Interview with Jeremy Scott of CinemaSins
If you’re like a lot of people in the world, you like movies. And if you like movies, you’ll probably agree that even the best movies have some sort of issue with them. That’s the rationale behind CinemaSins, a YouTube channel dedicated to pointing out “sins” in movies, be they cliches, plot holes, moments of […]
Ian Sayres Revisits his Top 10 Hip-Hop Albums of 2014
2014 seemed like a quiet year in Hip-Hop. A lack of releases by big name artists like Drake, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar left the charts open for the lesser known underground artists to make a name for themselves. Promising young emcees walked into the game with numerous major label debuts alongside a few seasoned […]
Review: Imagine Dragons “Smoke + Mirrors”
If you’ve listened to Imagine Dragons, odds are you are in one of two camps: you either enjoy them for their sheer theatrical bombast and radio-friendly hooks, or you dislike them for their genericness and their loose fitting to the term “rock.” On Smoke + Mirrors, their second album, the band seems to be trying […]
The Tesla Model S: Style, Economy, Power
Since 2003, the Tesla Motor Company has been designing and producing purely electric cars. With advances in battery technology and electric motors, the company has been able to flourish the electric car from a tasteless eco-box that could only drive for fifty miles, into a sleek and modern luxury car that is capable of driving […]
Darian Bolin’s Top 10 of 2014: Albums
2014 was an interesting year for music. Weezer and Weird Al made grand comebacks, Taylor Swift became the only platinum-selling album of the year, classic albums like Funeral by Arcade Fire and Weezer’s Blue Album turned ten years old and twenty years old, respectively, and The Wrens announced that they finally finished their 12-years-in-the-making 4th […]
“Birdman”: A Review by Darian Bolin
In Birdman, directed and co-written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Michael Keaton plays a character who is essentially a sensationalized version of himself, a washed-up actor named Riggan Thomson, famous for playing fictional superhero Birdman in a trilogy of movies over twenty years ago. He is growing worried that he will eventually not matter, that he […]
Review: The Decemberists’ “What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World”
It’s good to have you back, Decemberists. Their last album, 2011’s The King Is Dead, was in many ways very un-Decemberists, but it had its moments. Now, with What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, The Decemberists have found a way to mesh the folksy narrative elements of their older material while retaining the […]
Wake Up
For the first date I ever went on with the woman who would become my wife, I made a mix CD. Included was “Wake Up,” a standout song from Arcade Fire’s first album, Funeral. She loved it (and the other stuff on the mix, but mainly that song). A month later Arcade Fire released their […]