“I spent my whole life trying not to become a gangster,” Abel Morales says, his diction flawless, his resolve barely cracking. Encased in a broad, stiff camel coat, with his hair coiffured into a bouffant that could repel a hurricane, Abel, played by a masterfully controlled Oscar Isaac, may not…

When I think of cigarette smoking in the NBA, without a doubt, the first person who comes to mind is the gregarious, beloved Serb: Vlade Divac. Even your casual NBA fan most likely recalls hearing the tales: When he came into the league — not in the ’50s, when the harrowing health concerns were not…

I feel your pain, bitter, lonely, nerdy guys. I really do. It sounds corny to say it like that, but I don’t know how to say it and be believed. I know that because, having experienced this emotion from the inside for most of my life, I sure as hell resisted believing it when I heard people saying…

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia , which begins its 10th season tonight on FXX, has been on the air for almost a decade. It’s quite a run for something that started out as a short film about a guy trying to borrow some sugar. The show has been renewed for an 11th and 12th season already. What will…

It may be Detroit vs. Everybody in the blogosphere, but Black Milk is more concerned with improving himself. The Motor City producer and emcee dropped his album If There’s A Hell Below in October, months after his Glitches In The Breaks album. Fans could tell that he’d been shifting more towards…

Two Dissolvers keep the Heat conversation going... Nathan: In 1995, Heat wasn’t just a movie: It was an event, the long-awaited teaming of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, two of the most important actors of their generation. They shared The Godfather Part II, but they famously had no scenes together .…

In Michael Mann’s crime epic Heat , Robert De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a professional thief who resides in—and presides over—a modern home of glass and steel overlooking Los Angeles. As with the home of William Petersen’s tormented detective in Mann’s superb 1986 thriller Manhunter , the space…

Musical touchstones come in two variations: There are the ones that people remember (Motown, Thriller , Rebecca Black) and there are the ones people don’t remember that they remember. An example of the latter is Flood , the third album by long-running nerd-rock institution They Might Be Giants. Ask…

John Carpenter ranks among the finest genre filmmakers of all time. His run from the mid-’70s through the ’80s — including Dark Star , Assault on Precinct 13 , Halloween , Elvis , The Fog , Escape From New York , The Thing , Starman , Big Trouble in Little China , Prince of Darkness , and They Live…

Last week, Mark Ronson’s collaboration with Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk,” did the seemingly impossible and unseated Taylor Swift at the top of Billboard ’s Hot 100 chart. Ronson had previously notched several top-10 songs in the U.K. and elsewhere, and he won two Grammys in 2008 for producing Amy…

Brace yourselves for a weird night. There might be a little extra drama when the ball drops in Times Square, thanks to one of the more confusing political protests in recent memory. On a night when more than a million potentially lawbreaking, probably tipsy revelers will be crowding the most…

Hipsters aren’t anything new. Under Stalin, even the U.S.S.R. had them. They were called stilyagi . Whereas today’s hipsters are obsessed with skinny jeans and fixed-gear bicycles, the stilyagi were obsessed with Western culture–in particular, with jazz, boogie woogie, and rock ‘n’ roll. But in the…

Over the course of my 18 years of professionally writing about film, I have been wrong countless times. But I have seldom been more wrong than when I saw James Cameron’s Avatar and told my companions, “Holy shit! That is easily going to be the biggest flop of all time! What kind of audience could…

Odds are you probably have a stick or a tub of it sitting in your fridge right now, but do you have any idea how margarine became a staple in most kitchens? It turns out, margarine has a long and controversial international history, and can even boast the involvement of Emperor Napoleon III in its…

Movie musicals are having a moment, but it’s hard to tell what kind of moment it is. Two giant studio adaptations of Broadway mainstays belted their hearts out last Christmas; a third, directed by an American film legend, came out last summer, between a star-studded record-industry fable and a…

Archie Andrews had to die. It was the best way to help bring the long-lived comic icon and his collection of everyday, relatable friends full circle in time for a 75 th anniversary rebirth and allow him to remain rooted in today's present. "It was a decision that was long in the works — we were…

There's a place in central Florida where all your dreams come true. The weirder ones, anyway. The ones about your most decadent sexual fantasies, the ones where you're wandering through a party that never ends, or launching eggs into a 500-pound man's asshole, or fucking a girl while simultaneously…

Emerson Spartz calls himself an aggregator, but he acts more like a day trader. Illustration by Oliver Munday One afternoon in June, Emerson Spartz, an Internet-media entrepreneur in Chicago, left his office and walked several blocks to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where he was scheduled to speak…

The New York Times: Popular TV Series and Movies Maintain Relevance as Novels http://t.co/0TG4UXhfH2

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and…

If you’ve seen Big Hero Six, chances are that one of the things that stuck with you was Baymax’s “balalala” fist bump. You can see the exact moment in the YouTube clip above. Most people saw that and just laughed at the silliness of it. Me, I set my watch. Upon first seeing it, I guessed (correctly)…

Interview: Heiko Hoffmann A German translation of this article has been published in Groove 151 (November/December 2014) Richard D. James has been releasing music for almost as long as Groove magazine is being published. When the 25th anniversary of our mag approached this year, we heard that James…

Whittier, Alaska, is a town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in a 14-story former Army barracks built in 1956. The building, called Begich Towers, holds a police station, a health clinic, a church, and a laundromat. Its hallways resemble those of a school or a detention center. One can…

We’re a skeptical bunch in Massachusetts. Even a little ornery. And the impulse is never more pronounced than in the realm of sports; just turn on your car stereo. But here’s the thing about athletics. There is nothing quite like a big happening — a World Series victory or the triumphant return of…

There is no “but” about what happened at Charlie Hebdo yesterday. Some people published some cartoons, and some other people killed them for it. Words and pictures can be beautiful or vile, pleasing or enraging, inspiring or offensive; but they exist on a different plane from physical violence,…

Authors are upset with Amazon. Again. For much of the last year, mainstream novelists were furious that Amazon was discouraging the sale of some titles in its confrontation with the publisher Hachette over e-books. Now self-published writers, who owe much of their audience to the retailer’s…

Video Trailer: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ A preview of the film. By Fox Searchlight Pictures on Publish Date December 19, 2014. Photo by Internet Video Archive. With its candy-colored dollhouse sets, miniaturized funicular and post-Weimar-era grandeur, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” offered moviegoers…

The Qantas Airways computers started crashing just after midnight. A few hours later, as passengers started flying home from weekend getaways, there were long delays in Brisbane, Perth, and Melbourne, and the computers still didn't work. Qantas flight attendants were forced to check passengers in by…

We’ve long been conditioned to assume the topic is college football when we hear the words “Rose Bowl” and “bid committee” in the same sentence. But on Thursday, when four hopeful programs have their cases for inclusion considered by an impassive governing body, it will have nothing to do with a…

Few men know Steven Spielberg as well as Janusz Kaminski. The Oscar winning, Polish-born cinematographer has shot all of Spielberg's films since 1993, and their latest collaboration, Lincoln , is in theaters now. (Our David Edelstein reviews it here .) What better time, then, to talk to Kaminski…

Photo: Photos Courtesy of Warner Bros, Fox Searchlight and Brothers Productions The best cinematographers often form a long-lasting, creatively fruitful relationship with an A-list filmmaker — think of how Steven Spielberg uses Janusz Kaminski , for example, or how many iconic shots Roger Deakins…

Editor Tom Cross, who has been nominated for ACE and BAFTA awards and is a strong contender for an Oscar nom on Thursday, knew instantly that “ Whiplash ” would be created in the editing room and therefore worked closely with Chazelle on honing a multi-layered editorial approach for this intense,…

Root all you want for your Chastains, your Rivas, your Hathaways, and your Day-Lewises; for me, the Oscar nominee to pull for this weekend is venerated cinematographer Roger Deakins, nominated ten times with nary a win to his name. He's back in the race this year with the gorgeous, lush Skyfall ,…

Werner Herzog. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images If you gaze into Werner Herzog talking about Werner Herzog for long enough, does Werner Herzog gaze back into you? I pondered that question in late June as the 71-year-old director sat across from me at a conference table in the Santa Monica…

How Dylan seized control of his own story and made things more complicated than ever By Joe Levy It’s 2004 , but Bob Dylan wants to tell you about a day some 42 years earlier. It’s an ice cold afternoon in New York City. Dylan is 20 years old. He has just signed his first publishing deal with Leeds…

Two-time Oscar-winning editor Kirk Baxter (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Social Network”) enjoyed the narrative complexities and satirical fun of “ Gone Girl .” Gillian Flynn’s adaption of her bestselling thriller is like a Punch and Judy act for Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, which David…

I spoke to British cinematographer Roger Deakins via Skype while he was filming Angelina Jolie’s challenging new film “Unbroken” on the water in New Zealand. Deakins, who often collaborates with the Coen brothers, is a go-to cinematographer for many filmmakers and is revered by actors because he…

Adrian Younge inspires DJ Premier and Timbaland with his Blaxploitation-style instrumentals and directs new albums for Ghostface and Bilal “ Don’t half-ass it . If you’re going to go, earnestly go and do it.” Adrian Younge is speaking about experimentation. Younge is passionate and driven, traits…

All photos courtesy of the author Funk and disco might be making a comeback right now, but for some, including neo-soul artist Mayer Hawthorne and hip-hop producer Jake One, it never left. Tuxedo, their “new” collaboration, is set to drop a debut in March on Los Angeles indie heavyweight, Stones…