Comedy! Missed the first-season set of Episodes? Skip it. Instead, grab the new two-disc set collecting the first two years. Although very much a Hollywood in-joke, the Showtime series tells that in-joke with excellence, anchored by Friends vet Matt LeBlanc starring as an A-holier version of himself, reduced to starring on a hockey sitcom overseen […]
zip
Posted inMusic
Music explosion
Most bands never get the chance to meet their musical heroes. The dudes of Diarrhea Planet get to hang out with theirs on a near-daily basis. “Right when I started school in Nashville, I went out to a club and watched Jeff the Brotherhood play. It blew my mind,” guitarist Emmett Miller said. “I wanted […]
Posted inMusic
Ripple Green — A Lungful
Like closing your eyes and pretending Lake Texoma is Venice Beach, A Lungful brings the ocean to Oklahoma with pseudo-surf bass grooves mashed together with wild, prairie-bred guitar hooks. Opener “The Weak” is the cleanest weld; at its strongest points, the punchy anthem would have felt right at home on Incubus’ Morning View. The guitar […]
Posted inMusic
‘Circus’ folk
Singer-songwriter Rebecca Loebe rarely feels right at home on the road as she does when she plays The Blue Door, as she will Thursday. The Atlanta native cut her teeth in Georgia’s famed Eddie’s Attic, the club that helped foster the careers of Indigo Girls, Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and The Civil Wars, among others. John […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Thieves
So don’t complain that you have to read subtitles; literacy is good for you. Depicting the theft of a national treasure from a seemingly impenetrable art vault, a 10-minute prologue puts viewers right in the mood for its jaunty, addicting vibe — one that marries the globetrotting derring-do of the Mission: Impossible franchise with the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Nature Calls
Heading it is comedian Patton Oswalt (Young Adult), here doing a variation of his ever-reliable, ever-lovable teddy-bear character as Randy. A second-generation Scoutmaster of the Boy Scouts of America, he has inherited his father’s once-vibrant Troop 5516. Today, however, in an Xbox age, enjoying the great outdoors holds no appeal to most kids. As one […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Citadel
Infected by the syringe the hoodlums plunge into her, she ends up in hospice, but doctors are able to save the baby, a girl who’s happy and healthy — basically, everything Tommy is not. In fact, the trauma has turned him into a barely functioning agoraphobe. Not only is he afraid to leave the house, […]
Posted inMusic
A$AP Rocky — Long.Live.A$AP.
There has been a lot of buzz surrounding the freshman disc, especially since it leaked over a month ago. After just one listen, it becomes clear that Rocky has put together something special. Like Rocky’s popular mixtape, the similarly titled Live.Love.A$AP, this album features a collection of songs about everything from poverty and violence […]
Posted inArts & Culture
End of Watch / Officer Down
David Ayer has spent much of his career chronicling the life of Los Angeles law enforcement in his screenplays for Training Day, S.W.A.T. and Dark Blue, and directing Street Kings. With End of Watch, he pulls double duty. The result is an invigorating, pulse-pounding crime drama. Through a found-footage gimmick that really isn’t necessary to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Why Stop Now
In the kind of one-note part that threatened to kill his career before the one-two punch of Zombieland and The Social Network saved it, Jesse Eisenberg stars as Eli, a young man with a bright future as a pianist ahead of him, if not for having to act as a surrogate father for his own […]