© 2008 Drew Tewksbury: Multimedia Journalist. 
In 1999, more than 40,000 people gathered in Seattle for one of the largest protests since the Vietnam War. Yet in today’s world of the seemingly endless Iraq War, collapsing economy, and the end of the American century, this monumental moment of collective action is largely forgotten. Until now, that is. Writer/director (and actor) Stuart […]
If Syd Barrett, the late singer of Pink Floyd, had gotten the opportunity to sit in with Mudhoney, something resembling Darker My Love might have been the result. The Los Angeles-based band’s latest release, 2, alternates between muddy, haze-filled stoner jams and British psychedelia fit for lounging around a milk bar with George Harrison and […]
Truth and fiction were fluid concepts for seminal “Gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson. But, despite Thompson’s penchant for exaggeration, there was usually a morsel of truth in his drug-induced ramblings, political diatribes, and flights of fancy. This five-disc set was painstakingly extracted from the mess of audio recordings left behind by “The Good Doctor,” after […]
Not everyone can transcend genre and stretch the definition of the rock song like Dungen. On 4, the Swedish band exchanges itsusual ’60s-style jams for tightly orchestrated songs composed of jazz drums, glockenspiels, and grand pianos. Gone are the repeating verse-choruses of traditional rock, but the core Dungen sound remains intact, due largely to virtuosic […]
Movies are the ultimate extension of dreams. In the short time from the title to the credits, a movie can take the viewer into an all-enveloping realm of the unknown. Brand Upon the Brain is Canadian director Guy Maddin’s hallucinatory reimagination of his own childhood. It is a dreamworld that blurs the edges between the […]
“I am not from the last century, don’t wanna be,” Mylene Pires, the sometimes-sweet songstress, sometimes-Ladytronic robo-talker of Télépathique, sings on “Déjà vu.” But she is lying. Télépathique is so last century. From the riot grrrl talk-sing to the break beats and up-tempo catwalk keyboards, the São Paulo, Brazil-spawned duo of Pires and producer/drummer […]
The modern Western does not take place in West. Gone are the spurs and the horses, the dust and the six-shooter. Instead, these stories of revenge and justice play out in everyday situations, in the towns where we live and the landscapes we inhabit. Red brings the Western into the present with the compelling story […]
XXY shares the life of Alex, a knobbly kneed, 15-year-old Argentine girl (Inés Efron) who is an unusual intersection of genders: her body is home to both male and female genitalia.
XXY is a rare gem of a film. It is sharply cut, meticulously polished, and completely one of a kind. The Argentine film tells the story of Alex, a 15-year-old with an unusual secret: she is both a boy and a girl. Amid the beautiful landscapes of coastal Uruguay, XXY weaves the lives of Alex’s […]
In 2005 and 2006, Patti Smith paid homage to her late lover, the immensely talented artist Robert Mapplethorpe, in two transcendent performances at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The beautiful double-disc set of these performances is an enraptured testimony to the life of Mapplethorpe. Smith’s two-hour-long readings of work from her 1997 book The Coral […]
There is no Hip Hop Genome Project. No scientists in lab coats examining the contents of mix tapes; no geneticists pouring beats from beaker to beaker; or pipe-smoking socialites discussing the necessities of “Bring the Noize.” But fortunately, there is Stones Throw Records, the closest thing to a hip-hop think tank created by DJ and […]
For Sudanese child-soldier-turned-hip-hop-artist Emmanuel Jal, the wreckage of childhood trauma and the courage to persevere comes out on the title track of his album Warchild: “I’m a war child / I believe I’ve survived for a reason / To tell my story, to touch lives.”
Aaron Cohen travels around the world like a one-man army, fighting sweatshops, sex slavery, and human exploitation by liberating one person at a time.
Suicide is not for everyone, and the six-disc box set of the brutal, self-indulgent, no-wave duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev opens up the back catalog of America’s punked-up answer to Kraftwerk. With Rev rolling out repetitive keyboard lines, backed by a rudimentary drum machine, and Vega vacillating between manic screams and mutant-Elvis warbles, […]
Sometimes, an actor’s career begins with an ending. “Yup, I was a tail-end of a dinosaur,” says Summer Bishil…
Playing the role of the arrogant, underground fighter in the film Never Back Down, Gigandet channels the spirit of every prep-school pretty boy and trust-fund meathead you’ve ever met in this Karate Kid for the twenty-first century.
It was then that I found myself reclined on an oversized ball—
both the shape and color of a clown’s nose—while Eric Dane, the actor and
purported “hottie” of the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, uttered encouraging words as I
attempted to use a contraption that looked like it should be used only for drawing
and quartering, not developing super-rad pecs.
From the Batmobile to the General Lee, click through for a look at the baddest, freewheelin’-est hot rods in film history, rated on a pimped-out scale of 1-10.
The ceiling fan chops at the yolky light, barely illuminating the singer’s face. He closes
his eyes and opens his mouth wide to belt a rough and soulful series of “la la la la’s” into the microphone.
He faces the back of a burnt-orange, vintage organ, its top cluttered with empty cigarette
packs, beer bottles, and a pair of aviator sunglasses, as the guitarist swings his own instrument to the side
and steps in front of the keyboard, massaging a swell of sixties surf sounds from the organ’s groaning belly.
From two corners of the room comes…
For Lupe Hernandez, it all started with a plane ticket. As the youngest
child living with six brothers, she found herself a servant in her own household in
Mexico City, having taken the place of her mother, who died when Hernandez was
only 13. Her father, a street sweeper and an alcoholic…