Month: June 2003

Pure pop for now people, 2003 edition. The New Pornographers’ Electric Version is even better than their much-talked-about 2000 debut Mass Romantic—it’s easily the catchiest album we’ve run across all year, a sunny, soaring mix of harmonies and jangly chords that has more hooks than the state fishing opener. The Vancouver indie-rock supergroup—which takes its…

Oh sure, you remember “Fast Car,” the strummy singalong that launched Chapman in 1988 from the subway stations of Boston to MTV and beyond. But she’s had five albums since then, mostly working below the radar—the natural result, perhaps, of someone who helped usher in the now-dated era of the politically correct college-radio singer-songwriter. New…

We were relieved to discover that the atrocious buzz about Liz Phair’s attempt at pop starletry was too harsh. Only some of the new record is cringingly awful. A self-imposed exile from Exile in Guyville, her celebrated debut three albums ago, and a move toward slick pop is not necessarily wrongheaded—why should the field be…

It took us a couple of viewings before we grasped Wings of Desire’s quiet beauty, but it’s since grown to become one of our most beloved films, one we’ve seen a dozen times over the last decade. German director Wim Wenders’ story of angels silently witnessing human joys and sorrows is constructed like poetry, meditative…

Here are two mid-50s films from French director Alain Resnais, both struggling to come to terms with the deep psychic wounds of World War Two. Hiroshima, a collaboration with French novelist Marguerite Dumas, uses the story of the love affair between a French actress and Japanese architect as jumping-off point to explore grief and survivors’…

Writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell) and illustrator Kevin O’Neill crafted the somewhat geeky premise of a Victorian-era Justice League in the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Mina Harker, the femme fatale from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is appointed to assemble a few literary titans to foil the nefarious plans of the late Sherlock…