The A.V. Club - Features

Film: A.V. Talk:The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:08:00 -0600

Much like last time around, the macho male leadership of The A.V. Club took one look at the Twilight franchise and decided to set the girls on it. Genevieve Koski and Tasha Robinson catch up with the second adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling series, and discuss how the media phenomenon has aged for them, exactly how many facial expressions New Moon star Kristen Stewart owns, and the two groups of people who will enjoy this movie. Subscribe to A.V. Talk iTunes http://feeds.theonion.com/avtalk

TV: Hatecast:MTV says: OMG, Look At These Guidos.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:03:00 -0600

On this very special, 23rd edition of the Hatecast, Amelie Gillette and Sam West, Staff Writer for the Onion News Network, opened traditional 23rd podcast gifts, namely lamps, sharktooth necklaces, and lamps accented with sharktooth necklaces. It was all very something. But because the sound of opening wrapping paper isn't that compelling, they also discussed MTV's spate of pre-ridiculed tool TV shows; Guy Fieri's plan to charge $25 for a peek at a giant blender; and MC Hammer's disavowal of Hammerpants. Please, put their ramblings in your ears! Subscribe to The Hatecast iTunes feeds.theonion.com ...

Music: AVQ&A:Music to work by

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d like us and the readers to answer? E-mail us at avcqa@theonion.com. I have always needed to have some sort of music on while working. Generally, I listen to something I am familiar with that I can tune out, but still know ...

Film: Random Roles:Tom Noonan

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

The actor: Tom Noonan leads a curious double life as a respected playwright/arthouse fixture and a sought-after character actor and villain in genre movies, particularly horror and suspense films. Noonan’s current feature, the atmospheric early-’80s-style fright flick The House Of The Devil, makes inspired use of the seeming incongruity between Noonan’s towering frame and the underlying gentleness of his manner and sonorous voice. So did Noonan’s breakout film, Michael Mann’s 1986 masterpiece Manhunter, which cast him as a killer pursued by William Petersen with help from Brian Cox’s Hannibal Lecter. Noonan won the ...

Best Of The Decade: Best of the Decade:Best music: the orphans

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0600

Our list of the decade’s best music naturally didn’t cover every album our music writers loved in the ’00s, so we’re giving them the chance to big-up their personal favorites here—these are the discs that didn’t make our big list, but that nevertheless are worthy of your attention. Unless otherwise noted, these are presented in chronological order; the authors want you to love them all equally. JASON HELLER Botch, We Are The Romans (2000) 10 tracks - We Are The Romans (Deluxe Edition) (2xCD) by Botch Released on New Year’s Day, 2000, Botch’s full-length ...

Best Of The Decade: Best of the Decade:The best music of the decade

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0600

For our best-of-the-decade music list, it was more about the gut than the strict math we use to determine the best albums of each year. We took a general poll of our music writers, then whittled things down to a manageable number, then talked some more about what should go where. It probably doesn’t need saying that not everyone will agree with these choices, but that’s what the comments are for—let us know what your favorite records were from 2000-2009. (Try and make an intelligent case that doesn’t start with “You guys are retards!” if you ...

Books: Interview:Richard Dawkins

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:25:00 -0600

When Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion in 2006, he was at the forefront of a movement some have retroactively dubbed “the new atheism,” which also includes bestselling authors Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Sam Harris (Letter To A Christian Nation). Though The God Delusion became the British scientist’s most famous work, Dawkins had already written more than half a dozen books about evolution and genetics, beginning with The Selfish Gene in 1976. In his most recent book, The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution, Dawkins makes his case for evolutionary theory. With the increasing ...

Film: Random Roles:Ricky Jay

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

The actor: Ricky Jay has racked up an impressive résumé, appearing in cult TV shows like Deadwood and X-Files and movies like Tomorrow Never Dies, Mystery Men, Boogie Nights, and many of the films of his good friend and collaborator David Mamet. But acting is really just a sideline for Jay, who is perhaps the world’s greatest living illusionist, the author of several books, a popular live performer, and one of the brains behind Deceptive Practices, a which provides consulting expertise on a wide range of arcane matters. Jay is currently touring the country with Ricky Jay: A ...

Film: The New Cult Canon:Army Of Darkness

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

“Because it’s a brilliant film. It’s so funny and violent and the soundtrack kicks fucking ass. I never thought I’d say this, but can I go work now?” —Jack Black on Evil Dead II in High Fidelity Most weeks here at New Cult Canon, I offer some highfalutin reason why some lowdown piece of genre fare in fact aspires to some deeper significance beyond its surface pleasures. Ginger Snaps is not just a femme-centered teenage werewolf movie, but a metaphor for the terrifying anxieties of becoming a young woman. Stuck may seem like ripped-from-the-headlines exploitation, but it ...

TV: Interview:Ty Burrell

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

Though Community was an early favorite for funniest new show of the 2009 TV season, it’s had heated, unexpected competition from ABC’s Modern Family. The show is a single-camera, mock-documentary sitcom about three families, all related: The patriarch (Ed O’Neill) is in a May-December marriage, his son (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and the son’s partner (Eric Stonestreet) have a new adopted baby, his daughter (Julie Bowen) is married with three kids. The show’s loose, rambunctious style earns plenty of unexpected laughs—it feels improvised, but the majority of each episode is scripted—and Ty Burrell, who ...

Best Of The Decade: Best of the Decade:The decade’s best metal

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:45:00 -0600

Around this time every month, The A.V. Club forgets to lock its back door, and Texas-dwelling scumbag Leonard Pierce lets all of his disreputable longhair friends in to spike the water cooler with SoCo and listen to thrash until someone calls security. This month, however, is different. This month, as part of The A.V. Club’s wide-ranging end-of-year coverage of the best culture of the decade, Metal Box forsakes its usual barely coherent ramblings and focuses on the best metal releases of the 21st century. So grab a pen, look up your local record store (it’s a ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Twilight

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: 2008’s Twilight has a Metacritic score of 56. That’s pretty lousy, but looking over the list of semi-positive reviews (whoa, Entertainment Weekly gave it a B?), it doesn’t sound like the sort of train wreck that normally demands ...

Books: Interview:Steven D. Levitt

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

University Of Chicago professor Steven D. Levitt is probably the only economist who can also lay claim to being a genuine worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. His book Freakonomics (written in collaboration with journalist Stephen J. Dubner) has sold more than 4 million copies since its publication four years ago, coining a whole new subgenre of study, while reshaping the very idea of what economics means to most people. Never wary of controversy, Levitt stands by his data even if the numbers point to unpleasant conclusions. While his notion that the legalization of abortion eventually led to reduced crime rates didn’t ...

Music: Nashville or Bust:Week 23: George Strait, The Exception

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:42:00 -0600

A.V. Club head writer and hip-hop writer Nathan Rabin recently decided to spend a year or two immersing himself in the canon of country music, a genre he knew little about, but was keen to explore. The result: “Nashville Or Bust,” a series of essays about seminal country artists. After 52 entries, Rabin plans to travel south and explore some of country music’s most hallowed landmarks and institutions. There is a strange category of artists I like to call “the exceptions.” Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Eminem, Digable Planets, and De La Soul all qualify ...

Best Of The Decade: Best of the Decade:The best electronic music of the ’00s

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

The past decade in electronic music has been fitful and fruitful, with slews of new sounds and progress both big and small. Here’s an attempt to take stock of some of the main movements and the albums that attended them. (Some of the biggest ones appear in our upcoming Top 50 Albums Of The ’00s list, so take this list as an addendum.) Various artists, Clicks + Cuts (Mille Plateaux, 2000) The prevalence of minimalism in sounds of all kinds was the biggest story in electronic music throughout the 2000s. It served as a specific distinction in various styles that ...

Books: Interview:Jonathan Safran Foer

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

With his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close (2005), Jonathan Safran Foer became a literary celebrity. Actor Liev Schreiber optioned the former novel, and shot it as his directorial debut, starring Elijah Wood; the film rights for the latter have been sold as well. He’s married to the novelist Nicole Krauss, he lives in Park Slope, and he’s probably the envy of every other writer also in their 30s living in Brooklyn and still desperately scratching out first books. Awaiting the birth of his first child, Foer, an off-and-on-again vegetarian, determined it was ...

Best Of The Decade: Best of the Decade:The best comedy albums of the decade

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:40:00 -0600

The ’00s will likely be remembered as the era “alternative comedy” broke. After the boom and bust of stand-up in the ’80s and the distinctly Seinfeld-ian ’90s, a new generation of smartasses arrived to stretch the limits and help redefine it. David Cross proved stand-up didn’t need to be performed in traditional two-drink-minimum comedy clubs. Neil Hamburger created comedy that’s funny because it’s so incredibly not funny. Mike Birbiglia went from traditional stand-up to a storytelling format that became one-man shows. Scharpling & Wurster reignited the radio comedy of days gone by. And Tenacious D and Flight Of ...

Film: Inventory:Inventory book excerpt: No, seriously, you’re next! 15 movies where the crazies are right

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Here’s another list written for our new book Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone, And 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists. 1. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) There’s no more famous small-town crazy whom no one’s ever going to believe than Kevin McCarthy in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. And there’s no more famous unheeded warning than his chilling prediction, delivered straight at the camera, “They’re here already! You’re next!” This was meant to be Body Snatchers’ final scene; the alien pod creatures that ...

DVD: Better Late Than Never?:Ghostbusters

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

We all have cinematic blind spots: notable directors, eras, or entire genres of film we’ve glossed over, either by accident or design. I admittedly probably have more than most of the cinephiles who populate the A.V. Club offices and comment boards. But whereas most people are pretty tolerant of my ignorance of Dogme 95 or the oeuvre of Luis Buñuel, the blind spot that’s always earned the most indignant “What do you mean you’ve never seen ________?” outcries is blockbusters of the early-to-mid-’80s. Indiana Jones? We’ve already covered that. The Goonies? Haven’t ...

Film: Interview:Costa-Gavras

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:45:00 -0600

Beginning with 1969’s Z, recently added to the Criterion Collection, Costa-Gavras established himself as a master of the political thriller, using the tools of suspense to attack repressive ideology. Born Constantinos Gavras—the name change was courtesy of a title-card typo—he was raised in Greece by politically active parents; his father fought in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. While there’s no mistaking his targets, Costa-Gavras prefers allegory to direct confrontation, although the distinction can be a fine one. Centered around the assassination of a popular left-wing leader, Z is set in an unspecified time and ...