Photo: Warner Bros I get what American Sniper is trying to do. I really do. Clint Eastwood’s film is attempting to convey the grit, the determination, the pure endurance of seeing a belief through to its end. I served alongside a few guys like Bradley Cooper’s Chris Kyle in Iraq, guys whom I…

An entrepreneur as professionally careful as the Dread Pirate Roberts doesn't trust instant messaging services. Forget phones or Skype. At one point during our eight-month preinterview courtship, I offer to meet him at an undisclosed location outside the United States. "Meeting in person is out of…

By our third phone call, Steven Lloyd Sadler was a fugitive. Facing federal charges for drug trafficking and distribution, Sadler decided he’d rather skip the trial and jail sentence altogether. He was pulling away from Seattle, where he was charged, and we talked for hours. He began that particular…

About a half-billion dollars worth of it vanished from an online exchange in Tokyo. A prosecutor in Manhattan arrested the 24-year-old vice chairman of its most prominent trading body on drug-related charges of money laundering. Its founder’s identity remains a mystery, and last year, it shed…

If you're a musician who has worked hard on a new record, it must be pretty frustrating when it invariably leaks on BitTorrent. RuPaul just trolled would-be pirates with a fake leak of the album Born Naked . Daft Punk's Random Access Memories Has Leaked Online (Updated) Surprise! The new Daft Punk…

O n the night that Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla strode into the lobby of the Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel in Mexico City, the price on his head was $5 million. The handsome 33-year-old, nicknamed El Vicentillo (Pretty Boy Vicente), was a notorious drug capo. He was also the only son of Ismael “El…

For its two and a half years online, thousands of drug dealers sold every kind of narcotic imaginable on the anonymous online marketplace known as the Silk Road. But put one of the site's heroin dealers in a courtroom and ask him questions under oath, and the scale and consequences of that drug…

The inertia of the brilliant Times Square scene in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “ Birdman ” is deceptive. What seems like a roller coaster ride that stops actually picks up again when Michael Keaton re-enters the theater to continue his manic performance. We get the lowdown on the Best Picture…

Scott: I hadn’t seen Rock ’N’ Roll High School for probably 20 years, and it’s even better than I remember—so much so that you’ll have to forgive my reaching for superlatives. My first thought is this: The film is as good and proper a vehicle for the Ramones as A Hard Day’s Night was for The…

Filmmaking increasingly doesn’t involve film at all as the majority of films — both Hollywood blockbusters and small independent films — are shot digitally. It’s worth noting that although digitally-shot films dominate the Sundance lineup, this year a good number of projects were produced on film…

At the foot of the desk of the new baseball commissioner, in a frame waiting to be hung on his office wall, is an original roster from the Rome American Little League in upstate New York, dated April 27, 1969. In the No. 10 slot is a 10-year-old from Van Buren Avenue named Robert Manfred. He never…

And why I left Silicon Valley One year ago, I left San Francisco, sold and gave away everything I owned, and moved into a 40 liter backpack. I traveled to 45 cities in 20 countries, 3 Disneylands, and 1 bunny island . I also worked 50 hours a week building and launching a startup . And my total…

RuPaul Charles is nothing if not brutally frank. And with a decades-spanning career that's taken him from former New York City club kid to one-time " Supermodel (of the World) ," to current host of Logo TV's cult reality show competition RuPaul's Drag Race and all-around impresario of his brand ,…

The 70-year-old, shooting Robert Pattinson starrer "Map to the Stars," placed the lights a mile and a half away: "It's no different than shining a light from a helicopter." This story first appeared in the Sept. 13 issue of magazine. David Cronenberg , 70, recently wrapped his first Los Angeles-shot…

“N obody watched The Wire when it was on,” says David Simon, leaning forward with a conspiratorial whisper, sitting at a neat desk in the ersatz office of Harry Oxman, the long-ago vice-mayor of Yonkers, New York. “Nobody watched The Corner . “I didn’t believe for a minute [ Generation Kill ] would…

When it started in 1988, the Royal Rumble was a gimmick — a battle royal slightly reconfigured to create a trademarked event that would sell tickets regardless of its participants. Today, of course, the men (and occasional women) are what the match is built on — the big names, the big entrances, and…

They call it a demon, and it lurks just out of sight. The first time your player reaches the surface in Metro 2033, your ally laughs after he tells you that. “I call them bitches ,” he adds. They’re winged monstrosities, mutated and angry, haunting the irradiated Russian surface. They’re nearly…

Last week’s news that almost two and a half thousand MS-DOS computer games have been added to the Internet Archive , a free online library of books, music, movies, and software, was met with widespread delight. Over the years, the archive has rescued historical gems and curios that, unless one…

In today's video games, you can choose to assume the role of a high-powered military dynamo in the Call of Duty series to murder other soldiers in glorious HD, or you hop into the boots of an alien in Destiny to zoom across moonscapes with a jetpack and a space rifle. But in the glory days of the…

In the closing days of 2014, the Internet Archive added 2,334 MS-DOS games to its online library, all of which can be played in-browser. This sent certain corners of the Internet down a historical rabbit hole, revisiting (long-lost) first loves like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego , Prince of…

Photo The actor Al Pacino and the director Barry Levinson discuss “The Humbling,” about a longtime actor in decline. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Simon Axler, the fictional performer played by Al Pacino in “The Humbling,” is living a perpetual actor’s nightmare. In this dark comedy adapted…

Capcom’s next-generation reboot of survival horror classic Resident Evil has lots of new additions – including breast physicsPhotograph: public domain I need to get something off my chest. Well, I need to get my chest off my chest. No, wait, let’s start again. Video games are a technological art…

A Low Orbit Ion Cannon isn’t one of the sci-fi guns you can fire at aliens in Destiny. But that title certainly makes it sound like one, doesn’t it? Punch that in chrome lettering on to the hot barrel of a purple pulse rifle and it’d certainly fit right in with that universe. No, they’re more…

Break out the bow ties for a boogie-meets-g-funk revival project On December 14th, 2010 , at the grand opening of The Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas, virtual unknown Mayer Hawthorne gave a surreal performance on the casino floor. Like a man outside of his own time, Hawthorne’s brand of blue-eyed…

Getty Images The failure of the Fire Phone has been widely cited as the reason for Amazon’s disastrous quarter, but a darker cloud has settled over the world’s biggest online retailer. The core of Amazon’s business—its original reason for being: selling books and other media—has grown wobbly. The…

Residents of L.A.'s Beachwood Canyon are fighting off hordes of GPS-enabled tourists — thousands a day — who block their driveways, sometimes piss in public and, they say, pose a major fire risk as they make their pilgrimage to the city's most popular and unregulated landmark This story first…

On the day the Oscar nominations were announced, The Daily Beast hung out with Spike Lee at his Brooklyn office to discuss awards politics and how Selma was overlooked. Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast A few hours after the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced, I…

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: We’re human beings, and it’s only natural that our relationship with works of art will change over time. Sometimes those changes are marginal, sometimes dramatic, as we gain life experience and our taste grows more refined, or baser. Or as the culture shifts, and…

Music News Originals Culture Sports Shop Boards Home / News / News / OKP Exclusive: Killer Mike Speaks On Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Revolutionary Legacy On MLK Day 2015 News News Last Next OKP Exclusive: Killer Mike Speaks On Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Revolutionary Legacy On MLK Day 2015 Posted by…

Kaitlin Olson is hating having her picture taken right now. The 39-year-old star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia doesn’t say this out loud, but it’s not hard to tell that she is deeply, deeply uncomfortable — though she’s nowhere near as awkward in her own skin as her character Sweet Dee, a…

I n my life, I have given a fuck about many people and many things. I have also not given a fuck about many people and many things. And those fucks I have not given have made all the difference. People often say the key to confidence and success in life is to simply “not give a fuck.” Indeed, we…