Alice in Wonderland
At first glance, Tim Burton (the director of Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Big Fish and The Nightmare Before Christmas, among others) seems like a perfect choice to deliver a unique version of the familiar tale with the proper amount of visual spectacle, ingenuity and darkness.
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Massive Attack - Heligoland
Heligoland is the fifth album from Massive Attack and the first full-length album that they’ve put out in seven years. Seven years. Seriously.
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Under The Neon Sky by Jay Rankin
Las Vegas is frequently referred to as Sin City and it wasn’t assigned that nickname arbitrarily. It’s an unusual place…it has all the vices you would find in a regular city and a few characteristics that are a little more unusual. Gambling is legal inside the city limits, prostitution is legal only a short distance away and the alcohol never stops flowing.
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Whip It
Whip It is a coming-of-age story adapted from the novel Derby Girl by Shauna Cross. It is also the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore, who appears as the character Smashley Simpson and seems to be having an absolutely wonderful time whenever she is onscreen.
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Top 5 Electronic Albums of 2009
My exposure to good electronic music experienced a significant decline sometime at the beginning of the decade, but it seems like things are starting to pick up a bit. Two of the albums on this list are technically good enough to make the main top 10 albums of 2009, but “Electronic” is an important subgenre that should have its own list.
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Ke$ha - Animal
Ke$ha has appeared out of what seems like nowhere with an electropop dance album that sounds surprisingly fresh …considering the fact it took seven years to complete.
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Top 10 EPs of 2009
EPs are not the ideal format to release music when your fans have been waiting to hear new music from you for years. They are, however, a great way for a band to get some music out into the world, to supplement an already released album or to preview an upcoming album.
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Top 3 Instrumental Albums of 2009
It seems like instrumental albums get no love from the music world, but there are people creating some really great music with no vocals.
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The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The story of The Road centers on a father and son and their journey across an almost unimaginably bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape. The beginning of the end of their world occurs in a flashback, but the full extent of the cataclysm is never fully explained.
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Avatar
This review won’t compare Avatar with any of the other “character in a new, strange culture” films like Fern Gully, The New World, The Last Samurai or Dances With Wolves…mainly because I’ve never seen any of those movies and the only part of Pocahontas that I remember is the song “Colors of the Wind.” Also, everyone knows that Smurfs are blu
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k-os - The Trill: A Journey So Far
The Trill: A Journey So Far is a compilation album from k-os, the Canadian singer-songwriter/rapper that already put out two other albums this year.
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Best Song of November 2009
There were ten songs in the running for the month of November, but one of them almost stood out enough to invalidate the others. A list with only one song on it would be boring though.
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Blakroc - Blakroc
Rock rap was certainly thrust into the mainstream when Run DMC teamed up with Aerosmith for “Walk This Way,” but even Blondie’s “Rapture” hinted at the eventual fusion of rap and rock.
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Doug Stanhope - From Across the Street
For years, Doug Stanhope was my favorite comedian and I would tell people this – without hesitation – whenever the subject came up. It all started with Word of Mouth, his shockingly funny 90-minute stand-up video filled with life observations, social commentary and an unflinching honesty about a multitude of topics, ranging from 9/11 and abortion to drugs, sex toys and transvestites.
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Norah Jones - The Fall
The Fall is the fourth studio album from Norah Jones and if it continues the trend of her other albums – selling about half as many copies as the one before it and hitting number one on the charts – then sales on her new number one record should only reach about three and a quarter million copies worldwide.
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2012
Roland Emmerich has previously destroyed the world in The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day – and to a lesser extent, Eight Legged Freaks and Godzilla – but in his new film, 2012, he destroys the world like never before.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the sequel to the immensely popular Modern Warfare, which was itself a sequel to the original 1998 game that was set in World War II.
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50 Cent - Before I Self-Destruct
50 Cent is the stage name of Curtis Jackson, a rapper whose claim to fame seems to be selling crack, getting arrested, getting shot nine times and releasing a mixtape that somehow got in the hands of Eminem’s lawyer. (At least we know that he’s not frontin’ when he raps about being a gangsta.
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Snow Patrol - Up To Now
Up To Now is a two-disc compilation from the Northern Irish Indie Rock band, Snow Patrol. Frontman Gary Lightbody insists that it is not a “greatest hits” album – partly because he hates those types of records and partly because he claims that they haven’t had enough hits to warrant one.
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Best Song of October 2009
October boasted a decent number worthy tracks …and a few that were even better than that.
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