Iris idolises Iris Apfel. So, it seems, does everyone else. At a glitzy fashion event, J.Crew creative director Jenna Lyons and fashion-enthusiast and hip-hop legend Kanye West alike dote on her. “She’s the perfect example of the intersection of fashion and interior design and art,” says one of documentarian Albert Maysles’ talking heads breathily. All…
When House of Balloons dropped in 2011, The Weeknd didn’t seem like your typical popstar. Rather than a carefully orchestrated PR campaign, here was an immaculately produced mixtape that was fully formed, less a rough-edged debut than an assertive statement, something imbued with purpose yet cloaked beneath impenetrable anonymity. House of Balloons – and, to…
Hollywood has never really known what to do with Chris Rock. That’s been increasingly apparent over the last decade or so, with the so-called “the funniest man in America” finding work as either a cartoon zebra in the Madagascar series or as Adam Sandler’s Friend in The Longest Yard, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan…
“90s Music” – the first single from Kimbra’s The Golden Echo – is a misleading introduction in more ways than one. The off-kilter danciness of the track reminds me of Kanye West’s “Power”, in that it’s the kind of pop song that manages to combine infectious glee with intentional abrasiveness; it simultaneously sounds like it…
CLPPNG is a dark, often difficult record. It’s despair; it’s disgust; it’s the acrid sting of bile in the back of your throat. It wields its malignant soundscape — a swirl of hard-edged textures, a maelstrom of noise — not as an outcry of aggression (though there is anger here), but as a manifesto of…
Under the Skin is a challenging viewing experience. Those attending entirely off the back of “I heard Scarlett Johansson gets naked in this” will find themselves faced with a film more in tune with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey than Species. From its opening screen of black inexplicably infiltrated by white lights and rings that…
I didn’t write about music all that much in 2013, but I did set aside a bit of time to listen to music, so I thought I’d share the albums that I most enjoyed last year. Honourable mentions go to Future of the Left – How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident, which just…
If you’ve seen the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, you already know the plot: Rich kids steal from richer celebrities, get caught. This kind of plot-certainty isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it frees up the filmmaker to focus on tone and character rather than story. The Bling Ring portrays its protagonists’ crime…
It’s perhaps too easy to compare Magna Carta… Holy Grail to Yeezus. Beyond the two men being the pillars of modern hip-hop (and these records being their first solo work since Watch the Throne), Jay Z practically demands comparison when he describes himself as a god or mentions listening to “Strange Fruit” (prominently sampled on…
(Extended Cut posts are articles where I’ll exceed my usual 200-word limit to allow for more detailed discussion) ““Dark Fantasy” was my long, backhanded apology … It’s always going to be 80 percent, at least, what I want to give, and 20 percent fulfilling a perception.” – Kanye West, on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,…
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