[Wed, 7.Jan.09]

[Wed, 7.Jan.09]
Arc Angels
5.Dec.08: Austin, TX
When the Arc Angel’s first -- and as it turned out only -- album came out in 1992, there was massive buzz and rightfully so.

[Tue, 6.Jan.09]
George Jones + Jason Byrd + Travis Matte and the Kingpins
20.Nov.08: Baton Rouge, LA
Regardless of what the crowd listens to when not at a George Jones concert, they all seem ready to burn their Shania Twain and Uncle Kracker discs in the name of Jones at the moment.

MP3s, videos, trailers, streaming media and more

POPWIRE

News, Reviews and Commentary from the World of Popular Culture

[Wed, 7.Jan.09]
:. INTERVIEW:Writing too enjoyable an endeavor for John Updike to consider retirement
:. How will President Obama affect entertainment and the arts?
:. HD service changing how we listen to radio
:. Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton dies
:. Changing country sees its reflection in Obama
:. Consumer electronics industry finds silver lining in grim economic climate
:. Apple unveils new iTunes prices, 8-hour laptop battery
:. 2008’s top tech trends
:. ‘The Beast’ is real bad, but ‘24’ still knows how to thrill

[Tue, 6.Jan.09]
:. INTERVIEW:Emma Watson finds new challenges in ‘Despereaux’
:. Midseason TV: Winter is the new fall
:. ‘Infinite Undiscovery,’ ‘Last Remnant’ are proof the old game maker still has it
:. Dave on Demand: The television week in review
:. Glenn Close and William Hurt team up for a second season of ‘Damages’
:. INTERVIEW:Kevin Kline’s Cyrano de Bergerac brings Broadway to TV
:. ‘Friday Night Lights’ outshines latest Blu-ray releases
:. David Niven, Helen Mirren shine in ‘The Films of Michael Powell’
:. Prince’s New Year’s resolution: to release three new albums
:. These days, performers are creating their own marketing strategies
:. INTERVIEW:Viva Glasvegas: Scottish rockers are fast becoming the next big thing

[Mon, 5.Jan.09]
:. INTERVIEW:Aussie actress Anna Torv says she’s happy to be a ‘Fringe’ player
:. TV’s January thaw: After a bleak 2008, viewers can hope for a balmy new beginning
:. National Society of Film Critics honors ‘Waltz With Bashir’
:. ‘Graham Greene: A Life in Letters’ provides a revealing look at the artistry, less so the arti
:. ‘Outliers’: So that’s Malcolm Gladwell’s secret to success
:. Chess vs. ‘Cadillac’: The Chicago story
:. INTERVIEW:To his surprise, the big roles keep coming for veteran actor Bill Nighy
:. Networks hope to recapture viewers with such favorites as ‘Idol,’ ‘24’ and ‘Lost’
:. Some movies to look for in 2009
:. Second season of ‘Damages,’ premiering Wednesday on FX

FEATURES

PopMatters Picks: Best (and Worst) in Show 2008
By PopMatters Staff
[7.Jan.09] :. During the past 12 months, PopMatters writers have been turned away from shows due to torrential rain, stood next to flaming cymbals, and stepped out of their comfort zones all in the name of objective reporting. Here are the best and worst musical events of 2008.

20 Questions: James Morrison
By Christian John Wikane
[7.Jan.09] :. Fatherhood agrees with UK-based soul artist James Morrison and, as we discover in this edition of 20 Questions, so does a pair of Diesel jeans.

COLUMNS

From the Cheap Seats: Dave Zirin: A Sportswriter with Real Punch
By Tobias Peterson
[7.Jan.09] :. "We can pretend sports isn't political just as well as we can pretend there is no such thing as gravity if we fall out of an airplane."

Dread Reckoning: Something to Do with Death
By Marco Lanzagorta
[6.Jan.09] :. By manipulating mankind’s fear of death, organized religion clearly emerges as the most ruthless and totalitarian authority institution in the history of the world.

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PopMatters Best of Books 2008: Non-Fiction
By PopMatters Staff
[6.Jan.09] :. The 20th century is history and the 21st century is beginning to assume full shape and form with definable contours. As these 24 outstanding non-fiction titles from 2008 demonstrate, it’s a different world outside your door.

A Spirited Friendship
By shathley Q
[6.Jan.09] :. Given the respective careers of Will Eisner and Frank Miller, the root of their friendship becomes apparent. For both, the comics medium takes precedence above all else.

PopMatters Best of Books 2008: Fiction
By PopMatters Staff
[5.Jan.09] :. Feeling anxious? Here are 23 masterful works of fiction from 2008 that will either underscore your anxiety or help alleviate it through escape into the past and the land of make-believe.

Will Eisner’s Dual Identity: The Spirit of an Artist
By Charles Moss
[5.Jan.09] :. A biography of Will Eisner, perhaps the greatest cartoonist in the history of American comics. Eisner used The Spirit as his vessel for unexplored creativity with story elements not commonly found in comics.

PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2008
By PopMatters Staff
[19.Dec.08] :. PopMatters presents our best music of 2008, highlighted by the Best 60 Albums of 2008 and the Best 50 Singles of 2008, plus our picks across many musical genres. We're now on publishing break until the new year. Happy holidays.

George Orwell: Forgiving and Championing Bad Art
By Rob Horning
[19.Dec.08] :. Orwell's essays remind us that better than our best intentions is our inescapable nature, our shared ordinariness, which will always have the potential to redeem us all if only we will embrace it.

The Appealing Abstraction of Masahiro Sakurai
By Derek Halm
[18.Dec.08] :. Games within a game, distanced from the main narrative thrust of the text, ask the player to specifically abstract the game's fiction away from the gameplay itself.

Mike Doughty’s New Hope
By Robert Costa
[17.Dec.08] :. The former Soul Coughing frontman talks with PopMatters about his new album Golden Delicious, the joys of being a solo artist and being addicted to... MSNBC.

Pop Past: Bettie Page, Dead Since 1957
By G. Christopher Williams
[16.Dec.08] :. What might be remembered of the life of a woman who was long ago replaced by her own representation?

Rebels Wit Attitude: Beastie Boys
By Iain Ellis
[15.Dec.08] :. In this excerpt of PopMatters' new book Rebels Wit Attitude, Ellis discusses how Beastie Boys were not afraid to play the enemy within, often mocking the macho strutting of harder rappers.

Hong Kong Graffiti: Not for Lack of Inspiration
By Philip Leung
[12.Dec.08] :. Subversive commentary should be thriving in Hong Kong. All the ingredients to spark graffiti are there -- the divides in social class, the thriving materialistic culture, and political antagonism with Mainland China.

20 Questions: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
By PopMatters Staff
[10.Dec.08] :. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge warns PopMatters 20 Questions readers, "Pleasure is a cultural weapon. Use it wisely."

Rebels Wit Attitude: Talking Heads
By Iain Ellis
[8.Dec.08] :. In this excerpt from PopMatters' new book Rebels Wit Attitude, Ellis looks at the Talking Heads' art school intellectualism, pop melodies, funk rhythms, and the abstract humor that made them outsiders.

Women Lawyers, Bankers, and Presidents? Sure. Women Rockers? Not Just Yet.
By David Singer
[5.Dec.08] :. It's 2008, the 21st century -- we may not have reached full equality yet, but women have made huge strides in a number of industries. So why is that at show after show, on stage after stage, we still have to ask "Where are all the ladies at?"

Rambo: In All His Glory
By Marco Lanzagorta
[5.Dec.08] :. Rambo is constantly portrayed as judge, jury, and executioner in the national and international spheres.

A Mile Upstream: An Interview With Dean Ween
By Drew Fortune
[4.Dec.08] :. The Ween guitarist uses his love of fishing to launch a new show, and he explains that being out in his boat isn't all that different from playing a show.

Kind of Blue Revisited: The 50th Anniversary of the Greatest (Jazz) Album of All Time
By Will Layman
[3.Dec.08] :. A staple of modern music for nearly 50 years, Kind of Blue is near-impossible to hear with fresh ears. But perhaps that is precisely why it needs some re-examining.

RECENT COLUMNS

PopShots: Facebook and the Death of Distance
By Glenn McDonald
[6.Jan.09] :. Facebook is like having a dozen rolling high school reunions simultaneously, plus grade school, and college, and every summer camp you ever attended.

Busted Headphones: We Don’t Die, We Multiply: Posse Tracks
By Quentin B. Huff
[5.Jan.09] :. Having more than one rapper on the scene enhances and galvanizes a song, as the central theme is strengthened with each successive verse. As the saying goes, there's strength in numbers.

Deconstruction Zone: The Vast Immensity of it All: Fear and Loathing on Sunset Boulevard
By Rodger Jacobs
[19.Dec.08] :. Faces of Sunset Boulevard is, without a doubt, one of the strongest statements about man’s dark fate in the West ever committed to paper in the author and photographer’s chosen form.

The Screener: Exquisite Agony
By Chris Barsanti
[19.Dec.08] :. This holiday season, Mickey Rourke (in The Wrestler) and Will Smith (Seven Pounds) suffer for all us sinners.

Jazz Today: No Piano No Problem
By Will Layman
[18.Dec.08] :. Two new albums by piano-less quartets offer big doses of fun -- urgent rhythms, slabs of blues feeling, melody and invention with hardly any limit -- but also provide thrill-rides of surprise.

Mixtape Confessions: Sold on the Street
By Ben Rubenstein
[17.Dec.08] :. The guys selling their hip-hop CD-Rs on the street know exactly where to find their prey: outside the independent record store, in and around shows of like-minded artists. What makes them so hard to resist?

Worlds in Panels: Capturing the Abstract in the Concrete
By Shaun Huston
[16.Dec.08] :. What do the worlds contained within comics, within and between panels, tell us about the worlds in which we live out our lives?

Queer, Isn't It?: The California Smack-down
By Michael Abernethy
[15.Dec.08] :. The victory of Proposition 8 could be the best thing to happen to the LGBT community in a long time, but only if we pay attention to its lessons.

Sticky Wickets: The Thinking Voice of the NFL: A Conversation with Mike Carlson
By Robert Collins
[15.Dec.08] :. "If I was doing the same thing in the States, I’d probably be getting lot more criticism, not only from the fans but also from the people themselves."

Negritude 2.0: The Politics Inside Black Pop
By Mark Reynolds
[12.Dec.08] :. Will black pop artists still see themselves as outsiders now that a black person is President? Will they use their cultural platform to criticize him if need be, just as they did to help elect him?

The Screener: Shameful Exposure
By Chris Barsanti
[12.Dec.08] :. A fiery Kate Winslet saves morality tale in 'The Reader' while a similarly powerful Meryl Streep can't do the same for the overly certain 'Doubt'.

Pop Osmosis: Look What the Cat Lady Dragged in
By Jennifer Byrne
[11.Dec.08] :. The so-called “crazy cat lady” seems to be one of few sexist stereotypes that remains alive, well, and somehow immune to politically-correct backlash.

Moving Pixels: The Campbellian Myth of Monkey Island
By L.B. Jeffries
[11.Dec.08] :. The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the '90s' best examples of interactive fiction, and it accomplishes this by using a variety of narrative and game design techniques to deliver a Joseph Campbell experience.

Blood and Thunder: The Best Metal Albums of 2008
By Adrien Begrand
[10.Dec.08] :. It was a stellar year for metal, and an eclectic year, too: Norwegian prog-metal, goth-infused death metal, Swedish thrash, black metal, and stoner rock all make the list.

Pickin' Down the Line: CMAs and the End of Genre or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Kid Rock
By Bob Proehl
[9.Dec.08] :. This year's CMA winners point to a future where the only thing necessary to be classified as country is a desire to join in and sing.

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