Why a Beastie Boys series on Big Hollywood? Perhaps “To the Five Boroughs,” an album that largely eschews the fun party vibe in favor of left-wing political rants, helps to answer that question. Here’s the thing about politics and music,
In 1998, the Beastie Boys announced the arrival of a new album with the release of “Intergalactic,” which in my opinion, is their biggest and best single to date. It’s certainly their most accessible single, mainstream but with a sound
[Ed. Note: Previous chapters of this outstanding series can be found here.] Never before had a Beastie Boys album been so greatly anticipated. The release of “Ill Communication” was preceded by the single and video for “Sabotage,” an all-out screaming
This was the album that had me worried. In the wake of the commercial failure of “Paul’s Boutique,” would the Beasties try to rehash “Licensed to Ill?” I heard from a buddy it was going to be more like a
In November 1986, I wandered into a mall record store with every intention of buying nothing. I browsed, and nothing caught my eye, except the Violent Femmes first album, but it was too expensive. Nothing stood out in the rap
I finally had a chance to be one of “those people.” You know the ones, they read the book and see the movie so they can say, with more than a twinge of superiority, “The book was so much better.”
In 2006, while accepting the Academy Award for playing a husky, grizzled version of himself, George Clooney famously gushed, “…this Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs
Morris Buttermaker was a fair to middling minor league pitcher in his day, whose claim to fame was once striking out Ted Williams in a Spring Training game. Now, he’s a whiskey and beer swilling, filtered cigar chomping pool cleaner
Last weekend, Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott reviewed, among other films, Michael Moore’s latest farce, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” I don’t know their track records or political leanings, but Phillips for one noticed that Michael Moore is growing tiresome. He
So for the second time in about as many weeks, I’m hearing from Brad Pitt on religion. First, there was the absurd, “Eighty percent agnostic, twenty percent atheist” comment, and now he jokes that he’s running on the “no religion”
Back before the show “Rescue Me” went completely off the rails, there was a great episode where Denis Leary and the boys in his firehouse were ordered to go to sensitivity training. The training session went awry when the racially-mixed
That’s right. Obama’s putting everyone on notice. Dare not oppose him and bet not against him. Enough of the chatter. I keep waiting for the liberal cynics to step up and be, oh, I don’t know…CYNICAL about this guy, but
John Nolte’s review of “Brüno,” a film I haven’t yet seen, tackles Sasha Baron Cohen’s previous film “Borat,” a film I have seen about twenty times. That being said, Nolte is dead-on in his appraisal of the film: it found
LIBERALS LOVE TO LOSE. When liberals lose, it enables them to feel more superior than they naturally feel. It affords them the opportunity to bitch about injustice and unfairness. When they win, hell, it was a fair fight. They never,
Is it me, or do the Code Pinkers reeeeeally need to get laid? I don’t mean to judge them too harshly, but that’s what we’d say about a dude that flipped out in public like those two whack jobs at
You could feel it in the air as Apatow basked in the glow of his 2006 double whammy, the hilarious “Knocked Up” and “Superbad.” By the time 2007’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” rolled around, the backlash was gathering steam. I told
Nothing tickles the funny bone quite like phony outrage. You know, like Laurie David pulling up alongside an SUV and shouting down the driver for destroying the environment, when Ms. David herself is on the way to catch a private
I got a question about these embryos we’re going to destroy in the name of science. Are they white, or black? Hey, it don’t matter to me; they all look the same. But I really don’t want to get into
It’s not that I’m offended by the idea of Obama pointing every barrel he can find in the direction of Rush Limbaugh. Seriously, that’s fine. What offends me is the lack of wit and charm in the attacks. Obama got
Who else finds protests and boycotts a little, I don’t know, funny? I remember when I realized that protests and boycotts first began to amuse me. There was a Domino’s Pizza down the street from my house in suburban Atlanta.