Nerd culture has seen a rise in popularity in the last few years. Thanks to a combination of things such as the availability and knowledge of the Internet and changing social attitudes about personal niches (for example, people now look down upon a high school jock who gives a nerd a wedgie for playing “Magic: The Gathering”), it’s now...
Truth be told, I didn’t want “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” to be too funny this week because I had a cold and it hurt to laugh, but I also didn’t want it to not be funny. “The Mole” ultimately struck a good balance, but at first, there was a lot of exposition that slowed the episode down.
Since I didn’t like the...
It’s strange to me that two things I consistently like — Halloween and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” — just don’t seem to mix well together. Usually, I look forward to Halloween-themed episodes, but after “Halloween II,” I really hope “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” stays off that bandwagon for a good, long while.
“Halloween II” largely looks to repeat the same formula of last season’s...
Platinum Games has finally delivered a sequel to 2010’s character-action game “Bayonetta,” allowing the hungry fanbase to gorge on all the gun kata combos they could possibly want. “Bayonetta 2” arrived on Oct. 24 exclusively to the Wii U — much to the chagrin of a public used to playing the original on XBox 360 and Playstation 3 —...
“Nightcrawler” is a crime thriller written and directed by Dan Gilroy, telling the story of Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a driven man desperate for work and the desire to make a name for himself by any means necessary. When Bloom witnesses a car crash on the freeway he gets a brief introduction into the world of video journalism. Bloom...
A songwriter frequently known for her teenage sentimentalism or specifically providing listeners with new break-up songs, Taylor Swift has often been dubbed as a Southern songbird with a soft voice, safe songs and on a constant journey for her Romeo. (“Love Story,” anyone?) Flying away from her Nashville roots and glitter guitar, Swift welcomes pop music’s synthesizers and keyboards...
I had never been a fan of the musical genre known as ambient music. It was probably because I had hardly listened to it. That was before Jimmy LaValle appeared at the Barn performing many songs that he recorded as a part of his solo project The Album Leaf. Calling his ambient music “transcendent” or “emotional” doesn’t do it...
Rowan Joffe tries his director’s hat at a psychological thriller with “Before I Go to Sleep,” and he half-heartedly hits the mark. The film at first glance seems as if it could have been stripped right from the Lifetime movie network channel. What saves this movie from totally treading down that line is an impressive ensemble cast and production...
There are just a handful of songs that really get to me, almost every time I hear them. “You Can’t Hurry Love,” by the Supremes. “In My Life,” by the Beatles. “Fall On Me,” by R.E.M. “Letter From an Occupant,” by The New Pornographers. And as you could have guessed by the title of this column, “Sprawl II (Mountains...
The Artsblock premiered last Saturday “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” a documentary released in 2013. “Jodorowsky’s Dune” follows the avant-garde film director Alejandro Jodorowsky tell the account of his attempt at directing an adaptation of the science-fiction novel “Dune.” What I saw was an intense drama surge beneath the seemingly simple story of a director and his friends as they recall and...