This film season saw many phenomenal movies, with groundbreaking advances in several categories. The race for each category was neck and neck, with quite a few excellent movies snubbed even in the nominations. However, many well deserving films won big, with a dark horse rising to win a surprising three Oscars.
Ida from Poland won Best Foreign Language Film, topping...
In a makeshift backstage area in the Off The Record record shop, which resembled a storage closet, Jordan, singer and shredder for West Virginia’s Rozwell Kid, sinks into a chair. “It was a very short trip ,” Jordan says, thankful for a drive that was shorter than a 24-hour drive from South By Southwest to work in West Virginia....
A slow pan across a shadowy ally, a subdued, gravelly voice-over setting the tone, a morose orchestra of strings crescendoing into a dramatic climax: all contemporary tropes of the modern action film. While films such as The Dark Knight, Dredd, Godzilla and Daniel Craig’s James Bond all pull off these common themes with great skill, they do not negate...
D’Angelo & The Vanguard
Black Messiah Album Review
RCA Records
Released December 15, 2014
Genre: R&B, Noise Funk, Funk Rock, Neo Soul, Psychedelic Soul, Country Funk (?)
D’Angelo is an enigma. As one of the most innovative and widely praised artists of his time, D’Angelo is oddly reclusive- always absent from the public eye. So it came as a HUGE surprise when Black Messiah dropped...
Mark Ronson
Uptown Special Album Review
Columbia Records
Released January 13, 2015
Genre: Funk, R&B, Pop, 70s soul revival
When “Uptown Funk” first infiltrated the airwaves, I was surprised for two main reasons: first at how catchy, upbeat, and groovy the track was, and second at how absolutely no one had even heard of Mark Ronson before then. Ronson’s work has been prominently overlooked...
The Souls series is anything but easy; its trademark difficulty has led to countless broken controllers from hundreds of gamers. The next project from FromSoftware titled Bloodborne comes from the same mind who was the inspiration behind Demon Souls & Dark Souls. Bloodborne, a PS4 exclusive, takes place in the ancient fictional city of Yharnam. Here, the player is looking for a cure for a curse/illness that maddens those it...
Title Fight Hyperview Album Review (Click here to stream) ANTI- Records Released February 3, 2015 Genre: Indie Rock, Shoegaze, Punk (not too much) Progression can be a great or terrible thing. For Title Fight on their third LP Hyperview, progression is a step sideways.
The transition from melodic punk to dreamier-sounding territory has been noted throughout the band’s recent output (Floral Green...
Few books turn into good, let alone successful, game series. The Witcher series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski is one of the few that has accomplished just this. While the author was able to create a diverse and unique fantasy world that includes humans, dwarves, elves and monsters, the most unique aspect of the series is its extreme focus on magic and...
