Reviews
Adele Wonders What’s Next on Powerful 30
No artist deserves to be defined by their romantic failures, least of all Adele, whose catalog has provided solace to leagues of lovelorn listeners over the past decade-plus — a generational voice worth wailing along to on our lowest days. So in 10, 25 and 50 years, when anniversary retrospectives are written about the star’s excellent new album 30, may it not be unjustly labeled as her “divorce album.” Because it’s not a divorce album. It’s an identity album. Adele’s fourth LP, out Friday, is largely informed by her 2019 split from her entrepreneur ex-husband Simon Konecki after a seven-year relationship. But 30 does not dare to wallow long in “woe is me” melancholy. Instead, Adele poses a much more constructive inquiry: Who am I now? Her marriage is over, the family she spent a decade nu...
Garth Brooks Brings The Hits, Salutes His Heroes at Nashville Show
Garth Brooks’s concert Thursday (Nov. 18) at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville was billed as “an intimate evening” with the superstar — and with just an acoustic guitar, no band, and a lengthy list of iconic songs, Brooks certainly lived up to the promise. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news At one moment soon after making his way onto the austere Opry House stage, Brooks gestured to the center stage circle of wood that was taken from the Grand Ole Opry’s former home at the Ryman Auditorium and installed when the Opry House opened in 1974—calling it “the same floorboards that the greatest of all have stood on.” From there, he offered a snippet of “Three Wooden Crosses,” which Randy Travis turned into a hit in 2002. Throughout the evening, Brook...
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Is Too Haunted By the Past to Feel Fresh: Review
The Pitch: Trying to tell a really good 21st century Ghostbusters story seems to be an enterprise guaranteed to make absolutely no one happy. Which already makes Ghostbusters: Afterlife a depressing venture right out of the gate; one can almost sense director Jason Reitman screaming from the sidelines, “Are you nerds happy now?!?” Unfortunately, as much as Afterlife openly seeks to draw upon nostalgia for the original, a lot of fans may find the taste of their youth to be curdled by the level of pandering involved. Things begin with the reveal that one of the original Ghostbusters (the movie gets a bit coy about this, but it’s Egon Spengler, who was played by the recently deceased Harold Ramis) had left his friends and moved to Summerville, Oklahoma in the years before his death. Following...
Adele’s 30 Is Much More Than a Divorce Album — It’s a Hard-Won Journey to Self-Love
“To be loved and love at the highest count, means to lose all the things I can’t live without.” When Adele croons that line on the devastating piano ballad “To Be Loved,” one gets the impression that it is not only emblematic of her latest album, but also the journey of the past six years of her life. On the surface, 30, out Friday (November 19th), could be perceived as a divorce album, but it’s more than that: It’s about depression, new love, rebirth, choosing the harder road even if it means self-preservation. Here, the singer digs deeper than she ever has before. Though Adele has always mastered the art of remaining notoriously private, despite being one of the biggest pop stars in the world, 30 unveils the extreme change she’s experienced over the years. Advertisement The world has bee...
Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Hits More Than a Few False Notes: Review
3,2,1, Let’s Jam: In a far-flung future where the solar system has been colonized and Earth has become uninhabitable, civilization has spread out into a new Wild West filled with grifters, terrorists, con men, and criminal syndicates. Among the rabble, there are a few intrepid souls who set out to collect the most dangerous bounties in the system… or at least scrounge up enough cash to keep their ship running. You might call them bounty hunters; they prefer cowboys. Two such cowboys are the crew of the run-down starship BeBop: Spike Spiegel (John Cho), a former Syndicate enforcer starting his life over, and Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), a divorced ex-cop trying to make ends meet and be a good dad to his daughter. But the more they try to run from their shadowy pasts, the more those past...
Adele’s One Night Only Concert Indicates a Great Heartbreak Album Is on the Horizon: Recap
Oh, Adele, how we’ve missed you. On Sunday, November 14th, the record-breaking singer-songwriter made a return to live performance with Adele: One Night Only on CBS, which featured some of the artist’s greatest hits, a vulnerable interview with Oprah, and a peek at that highly-anticipated new music head of this Friday (November 19th), when 30 will arrive in full. The event was gorgeously staged and shot at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Adele gifted the (extremely star-studded) audience with her signature vocals, strong as ever, against a surreal sunset in the Hollywood Hills. Advertisement From the first notes of “Hello,” it became very clear: Adele is not here to play. This album, which we’ve waited six or so years for, is going to be a doozy. Adele is so effortlessly charming,...
9 Reasons to Watch Red Notice, a Movie Where Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds Do Art Crime Together
Got to say this for Red Notice — it knows exactly what kind of a movie it is: a mashup of a classic caper tale and Indiana Jones that’s fully aware of how the star power involved will draw people in, and thus makes sure to put said stars (Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot) front and center. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber also makes sure that all 118 minutes of the film move along at a brisk pace, with plenty of action set-pieces, twists, and heist hijinks along the way. Things begin with notorious art thief Nolan Booth (Reynolds) attempting to steal one of the three legendary (and incredibly valuable) eggs of Cleopatra, with special agent John Hartley (Johnson) determined to track him down and stop him, building up to a globe-trotting adventure packed with legitimately laugh-o...
Stallone’s Recut Rocky IV Has More Heart, But Less Charm: Review
The Pitch: In 1985, Rocky IV was released to box office success (netting $300 million, the most the series has ever earned), but critical derision. It’s no surprise, either; the film, which tracks Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) as he seeks revenge against Russian superman Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) for the death of his friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), was the ultimate jump-the-shark moment for a series that had heretofore mixed taut boxing action with comparatively tamped-down character drama. It’s a thorn that’s clearly been stuck in Stallone’s paw for 35 years, and with the creative idleness that came with the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 seemed as good a time as any to pick it back up and revisit it. And so, we have Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago – The Director’s Cut, a dra...
Taylor Swift Remakes Heartbreak Odyssey With Red (Taylor’s Version)
Red was already Taylor Swift’s greatest album, her bittersweet spot between the confessional heartache that defined the megastar’s earliest songwriting and the stadium-pop grandeur that would inform her next trio of colossal LPs (1989, Reputation and Lover). It was the ultimate millennial breakup album, a touchstone of lovelorn devastation, fury, hope and reflection for all those suburban teens and twenty-somethings similarly figuring their shit out — the era of “happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time.” And of course, Red, released in 2012, was a commercial mammoth; seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, certified seven times platinum and earning Swift her first Hot 100 No. 1 single in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” It was the project that planted her...
Snail Mail Hits the Emotional Sweet Spot on Valentine
Love hasn’t gotten any easier for Lindsey Jordan, but her heart is better equipped to sustain it on Valentine, her second studio album as Snail Mail (out November 5th via Matador Records). The 22-year old indie rock upstart reemerges after grappling with a tumultuous rise to stardom from her 2018 breakout debut Lush, which recounted a series of relationships that left her burned. However, she returns not hardened by her experiences, but enlightened, accountable, and against all odds, open to falling in deep once again. Now in sequence as the opening track, the album’s debut single “Valentine” serves as an even greater introduction to Snail Mail’s next phase; the initial enveloping synths and warbling flourishes tucked deep into the verses hint at both the vast expansion of sound and subtle...
Dexter: New Blood Can’t Quite Bring Its Madcap Antihero Back to Life: Review
The Pitch: Over a decade after the original series’… let’s say controversial finale, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) has been living off the grid. Last we saw him, he was a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest; now he’s packed up and moved to the sleepy, snowy upstate New York village of Iron Lake. He’s set himself up as Jim Lindsey, the unassuming town sweetheart, who mans the local hunting shop and brings cinnamon rolls to his customers. He’s even dating the town sheriff, Angela Bishop (Julia Jones), and has successfully tamped down the so-called Dark Passenger that drives him to kill. (Instead of his adoptive father Harry, it’s taken the shape of now-deceased sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), the devil in his ear who acts as his grim anti-conscience.) But naturally, Dexter: Ne...
Outside Lands 2021 Day 3 Live Gallery: Tame Impala, Caroline Polachek, Kehlani and More
Well, all good things come to an end, but no one can say the 2021 edition of Outside Lands didn’t go out with a bang. The Halloween weekend also gave many artists and attendees a chance to transform into hilarious and inventive personas — click through the gallery, below, to see photos of Caroline Polachek playing her set as Marie Antoinette, Cannons cosplaying as Kiss, Consequence’s February Artist of the Month Claud dressed as a panda, and headliner Tame Impala as The Wiggles on Sunday, October 31st. Needless to say, it was a pretty special way to close out the festival. After you check out the visual gallery, head over to our full recap of the weekend here. Advertisement Related Video Share this: You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what...
