What is the best place to sit in a movie theater? Cinephiles have debated this topic for decades. Most people tend to prefer the middle; as close to the the center of the screen—and the center of the auditorium—as possible. But at one Canadian theater chain, those prime seats may soon become a lot…

Grantland: Summer Box Office Report: How Screwed Is Hollywood? (Very Screwed), by @jedgarlopez http://t.co/axTIqSRpDh

Academic Music & Sound Studies African American Music Classical Music Electronic Music Experimental Music Folk Music History of Jazz Latin American Music Music and Culture Music and Media Music and Sound Studies - Other Music Biographies Music Industry Noise Popular Music Rap and Hip-Hop Songwriting…

SPIN: Q&A: @KillerMikeGTO and @therealelp (@runjewels) talk tragedy in #Ferguson and racist idiots http://t.co/thxsQpGWXQ http://t.co/kpNKMD2RBj

Connor Ennis: "Is this really a thing?" @carr2n examines the lucrative draw of http://t.co/nbt166JVYJ http://t.co/9CezfsmKko

33 1/3 Books: Danger Mouse Week – Day 1: The New Music Industry http://t.co/vHQt5IMIsY

Grantland: The 1994 Rap Album Matrix: Is This Hip-Hop's Greatest Year? by @SheaSerrano http://t.co/8tuwWHhkIt

The Guardian: Something incredible is happening in Scotland. And the shock to the UK will be extreme, says @paulmasonnews http://t.co/BWo4OStOVt

Take almonds and just…wait, why add water? Lecic/Shutterstock Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Almonds are a precious foodstuff: a crunchy jolt of complete protein, healthful fats, vitamins and minerals, and deliciousness. Given their rather intense ecological…

From Seeing Through the Illusion: Understanding Apple’s Mastery of the Media , a profile examining Apple’s PR strategy: Apple’s PR department presents a cool, measured public-facing image: it only responds to press inquiries when it wants to, doesn’t offer quotes unless they’ll be reprinted without…

The Boston Globe: .@djshadow and @Cut_Chemist raided Afrika Bambaataa's vinyl collection http://t.co/XbZfqGwHXi http://t.co/YGXtS2ZXS4

From Seeing Through the Illusion: Understanding Apple’s Mastery of the Media , a profile examining Apple’s PR strategy: “The keynote is like a production. You have to have a special appreciation for it.” You probably never knew that an audience member fainted during one of Steve Jobs’s keynotes.…

“Beautifully, unapologetically plastic.” “Feature for feature, it’s identical to iPad Air in every way.” “Just avoid holding it in that way.” Apple’s public relations (PR) department is probably the best in the world — certainly more impressive at shaping and controlling the discussion of its…

Lawyers, lawyers, and more lawyers Where there's a courthouse, there are lawyers. And where there's a courthouse with a lawsuit potentially worth billions of dollars, there are plenty more lawyers. Maybe Facebook would just settle up with Ceglia to make the New York federal lawsuit go away? After…

An extended discussion with Director DAVID FINCHER , expanding beyond our first interview for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . Your films are known to feature interesting title sequences – would you say that you're a fan of titles in general? Absolutely! Obviously, all the Saul Bass stuff is really…

Editor’s note: Director Neill Blomkamp is back with his latest film Chappie this weekend. Like with his previous films District 9 and Elysium , Blomkamp is imagining a gritty version of our future with his new movie—this time exploring what happens when a police robot is made self-aware. WIRED…

The sudden death of Robin Williams yesterday set everyone thinking about what his work meant, and what performances we considered to be his defining work. Here, each of us contributes a short remembrance. Scott Tobias: Last night, I watched World’s Greatest Dad , directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, one…

From the poster to Art and Craft . In The Recognitions , his brilliant novel about an art forger, William Gaddis wrote, “Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people … Most original people are forced to devote all…

The United States of America is not for black people. We know this, and then we put it out of our minds, and then something happens to remind us. Saturday, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., something like that happened: An unarmed 18-year-old black man was executed by police in broad…

18-year-old Michael Brown was gunned down on Saturday by a Ferguson police officer in St. Louis. Witnesses say Brown had his hands in the air as he was shot from 35 feet away. As a black person in America, it's getting exhausting to still have to explain, in the year 2014, your right to exist in…

Elizabeth, BioShock Infinite. You know what's not escapism? Having to wonder if any given game (or movie, or book) you pick up is going to include women primarily as prostitutes, murdered girlfriends, vulnerable daughters, and rape victims. I would love to have been able to play BioShock Infinite as…

Viv was named after the Latin root meaning live . Its San Jose, California, offices are decorated with tchotchkes bearing the numbers six and five (VI and V in roman numerals). Ariel Zambelich When Apple announced the iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011, the headlines were not about its speedy A5 chip or…

The icing on the cesspool that is air travel circa 2014 (American edition) is that it's not even fast anymore. Sure, it's faster than its competition, but the competition is a rail system-qua-punchline forced to pad already slow long-distance schedules with extra hours of travel time to account for…

Chess is getting a sequel. Yes, that Chess. The game with the little horses and kings and queens has been around for thousands of years. A few video games have transcended our hobby to become household names, but even they have nothing on Chess. They're footnotes in a gaming history that spans…

In one of the late writer's most loved essays, David Foster Wallace describes taking a cruise, upon which he was constantly pampered and offered every luxury. He basically hated the whole thing. As part of his suspicion of a society oriented towards comfort and entertainment—further elucidated in…

For a staggering 550 episodes (and counting!), The Simpsons has satirized, spoofed, mocked, and celebrated American life and popular culture. FXX’s ongoing “Every Simpsons Ever” Marathon got the staff of The Dissolve thinking about the series, and recalling their favorite movie references from its…

Because Lorne Michaels won’t know what a decent night’s sleep is until he’s made Saturday Night Live as unavoidable as Star Wars or the Marvelverse in pop culture’s cosmic debris field, he’s never given up on transferring the show’s buzziest sketch characters to the big screen. This has turned out…

Would you buy a self-driving car that couldn’t drive itself in 99 percent of the country? Or that knew nearly nothing about parking, couldn’t be taken out in snow or heavy rain, and would drive straight over a gaping pothole? If your answer is yes, then check out the Google Self-Driving Car, model…

What an awful week for the culture that surrounds and influences video games. Last week, a game designer's personal life was exposed to the internet, and used to justify physical threats to both the developer and her colleagues. The designer was one of many people targeted in an orchestrated…

A zipping comes across the sky. A man named Neil Parfitt is standing in a field on a cattle ranch outside Warwick, Australia. A white vehicle appears above the trees, a tiny plane a bit bigger than a seagull. It glides towards Parfitt, pitches upwards to a vertical position, and hovers near him, a…

Photo: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine Photo: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos No producer in TV history has done more with an 11:30 p.m. time slot than Lorne ­Michaels. Since creating Saturday Night Live in 1975, Michaels has built the comedic universe as we know it, sparking…

Where will the music industry be in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years? Before I tell you my thoughts on the matter, you should know that you're reading the opinion of an enthusiastic optimist: one of the few living souls in the music industry who still believes that the music industry is not dying…it's…

For 25 years, Richard Linklater has led a remarkably eclectic and expansive career, finding ways to work from both inside and outside the Hollywood system, and experimenting dramatically with narrative form. Though Linklater has proven himself more than capable of making movies with a satisfying…

Movie: Elysium Director: Neill Blomkamp Writer: Neill Blomkamp Release date: August 9, 2013 U.S. box office: $93 million (38th best of 2013) Worldwide box office: $286.1 million (26th best of 2013) Days in U.S. theatrical release: 108 days Rotten Tomatoes rating: 68 percent Metacritic score: 61…

Style/Storytelling Keith: Too often, movie reviews throw the word “stylish” around as if that word means anything by itself. I’m sure I’m guilty of the offense multiple times over, but some films just inspire it, Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 Elmore Leonard adaptation Out Of Sight among them. What do we…

A history of Saturday Night Live ’s musical guests is expected to hit certain beats. You must retell the story about how Elvis Costello & The Attractions started playing “Less Than Zero,” stopped playing “Less Than Zero,” and then played “Radio, Radio.” It is required that you talk about Sinéad…

Forty years ago, in the beginning, the first two words in Saturday Night Live mattered far more than the third. In 1975, only certain types of people watched television late on a Saturday night: loners and stoners, outcasts, shut-ins, the very young, and the very, very bored. Naming the show after…