The Virginia Quarterly Review hosted its first-ever writers’ conference last week, a four-day retreat at the Boar’s Head full of workshops and public panels with a host of big names in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Atlantic editor Scott Stossel, journalist and short story writer Wells Tower, Pulitzer-prize winning poet Claudia Emerson, Slate senior editor […]
The Virginia Quarterly Review hosted its first-ever writers’ conference last week, a four-day retreat at the Boar’s Head full of workshops and public panels with a host of big names in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Atlantic editor Scott Stossel, journalist and short story writer Wells Tower, Pulitzer-prize winning poet Claudia Emerson, Slate senior editor […]
The Morning Birds Bloom/Funky Island House Releases based around a song, a theme, or a tribute are generally boring, or feel schizophrenic because it is almost impossible to shape the creative instincts of various artists into a cohesive musical narrative. Bloom is a rare exception because it successfully weaves a seasonal theme throughout its six […]
Get On Up is the best possible film of an inherently mediocre genre: the biopic. Most biopics render themselves obsolete by failing to admit that when a person is famous, we almost always know the most interesting thing about them because that thing is the reason they’re famous in the first place. Whether the subject […]
Begin Again Music from and Inspired by the Original Motion Picture/222 Records John Carney, who gave us the classic music-focused film Once, returns with another music-based film, Begin Again, and the soundtrack is predictably loaded with fun moments that will appeal to a variety of listeners. If you like soul music with a sense of […]
It may seem nitpicky in this era of movies about radioactive spider bites and ancient alien stud-gods to take issue with a premise that is basically an excuse for inventive set pieces, but there’s something so incredibly lazy and pointless about the way Luc Besson plays with the old (and false) “Did you know that […]
Anyone who has been to an underground or independent film festival is no doubt familiar with a very specific genre of DIY “woods” movies where dudes with guns creep through a forest, talk an awful lot for people trying to remain undetected, and get into strangely choreographed shoot-outs at odd intervals. These movies are made […]
Confession time: My favorite movie of all time is the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, and it breaks my heart that it doesn’t appear on more Best Of lists. Boasting a script from the eternally relevant Rod Serling, it channels the best aspects of “The Twilight Zone” into a feature-length idea. PotA has it all: […]
Old Crow Medicine Show Remedy/ATO Records Remedy is the latest proof that Old Crow Medicine show is incapable of doing anything poorly. Whether it’s a raucous, hoedown-style piece of country like “8 Dogs, 8 Banjos,” or whether it’s the old time bluegrass feel and R-rated sensibility of a track like “Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer,” you […]
A lack of new ideas and a surplus of sincerity are not typically good qualities in a comedy. Just think of how forced and unearned the last 20 minutes of any Happy Madison movie are: “I know I’m a slob who screwed everything up while being distractingly racist and homophobic along the way. But I […]
Linkin Park The Hunting Party/Warner Bros. Somewhere along the way, the band Linkin Park became viewed as a formulaic one-trick pony. Pair up Chester Bennington’s throat- scraping screeches with raucous guitars and drums, occasional scratches and raps from Mike Shinoda, repeat, and call it good. And while this might have been true at the start, […]