June 2009
2 posts
6 tags
Two Weeks At The Movies
by Daniel Erenberg
My excitement for the summer movie season this year has been curiously subdued. I’ve been seeing pretty much everything that’s coming out, but I’m finding it difficult to care about any of them. The only film I’ve seen this summer that I’d consider seeing multiple times was Star Trek. And I probably only have one more viewing of that movie left in me. Meanwhile, looking ahead, I...
6 tags
Playing Catch Up: A Capsule Review Fiesta!
by Daniel Erenberg
So, it seems that Slow Century Magazine has taken the entire month of May off. Co-founders Joe Ireland and Janna Washington have spent the month packing up their shit and shipping it out west, as they now reside in Eugene, Oregon. Danielle Berg has spent most of her time working on The Quilt Project, a wonderful Community-building non-profit, which hosted a very successful...
April 2009
2 posts
1 tag
Slow Century Summer Movie Preview
by Daniel Erenberg
Well, it’s only April, but the Summer Movie Season appears to have begun in earnest. Fast & Furious is out and making a ton of bank (over 100 million bucks in its first two weekends) and, in so doing has resurrected the careers of both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. And thank Christ for that, right? But, meanwhile, the studios have also begun releasing genuinely good films....
4 tags
Album Review: The Hazards Of Love, by The...
by Daniel Erenberg
We all knew that The Decemberists would eventually write a concept album. After all, they’ve always been storytellers just as much as they’ve been songwriters, sometimes to an extremely frustrating degree. Their last record, and major label debut, The Crane Wife, came very close to being classified as such, by packing in the three-part title track, as well as the five-section...
March 2009
6 posts
4 tags
Ménage à TV
by Daniel Erenberg
Three new television shows premiered last week, amidst much hype and ubiquitous advertising campaigns. All three shows turned out to be ratings disappointments, but the networks certainly couldn’t be blamed this time. They got those shows out there. For one, who here hasn’t heard of Kings? That show has been everywhere these last few months. I haven’t been able to take a damn...
4 tags
Our First and Final Word On Watchmen
by Daniel Erenberg and Joe Ireland
Joe: I think I should start out by saying that I’m no expert when it comes to comics, though I’ve read several series and enjoyed most of the ones that I’ve read, some of them quite a bit. Watchmen is hands-down my favorite comic, so I was super excited when I heard that an adaptation was going to be released, and only slightly less excited when I heard that...
3 tags
TV Review: Castle
by Daniel Erenberg
Somewhere, in a saner universe than our own, Nathan Fillion is the biggest movie star on the planet. He’s got matinee idol looks, he looks like he could take you in a fight, he’s as good at slapstick as he is at subtler verbal humor and he forces you to immediately care about the characters he plays, no matter how morally ambiguous they are. Unfortunately for his career and...
4 tags
ADVANCED Film Review: I Love You, Man
by Daniel Erenberg
I Love You, Man is a good film for only one reason. Its cast is phenomenal. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel carry this movie, completely elevating it beyond the rather uninspired material they are given. The film is also populated with such gifted comedic actors as Rashida Jones, Jon Favreau, Jaime Pressly, J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin and Andy Samberg in appropriate supporting roles....
3 tags
The Smoke Monster vs. Ben Folds Five's "Smoke"
by Danielle Berg and Daniel Erenberg
The smoke monster of Lost is perhaps the show’s most mysterious element; “Smoke,” off Ben Fold Five’s album Whatever and Ever Amen is a fantastic song about a breakup. Dan and Danielle pitted these two contenders against each other to decide which is better. What they found was not the obvious conclusion they had predicted; led, perhaps, by destiny, they...
2 tags
Life On The TV Bubble
by Daniel Erenberg
It occurred to me this week that we are a mere two and a half months away from the broadcast network upfront presentations. So I thought we could take a look at some existing shows that remain on the proverbial network bubble and whether they will or won’t and should or shouldn’t be cancelled. I’m not going to go into mid-season replacement shows like Dollhouse or Castle because...
February 2009
10 posts
3 tags
The Oscars: Minute By Annoying Minute
by Daniel Erenberg
I’ve been watching the Red Carpet show on E! for an hour and I’m already pissed.
I should probably give you guys a disclaimer. I thought Slumdog Millionaire was a totally lame movie, and I don’t care what anyone says. And don’t try to explain the film to me. I don’t care that it’s a fairy tale. I don’t care that it’s being honest about real life events that have occurred in...
3 tags
Music Review: It's Not Me, It's You, by Lily Allen
by Daniel Erenberg
“Not Fair,” the third track on Lily Allen’s new album, represents everything that is great about her as an artist. It’s a break-up song about a guy who is perfect in every way, with the apparently massive exception that he’s terrible in bed. The lyrics are cutting and laugh-out-loud funny, calling attention to those aspects of relationships that no one really talks about...
3 tags
Dollhouse--Episode One: "Ghost"
by Daniel Erenberg
I’ve been very reluctant to review the Dollhouse pilot since it aired on Friday. Since the launch of Slow Century Magazine, it’s the only thing that people have actually requested I write about. In fact, friends of mine have asked me to review each episode individually, which is something I haven’t done with anything yet. You have to understand. As I’ve stated elsewhere on the...
3 tags
When I Watch You, I Really Pretend I’m Watching...
by Danielle Berg
MTV’s The City is the television show you don’t admit you watch, unless you’re watching to be ironic, or to stay updated on The Cut’s hilarious recaps. I watch it. But I’m not doing it (primarily) for the reasons above. I’m watching it for the same reasons we fall in love with slightly less attractive, less intelligent versions of our greatest loves; why we order the same dish...
3 tags
Friday Night: Where Good TV Goes To Die
by Daniel Erenberg
With Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse set to premiere this Friday night, it must finally be said and agreed upon that Friday is currently the best night of the week for TV. After all, NBC and Sci-Fi are airing near-perfect seasons of Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica, respectfully, and FOX is working hard to create a Geek brand on Friday nights by pairing Dollhouse with...
4 tags
Comic Book Review: Secret Warriors #1, by Jonathan...
by Daniel Erenberg
Comic books will never be understood by mainstream audiences, and it’s all the fault of the comic book companies. Here, Marvel have a wonderful new book, written by the interesting indie creator Jonathan Hickman, doing his first mainstream comic book work, co-plotted by superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis and penciled beautifully by rising star Stefano Caselli. But, if a...
3 tags
New York Comic Con Coverage: Day 3 (of 3)
by Daniel Erenberg
It was impossible for me to be too depressed today, because I was about to see two of my three modern TV idols in person. I feel as though Joss Whedon, Josh Schwartz and J.J. Abrams are at the top of the heap in terms of TV writing these days (I’m gonna go ahead and wait until Matthew Weiner’s follow-up to Mad Men to add him to this list). Abrams wasn’t going to be attending...
3 tags
New York Comic Con Coverage: Day 2 (of 3)
by Daniel Erenberg
Like the middle chapter of most trilogies, the second day of Comic Con felt a bit like filler, killing time until the grand conclusion. I woke up in better spirits this morning (though still not great) and walked over to the Javits Center with my head held medium-high. There were only two Saturday panels that I really gave a shit about and those were Cup O’ Joe, a regular...
3 tags
New York Comic Con Coverage: Day 1 (of 3)
by Daniel Erenberg
For the second straight year, your intrepid reporter is going through a breakup during the New York Comic Con. So, for the second straight year, going into the Jacob Javits Center, I wasn’t excited. I was depressed. And not only about the breakup, mind you. Something sort of personal that had been building up for the last couple weeks came to a strong head this morning. So, on...
4 tags
Music Review: Noble Beast, by Andrew Bird
by Daniel Erenberg
Andrew Bird is a musician who, historically, has flitted between genres like a hummingbird. For a while there, with each record released, you never quite knew what to expect. So it’s a little bit dismaying that his new release, Noble Beast, sounds so much like an Andrew Bird record. All the signs are there that it is clearly him being himself: the ever-present whistling, the...
3 tags
Media, Upstream
by Danielle Berg The Printed Blog, a new venture by Josh Karp, of Chicago, is taking blog posts across the Internet and putting them to print. A small team of (for now) volunteers is fighting the strong media current with a paddleboat, and as far as interest goes - it seems to be working. It’s not that the Printed Blog is trying to change the direction of the current; they’re simply rowing in the...
January 2009
7 posts
Comic Book Review: Dark Avengers #1, by Brian...
by Daniel Erenberg
The new Marvel ongoing series, Dark Avengers, wisely plays off of the fascinating results of their big 2008 event series, Secret Invasion. Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, has wrested control of S.H.I.E.L.D., the world peace-keeping task force, away from Tony Stark, disbanded the whole thing and set up a new organization, which he calls H.A.M.M.E.R. (in this issue, he...
Film Review: The Lodger
by Daniel Erenberg
The Lodger was released in theaters on January 23rd. It comes out on DVD on February 10th. This is not usually a good sign for a film, but it seemed like The Lodger might have been different. It is billed as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock, complete with many of Hitchcock’s signature shots and set-ups, and it boasts a truly impressive cast, which includes interesting actors like...
Film Review: My Bloody Valentine 3-D
by Daniel Erenberg
3-D technology can make anything cheesy. So a film that is meant solely to scare the shit out of you might not be the best choice for it. I can sort of see what they were going for though. The first killing in the movie pops an eyeball out at you, and later in the film a human heart goes flying out into the audience. But these shots should elicit more shock and less giggles....
3 tags
TV Review: Lie To Me
by Daniel Erenberg
I’ll give FOX the credit they deserve. Tim Roth is an inspired choice to headline a procedural dramedy, and the fact that the network was able to steer him away from the new Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds in order to appear in what is essentially House if they let Hugh Laurie be British is nothing short of remarkable. And Tim Roth does not let his network down. He...
4 tags
TV Review: The United States of Tara
by Daniel Erenberg
Toni Collette is going to win an Emmy for her performance in the new Showtime series, The United States of Tara. After all, this is the kind of performance that the Best Actress in a Comedy Series category was built for. As Tara, a woman with split personalities, she is also required to play three “alters,” including T, a 15 year-old lolita who is besties with Tara’s teenage...
3 tags
Biggie Smalls Was A Total Dick
by Daniel Erenberg
So after the monstrous rush to see every supposedly Oscar-worthy film that came out in the tail-end of December in order to be eligible for award consideration (by the way, who are you kidding, Defiance?) the first film of 2009 that I give a shit about is Notorious. Notorious is a lovely Alfred Hitchcock film, but now it is also a very Ray-like biopic about the life of...