You may have heard this one before: several years ago a young filmmaker ( Colin Levy ) wrote to Martin Scorsese asking which films he should see in order to broaden his cinematic horizons. Much to his surprise, the director answered him and provided a list, through his assistant, of 39 essential…

Following his retirement from filmmaking earlier this year, Steven Soderbergh has filled his time with some interesting endeavors. He tweeted an entire novella , and now he has posted a log of all the films and television shows he watched, and all the books and plays he read, in 2009. As you will…

Words by Daniel Isenberg ( @StanIpcus ) Ricky Powell aka The Rickster, for those who don’t already know, is the man behind some of the most iconic images in the history of hip-hop and NYC street photography. Whether it was the Beastie Boys or Run-D.M.C. or Public Enemy, he was always up in the mix,…

A ll movies choose their moment. It’s called a release date. Some moments, however, choose their movies. And it looks as if the moment has chosen Let’s Be Cops . But let’s be clear: No one should choose this movie. It’s a title in search of a plot. It could also have been called Let’s Be Funnier ,…

Steven Soderbergh has never told a straight story. Not one of his 26 feature-length films or two television series has played out in a linear fashion. Jump cuts, flashbacks, hallucinations, videotaped segments, dream sequences, unreliable narrators, gaps in logic, cross-cutting plotting, direct…

By 1985, a three foot tall black man from Minnesota with a wardrobe seemingly borrowed from The Vanity 6 had reached the very pinnacle of pop superstardom. Prince was a critic's darling and a popular favorite. He'd conquered the world of film a year earlier with Purple Rain and walked away with an…

For B-movie lovers, the names “Cannon Films” and “Menahem Golan”—and to a smaller extent, the name of Golan’s less-magnetic cousin and partner, Yoram Globus—are coated in magic. True, the magic is of the lurid, second-rate variety, but it’s magical all the same. Let’s call this magic “Electric…

The ubiquitous web petition. Chances are, you've recently clicked one. Maybe it was from your favorite nonprofit's email list or Facebook page, allowing you to take "action" in one second. Or perhaps you found it on the web's major petition site, Change.org. To click may seem like an innocent act,…

In October 2013, US authorities shut down Silk Road, the world’s largest cryptomarket . At the time, prosecutors claimed that the closure of the so-called “eBay of illicit drugs” represented the beginning of the end for online drug distribution. This assertion has since proved incorrect. Over the…

Joao Rodrigues had been listening and holding his tongue. For a day and a half, brand managers, ad agency creative types and Facebook strategists had gathered in airy conference rooms and around cafeteria tables in Facebook’s Madison Avenue offices, filling up whiteboards and scratch pads with one…

Skylanders has been a huge console hit for Activision. But it’s not just playing on consoles anymore. Today, Activision announced that it will bring the latest game in the series, Skylanders Trap Team , to tablets as well as consoles when it debuts on October 5. The popular game, which requires…

Officially, Robin Williams was from suburban Detroit. But at the movies, he wasn’t from anywhere, not for long. He was “at,” he was “in.” He was wherever he was in a given moment. He was often arriving, searching, and misunderstood, in possession of some secret truth that was boat-rocking but made…

In an old interview included on Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition of the 2001 road picture Y Tu Mamá También , writer-director Alfonso Cuarón says that he and his co-writer/brother Carlos had the idea for the film long before they made it—and even before they made their 1991 debut feature, Sólo Con Tu…

U.S. Department of Transportation Do you remember that day when you lost your mind? You aimed your car at five random people down the road. By the time you realized what you were doing, it was too late to brake. Thankfully, your autonomous car saved their lives by grabbing the wheel from you and…

Dan Boeckner has been one of the biggest names in indie rock for nearly a decade as a member of Wolf Parade , Handsome Furs , and Divine Fits , but his latest project, Operators, has been kept pretty much under wraps. The three piece group, filled out by Divine Fits drummer Sam Brown and Devojka ,…

In the decade leading up to 2008’s JCVD , Jean-Claude Van Damme, “The Muscles From Brussels,” the martial-arts sensation of Bloodsport and Timecop , made the following movies: Legionnaire , Inferno , The Order , Replicant , Derailed , In Hell , Wake Of Death , The Hard Corps , Second In Command ,…

Frank Miller didn't want to go back to Hollywood. To hear Miller tell it (he and his Sin City codirector Robert Rodriguez have different versions of the story) after having a rough time as a screenwriter he had pretty much lost all interest in working in films ever again. Luckily for Sin fans, he…

Jim Yurchenco was responsible for squeezing the guts inside the impossibly slim Palm V. He helped build the mouse for the Apple Lisa, which was significant in that it was the first mouse ever used by regular people. He was the first full-time employee at the company that would become Ideo, the…

by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd The cover art for Nicki Minaj’s new single, “ Anaconda ,” is a backshot of the rapper squatting in a g-string. (Oh: There it is .) The visual was, almost immediately, enough to trigger some paternalistic outrage — for how dare a top rapper bare so much of herself in a…

It was only a year ago that Miley Cyrus twerked on Robin Thicke at the 2013 VMAs and kicked off a long public conversation about the appropriation of black musical culture by white pop artists. The history of white artists adopting a black sound and gaining mainstream popularity with it is much…

I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it…

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Your usage has been flagged as a violation of our terms of service . For inquiries related to this message please contact support . For sales inquiries, please visit http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/request-demo If you believe this to be in error, please confirm below that you are not a robot…

Movie: The Lone Ranger Director: Gore Verbinski Writers: Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio Release date: July 3, 2013 U.S. box office: $89.3 million (40th best of 2013) Worldwide box office: $260.5 million (31st best of 2013) Days in U.S. theatrical release: 100 days Rotten Tomatoes rating:…

The mid-1990s were filled with low-budget, often direct-to-video films that embodied what at that time was a particularly ubiquitous strain of bad movie: macho, flamboyant action movies studded with has-beens, and worshipping at the altar of Quentin Tarantino. The defining feature of this strange,…

Felix Pfäffli We see the middle-aged man crouching in pain, alone. His clothes are torn, and one eye is swelling shut, but his fists are clenched. He is a hero. He is the Batman, as drawn by Frank Miller , and he is on the T-shirt that Frank Miller is wearing. Miller smiles. He's sitting in his…

In March of 1987, a group of Soviet and American filmmakers sat down in Los Angeles to watch 60 years’ worth of their countries’ worst cinematic caricatures of each other. It was the international filmmaking equivalent of finding someone else’s burn book: from 1924’s The Extraordinary Adventures of…

features 3 years ago Random Article Blend This weekend, The Expendables 3 crashed and burned, collecting a dismal $16.2 million, by far the weakest opening in the series. This franchise has been something of an institution, giving fans a chance to see some of the members of the Action Hero Hall Of…

When I perform, I don’t think about the haters, the Internet trolls, or anyone else. I care about giving the person in front of me something they won’t forget. And that’s why I bring the cake and raft out. Steve Aoki Where do I begin? I haven’t had a chance to really to speak about all the…

"There is a new 2010 bootleg by a guy named Editdroid (who did two previous ones from 1999-2005) that hasn't yet leaked onto the Internet that is quite astounding, and another version called LFL PWNAGE edition; both use the 2006 master," he said. "These bootlegs reduce the amount of grain that came…

C.J. Isakow is pictured with the 3D-printer he used to create the prototype for the Eyebloc. (Jeffrey MacMillan/For Capital Business) T he investors laughed him off the stage. But that didn’t seem to matter. In the two days following his Jan. 10 appearance on the hit television show “Shark Tank,”…

Nathan Fielder’s Comedy Central show Nathan for You is a lot of things: a prank show, an absurdist art project , a filmed meditation on the limits of politeness. But it’s also a travelogue through some of Los Angeles’s most mundane areas. L.A. may be famous for places like Malibu, the Hollywood…

Grantland: Blockbuster Talk: 'The Expendables 3’ Could Have Used Some Reinforcements, by @robertmays and @Rafeboogs http://t.co/paUGSLwKry

In practically every discussion that’s taken place about pop music over the past 40 years, two rubrics have been used to assess an artist’s greatness. The first is “popularity,” which is the sum total of record sales, radio airplay, television appearances, social-media prominence, bedroom wall…

Photo: Maya Robinson For some of us, the tragic death of Robin Williams yesterday brought into sharper relief the darkness that was often lurking at the edges of his work — even some of his most beloved comedies. Sometimes these movies veered into sentiment; sometimes they became classics.…

It's difficult to look at the world through someone else's eyes, and even more difficult to grasp their basic morals and ideas. But ideas come from experiences, of which we only know our own. I'm here to present you with a lens through which I viewed my life; a memoir on gaming while black. It’s…

“The Knick” makes you appreciate other historical dramas, like “Masters of Sex.” Photograph by Mary Cybulski/Cinemax. Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind the Candelabra” (2013), for HBO, was a spectacular with a shrewd heart. In the two-hour movie, Soderbergh placed two superb performances, by Michael…