I remember a film critic who once compared Robert Altman’s Gosford Park to Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (Regle du jeu). The critic found each film more or less equal in terms of ambition, craftsmanship and themes, but nevertheless argued that one was clearly superior to the other. To that particular critic, the…
My pet theory about Q-Tip’s solo career for a long time has been that something went awry when his house burned down back in 1998. The trauma of losing his entire record collection to the flames purged the glory that was A Tribe Called Quest from his system and begat the abomination that was Amplified…
I was waiting for this video to drop to hype one of the albums that’s been in heavy rotation here for the last couple months — Young Jeezy’s The Recession. Releasing the album earlier this year, Jeezy smartly picked up on the coming recession as the underlying theme for the everyman-as-a-drug-dealer thematics that he has…
The latest ACME Novelty Library (#19), which is the latest instalment in the greater story of Rusty Brown, is a somewhat frustrating experience. It combines two stories that reflect on one another. An science fiction piece detailing the colonisation of Mars by four people and two dogs, and a flashback to the youth of what…
“The ‘Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.” — Grant Morrison, on Pico della Mirandola’s Oratory on the Dignity of Man In the marathon Newsarama interview with Grant Morrison on his and Frank Quitely’s newly-finished All-Star Superman…
Currently on display at the art dealer Pietro Scarpa in Venice, there’s a reclining nude by the Venetian painter Giacomo ‘Palma’ Vecchio (c. 1480-1528), which is worth a second look for anyone interested in the practice of replication in the Italian Renaissance workshop. It repeats with slight variations the figure of Venus in a canvas…
Michael Chabon frustrates me. He’s obviously talented, smart and knows how to tell a good story in the old school way. Even if he suffers from the classic problem of providing his stories with endings as memorable as what went before. (I remember a lot of cool things about Kavalier and Clay, but how did…
As so many before me, I recently took umbrage at some of Domingos Isabelinho’s rather categorical views on comics, as expressed on his new blog The Crib Sheet. This time it was a curt dismissal of the majority of Hugo Pratt’s work as being superficial and hollow that got me out of my chair. For…
In which I go to the Venice Architecture Biennial, so you don’t have to.
Danish rap supergroup Majors have just dropped a new single, reprising “Suckers Never Play Me,” arguably the best track on their fine, eponymously titled album, released earlier this year. It’s available for free download from their website, and is well worth it if you’re into traditional hardcore hip hop.
De fleste københavnere, og sikkert også de fleste danskere, har nok allerede hørt om ‘Store Roberts’ kommende entré i Københavns havn, så jeg vil undlade at komme ind på de triste detaljer her og blot eklære mig enig med de efterhånden mange stemmer, der synes at det er en meget dårlig idé, og i øvrigt…
A true legend of Jamaican music passed away last week. Alton Ellis, Mr. Soul of Jamaica, the King of Rocksteady, is gone after an extended bout with cancer that had been in remission for a while, allowing him to return to the stage as late as last year. I never got the opportunity to hear…
Shooting Star — Natasjas posthumt udgivne engelskprogede album — er resultatet af en række uheldige sammenfald, ulykkeligt tynget af hendes tragiske død sidste år. I modsætning til hendes ligeledes posthumt udsendte, mesterlige dansksprogede album fra i fjor, I Danmark er jeg født, var Shooting Star åbenlyst ikke grydeklart som album, og det kan mærkes. Det…
Forty years ago, British modern dance was essentially nonexistent. Today several of its choreographers are internationally renowned, among them Michael Clark, Akram Khan, and not least Richard Alston, artistic director of London’s first (and still foremost) centre for modern-dance training, the Place. Alston trained at the Place himself, as a student in the ’60s, and…
OK, so it totally passed me by when Fantagraphics published it last year, but I’ve now read Scrublands by South African cartoonist Joe Daly in French, no less. Nice edition by L’Association and all, but kinda stupid not to read it in the original language. Anyway, it’s kind of a sleeper hit with me. Though…