You wouldn’t expect a United Nations press officer to write a book about an aging Faulknerian simpleton on a rural farm. But that’s what we have in Laird Hunt’s second novel, Indiana, Indiana, just out from local publisher Coffee House Press. Hunt’s hero is a Hoosier State farmer named Noah Summers, somewhat bitter and uncomfortable … Read more
San Francisco writer Johnson was highly praised for his debut collection of short stories, Emporium, and set a record for consecutive appearances in the Best New American Voices anthologies. His best work has the same satiric bite of a Vonnegut or a T.C. Boyle, sharp and funny and surreal. But his first try at the … Read more
If only more horror films were made with this level of creativity. The much-ballyhooed 28 Days Later didn’t send much of a shiver up our spines—too much gimmicky herky-jerky camera and too few new twists on the ideas it steals from earlier and better horror films. Cabin Fever is another beast entirely. Not that it … Read more
Sofia Coppola has one venerated filmmaker for a husband (Spike Jonze) and another for a dad (Francis Ford C., who made a couple of halfway decent movies before Jack and Captain Eo). But her own debut as writer-director, The Virgin Suicides, proved she can at least hold her own in such company. Even if it … Read more
Ridley Scott takes time off from the epics of violence he’s been specializing in these days (Hannibal, Gladiator) for this crime comedy about a tic-ridden con man (Nicolas Cage) reunited for the first time with his wayward daughter just as he’s about to pull off a massive swindle. It sounds to us like Paper Moon … Read more
Following up the enormous cult success of his breakthrough documentary American Movie, filmmaker Chris Smith takes us through five wildly disparate offbeat homes, including a refurbished nuclear-missile silo, a treehouse in the Hawaiian jungle, and one completely redesigned for the convenience of the owners’ dozen-odd cats. In this way it reminded us of Errol Morris’s … Read more
One of the wags around the office keeps calling soccer “European kickball,” and not coincidentally he’s an irredeemable devotee of that other game, the misnamed and cretinous game of football as it’s played in America. But he’s in the minority. You don’t have to be smart or pretentious or unpatriotic to love the world’s favorite … Read more
Our favorite eccentric Brit re-disbanded the reunion of his first band the Soft Boys in March, so there’ll be no full-band major-label followup to 2002’s enjoyable Nextdoorland. Instead, Luxor is the polar opposite—a DIY self-released set of acoustic songs recorded in a single afternoon in his living room: “I thought, screw it, I’ll just put … Read more
Fairly or not, the words “David Byrne solo record” suggest inconsistency and pretension as much as clever musicianship. But the ex-Talking Head leader’s latest, a soundtrack to the new film based on the novel by Scottish Beat writer Alexander Trocchi, is worth overcoming any low expectations. Scotland-born himself, Byrne assembled a backing band made up … Read more
There isn’t much advance billing on the next album by the Dublin doozy. One wonders if Sinead’s pronouncement that she would, alas, no longer speak with the press has extended to a blackout on all publicity. The quieter, gentler Sinead is the wiser Sinead, and one built for the long haul. More important, without all … Read more