Hollywood Los Lobos: proof that the family that plays together stays together. For close to 30 years, they’ve kept the same lineup, adding sax lad Steve Berlin along the way, and leaving a trail of good to great records behind them. They’re as rooted as The Band was, but they’re not afraid to splatter […]
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Robert Plant-Nine Lives
Rhino Front one of rock’s all-time biggest bands and your solo career is bound to suffer in comparison, whether you’re Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger or Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, who gets an elaborate post-Zep retrospective with “Nine Lives,” a mammoth boxed set containing all nine of his solo albums. No Plant album has made […]
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Beerfest: Completely Totally Unrated
2006 “Beerfest,” an over-the-top raunchfest starring five schlubs who pound brewskis like Olympic athletes, is every bit as stupid as you’d expect “? but God help you, you’ll laugh anyway. Rebounding from the humorless misfire of “Club Dread,” the boys of Broken Lizard deliver dumb giggles as the hard-chugging, frog-masturbating quintet who must defend […]
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Damien Rice-9
Warner Bros. The mental image I’ve had of eternally dour troubadour Damien Rice’ as a leaky human sieve, barely held together and struggling to stay whole amid a near-constant barrage of debris’ is only reinforced with his sophomore disc “9.” Love is either unrequited, spurned or dreamt in Rice’s songs, acoustic shards of folk-pop that […]
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When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
2006 A purifying masterpiece of pain and anger, Spike Lee’s devastating dissection of the Hurricane Katrina debacle is one of 2006’s best films and a stirring document of sickening governmental indifference. Spread over four hours and originally broadcast in two parts on HBO on the first anniversary of the storm striking the Gulf Coast, […]
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Six Feet Under: The Complete Series
2001-2005/2006 The beauty of long-form, episodic television shows is that writers are allowed to give characters room to breathe, letting narratives develop like the most satisfying novels; few hour-long dramas better dealt with the absurdity and gravity of death than Alan Ball’s “Six Feet Under.” A thematic extension, of sorts, of Ball’s acclaimed “American Beauty,” […]
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Miami Vice: Unrated Director’s Edition
2006 Perhaps I judged “Miami Vice” too harshly earlier this year “? Michael Mann’s consummate skill at evoking the twilit netherworld of cops and robbers was lost amid heightened expectations and what felt like a rather flabby missed opportunity, a splintering summer tent-pole flick. Revisiting the film on DVD, particularly via this extended “director’s […]
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Grey Gardens/The Beales of Grey Gardens: Criterion Collection
1975/2006 Creepy and disquietingly funny, “Grey Gardens,” David and Albert Maysles’ crack’d-mirror biography of the Beales “? Big Edie and Little Edie “? anticipates the bare-all aesthetic of modern-day reality TV, but does so with a grace and respect that “The Real World” wouldn’t dare attempt. A film custom-built for cult status (indeed, everyone […]
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Clipse-Hell Hath No Fury
Zomba It’s been four years since siblings Pusha-T and Malice’ collectively known as Clipse’ dropped “Lord Willin’,” a mind-blowing collaboration with the then-lesser-known production team The Neptunes. A endless series of legal disputes have kept the duo’s sophomore release, “Hell Hath No Fury,” from seeing the light of day, but at last, these irreverent, futuristic […]
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Gob Iron-Death Songs for the Living
Transmit Sound/Legacy Son Volt’s dour Jay Farrar continues his quest for the world’s slowest tempo, this time enlisting Varnaline leader Anders Parker in a (probably) one-off duo. Gob Iron specializes in traditional folk and blues, with Farrar frequently reworking the lyrics. Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” is changed to great effect, though it bears little […]