Dennis Cooper, Mark Gluth and James Greer… West Coast Styling
Casey McKinney03.15.10
Dennis Cooper, Mark Gluth and James Greer… West Coast Styling
Come See Bruce Covey at Whitespace Tonight
Casey McKinney03.12.10
Come See Bruce Covey at Whitespace
Corey “The Haimster” Haim is Dead
Michael Louie03.11.10
By now you’ve probably heard. Corey "The Haimster" Haim is dead. He was 38 and had lost something…
Josiah Wolf: Jet Lag (Anticon)
Chelsea Martin03.10.10
On the most recent WHY? album frontman Yoni Wolf sings, "I know saying all this in public oughta make me feel funny/but you gotta yell something out you’d never tell nobody." After five years as a backing multi-instrumentalist in his brother’s band, Josiah Wolf, a classically trained drummer capable of some incredible riffs, is speaking his mind in his first solo album. Through a multitude of overdubs, Josiah played all of instruments on this sonic exploration of the dissolution of his 11-year marriage. Chelsea Martin, author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever, interviewed Wolf and finds much to praise in the album but wonders whether the anxiety over the novel being supplanted by the memoir has its parallel in music.
Tastes Good Still? Oscars 2010
Benjamin Strong03.08.10
We are so bitchy we’ll never get any star interviews…oh well. As Ben Strong elucidates: "The Oscars exist for the sole purpose of Hollywood’s identity maintenance." But the Academy didn’t need Avatar to win to prove anything to itself. ‘Cause The Hurt Locker "more closely resembles Hollywood’s image of itself than do blue people." Alas, it ended with historic precedents. And George Clooney had a hockey haircut, ha….and Ben Strong gives Fanzine’s annual second take opinion on the event. (What we are hoping for in the future? I’m not sure…but I wouldn’t mind seeing Rob Lowe take another stab at some song and dance, cracked out Disney style. -CM)
From Party Animals to Gilt Queens to a New Hollywood Dame: Oscars 2010
Kevin Killian03.08.10
Some changes in the Oscars over the years, and especially this year – 2010 sees 10 best picture noms as opposed to 5, a woman winning best director, and no gilded Miramax flick in the bunch, right? Except that “damned Helen Mirren” still got unwanted attention from co-host Steve Martin. Kevin Killian notes what has changed and looks back on a man who maybe got the Oscar show rolling in a new direction long ago, Allan Carr, who once ruled the Hollywood party scene and blew it all on a weird Snow White night. There’s a new book out about him by Robert Hofler called Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.
Music: Four Tet: There is Love in You
Casey McKinney03.04.10
Ah Four Tet, king of the click, or pop click, clique, off the beaten blip of a tick…tock…dock? or sundry sampled warble, or what can I say? tough…
Kim Ji-woon’s Tale of Two Sisters
Emily Carter03.03.10
Alfred Hitchcock either popularized or created the term "MacGuffin" to describe any highly valued object that sets the plot in motion: the ticking bomb, top secret microfilm or the stolen necklace. Is it a stretch to say that in a romantic comedy, the completion of the romantic union is a type of MacGuffin? U.S. films often trot out romantic or sexual union as kind of plot device, while several Korean films I’ve seen seem to use the re-completion of the family unit as one of the central concerns. Director Bong Joon-ho’s excellent 2006 swamp monster film, The Host revolves around a family getting their daughter back after she’s been eaten by a giant mutant squid and dragged into the sewers. (Fittingly, Bong’s latest film which opens next month is titled Mother.) Kim Ji-woon’s particularly unpleasant depiction of "blended" family life, oddly helped Emily Carter, author of Glory Goes and Gets Some, to heal the wounds in her own.
Kay Ryan: The Best of It
Aneesa Davenport03.02.10
In July, Kay Ryan was appointed the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. It’s a sudden change for a poet, whose reclusiveness has earned her comparisons to Emily Dickinson. For the last 33 years, Ryan has quietly taught remedial English for as an adjunct professor at a California community college instead of accepting an tenure track position leading writing workshops. Although critics claim that her poems haven’t changed much over the years, writer Aneesa Davenport explains that "They are like hard little diamonds, each brilliant but cut only slightly differently."
Music: Shining: Blackjazz
Casey McKinney03.01.10
Could say this is like the bastard step child of Albert Ayler or Miles Davis Bitches Brew era and um… Opeth? but it’s something even weirder….
