Suffused with the hazy reds and oranges of a western sunset, the first video of Campo Santo’s Firewatch was an unexpected treat. Set in the wilderness of Wyoming, the game is set to follow Henry, a fire lookout, through forests backlit by the sun and up and down blue-gray mountains of stone. The…

There is no Trader Joe's in Canada. Imagine -- maybe you don’t have to -- you’re Canadian. You’re at a dinner party, and the host has put out a bowl of the best snack you’ve ever had. Love at first bite, and it’s going fast. Soon enough, your fingers graze the bottom of the bowl and you realize that…

In the Fog Aliza Ma on Shutter Island During a three-month visit to the set of Shutter Island in April 2008, Argentinian filmmaker Celina Murga observed Martin Scorsese with his actors, noting in a diary for Cahiers du cinéma that he was shooting in subtly varied angles of close-ups and directing…

Header illustration by Jordan Rosenberg /// The Sext Adventure booth at the Boston Festival for Indie Games stood out almost because it had little to distinguish it. While many of the other tables surrounding it had monitors, art, multiple people in matching T-shirts running around talking to…

T here are two reasons that the latest music video for rap duo Run the Jewels is being shot at Atlanta’s retro, neon-saturated Landmark Diner, explains director Trevor Kane: A long runway perfect for a dramatic escape and the Key lime pie. Michael “ Killer Mike ” Render, 39, loves that the place…

With the announcement this morning of the 2014 Gotham Award nominees, we have come to the time of year w e simultaneously love and dread in equal measure: awards season. As the weeks progress, the hype will get louder and louder, and the group of movies discussed will get smaller and smaller, as the…

I’m not a huge lyrics person — I hear the music first. But sometimes tuning in to the words can clarify things. And when I checked out the lyric sheet for Tune-Yards’ new album Nikki Nack , it turns out it’s a collage of ideas revolving around existential crisis. Like in “Hey Life,” the band’s…

Lucas Pope teased his Papers, Please follow-up Return of the Obra Dinn back in May, with little more than a GIF and some sparse hints to illuminate exactly what this game would be. But today Pope released the first build of Obra Dinn for free. It’s a ten-minute slice of the game that reveals its…

Police set up a perimeter near Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada. Errol Mcgilhon/QMI Agency/ZUMA Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation today gave a master class in calm, credible breaking-news reporting. Anchored by the unflappable…

Few people admit to buying modern military shooters for their campaigns, and it's not hard to see why. The Battlefield s and Call of Duty s are derided for being simplistic shooting galleries that hold the player back. But what if it didn't have to be that way? What if some game had already done it…

Skip to main content You are here Home / Explore film & TV / Sight & Sound magazine / Sight & Sound articles / Reviews and recommendations Film of the week: Björk Biophilia Live Hi-tech and all-natural, Nick Fenton and Peter Strickland’s ‘coloured-in’ concert recording from the last night of Björk’s…

Photograph by Dana Edelson/NBC/Getty “Saturday Night Live” has a ratings problem. The recent episode hosted by the former cast member Bill Hader had the fewest viewers within the industry-cherished eighteen-to-forty-nine demographic in the show’s forty-year history, tying an episode from last May.…

A little bit over a week ago, I went to Los Angeles International Airport to make a photo. It was a clear day, and I didn't want to waste it sitting inside. Being an aviation fan myself, as well as an occasional pilot and aerial photographer, watching planes, to me, is hardly the worst way to pass…

What happens when your photo goes viral? Well, for one, its resolution and image quality goes to hell damn near immediately. That's what New York City street artist Mark Samsonovich learned very quickly last month when a piece of his called Water the Flowers made the rounds on Instagram, Twitter,…

Embarrassing open mic nights, topical parodies, gaming tutorials—these are the YouTube videos we know. The ones we replay and the ones we send to our friends, coworkers, families, and everyone we know. But YouTube has another layer. One where view counts sit at zero and bizarre bits of film rot away…

Larry Smith (left) and Run-DMC in March, 1984 | photo by Gene Bagnato, courtesy of the Adler Hip-Hop Archive In 1983 a bass player from Queens revolutionized the sound of hip-hop. How did he end up forgotten and confined to a hospital bed? R emember when Run declared to the world that “Larry put me…

She's done with the pink hair, and the bonkers outfits, and at least a few of the alter egos. Nicki Minaj is now in her world-conqueror phase—her new album, following two platinum-sellers, is immodestly titled The Pinkprint —and she's got a new message to go with it: This isn't all about butts…

One of the most confusing aspects of the movie business is how actors end up in the roles they do. In 1971, William Friedkin did everything short of file a restraining order to keep Gene Hackman from playing Popeye Doyle in The French Connection . John Schlesinger didn’t want Dustin Hoffman to play…

Hatred is a game about the wanton slaughter of people fueled by nothing but pure, well, hatred. Its trailer came out this week, and many people found it to be upsetting, even deplorable. Video games, however, frequently revel in over-the-top violence. So why is everybody talking about this game in…

In an entertaining installment of Grantland ’s “ B.S. Report ” podcast last year, Bill Simmons and Wesley Morris examined Jodie Foster’s filmography in an attempt to determine if she was, in the site’s parlance, “Overrated, Underrated, or Properly Rated.” Simmons framed the discussion in terms of…

We took a hacker to a café and, in 20 minutes, he knew where everyone else was born, what schools they attended, and the last five things they googled. By Maurits Martijn , from De Correspondent Translated from Dutch by Jona Meijers Illustrations by Kristina Collantes In his backpack, Wouter…

Alan Moore is waiting when I get off the train in Northampton, a majestically bearded figure in a hoodie, scanning the crowd that pushes through the turnstiles with a look of fearsome intent. When I wave, the glare becomes a beaming smile. ‘How are you, mate?’ he booms. ‘Splendid, splendid. I…

Are Americans getting dumber? Our math skills are falling . Our reading skills are weakening . Our children have become less literate than children in many developed countries. But the crisis in American education may be more than a matter of sliding rankings on world educational performance scales.…

The lyrics on Damon Albarn's debut album, Everyday Robots , are some of his most persona in a long and celebrated back-catalogue. But Albarn says it isn't the most personal album he's done, rightfully pointing to Blur's second last album, 1999's 13 , which painfully documented his break-up with…

Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn pictured Amy (Rosamund Pike) as a "Hitchcock blonde." © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises. This post contains spoilers for Gone Girl , Psycho , and many other David Fincher and Alfred Hitchcock movies. The most important shot in David Fincher’s…

Logistically speaking, the third season of FX’s popular spookfest American Horror Story was a colossal mess. Characters inexplicably developed superpowers whenever the story called for them, and lost them just as quickly. There were no rules governing the show’s universe, so it never stood a chance…

“All right,” Jeremy Renner says, looking up from his phone in the lobby of the Greenwich Hotel in downtown Manhattan. “What’s happening, brotha?” At this point, with all his various franchise-hoppings since The Hurt Locker — the Bournes , the Missions: Impossible , the, um, Hansel & Gretel: Witch…

During the same period–and especially during the past 50 years–chess has declined as a universal game. Blame it on our short attention spans, the ubiquity of computer games, or even the rise of sports as an armature of international politics–people just aren’t playing as much chess these days, and…

Angry, opinionated rap music has disappeared, but there’s still plenty to be mad about Hate is a bold word . As far back as I can remember, everyone and everything I’ve hated, I wanted dead. I spent hours thinking about how great it would feel to heat some Jiffy Pop, sit back in a recliner and watch…

Over the last few months, we've seen many people — some of them friends, some of them colleagues, some of them professional acquaintances — harassed, threatened, bullied for daring to suggest that video games can and should do better. It's no coincidence that many of these people — award-winning…

One of the harder things about growing up is realizing how much terrible stuff out there you would have been into as a younger person. It's a good reminder of how far you've come, but it can be cringe-worthy to look back at the things you took seriously. There's a certain self-absorption and…

Airbnb, the pioneering home rental service, presents itself as useful and virtuous, but the reality is far less benign, according to a report that Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, released on Thursday. The report will say nearly three-quarters of all Airbnb rentals in the city…

In the new movie Listen Up Philip , Jason Schwartzman stars as a young author named Philip Lewis Friedman. He’s unsympathetic to others, doggedly selfish, and emotionally cruel. Basically, he’s the type of total nightmare you hope to never get seated next to at a wedding, or God forbid, find married…

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Dave Kehr is not a flashy critic, but he does know movies better than you ever will, better than just about anyone who’s toiled on the film crit beat. And, patiently, intently, with the same quiet craftsmanship and lack of ego found in the work of the American studio directors who he’s so eloquently…

Photo: Merrick Morton/Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises We will be discussing Gone Girl plot and twists. If you’ve read the book, you’re fine. If you haven’t and plan on seeing the movie unsullied, you might want to save this essay and read it afterwards. In 2013, the author Gillian…

Gone Girl A big part of the case for David Fincher, at least as I’ve heard it put forward by his more eloquent defenders, is that he’s a throwback—that is to say that, with his unfailing technical luster and easy traverse between genre subjects, he’s a holdover from the days of studio…

Counted among Twitter’s 271 million active users are an untold number of bots. These accounts were created by people with a pulse but tweet without human intervention. Some are handy, others beautiful, many peculiar. Bots, it should be said, are some of the most productive members of Twitter’s…