New release (Republic Nashville; tour dates) Photo by Robby Klein
Sophomore slump? Not here. As soon as the banjo on the opening track, “Better Dig Two,” makes room for some choice electric-guitar power chords before the two instruments dance together, it’s clear that The Band Perry has lost none of its charm or chops.
In his first film for television, director Philip Kaufman (Henry & June, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Right stuff) focuses for the first half on Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen) and Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman) falling in love during the Spanish Civil War.
I’ll never forget my first encounter with Paramore. It wasn’t at a gig or on the radio. It came in the pages of a magazine: a backstage photo taken around the time of 2007’s Riot! And I have to be honest: My focus wasn’t on the band but on its singer, Hayley Williams. Underneath that flame of orange-red hair, with her head cocked elatedly to the side, she was laughing as if there was no tomorrow. Now that’s rock & roll, I thought, wondering if she (um, the band) sounded as full of youthful excitement as she looked.
New release (Warner Bros.; tour dates) Photo by George Salisbury
Telepathic surgery. Ego tripping at the gates of hell. I’ve allowed the Flaming Lips to take me deep inside myself and pull me far afield. But I can’t submit entirely to The Terror.
Set in the South in 1858, two years before the Civil War, writer-director Quentin Tarantino's Spaghetti-sauced Western (or more accurately Southern) Django Unchained tells of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave bought and freed by a German-born bounty hunter, Dr.
Years ago, someone told me that 1,200 high school kids were given a survey. A question was posed to them: Have you ever been to a stand-alone record shop? The number of kids that answered “yes” was . . . zero.
Has a hip-hop-related record ever opened as optimistically as this?
Good morning, welcome to the thing called life Good morning, don’t you let it pass you by We laugh, we cry, and then we dry our eyes We fall, we rise, ready for another try When life gets tough, remember, we were never born to die When times get rough, remember, we were born to be alive
By 1949, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a New York Jew, has gone West to follow his manifest destiny to take over Los Angeles and then the whole of the Western United States through buying politicians, judges, and cops with profits from his vice, gambling, and drug rackets.
In Silver Linings Playbook by director David O. Russell (Three Kings, The Fighter, I Heart Huckabees), former high school history teacher Pat Solatano (Bradley Cooper) gets out of a state institution after spending eight months incarcerated there.
New release (Fat Possum; tour dates) Photo by David Raccuglia
Ready to Die is billed as the 40th-anniversary follow-up to 1973’s Raw Power because it’s the first album since then to be credited specifically to Iggy and the Stooges, with James Williamson returning on guitar.
Reacher (Tom Cruise) is an ex-lifer military police officer living off the grid. He agrees to become lead investigator for attorney Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike) who’s trying to keep a veteran sniper off death row since all evidence points to him having randomly shot five people.
“Lots of albums by lead singers might just as well have been made by the band, but I think this is very different from anything the Dixie Chicks could make.” So says Natalie Maines about her debut solo album. It’s “a new direction,” her press release underscores. Most common translation I’ve seen to date: It’s “a rock album.”
"Lots of albums by lead singers might just as well have been made by the band, but I think this is very different from anything the Dixie Chicks could make." So says Natalie Maines about her debut solo album. It's "a new direction," her press release underscores. Most common translation I've seen to date: It's "a rock album."