Some movie stars seem insecure and tortured if they haven’t gotten that Oscar nomination yet. Every few years they ugly themselves up and do an indie movie or a prestige picture in desperate hope for a little precious respectability. McConaughey doesn’t have time for such silliness.

“A Few Good Men” genuinely works, and makes a great reason to visit the Little Theatre.

Not much wiggle room there, so we’re going to stick to a conventional post-Romero definition of the genre. No Haitian zombies, who actually exist. No Evil Dead, who are more demons who happen to inhabit the vessels of the recently deceased than zombies proper.

We were treated by a commanding emcee and an irresistible clown to a set that was mostly killer, little filler.

Junk food, arcade games rigged to ‘free’, and sometimes hard-R cult movies for free in projected, stereo blasted, (free) air conditioned splendor.

Nicolay and Phonte of Foreign Exchange will both be at Time Lounge in Norfolk for this Fuzzy Wednesday, the long-running showcase for local treasures the Fuzz Band.

I abuse hyperbole like “genius” and “funny” way too much as we all do about our friends. Regi is the cat I tend to mean it about.

Local Review: No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson, directed by Hampton native Steve James.

Local comedian George Booker spends an hour dealing with glitches, wangs, and the loneliness of the white men in the world.

George Booker spoke to a member of Second City about improvising material, gang warfare with other improv groups, and if there’s such thing as good pizza in Chicago.

Khori Johnson, one of the area’s leading comic lights of the last half decade or so, is stopping through the 757 between Colorado and Iraq this Sunday.

Billed as the gayest and most outrageous comedy tour in the US, “Under the Gaydar” will be at the Boot tonight.

What remains disturbing is that it took a movie to jerk me back into reality.

Silent movies at The Naro have become one of the few institutions here that never disappoint and always impress.

It’s Alive at the Chesapeake Central Library Friday Night, sensibly followed by It’s Alive 2.

Fantasmo brings The Last Man on Earth and House of Wax to the library tonight.

Ten songs. Don’t overthink it. No taking out a notebook and honing it. Just the first ten you think of and what they mean to you.

Yo, dudes, seriously…don’t sleep on the Britpop legacy. To evoke Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, this means something. This is important. Click to get the hysterical British music press. Also, Lennon and McCartney ain’t got shit on Albarn and Coxon. Just sayin’.

With our social networking, with our plastering our personal mediocrity on youTube, with all of the twats we tweet on Twitter (just kidding, nobody uses Twitter), and indeed with blogs such as this one, we are a nation of ignorant media whores, and Sarah Palin is about the best of our kind at branding her very person onto a fractured media landscape without any visible qualification to do so.

This Sunday at 11:45 PM, the new episode of Aqua Teen will be…wait for it…in live action.

New Claire Hux mixtape. These are the compulsively entertaining Baltimore Club baby powder enthusiasts who rocked the Boot recently.

1826 This is something Brendan Kennedy hipped me to. First off, what a wonderful phrase, “long dark night of the soul.” Lit majors, enlighten me: where did that come from? I know great dance nights have made a great moniker by stripping an article. Would anybody show up besides me if 24SevenCities committed to a [...]

Go ahead, listen to him…

The Max Mega mixtape.

Did any appropriations of the past ruin a work for you when you became aware of them?

Free download from Max Mega with Gabe Niles kicking his skills on production.

This clip, however, subtly (and awkwardly punctuated in that internet way) titled “Love Story” One Man. One Dream. One Chance., I think does need to be seen to be believed. Actually, seeing does not necessarily equal believing here, as I’m not sure this isn’t a fairly elaborate joke.

Dropping today, Cocker’s new album is called Further Complications, and that simple phrase has resonance to me here.

Follow your muse and don’t let anybody make you feel bad about it.

For five bucks, its a great chance to see a band likely to get a lot bigger in the next few years at one of the best small venues in town.

If any of you kids have followed my writing, you’ve detected my love for El-P. I adore the dude. As a producer, he has brought the revolutionary Bomb Squad aesthetic of essential Public Enemy into this era and helmed what might be the best hip hop album of the aughts, Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein. [...]

Motown aside, Detroit holds a reputation as a city of musical maniacs slashing against the predominant trends. It is the birthplace of techno and the Nug; where Iggy Pop and MC5 destroyed white rock, and Jack White rebuilt it in a similar fashion.
Why then is all the hip hop emerging from the rusting motor city so affirmingly consistent?

“Juno Had A Rough Day” is the title of the 84-second track that kicks off record/netlabel Error Broadcast’s indie collection. And indie is not quite a quirky clusterfuck on this album.
This is art pure and free.

The free internet release of Funk Man (the stimulus package) was a surprise, but a nice one. It isn’t a slapdash collection of odds ‘n sods thrown out there to maintain exposure. It’s not a mixtape.
Funk Man is subtler, as Del seems to have learned how to layer softer, fuzzier sounds into a more distinct whole.

Click here to read Nathan Rabin getting disillusioned by one of his favorites disappointing him with an out of nowhere homophobic manifesto.

Hey, kids, take a look at this!

Springsteen gets the Super Bowl, so he can probably deal with my lack of interest in his latest release.

Marilyn Chambers died on Sunday.

Bpitch Control seems to be having a good year. They already released my favorite recent album, Telefon Tel Aviv’s Immolate Yourself, and the hints I’ve heard from this record have been tantalizing as well.

There is totally a new Del album up online for free.

The Yellow Snow Mix is 50 minutes ranging from droll hip hop to avant downbeat electronic to jazz. I could make up more specious and legitimate musical descriptors, but it would make more sense just to click here and cop it.

This is a net label. I think they also have physical records for purchase, but more importantly they give everything away digitally on their site here. They also do the favor of pointing towards several free bits of web culture that do not suck. The focus is on contemporary experimental hip hop. Their Bag of Nothingness collection is anything but, collecting underexposed progressive instrumental hip hop from around the globe.

He’s everybody’s local hero, and he can rap too. Swagger to slay robot dragons with. Clickedy click to download “Tumbling Down” from Ced Hughes. It “features” Keane, which is a cute way to acknowledge samples. Rocks well.

If you’re looking for a totally legal way to sample their delicious, laidback platter, you can download “Alright With Me” here.

If you’re curious, go ahead and take a listen to El Michels Affair on their version of “C.R.E.A.M.”

The new Del The Funky Homosapien release will be available on his website starting April 7 for the low, low price of free. Go ahead and click that last sentence just to get yourself excited.

Twilight in Paris (via the internet).

The Knife’s Silent Shout was a manicured symphony of electronic light and sinister, hushed darkness; evoking the inexplicable discomfort of a David Lynch film. Karin Dreijer’s Fever Ray strips away some of the horror-show beat strobes and embellishes some of the silence with percussive instruments like a steadily anxious heartbeat.

Here is an album pulsing with well worn life and emotion that never sounds overproduced.

The Congolese musicians of Staff Benda Bilili have the kind of familiarity bred over years that makes proficiency sound offhand and casual.

There is nearly nothing bad and so much good about Royksopp’s Junior that it feels like it should be a better album.
Everything is quite good and bubbly…the album is like champagne, but it is debatable whether this is the good stuff or that pleasantly sweet 5-dollar obligatory New Year’s purchase.

After listening to the new Asobi Seksu album Hush, I wonder if somebody high up at Polyvinyl decided that 2009 must be the year for low-impact pop.

Like Hush, Dear John functions well in a shuffle, but effects a kind of numbing prettiness at album length.

Though Keelay & Zaire sound at an ear’s quick glance to be a quintessential West Coast production duo, many of the ingredients for their musical gumbo are SevenCities grown.

This is the ongoing exuberant collaboration between a few American rock dudes and a few Kenyan benga dudes. It makes for nice jumping music, and on their third album they have officially progressed beyond “fascinating experiment” to “superb band.”

What has changed for Doom in the last four years? Listening to Born Like This, not very much.

And this is a very good thing.

As the creative driving force beyond the immortal new jack trio Tony! Toni! Tone!, Raphael Saadiq gave neo-soul both its blueprint and definitive statement with House of Music.

Assembled by mash-up pioneers 2 Many DJs, this seminal mix clashed one of the most important dance songs of the early ’80s, New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with one of the most important dance songs of the early aughts, Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.”

If there’s a lullaby racket, Koushik could be running the game.

Dalek comes from Newark and they are utterly distinct. Though they loosely share some ground with other indie hip-hop outlets, particularly the dystopian Definitive Jux camp and the self-consciously strange Anticon tribe, Dalek have spent the decade perfecting a genre only they seem to make.

The term “shoegaze” may be at an apex of meaninglessness or universiality as it now encompasses everything from the more snoozy than ambient to the beyond post rock noisey. The appropriately titled Hush leans way more to the former.

GZA’s new release ProTools stacks up with Legend of the Liquid Sword as a post-classic highlight.

London Zoo is a pulverizing work from the jump, an aptly named number called “Angry.”

The album is littered with one word titles with the same impact and focus. “Skene” (weapon). “Insane.” “Fuckaz” (fuckers). “Warning.” “Judgement.” Palpable dread alternates with righteous fury in passages that are physically impossible to ignore.

So the trailer for Spike Jonze’ version of Where The Wild Things Are looks amazing, doesn’t it?

So I got a tip from BFF/Nemesis Ty Bliss to check out the Spitzwell Brothers. NC hip hoppers who are chummy with the Rebel E kids, I was suspicious for no good reason. You know when your friend who knows you well and has a great taste in music recommends something? Do you just assume [...]

Local boy and spurned Cali actor Jason Kypros has been doing quite a job of keeping the flag flying for regular local comedy with his Sunday night comedy parties at the New Belmont. He’s also a great advocate for local theatre. These agendas clash beautifully when he does his Fix the Floor Fundraisers at the Little Theatre of Norfolk.

3 SCHOOL
If you have’nt figured out how to balance a rigorous academic schedule with a problematic degree of partying and are not seeing four times more shows than you will see in the remainder of your adult life, you have already failed college.

New free mp3 from Rebel E emcee Max Mega

…is Karin from the Knife on a solo tip.

Local label turns it up, brings the noise to the Boot.

Over the last week, nearly every music or pop culture site I’ve looked at has posted something concerning harsh words exchanged publicly (well, on the internet) between Wayne Coyne and Win Butler.

There are still many Dillas out there without lupus who walk among us. Black Milk is one of them.

What is the moral of this aimless story? I don’t know. Maybe that the inadaptable is often just a guise for a blockbuster comedy. It is recommendable to have Bill Murray cracking wise in it.

Produced by musical globetrotter Damon Albarn and fitting snugly on Pitchfork’s top singles of 2008, nothing else on Welcome to Mali sounds much like it, but it creates an important first impression.

Serge Gainsbourg (Vie Heroique) will tell the lurid, elegant, sleazy, glamorous story of France’s finest and most adventurous pop star.

The plague of lame horror remakes is a sickness that is devouring theatrical horror alive (or at least undead).

Today I’d like to specifically acknowledge the label that first got me into this kind of immaculate obscuria, Soul Jazz Records in London.

Local Heroes Comics is one of the brightest new businesses enlivening Ghent culture. Fearless leader Greg Thompson was kind enough to answer seven ill-considered questions for us.

Stereogum has done us the favor of posting some entrancing clips from Kanye West’s recent performance on “vh1 Storytellers”, including an unaired clip of “Love Lockdown”.

Plenty of critics have become artistic entities worthy of praise in their own right. Where would movie lovers be without Pauline Kael or Vern? Where would music fans be without Lester Bangs or Jeff Chang?

Take a look at the website to figure out what all of this has to do with fighting global poverty and oppression of women.

…is the cheeky title of the forthcoming album from a few of my favorite frogs, Phoenix.

Dave Allison runs Custom Made Music from right here. His hometown rock label will be presenting two bands, Ceremony and Screen Vinyl Image , as well as Florida friends Averkiou at the Boot on March 14th for an evening of brain buzzing shoegaze madness. He was kind enough to answer SevenQuestions for SevenCities.

The Scott Walker documentary is hitting our shores.

It should be no surprise that Ang Lee’s latest directorial adventure, Taking Woodstock, stars none other than the acting powerhouse that is…Demetri Martin? Really? I don’t know, okay. I guess I have no reason to complain. I mean, maybe, you know, Demetri just happens to be an awesome actor. Certainly no way to tell at this point.

Hey kids… I’m not sure how many of you have checked it out yet, but take a look at No Ripcord Magazine. This is one of the UK’s finest online independent music and film magazines that is staffed mostly by American geeks such as myself (I have been one of the more obnoxious contributors to [...]

I just solved a great mystery that might be useful to other posters here: misspell your profanity if you want your posts to actually show up!

U2 is streaming the new album No Line On The Horizon on MySpace. I’m going to spend the next hour or so recording my first impressions, track by track.

In all of Bunuel’s great works, conventional movie-watching emotional shortcuts are subverted and toyed with as cinematic manipulation is revealed for the grand illusion it is.

You’re damn right. He is Shaft.

In this decade, u2 has reverted to a quality they rarely possessed before: musical conservatism.

It could be the indie film Catcher in the Rye for the techno set. It could be the minimal Purple Rain. It could be the electronic Once (if that kind of thing can be repeated). It could be another gawky sub-mumblecore indie clusterfilm. I have no idea, and will probably have to wait until Naro Expanded Video gets their keen hands on it to find out.

One of the unfortunate ramifications of nobody buying physical music or going out to shows anymore is a decline in musical activism and charity. Somehow, this has not stopped the Red Hot Organization, which continues to produce some of the best new music compilations, charitable or otherwise, for the benefit of AIDS awareness and relief.

Pet Shop Boys have always been canny album artists, a rarity for dance acts spawned in the ’80s. They have continued to produce great albums, both contemporary and timeless, in the years since they stopped being a massive singles act.

Listen and fall into the good times without discounting the bad…or the aftermath.

I really don’t think the “Eno Is God” graffiti formerly popular in London and New York were hyperbolic. Eno’s work and wisdom stretch beyond the realm of music into philosophy and general art theory.

Some records don’t hold up to their reputations, but Paul’s Boutique deserves every superlative accolade it has received.

A review of the RZA’s soundtrack for Samuel L. Jackson-produced anime Afro Samurai Resurrection

Telefon Tel Aviv’s latest album Immolate Yourself marries textured ambience with wrenching, resigned sentiment.