LIKE YOUR FAVORITE Sonic Youth T-shirt that now only finds its way out of your bottom drawer on lawn-mowing day, most of the fortunate few who courted the alternative rock explosion have in recent years been forced to marry their youth with the inevitability of adulthood. For Craig Wedren—erstwhile frontman of the brilliant, uncompromising, and […]
Zac Pennington
Posted inMovies & TV
Woody’s Fourth Film
Allen Volleys with Match Point
If we’re going to get reductive—and, let’s face it, of course we are—it could be argued that Woody Allen has been making and remaking the same three films once a year for the last 30 years or so: the light, goofball period piece (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Sweet and Lowdown, etc.), the thoughtful relationship […]
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Livin’ Out Loud!
Queen Latifah Takes Her Last Holiday
Presumably designed for the audience of frumpy, late-30s white women that she’s been happily courting since becoming an Oscar nominee a few years ago, Queen Latifah’s latest vehicle—the predictably predictable Last Holiday—finds our former heroine charting new lows in the rapper-turned-schlocky actor idiom. In it, the queen plays Georgia Byrd, a frumpy, bookish, and boring […]
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Girls Just Wanna Have Meat
Coming of Age by the Campfire
Despite the utter universality of its theme, it’s strange to consider how often the pervasive cinematic subgenre of the “coming of age” saga totally gives women the shaft. While boys and their ages of self-discovery are typically back-dropped with compelling socio-political context—or at the very least, interesting themes like class, gender, or college football—women’s maturation, […]
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Call the Academy!
Casting the Inevitable Biopic of Jimmy Scott
HOLLYWOOD TAKE NOTE: Have I got a pitch for you. An acclaimed jazz singer with a devastating hereditary disease rubs shoulders with some of jazz’s greatest voices, languishes in obscurity for the better part of his 80 years, and then experiences a miraculous 11th-hour comeback, only to be name-dropped by everyone from Madonna to Antony […]
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Sort of Magic
Everyone Wants Sarah Silverman to be a Star
For over a decade, comedian Sarah Silverman has held high court in the unenviable kingdom of comedic purgatory. She spent a forgotten year on Saturday Night Live before getting shitcanned, played a handful of memorable roles on Mr. Show, and in spite of a talent (and beauty) both singular and undeniable, has generally padded out […]
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97 Percent Ass
The Mercury’s Music Video Roundup
Riding that fine line between relevant pop cultural reporting and incredibly slow news weeks, Team Mercury joyfully presents a trip down commercial lane with yet another in our illustrious line of highfalutin music video reviews. Without further ado… Madonna “Hung Up” Hey, Grandma! Where’d you get all that ass? All that ass? All that ass? […]
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I’m Staying Home
Keepin’ It Reel
Hiphop’s always flaunted an unabashed vision of upward mobility—a pursuit of fame and fortune that it happily wears on its sleeve. It’s no surprise then, that hiphop artists have tried to diversify their interests through film—what is somewhat surprising is the inexplicably high success rate of said crossovers. For every nosedive that Nelly (The Longest […]
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It’s Too Much
She’s Kevin Blechdom, and You Broke Her Heart
Excepting any dark horses still set to leave the gates in the coming weeks, I’m secretly tempted to call Kevin Blechdom’s Eat My Heart Out my favorite record of the year. This, in spite of the fact that in the five months I’ve owned it, I’ve listened to it in its entirety roughly four times. […]
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Wanna Get Rich? Try Dyin’
50 Cent’s Lazy Flow Hits the Big Screen
Remember the last five minutes of 8 Mile? That amazing, redemptive, and legitimately exhilarating finale in which Eminem—turning all of his crippling shortcomings into weapons—effortlessly dissects his bitter rivals in the freestyle battle, while effectively erasing from your memory the fact that the rest of the movie was actually pretty mediocre? Yeah, well, Get Rich […]
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Japanese Chicks are Hot
Succinct Reviews for the Discerning Cinephile
Directed by German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer, the unfortunately titled
Posted inMusic
Magically Mediocre
You’ve Got to Be Fucking Kidding Me
In the relatively limited space that exists between consciousness and critique of faceless, equally PR-ed pop bands that flow on and off of the critic’s weekly radar, it’s easy to make the occasional judgment slip. There’s taste and then there’s taste on a time clock—and really, even if you say that the Bloc Party are […]