The A.V. Club - Primer

Music: Primer:Heavy metal

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: heavy metal, organized by the major subgenres that have developed over the five decades of its existence. Moving from the best-known examples of heavy music to the deepest pits of black Satanic noise, we’ll conclude with five essential albums that belong in the music library of anyone who likes it hard. Metal 101 Even casual fans know that the biggest name in heavy metal’s ...

Film: Primer:Clint Eastwood

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Clint Eastwood, the 79-year-old actor-turned-director whose yeoman work on both sides of the camera has established him as a critical and audience favorite. Clint Eastwood 101 If Clint Eastwood never made a movie, he would still be remembered, albeit faintly, as one of the stars of the long-running television Western Rawhide. For eight seasons, he played the character of Rowdy Yates alongside Eric Fleming, who like ...

Music: Primer:Prince

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. Prince 101 To best understand where Prince comes from, it helps to start almost at the beginning, with his first crossover hit, 1979’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” Take a moment to revisit the song that kicked off his second album—titled simply Prince—and helped introduce the then-21-year-old Minneapolis native to an audience beyond the R&B charts that made a 1978 hit of his debut ...

TV: Primer:TV Spies & Secret Agents

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. Last year, we penned a Primer on culturally significant TV detectives. This week: A brief history of—and notable highlights from—television’s long-term love affair with spies, secret agents, and other adventurers who do the job ordinary citizens won’t. TV Spies & Secret Agents 101: The Patriots Espionage has been the subject of fiction at least as far back as 1821, when James Fenimore Cooper penned the ...

Film: Primer:Primer: Mickey Rourke

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:25:00 -0600

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. Mickey Rourke 101 Mickey Rourke exploded onto the cinematic scene with a small but crucial supporting performance in the sweltering 1981 neo-noir classic Body Heat. He would go on to play that role over and over: a sensitive brute, a degenerate with a code of ethics. In Lawrence Kasdan’s homage to Double Indemnity,Rourke’s ex-con becomes an unwitting criminal mentor to his hapless lawyer (William Hurt ...

TV: Primer:Primer: TV Detectives

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:50:04 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: A brief history of—and notable highlights from—television's long-term love affair with procedurals, mystery stories, and the colorful characters who figure out whodunit. TV Detectives 101: "And then a case walked through the door." At their most basic, detective stories are about questions that need answering, whether they be "Is my husband sleeping around?" or "Who killed that guy?" No matter how often the ...

Film: Primer:Primer: Woody Allen

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:04:39 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Woody Allen, the comedian turned actor-writer-director behind many films, including the new Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Woody Allen 101 Though his now four-decade-long moviemaking career technically began with the overdubbed 1966 lark What's Up, Tiger Lily?—addressed here in "Miscellany," where it belongs—any formal Woody Allen education must begin with 1969's Take The Money And Run. When people talk about Allen's "early, funny ...

Film: Primer:Primer: Pixar

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:01:13 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Pixar Animation Studio, the company that invented the computer-animated feature film and has become the Walt Disney corporation's most acclaimed imprint. Their ninth full-length film, WALL—E, opens today. Pixar 101 Making movies was never what Pixar's corporate overlords had in mind. They intended to sell specialty imaging computers and software for advanced rendering to businesses like advertising agencies and medical equipment manufacturers. But ...

Film: Primer:Primer: Steven Spielberg

Thu, 22 May 2008 23:07:06 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Steven Spielberg, an American director of science-fiction and adventure films and historical dramas whose latest, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, opened yesterday. Spielberg 101 Steven Spielberg, who has made some of history's most financially successful films, is an Eagle Scout who lives in a home filled with movie props and Norman Rockwell paintings. But just as Rockwell frequently cloaked tremendous nuance ...

Music: Primer:Primer: Elvis Costello

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:03:59 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Elvis Costello, broken down by the songs that define his themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Costello's latest, Momofuku, is currently available as a vinyl-only release with a digital download code. A CD will follow May 6. Costello 101 By the time Elvis Costello released his 1977 debut album, My Aim Is True, rock 'n' roll radio on ...

Music: Primer:Primer: The Rolling Stones

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:07:25 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: The Rolling Stones, broken down by 20 songs that define their themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. The Rolling Stones appear in the new concert film Shine A Light, directed by Martin Scorsese. The Rolling Stones 101: Unlike their classic rival, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones aren't frozen in time. Their body of work spans several decades, covers ...

Books: Primer:Primer: Alan Moore

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:10:18 -0600

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: We examine the comic book work of writer Alan Moore, the mind behind Watchmen, From Hell, and Lost Girls. Moore 101 "I'd discovered American comic books at age 7," Alan Moore told the website Comic Book Resources in a 2002 interview. "I later came to appreciate comics as an art form, and realized that even with glorious exceptions like Will Eisner [and] Harvey Kurtzman, this ...

Music: Primer:Primer: The Kinks

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:10:10 -0600

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: The Kinks, broken down by 20 songs that define their themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Kinks leader Ray Davies releases his latest solo album, Working Man's Café, next week. The Kinks 101 In early 2008, The Kinks wound up, oddly and out of the blue, at the top of the U.S. album chart. Admittedly, that didn ...

Film: Primer:Primer: Stephen Sondheim

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:05:00 -0600

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. There's a good chance that Tim Burton's movie version of Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street will be the first prolonged exposure to Sondheim for a lot of otherwise-knowledgeable pop fans. Although Sondheim has been a—if not the—leading light in American musical theater for almost four decades now, his work is so tied to the stage ...

Film: Primer:Primer: The Coen Brothers

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:23:25 -0600

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. Today: Who are the Coen Brothers? Arguably, they're the most controlled and technically proficient filmmakers of their time—peerless writers of stylized dialogue, efficient in pacing, ingenious in plotting, and brilliant in harmonizing every aspect of the craft (music, cinematography, editing, performances, et al.) to best service the whole. But here's the funny thing about the Coens: Their detractors are likely to agree with nearly every ...

Music: Primer:Primer: Jay-Z

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:47:15 -0600

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Jay-Z struggled long and hard to go from a childhood in New York's Marcy Projects and a young adulthood spent selling drugs to famously headlining a sold-out "retirement" show at Madison Square Garden. He followed it up with a similarly dramatic, high-profile shift from being hip-hop's biggest star to the guy with the corner office whom everyone on his label complains isn't doing ...

Music: Primer:Primer: Neil Young

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:01:12 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Neil Young, broken down by 20 songs that define his themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Young's latest album, Chrome Dreams II, will be released next week. Neil Young 101: Raised in rural Ontario and suburban Winnipeg, Neil Young played in various small-time rock bands—idolizing The Guess Who's Randy Bachman and befriending future stars Joni Mitchell ...

Music: Primer:Primer: Bruce Springsteen

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:01:28 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Bruce Springsteen, broken down by 20 songs that define his themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Springsteen's latest album, Magic, was released this week. Bruce Springsteen 101: The Jersey-bred Springsteen started gigging around his home state beginning in 1965, first as the 16-year-old wunderkind guitarist in a garage-band called The Castiles, and later, at the end of the ...

Music: Primer:Primer: Canadian Indie-Rock

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:29:58 -0500

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: the rich bounty of Canadian indie-rock, as represented by the likes of Stars (new album out Sept. 25), Kevin Drew (new album out this week), The Weakerthans (new album out Sept. 25), and The Sadies (new album out Oct. 2). Canadian indie-rock 101: Stylistically, Canadian indie-rock covers a spectrum as broad as the country itself, encompassing everything from rootsy twang to futuristic electronica. But if there ...

Film: Primer:Primer: David Cronenberg

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:36:59 -0500

For all its bright colors and beeping sounds, the world of pop culture can be big and forbidding. Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. If you've ever wanted to get into something but didn't know where to start, you can start here. First up: director David Cronenberg, whose new film, Eastern Promises, hits theaters September 14. Cronenberg 101: Not much divides ideas and bodies in the films of David Cronenberg. He places ...