few decent love poems. and don’t worry about age and/or freshly-arrived talents. just drink more beer more and more beer and attend the racetrack at least once a week and win if possible learning to win is hard - any slob can be a good...

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