I n November 1996, executives at Warner Bros. were making final preparations to release one of the most ambitious films in the studio’s 73-year history. A hybrid live-action/animated production where the fate of the galaxy depends on teaming up the most recognizable athlete on the planet ( Michael…

When hardcore and hip-hop collided in 1980s New York City, the cultural crossover was uncomfortable, dangerous and exhilarating By Dante Ross Photographs by Glen E. Friedman I grew up on New York’s Lower East Side , so I can blame most of my early life on my immediate surroundings. I was raised in…

Volume is a game that wears its influences on its sleeve, and none seem to loom as large over the project as the spectre of Metal Gear Solid . In talking about Volume, the developer, Mike Bithell, has been upfront with his admiration for the series, particularly the first two installments. Talking…

Justin Bailey, formerly of developer Double Fine, is launching a new crowdfunding solution for game developers. Called Fig , the service will offer rewards-based funding alongside equity investment. Fig's advisory board will include Feargus Urquhart, Brian Fargo and Tim Schafer. Fig's first…

This weekend, I paid to see Straight Outta Compton, F. Gary Gray’s authorized biopic about pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A . Two and a half hours later , I felt like I had been watching television — Straight Outta Compton is essentially a well-made homage to one of the least reputable film…

This weekend, Dr. Dre made an extraordinary announcement: Detox , the career capstone LP that he spent 13 years finessing while fending off torrents of flop sweat, has been scuttled. “I didn’t like it. It wasn’t good,” Dre admitted Saturday on his Beats 1 radio show, The Pharmacy , officially…

Photo: New Line Cinema We have Ice Cube’s 1995 classic, Friday , to thank for the very useful phrase “Bye, Felicia”: In the movie, his character gets rid of a freeloading neighbor with this curt, simple phrase. Bye, Felicia. More recently, the phrase has found new life as the most satisfying way to…

Whether it’s Katy Perry poaching dancers from once-BFF Taylor Swift or Clytemnestra orchestrating the murder of her husband Agamemnon, betrayal is a dark, persistent part of the human condition. Unlike garden-variety deception, betrayal happens in established relationships, destroying trust that has…

Ashley Madison Last month, a hacking group going by the name "Impact Team" claimed that it had hacked Ashley Madison, the infidelity dating site, and published some business records online as proof. Those records quickly vanished, but Impact Team said it had a lot more, and threatened to release…

Fight back with this simple hack (and when you are done, read the FAQ ) If you subscribe to a subscription music service such as Spotify or Apple Music you probably pay $10 a month. And if you are like most people, you probably do so believing your money goes to the artists you listen to.…

ABOARD THE BOB BARKER, in the South Atlantic — As the Thunder, a trawler considered the world’s most notorious fish poacher, began sliding under the sea a couple of hundred miles south of Nigeria, three men scrambled aboard to gather evidence of its crimes. In bumpy footage from their helmet…

It’s easier for a company to justify generous parental leave when many of their employees were already taking time off anyway. PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER MARLOW / MAGNUM Netflix’s announcement, on Tuesday, that it will start offering new moms and dads up to a year of paid leave has the tone of a parent…

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The Carte of Coastal Virginia (Image: Theodor de Bry/Wikimedia ) Since 1590, the fate of the colonists who settled on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what’s now North Carolina, has been one of America’s great mysteries. When John White left the colony in 1587, to ask England for additional aid,…

T he thing is, when you actually think about it, it’s not funny. Given what’s at stake, it’s more like the opposite, like the first sign of the collapse of the United States as a global superpower. Twenty years from now, when we’re all living like prehistory hominids and hunting rats with sticks,…

When Kendrick Lamar arrives this Friday evening at a cavernous photo studio in the flatlands of industrial Hollywood, he’s 30 minutes early. And the occasion has been nearly 25 years in the making: Lamar, 28, is here to interview the four living members of N.W.A for their first magazine cover…

The news that HBO would be ” occasioned an immediate flurry of social-media gags — what if Bert and Ernie were the cast of #TrueDetectiveSeason3? — and a less widespread but more intense burst of outrage from people who felt that a treasured public resource had suddenly been privatized. Sesame…

A normal drive from Ocean City, Md., back to the suburbia of Baltimore County, Md., would usually take three hours, tops. A drive back from Ocean City, Md., with my immediate family—the eleven-year-old half brother, my stepfather, my mother, our pug/chihuahua Milo and our looming Labrador mix…

I recently finished a story I’d spent several months obsessing over. When I pitched the piece to my editor, I knew that I’d found a worthy subject, but I couldn’t quite articulate what the story was about. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the words — it’s that I didn’t have an answer yet. All I knew was…

Last fall, Andrew Vestal found himself rocking his baby daughter, Ada, back to sleep every morning between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. Cradling Ada in the crook of his arm, he discovered he could read his dimly-lit phone with one hand. That’s how he read David Mitchell’s 624-page science-fiction saga “The…

THE prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it. He has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public venues, like the scholarly…

Craig Schweisinger opened the doors to Skateland U.S.A. on Saturday, Nov. 16, 1984. High schoolers mingled with gangbangers and roller skaters who took their choreography seriously. A sign reading NO CAPS — NO COLORS greeted attendees at the door. Everyone was required to pass through an…

Image from the series "Hawthorne Mall." © Theonepointeight Image from the series "Hawthorne Mall." © Theonepointeight Image from the series "Hawthorne Mall." © Theonepointeight Image from the series "Hawthorne Mall." © Theonepointeight Image from the series "Hawthorne Mall." © Theonepointeight Image…

Once upon a time, in the year 2007, people were really excited about Second Life . Businessweek ran a cover story with the headline "Virtual World, Real Money." Brands opened stores in Second Life malls . It was even featured on an episode of The Office . Colleges were among those that bought the…

Last August the death of Mike Brown and police reaction to protests in Ferguson brought the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter movement to the mainstream media foreground. In the year that followed, a slew of American states and cities have faced protest, controversy, and mass media scrutiny over the killing…

Photo: J.A. Bracchi/Getty Images Last night, the Twitter account for Tinder went on a tear against the Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales, who recently argued, in her feature “ Tinder and the ‘Dating Apocalypse ,’” that dating apps are causing changes in human mating rituals of a magnitude…

H istorians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first…

A t age 8, Jerry Heller was dodging beatings by the Polish kids on the west side of Cleveland. At age 11, he had his first gun: a .26 caliber Mauser a family member had taken off a German soldier in the fields of World War II. He was born and raised in Ohio, the son of a second-generation…

So, a six-hour miniseries about a young mayor struggling with the legal and political complexities of low-income housing might sound like a hard sell… until you find out that it’s being directed by Paul Haggis and produced by David Simon , the architect of one of modern television’s greatest…

The most viewed video game video on YouTube is not a scream-filled Let's Play by PewDiePie or a trailer for League of Legends. Nor is it the work of some glitzy production company, a video game publisher with money to burn or a YouTuber with a book out at Christmas. The most viewed video game video…

Ashly & Anthony Burch (you know, from HAWP and Borderlands) have just written a book. It’s all about Metal Gear Solid . What follows is an excerpt. Before they co-created the hit web series Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’ ?, Ashly and Anthony Burch were just a brother and sister who shared a weird…

Sex toys have transformed into sophisticated and well-designed gadgets that take their inspiration from Apple not Hustler. But one company has a bigger hope: that a better machine could mean better sex for a repressed nation. The sex toy as design object: the innards of Jimmyjane's Form 6 vibrator.…

Part Two So, in 1968 you were working on the titles for Bullitt. How did that come about? Pablo: That was because of Thomas Crown Affair – Steve McQueen loved me. He said I had to come to San Francisco, to give him an idea for a title. I said, “Okay, I’ll give you a month.” Pablo with Steve McQueen…

Part One Pablo in Cuba, 5 years old Let’s start at the beginning. You were born in Antilla, Cuba in 1935 and later you moved to New York. What was Cuba like for you? Pablo: In Cuba, my grandfather had a big farm and I worked for him there. That was a great experience, doing all kinds of work and it…

“Do you want to see what it looks like from the inside?” Sure. The helmet is ominously pockmarked and constructed out of steel in the Norman style. It looks like half a football sitting on a serving plate. The face is protected by bars that jut down from the brim, and an aventail, a ring of chain…

The complete story of Public Enemy ’s trail-blazing 1988 LP It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 1990’s Fear of a Black Planet will be told via two Def Jam/UMe reissues released this month. The multi-disc sets, out on November 25th, will provide insight into two of the most sonically…