Arts & Lifestyle

Alfredson's provocative tale of a child-vampire seduces us into the dark with well-acted, yet unaffected characters that eerily promise to persevere even if we stop watching.

The Tornados, The Martells, The Driving Stupid, The Syndicats and The Blue Men all hold Meek responsible for their success and ultimately a new classification of sound beyond ‘60s British pop.

Where “Return to Cookie Mountain” conjured up images of a chorus of ghosts on a dark street late at night, “Dear Science” sounds more like the tail end of a party in a Williamsburg loft.

"Watch This, Not That" is a regular guide that saves you the trouble of suffering through the bad movies to get to the good ones.

Seldom does a genre incite the kind of audience camaraderie that a horror film can. “Quarantine” solicited every gasp, scream, laugh, and jeer without the expense of good taste.

Of Montreal will always be one of those bands that just stand out. They aren't even from Montreal. But, they are the American dream of musicians.

According to the title of M83’s spring release, “Saturdays” equal “Youth.” According to the lyrics, so do Dreams, Stars, Highways, Galaxies, Owning the Sky and having intercourse while flying. On his spring ’08 release, songwriter Anthony Gonzalez struck out with the explicit goal of capturing teenage-hood in sound. Thus, the French artist’s latest work is notable both for this towering aspiration and the wooden clichés that prop it up.

If you have to listen to an album fifty times before realizing you don't really like it, it's probably a good album. Electric President's “Sleep Well” has that effect, sporting a sound that is grand but quiet and understated in an artful way.

Despite the spirit of reform, Cold War Kids remain loyal to their defining elements, reviving the usual suspects for their fall-staging: the lovers, liars, livers and possessors of generally every slightly-forbidden human emotion gone awry. Sorry, but this album is no cheerier than the last.

Kings of Leon, the band of Tennessee-
born kin, released their latest album on Sept. 23. Boring and prosaic, it is a step down from their previous work. “Depressive” sums it up; emotionally depressive, with minor chords dominating the tracks, and technically depressive, with a drought of imagination in song structure.

If bad band names were food, between acts like …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Earth could rejoice that her children need no longer suffer from hunger. And if this wonderful world were so, Portugal. The Man would be Live Aid, Bono on a charitable bender and an Oprah special all in one.

The skinny stall of a bar, known as the Mercury Lounge, was merely a waiting room for the Sunday night show. Brown velvet curtains converted glass doors, hiding the main room. TPC took the stage shortly after 11.

The Brooklyn electronica duo, Ratatat, have deemed words a thing of the past with their newest aphonic release, “LP3,” which dropped on July 8. Maybe they try to over-compensate with excellent instrumentation, but listeners would never think they were being cheated.

There certainly is no intelligence allowed in Ben Stein's recent documentary, Expelled. In the film, Stein is searching through academia not for Ferris Bueller, but for the so-called "fascist" dictations that mainstream science, which supports evolution, has cast upon intelligent design.