Fri, Aug 31 2007 11:25 PDT
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Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Friday, August 31, 2007
Random Notes: Smashing Pumpkins, Janet Jackson, LL Cool J and the Week in Rock: Panic! At the Disco, Bjork, M.I.A., Feist, Sonic Youth and More
Fri, Aug 31 2007 02:02 PDT
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Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Undefeated - Meliah Rage
 | Artist: Meliah Rage Song: Undefeated Album: The Deep And Dreamless Sleep |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The Great Iraq Swindle:
 | How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury --From Issue 1034 How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq. You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Ask A Columnist: Rolling Stone Executive Editor Joe Levy Answers Your Questions
 | We all have our opinions on why the music "industry" is sliding on CD sales. This is my question to you: Has anyone mentioned MTV's lack of video play as a possible cause for a slide in the music biz? MTV is on almost every cable network in the US. It could still reach kids instantly if they used this as a medium. -- KingLeer I'm sure someone's mentioned it. Everyone certainly bitches |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Exclusive Audio: M.I.A. Found Hip-Hop Via Thieves, Thinks U.S. Music Is Too Digital
 | --From Issue 1034 M.I.A. recently sat down with Rolling Stone associate |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
My List: Sean Kingston
 | The seventeen-year-old pop-reggae crooner scored the jam of the summer with "Beautiful Girls" Here are his fave summer jams Jay-Z: Lost One [Listen] "I love the vibe," Kingston says of the Kingdom Come tune, on which Hova dissects fame's pitfalls over Chrisette Michele's sweet hook. Stevie Wonder: Ribbon in the Sky [Listen] Kingston's mom used to play the Motown legend's 1982 ballad when Sean was a kid. "I like Stevie's soft stuff - he's one of my biggest influences." Bob Marley: No Woman, No Cry |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Simpsons Movie
 | Starring: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright,... Review: Look, there's no way you can go wrong spending ninety minutes at the multiplex with animated characters who have raised the bar sky-high on quality TV. Created by Matt Groening and produced by James L. Brooks, who could be buried alive in their justly won Emmys, The Simpsons is TV for the time capsule. For two decades and counting, this dysfunctional Springfield family, drawn in yellow and dripping with comic irreverence, kept us in whoo-hoo euphoria. So why did I leave the film version feeling entertained but frustrated? Expectations are part of the problem. How do you please rabid fans, me included, who pore over the past 400 episodes like holy writ? As for new audiences who never bothered to watch the show and wouldn't know Krusty the Clown from Apu, frankly I don't give a... Rating: 2 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Bourne Ultimatum
 | Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Paddy Con... Review: Matt Damon damn near jumps off the screen, returning for the third and (he says) final time to his career-crowning role as amnesiac Jason Bourne, a killing machine out to go whup-ass on the CIA operatives who made him. The Bourne Ultimatum is a wow of an action movie with a soul that isn't computer-generated. Like the two previous films, this Bourne borrows only the name and the central character from Robert Ludlum's best-selling spy novel. Paul Greengrass (United 93), who directed the last two films (Doug Liman did the first), digs out all the provocation in the script, co-written by Tony Gilroy, to plumb the violence of the minds behind global terrorism. With his handheld camera, Greengrass keeps the suspense taut as Bourne trots the globe. In Madrid, Bourne tilts emotionally with... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Interview
 | Starring: Steve Buscemi, Tara Elders, Molly Griffith, Robert Hines, Jackson... Review: The controversial dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh had intended to make this movie before he was murdered by a Muslim extremist. So Steve Buscemi took over as director and co-writer. He also takes the lead role of Pierre, a snob of a D.C. correspondent who gets his nose out of joint when assigned to interview Katya (Sienna Miller), a sex-kitten actress he ranks below Paris Hilton. The film is unashamedly a claustrophobic exercise, shot in one room in which two characters strip away layers of pretense to get at the truth. Stick with it for Miller?s gutsy tour de force and the kick of watching Buscemi, as actor and filmmaker, turn an experiment into a mesmerizing battle of wills. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The King of Kong
 | Starring: Walter Day, Billy Mitchell, Todd Rogers, Steve Sanders, Doris Sel... Review: Who would have guessed that a documentary about gamers obsessed with scoring a world record at Donkey Kong would not only be roaringly funny but serve as a metaphor for the decline of Western civilization? Using Billy Mitchell?s need to stay champ and Steve Wiebe?s need to beat him, director Seth Gordon deftly manages to show how age, marriage, fatherhood and so-called ethical thinking will not stop man?s need to go to war, no matter how stupid the reason. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Children of Men
 | Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore Review: Just in case you're one of the deprived who let Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men slip by at the multiplex, grab this DVD and hold on for rock-the-house image and sound. It's a ride, but not quite what you expect. This tale of a futuristic dystopia is the anti-Blade Runner. The focus isn't in the action up front, it's there in the background where the film's themes take root. Cuaron, filling every frame with his passion and intellect, takes on a 1992 novel by P.D. James set in 2027 in... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Ace in the Hole
| Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur Review: Criterion Director Billy Wilder painted too dark a picture for 1950?s America with this tale of an unethical reporter (a never better Kirk Douglas) who manipulates the story of a man trapped inside a cave into national news. Nowadays, the film should be required in journalism school. Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Zodiac
| Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. Review: David Fincher, who directed Se7en, loves his crazies. But this film doesn?t just tell the story of the serial killer who plagued 1970s California. Fincher shows how the lives of cops and journalists were ruined when they got too obsessed with the case. Witness Robert Downey Jr. as a reporter turned cokehead. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
You're Gonna Miss Me
 | Starring: Billy Gibbons, Patti Smith Review: This documentary traces the life of Roky Erickson, a pioneer of 60s psych-rock whose life becomes ruined by smoke, smack and schizophrenia. It?s a familiar arc, sure, but the clich�s are averted when the focus turns to the cause of his madness: his bat-shit crazy mother. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Hot Fuzz
| Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost Review: Who knew? Apparently, there are English hipsters out there who revere trashy big-budget buddy-cop flicks like Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys. Hot Fuzz is the latest from the U.K. geek squad behind the cult comedy Shaun of the Dead: writer/director Edgar Wright, writer/star Simon Pegg, and demented plus-size sidekick Nick Frost. Together, they parody cop movies with the same fanaticism Shaun of the Dead brought to zombie flicks. For the first half or so, it's bloody brilliant. Pegg and Frost are... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The Host
| Starring: Bong Joon-Ho Review: Need proof that South Korea is the epicenter of cool Asian cinema? Look no further than The Host, where a family battles a huge, contagion-carrying ? fish monster? The film is hilarious and the action is out-of-control ? simply one of the greatest monster flicks ever made. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Silverchair - Young Modern
 | Artist: Silverchair Review: In the mid-nineties, the Australian trio Silverchair was a true boy band - very young men playing strong, original hard-rock songs on their own instruments. Drummer Ben Gillies, bassist Chris Joannou and singer-guitarist-songwriter Daniel Johns are still young (in their late twenties). They are also aggressively modern in the long reach of Young Modern, their first studio album in five years, from the balled-fist fuzz of "Mind Reader" to the sumptuous glam of "Strange Behaviour" (with strings... Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight
 | Artist: Rilo Kiley Review: Because Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous was a triumph of the well-made narrative song, its markedly terser and beatier follow-up, which is also the band's true major-label debut, will be accused of sellout. Instead, it's yet more adventurous, a prosperous band's challenge to its comfortable cult. Always too cute for serious indie cred, Jenny Lewis slips four songs about dangerous sex in which she herself might be indulging -- right now, in her pretty prosperity -- into music that's defined... Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Architecture in Helsinki - Places Like This
 | Artist: Architecture in Helsinki Review: What happens when indie-prog miniaturists decide to go for the long bomb? "Heart It Races," if they're lucky -- the Australian twee-dweeb aesthetes devise a real pop song even trippier than the fake ones they keep snapping into fragments, a spaced-out bit of calypso crossed with dance hall that keeps getting bigger until it finally floats away. With its sexed-up beats, cowbell, nonsense chants and wigged-out Casio-keyboard psychedelia, Places Like This turns its sound-effect juxtaposition... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Talib Kweli - Eardrum
 | Artist: Talib Kweli Review: Talib kweli earns the respect he gets. He's got plenty of brains and enough flow, and though his attempts to make conscious rap commercial inspire purist sniping, he's balanced the two with integrity and grace. But four solo albums in, it can't be an accident that he's done his signature work with collaborators ? Mos Def (Black Star), Hi-Tek (Reflection Eternal) and many, many cameos (try the z "My Favorite Mutiny"). The man simply lacks spark. Kweli's Warner debut features yet more cameos -- ... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
 | Artist: Junior Senior Review: Where can we buy the happy pills Junior Senior are taking? Hey Hey is the Danish duo's second straight album full of megabright electro disco, something on the order of KC and the Sunshine band partying with Abba, only with better keyboards and a knowing wink. The album's enthusiasm sounds almost cartoonish at times, and its title tells you all you need to know about their lyrical approach. But Junior Senior's track-building smarts and way with a hook add up to non-annoying bliss on a handful of... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The Grateful Dead - Three From the Vault
 | Artist: The Grateful Dead Review: This show, the second of six at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, in 1971, has been a trader's favorite since ancient times, when live Dead music circulated on cassettes. The week began with a drag ? drummer Mickey Hart quit after the first night, not to return until 1976. But the Dead had recently made Workingman's Dead and American Beauty and were on an inspired roll. At Port Chester, they debuted imminent set fixtures like "Playing in the Band" and "Wharf Rat." The improvising is... Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Undefeated - Meliah Rage
| Artist: Meliah Rage Song: Undefeated Album: The Deep And Dreamless Sleep |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The Great Iraq Swindle:
| How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury --From Issue 1034 How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq. You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Ask A Columnist: Rolling Stone Executive Editor Joe Levy Answers Your Questions
| We all have our opinions on why the music "industry" is sliding on CD sales. This is my question to you: Has anyone mentioned MTV's lack of video play as a possible cause for a slide in the music biz? MTV is on almost every cable network in the US. It could still reach kids instantly if they used this as a medium. -- KingLeer I'm sure someone's mentioned it. Everyone certainly bitches |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Exclusive Audio: M.I.A. Found Hip-Hop Via Thieves, Thinks U.S. Music Is Too Digital
| --From Issue 1034 M.I.A. recently sat down with Rolling Stone associate |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
My List: Sean Kingston
| The seventeen-year-old pop-reggae crooner scored the jam of the summer with "Beautiful Girls" Here are his fave summer jams Jay-Z: Lost One [Listen] "I love the vibe," Kingston says of the Kingdom Come tune, on which Hova dissects fame's pitfalls over Chrisette Michele's sweet hook. Stevie Wonder: Ribbon in the Sky [Listen] Kingston's mom used to play the Motown legend's 1982 ballad when Sean was a kid. "I like Stevie's soft stuff - he's one of my biggest influences." Bob Marley: No Woman, No Cry |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Simpsons Movie
| Starring: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright,... Review: Look, there's no way you can go wrong spending ninety minutes at the multiplex with animated characters who have raised the bar sky-high on quality TV. Created by Matt Groening and produced by James L. Brooks, who could be buried alive in their justly won Emmys, The Simpsons is TV for the time capsule. For two decades and counting, this dysfunctional Springfield family, drawn in yellow and dripping with comic irreverence, kept us in whoo-hoo euphoria. So why did I leave the film version feeling entertained but frustrated? Expectations are part of the problem. How do you please rabid fans, me included, who pore over the past 400 episodes like holy writ? As for new audiences who never bothered to watch the show and wouldn't know Krusty the Clown from Apu, frankly I don't give a... Rating: 2 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Bourne Ultimatum
| Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Paddy Con... Review: Matt Damon damn near jumps off the screen, returning for the third and (he says) final time to his career-crowning role as amnesiac Jason Bourne, a killing machine out to go whup-ass on the CIA operatives who made him. The Bourne Ultimatum is a wow of an action movie with a soul that isn't computer-generated. Like the two previous films, this Bourne borrows only the name and the central character from Robert Ludlum's best-selling spy novel. Paul Greengrass (United 93), who directed the last two films (Doug Liman did the first), digs out all the provocation in the script, co-written by Tony Gilroy, to plumb the violence of the minds behind global terrorism. With his handheld camera, Greengrass keeps the suspense taut as Bourne trots the globe. In Madrid, Bourne tilts emotionally with... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Interview
| Starring: Steve Buscemi, Tara Elders, Molly Griffith, Robert Hines, Jackson... Review: The controversial dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh had intended to make this movie before he was murdered by a Muslim extremist. So Steve Buscemi took over as director and co-writer. He also takes the lead role of Pierre, a snob of a D.C. correspondent who gets his nose out of joint when assigned to interview Katya (Sienna Miller), a sex-kitten actress he ranks below Paris Hilton. The film is unashamedly a claustrophobic exercise, shot in one room in which two characters strip away layers of pretense to get at the truth. Stick with it for Miller?s gutsy tour de force and the kick of watching Buscemi, as actor and filmmaker, turn an experiment into a mesmerizing battle of wills. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The King of Kong
| Starring: Walter Day, Billy Mitchell, Todd Rogers, Steve Sanders, Doris Sel... Review: Who would have guessed that a documentary about gamers obsessed with scoring a world record at Donkey Kong would not only be roaringly funny but serve as a metaphor for the decline of Western civilization? Using Billy Mitchell?s need to stay champ and Steve Wiebe?s need to beat him, director Seth Gordon deftly manages to show how age, marriage, fatherhood and so-called ethical thinking will not stop man?s need to go to war, no matter how stupid the reason. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Ace in the Hole
| Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur Review: Criterion Director Billy Wilder painted too dark a picture for 1950?s America with this tale of an unethical reporter (a never better Kirk Douglas) who manipulates the story of a man trapped inside a cave into national news. Nowadays, the film should be required in journalism school. Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Zodiac
| Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. Review: David Fincher, who directed Se7en, loves his crazies. But this film doesn?t just tell the story of the serial killer who plagued 1970s California. Fincher shows how the lives of cops and journalists were ruined when they got too obsessed with the case. Witness Robert Downey Jr. as a reporter turned cokehead. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
You're Gonna Miss Me
| Starring: Billy Gibbons, Patti Smith Review: This documentary traces the life of Roky Erickson, a pioneer of 60s psych-rock whose life becomes ruined by smoke, smack and schizophrenia. It?s a familiar arc, sure, but the clich�s are averted when the focus turns to the cause of his madness: his bat-shit crazy mother. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Hot Fuzz
| Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost Review: Who knew? Apparently, there are English hipsters out there who revere trashy big-budget buddy-cop flicks like Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys. Hot Fuzz is the latest from the U.K. geek squad behind the cult comedy Shaun of the Dead: writer/director Edgar Wright, writer/star Simon Pegg, and demented plus-size sidekick Nick Frost. Together, they parody cop movies with the same fanaticism Shaun of the Dead brought to zombie flicks. For the first half or so, it's bloody brilliant. Pegg and Frost are... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
The Host
| Starring: Bong Joon-Ho Review: Need proof that South Korea is the epicenter of cool Asian cinema? Look no further than The Host, where a family battles a huge, contagion-carrying ? fish monster? The film is hilarious and the action is out-of-control ? simply one of the greatest monster flicks ever made. Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Silverchair - Young Modern
| Artist: Silverchair Review: In the mid-nineties, the Australian trio Silverchair was a true boy band - very young men playing strong, original hard-rock songs on their own instruments. Drummer Ben Gillies, bassist Chris Joannou and singer-guitarist-songwriter Daniel Johns are still young (in their late twenties). They are also aggressively modern in the long reach of Young Modern, their first studio album in five years, from the balled-fist fuzz of "Mind Reader" to the sumptuous glam of "Strange Behaviour" (with strings... Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight
| Artist: Rilo Kiley Review: Because Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous was a triumph of the well-made narrative song, its markedly terser and beatier follow-up, which is also the band's true major-label debut, will be accused of sellout. Instead, it's yet more adventurous, a prosperous band's challenge to its comfortable cult. Always too cute for serious indie cred, Jenny Lewis slips four songs about dangerous sex in which she herself might be indulging -- right now, in her pretty prosperity -- into music that's defined... Rating: 4 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Architecture in Helsinki - Places Like This
| Artist: Architecture in Helsinki Review: What happens when indie-prog miniaturists decide to go for the long bomb? "Heart It Races," if they're lucky -- the Australian twee-dweeb aesthetes devise a real pop song even trippier than the fake ones they keep snapping into fragments, a spaced-out bit of calypso crossed with dance hall that keeps getting bigger until it finally floats away. With its sexed-up beats, cowbell, nonsense chants and wigged-out Casio-keyboard psychedelia, Places Like This turns its sound-effect juxtaposition... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Talib Kweli - Eardrum
| Artist: Talib Kweli Review: Talib kweli earns the respect he gets. He's got plenty of brains and enough flow, and though his attempts to make conscious rap commercial inspire purist sniping, he's balanced the two with integrity and grace. But four solo albums in, it can't be an accident that he's done his signature work with collaborators ? Mos Def (Black Star), Hi-Tek (Reflection Eternal) and many, many cameos (try the z "My Favorite Mutiny"). The man simply lacks spark. Kweli's Warner debut features yet more cameos -- ... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
 | Artist: Junior Senior Review: Where can we buy the happy pills Junior Senior are taking? Hey Hey is the Danish duo's second straight album full of megabright electro disco, something on the order of KC and the Sunshine band partying with Abba, only with better keyboards and a knowing wink. The album's enthusiasm sounds almost cartoonish at times, and its title tells you all you need to know about their lyrical approach. But Junior Senior's track-building smarts and way with a hook add up to non-annoying bliss on a handful of... Rating: 3 Stars |
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com
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