Artist: Lupe Fiasco featuring Jill Scott. Album: Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor.
Artist: Sparks. Album: Lil' Beethoven.
Why does every episode of this show feel like it's ninety minutes long? The fate of the free world doesn't rest on sketch comedy. The fate of network television doesn't rest on sketch comedy. Nevertheless, nice try. Welcome back, Matthew Perry. And welcome, period, Amanda Peet. Enjoy it while it lasts, whatever it is.
Numerous personal recommendations, an EW cover story and an iTunes binge have made me a convert. I'll Netflix the rest while awaiting Season 3.
Artist: The Velvet Underground. Album: The Velvet Underground.
Artist: Skye. Album: Mind How You Go.
The usual irritants of Gallic literary convention aside, this compact French thriller is a legitimately gripping tale of botany, mistaken identity and betrayal. An elegant page-turner.
Trashy, hyper-violent action pic wears out its welcome a little too quickly for an eighty minute thrill ride, but the unapologetic silliness, executed with reasonable flair by directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, offers its own repetitive pleasures. The ending is literally a corker. Grade: B-
Mike Judge's amiable future-schlock satire is smarter than it looks—bursting with ideas, and plenty funny if you can get past the auteur's basic discomfort with storytelling and mise en scène. An immediately underrated movie. Grade: B
Antique potboiler generates steam until its supernatural pretense gives way to pedestrian narrative gimmickry and an over-reliance on CG. The strapping Jessica Biel is woefully miscast as an Austrian duchess. (Yes, you read that correctly.) I'm looking all the more forward to Christopher Nolan's Prestige. Grade: B-
A recent reviewing of the Kubrick opus impelled me to pick up Clarke's novel; and while his telling lacks the director's signature atmospherics, the author's crisp grasp of science is expectedly illuminating and visionary, despite the story's somewhat ragged metaphysical ending. The usual caveats apply concerning Clarke's sturdy prose, stolid dialog and square characters.