It’s easy to forget that there is a whole musical world out there full of artists who are taking their own traditional styles and fashioning them into contemporary masterpieces that challenge our preconceptions of what music is, has been and will be.
It is all too easy to buy into the one-dimensional cult of genius that surrounds the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso and is propagated by art historians, intellectuals and sometimes, the artist himself.
A collaboration between DJ Green Lantern, the former DJ for Eminem’s Shady Records, and Styles P of The LOX, The Green Ghost Project sounds exactly like what it is: a bunch of talented guys coming together to make hip-hop they themselves would actually listen to.
K-Os has always been one of those artists on the brink of success. Maybe it’s his Canadian heritage that’s holding him back; his smooth hip-hop has swiftly flown under the musical radar for nearly all of his 17-year career.
For a film based on the well-known attempt by a set of climbers to scale the north face of the Eiger in 1936, the German-made thriller North Face perfects the art of the cliffhanger (literally) — even for an audience aware of the ultimate historical outcome.
From the moment the main characters Toni Kurz (Benno Furmann) and Andi Hintertoisser (Florian Lukas) — two Nazi soldiers who prefer pitons over pistols — approach the deathly Eiger, director Philipp Stolzl crafts the story of the climber’s ascent with visual and emotional precision.
With the group of climbers clinging to a mass of rock by the most inconsequential of steel and rope, dodging avalanches and taking a frostbitten beating from the fickle weather, Stolzl brings the audience to the mountain, piecing together the infamous story in the process.
This becomes most evident in the scenes off the mountain; where the storyline strays from original accounts of the expedition, it struggles the most.
According to Don Argott’s riveting documentary The Art of the Steal, one of the biggest thefts of recent memory was conducted not by masked men with guns, but by Philadelphia’s own elected officials.
Roman Polanski has directed yet another cinematic success with The Ghost Writer, a political thriller — and adaptation of Robert Harris’s book of the same name — that acutely delves into the lives of its high-powered characters, isolated from their country and the rest of the world on a secluded, bleak and wintry Massachusetts island compound.
A few years ago, I watched Raging Bull on a whim. Having finally appreciated a movie not starring Will Ferrell, I vowed to make my way through the rest of Martin Scorsese’s greatest hits.
MUSIC
Thursday, 2/18: Mission of Burma with Sleeper Agent, First Unitarian Church, $16, All Ages
Mission of Burma is one of the most important bands of the past 20 years, and once you hear them play, you’ll immediately know why.
Everyone loves telling stories. Whether reliving last weekend’s escapades, reminiscing about high school or repeating the absolutely ridiculous thing a professor said in class this week, this urge to share snapshots of daily life is embraced by Philadelphia’s First Person Arts.
Yeasayer’s sophomore album Odd Blood is deceptive. The first song, “The Children,” is a pretentiously experimental jumble of robotic noises and creepy, boogeyman vocals.
Yeasayer’s sophomore album Odd Blood is deceptive. The first song, “The Children,” is a pretentiously experimental jumble of robotic noises and creepy, boogeyman vocals.
Yeasayer’s sophomore album Odd Blood is deceptive. The first song, “The Children,” is a pretentiously experimental jumble of robotic noises and creepy, boogeyman vocals.