The key reason the human race has been able to survive countless wars, famines and the first two seasons of The Ghost Whisperer lies in the ability of each individual to adapt to surrounding circumstances. And though we usually think about adults when discussing these dire subjects, we can’t forget that children have their own built-in methods of coping with the worst that life has to offer; a fact made beautifully yet hauntingly clear in Pan’s Labyrinth.
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Blade II), Pan’s Labyrinth is the story of a young Spanish girl in 1944 who invents a vivid world of her own as a way of coping with Franco’s new fascist regime. Unlike any children’s story to have ever come out of the West, Pan’s Labyrinth may be the sole movie capable of derailing Volver’s momentum for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
While its Sunday night colleagues The Simpsons and Family Guy struggle with increasingly abstract storylines and jokes, King of the Hill launches its winter premiere by continuing to mine its inherently funny premise of a traditional family being exposed to the value systems of a changing America. In the premiere entitled "Peggy is Queen of the Dessert," the matriarch of the Hill clan meets Carolyn, an individual who considers size 16-feet Peggy to be the epitome of womanhood. The only problem lies in the fact that Carolyn is a drag queen, something Peggy finds out after she performs in her new friend’s stage show.
Like George Washington and Webster before him, Britain’s Damon Albarn -- the brainchild behind Blur and The Gorillaz -- can do no wrong. Now seemingly tired out from the anything-goes mashup of The Gorillaz, Damon has decided to go the powerfully understated route with his new supergroup, The Good, the Bad & the Queen.
Composed of Clash bassist Paul Sinomen, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Africa 70 drummer Tony Allen, the group masterfully combines all its members' musical backgrounds and interests -- from afrobeat to punk -- into an astonishingly cohesive, original sound that never seems contrived or forced. If you’re not sure about whether or not to lay down cash for the group’s premiere disc, be sure to check out the concert video of the band’s single, “Kingdom of Doom,” that is currently circling the internet; like caffeine and meat (or caffeinated meat), it will force your wallet out of your pocket.
Though it was human-cardboard box Sandra Bullock making $10 million a year that first made it clear that all may not be fair and good in Hollywood, This Film Is Not Yet Rated certainly does drive the point home. A documentary by Kriby Dirk that features appearances by notable filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky and Atom Egoyan, Rated takes a scathing look at the way films are designated ratings by the MPAA. Lampooning the organizational body for consistent inconsistencies in the application of their standards and for favoring larger studios over smaller production companies, Dirk makes one of the funniest and most insightful -- albeit unimportant -- documentaries to come out on DVD in some time.
After a hard day of crunching numbers, updating databases and filing invoices, most guys just want to lose themselves in a good couple of hours of urban planning. Thankfully for all of us virtual real estate developers, Take 2 has just released the followup to its City Life title with the new World Edition. Building off the original’s gameplay format, World Edition expands the options of the original by adding over 100 new buildings (including famous structures such as the White House and the Kremlin), new maps and an overhauled content editor. Moreover, gamers will not only be able to create the city of their dreams, but they'll also have the chance to walk around in it like any other citizen once they are finished.
If the world is bombarded with bartending books that fill their 200 pages with interesting “fodder” on the history of liquor, we swear we’re going to start buying nonalcoholic cereal in protest. Luckily for the world of books and our sanity, Anders Larsen has taken the “fodder-centric” guide popularized by bartending books and applied it to another manly yet rarely discussed topic: shaving. On the whole, Sharp Practice aims to -- and does a pretty good job at -- positioning itself as the definitive guide to shaving, as it never steers away from its intended purpose: To pair genuinely interesting tips on the art of shaving with genuinely interesting stories on the history of a ritual that has tied together everyone from John Ritter to Alexander the Great.
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