Artsweek Editor

February 5, 2009

Clint Eastwood Has Still Got It, Baby

By Artsweek Editor

You almost begin to feel like cattle as a journalist covering red carpet events at Santa Barbara International Film Festival. You're sent through the chute with your fellow journalists and paparazzi and then made to stan...

January 29, 2009

Tears of Joy *****

By Artsweek Editor

The first thing that will strike you about listening to The Crying Light, the latest release from Antony and the Johnsons, is the almost ridiculously heartbreaking beauty of the whole affair. Antony Hegarty's voice falls...

January 8, 2009

The Neverending Story **

By Artsweek Editor

David Fincher and Brad Pitt have notably collaborated before, bringing Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club to the big screen, creating an icon of modern cinema in the process. It would then stand to reason that an adaptation of...

December 4, 2008

Robotic Engineering (0 stars)

By Artsweek Editor

Wherever T-Pain is, he needs to be dragged out in front of the public and put into the stockade for crimes committed against music. He has directly contributed to this increasingly distressing vocorder lunacy that has in...

November 20, 2008

Bond Is Back… ***

By Artsweek Editor

James Bond movies are supposed to be fun, escapist and entertaining fare that pass in one ear and out the other without a great deal of consequence and with a great deal of snappy one-liners, smoking hot women, cars that...

November 13, 2008

Dance Dance Revolution

By Artsweek Editor

To the throng that waited outside the Thunderdome at 6 p.m. to be let into the concert, I tip my hat and shake my head. The doors opened at 6:30 p.m., but Lupe Fiasco didn't take the stage until around 10 p.m., leaving t...

November 6, 2008

Porntastic ****

By Artsweek Editor

"Zack and Miri Make a Porno" sees Kevin Smith doing lots of things that he has never done before -- moving out of his favored New Jersey locale and into a slightly different but equally industrial corner of the northeast...

October 30, 2008

Androgynous Vamping ***

By Artsweek Editor

Skeletal Lamping is definitive proof that Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes has taken a dive off the deep end. The Athens, Ga. band takes its brand of freaky, psychedelic folk and infuses it with a sexual energy more reminiscen...

October 23, 2008

Imperfect Monotony

By Artsweek Editor

Until this point, Keane had never released an album in the same year as Coldplay. Maybe Perfect Symmetry is a sign that the band has finally branched out from unabashedly jocking its countrymen's sound in a bid for popul...

October 16, 2008

‘Body of Lies’ Review

By Artsweek Editor

Who knew that a Ridley Scott-directed movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe about the capture of an Osama bin Laden-like terrorist before he strikes in America could be the worst crime against eyes since "Ep...

October 9, 2008

Free Flow

By Artsweek Editor

T.I.'s songs require more than one listen for the listener to truly "get it."

October 2, 2008

Palahniuk-Lite

By Artsweek Editor

Chuck Palahniuk should be handed some kind of award for being arguably the most darkly creative author of his generation (not to mention one of its most popular).

May 22, 2008

Extravaganza 2008

By Artsweek Editor, Virginia Yapp

A thick cloud of smoke hung over Harder Stadium's infield, where a crowd of students, community members and out-of-towners gathered for UCSB's 10th annual Extravaganza music festival.