Proof concludes with a slowly widening shot, changing in scope from intimate to omniscient until finally releasing us from the claustrophobia of the preceding 100-odd minutes…
The plays at the Second Annual 24-Hour Play Festival weren’t really produced in 24 hours…
~and~
Franz Ferdinand’s eponymous 2004 debut cemented them as the critically adored commercial kings of the retro rock revival movement, even if they arrived a bit late to the party…
Animal Collective doesn’t sound like a rock band. It sounds like a couple of shamans have sat down around a fire every once in a while with an acoustic guitar, a floor tom, and a delay pedal to effuse sixty … Read More
I had never heard a Jonas Brothers song before the first week of this school year. I was throwing a pre-game for Lawnparties, offering Tequila Sunrises and mojitos in the a.m.—the youngest oldest thing Princeton students do. The eclectic and up-to-the-minute iTunes playlist I had made for the occasion had run out, and some roommate of a friend had taken over the computer to keep the mood going. “‘Burnin’ Up’!” someone requested. Probably the new Usher single, I thought, and then a nineteen- or twenty-year-old played me my first Jonas Brothers song. “Don’t they wear chastity rings?” I asked no one.
I’ll shoot straight with all y’all: I was born and bred in Georgia, a state whose famous red clay mirrors its perennial color on the political map. But I’m from Atlanta, that one blight of blue in a sea of perfect scarlet. While I can slip into the languid drawl of a southern belle at the drop of a camo-and-fishhook baseball hat, I normally maintain the accent of many an Atlantan – that is to say, none at all.
John Cameron Mitchell’s new film Shortbus raises a lot of difficult questions. For example, if A is fellating B, B is fellating C, and C is fellating A, is A fellating C? Is A fellating himself? Because that is, as … Read More
In his Baltimore basement, Edan has carved his name across the forty-year span of rock and hip-hop. “Rock and Roll” melds Velvet Underground and Black Sabbath into feedback-frayed banger that would play comfortably in Queens circa ’88, or the Filmore East circa ’68. This kind of mad-scientist approach embodies the best of rock and roll.
Barack Obama–U.S. Senator and Democratic candidate for president–has, if nothing else, my entire extended, voting-age family in a polarized tizzy. My mother isn’t voting for Obama because of his smoker’s teeth–my uncle because his middle name is Hussein. My father likes his health care platform–his father-in-law is filled with warmth by his back story and earnestness. Me? I’m voting for Obama because he won a Grammy.
Now that fall has arrived, FOX news is wetting itself over the official kick-off of the 2012 campaign season and the sudden flood of the media with Republican debates. While there are many outstanding candidates, and while each has something … Read More
Green Day has released its eighth album, a so-called punk rock opera entitled American Idiot. American Idiot sounds like, and almost certainly is, the soundtrack to a movie that is yet to be filmed.
I was terrified, certain of my imminent and undignified demise – death by stampeding cows – which got me thinking about how I came to be standing atop the scenic, grassy slope that was once the site of Jane Austen’s … Read More
“Most plays have this rule imbedded in them,” said Khalil Sullivan two days before opening night of “Playing in the Dark,” which he wrote and directs for his senior thesis. “A play has an action, a desire that characters want, and obstacles in the way of completing that action.”