Allen HuangMao’s Last Dancer Director: Bruce Beresford Australia, 2009 Based on his bestselling autobiography, the dramatized story of Li Cunxin escaping from Communist China is not a particularly unique one. Handpicked from a dusty village in rural China, a...
Countdown to Zero Director: Lucy Walker USA, 2010 Countdown to Zero shakes off all the dirt, rumors, myths, and outright lies when it comes to the danger of nuclear terrorism. Using John F. Kennedy’s famous quote comparing nuclear weapons to the...
Secret Cities are a psych-pop trio from Fargo, North Dakota. And much like the Coen brothers’ film of the same name, Pink Graffiti is a wonderful dreamscape of complicit artistry and deliberate complexity. Though comparable to other pop...
It doesn’t surprise me that Caribou (stage name of one Daniel Victor Snaith) has a PhD in Math. Talk to a math nerd for more than an hour about anything, and you’ll find that, more often than not, they relish in the joy of deconstructing...
"... Brian Wilson became the central figure in my writing -- sort of an easy place to start in sorting through the intense emotions of that breakup and the process of making music." -- Charlie Gokey
The saying might go, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” but any critic who has sifted through dozens of CDs/movies/books/whatever will tell you that first impressions matter greatly. That’s why God invented press kits and...
Whether you hated them or loved them, in the early 00’s, The Blood Brothers were THE It Band of the hardcore scene. Wild, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and highly intelligent, the band quickly amassed a devoted following, praised by the die...
"I think the only time I feel completely comfortable with who I am and with what I have to say is when I'm playing music." -- Tomo Nakayama