Regina SpektorBegin to Hope(Sire)For bandwagon-fleeing Tori fans bitching that Myra Ellen has gotten soft with motherhood (wrong), here’s Russian-born, New York-bred Regina Spektor to satisfy your piano cravings and keep your hipster cred in the black. Following 2004’s stellar Soviet Kitsch, which helped put Spektor on the indie map near, but thankfully not of, the […]
Tara Thorne
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Friday Night Lights: The First Season
Friday Night Lights: The First Season Directed by: Peter Berg and Jason KatimsUniversalThe winner of this year’s Emmy for casting was Friday Night Lights, the struggling NBC ensemble series that has moved from its Wednesday time slot so as to attract the kind of idiots that need it to be on Fridays. As the network […]
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Gomez
GomezOut West (ATO)From the rise and fall of Britpop stars Oasis and Blur through the recent surge of nu-New Wave acts like Bloc Party and onto the wuss rock of Coldplay (and lesser Coldplays Keane and Snow Patrol), everybody forgot about Gomez. A terrific British five-piece with three singers and a name like a Mexican […]
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Tori Amos
Published November 27, 2003. Tori Amos Tales of a Librarian (Atlantic) With no bona fide hits and only a few singles in her career, Tori Amos’s best-of collection inherently avoids the trap of existing to appease half-assed listeners who don’t own any albums. It’s a fan’s compilation, culling 20 songs from her first five records […]
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Death Cab for Cutie
Published December 08, 2005. Death Cab for Cutie Plans (Atlantic) Death Cab releases its first album for an evil, corporate major label and nothing happens! Except a top 10 record! Nice fear-mongering, indie tools! Sonically nothing has changed, lyrically Ben Gibbard appears to be exploring his spirituality. Beautiful songs abound as always, especially the epic […]
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Various
VariousMaybe This Christmas Tree (Nettwerk)Nettwerk’s winning compilation series—you could call it A Hipster Christmas—goes three for three with this collection of classic holiday tunes covered by bands normally holding onto an unhealthy amount of irony. The Polyphonic Spree’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” turns into jaunty Raveonettes effort “The Christmas Song” and then Death Cab’s […]
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Grandaddy
GrandaddyJust Like the Fambly Cat (V2)“We’ve been doing this a long fucking time,” says Grandaddy drummer Aaron Burtch in the new Magnet, “and it’s still not happened for us the way it happened for other people we toured with: Coldplay, Bright Eyes, Snow Patrol. We’re too weird, too fuckin’ ugly. We’re not rich kids, and […]
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Kelly Clarkson
Kelly ClarksonMy December(SonyBMG)Draw a line in your mind. Write “Alanis Morissette” at the top and “Kelly Clarkson” at the bottom. From the top, add these titles: Alanis (1991). Now is the Time (1992). Jagged Little Pill (1995). Thankful (2003). Breakaway (2004). My December (2007). See the picture? Though Morissette’s trajectory—she fled to LA and found […]
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Hiding places
Ang Lee’s films vary wildly in scope, subject and setting—think gay cowboys in rural America (Brokeback Mountain), swinging WASPs in 1970s New England (The Ice Storm), a Jane Austen adaptation (Sense and Sensibility), old-school Chinese assassins (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), a CGI rageholic just trying to sort out his daddy issues (Hulk). But while you […]
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Trial and errors
Reese Witherspoon disrupts her glam presentation—short-sleeved black dress, artfully wavy hair—by coughing onto her bare forearm. “I have a terrible cold,” she’ll say later, apologetically. Stars, they’re just like us. Witherspoon, seated two conspicuous chairs away from co-star and alleged boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal, has gathered with a sliver of her new film’s international ensemble at […]
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In good company
“Given that I’m in a country where the popularity of the president is comparable to that of Nixon during Watergate, one would think there would be a general disdain for the administration here. You also have to factor in that 71 percent of the country now believes they’re in a war they shouldn’t be.” Matthew […]
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The winning Pot
For years the Atlantic Film Festival has been running a program for emerging screenwriters, in which a handful of scribes spend the summer workshopping an original script each with legendary Canadian story editor Allan Magee, then pitch it to producers during the fest itself. Last year, which focused on first-draft features, was the first time […]
