The Pretty Hate Machine

I think a lot of ’90s youth angst was cosmetic. All those black-clad teens shuffling around small town malls in Tripp pants and band tees got rides there and back from loving parents. Their favorite bands’ arch-nemesis was plain old Middle America. That’s a boring villain. The punks fought political upheaval. Rappers fight for their lives. Disaffected teens fought stasis and conformity. Their sharpest weapon was shock. Transgressive art resonates as response to the very specific social sensibilities of the times in which it is created. That often dates it; it’s a laugh to peer back out of the daily absurdity of 2018 to a time when the country seemed united in terror at the sight and sounds of an artist like Marilyn Manson. He was always just a great glam guy in elaborate corpse paint. Like a lot of the figureheads of the ’90s alternative scene, he was just trying to create a space for kids who didn’t feel like they fit into the roles society afforded them. It’s ludicrous tha...

It’s been nearly three years since the  death of David Bowie , and his widow, the  supermodel Iman , still wears a gold pendant that reads “David” around her neck, a reminder of her late husband. Or, rather, her husband, she corrects anyone who calls him her “late husband”—as she explains  in a new interview  with the Net-a-Porter editorial site Porter Edit, “He is always going to be my husband.” In the story, Iman opens up about her marriage to the late glam-rock star, their family, and why she’s not looking for a new relationship any time soon. “Sometimes, I don’t want people to know how sad I am,” she says. “People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so strong,’” she adds with a roll of her eyes, Porter Edit describes. “I’m not strong—I am just trying to keep it together.” Bowie and Iman were married for 24 years, during which the supermodel lived under the unremitting gaze of paparazzi and tabloid items. But, according to Porter Edit, the public attention has ...

The feisty writer, editor and publisher was responsible for such iconic characters as Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, Black Panther and the Fantastic Four — 'nuff said. Stan Lee, the legendary writer, editor and publisher of Marvel Comics whose fantabulous but flawed creations made him a real-life superhero to comic book lovers everywhere, has died. He was 95.  Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told  The Hollywood Reporter . Lee's final few years were tumultuous. After Joan, his wife of 69 years, died in July 2017, he sued executives at POW! Entertainment — a company he founded in 2001 to develop film, TV and video game properties — for $1 billion alleging fraud, then...

Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor talked about winning the Academy Award for Original Score for his work with Atticus Ross on the 2011's "The Social Network" soundtrack, telling Variety : "When 'Social Network' came up, having done NIN for quite some time, I'd had every decision ultimately hang on my head, from what color the lights are down to what outfit somebody's wearing, and it was exciting to be able to step into a role that was more supportive and not being the top of that pyramid. "The feeling that you could contribute something to make that better was an exciting professional change. And coming out of an intense few months of working in service to the team, then it became a little more fun to be the boss again in a Nine Inch Nails situation for a little while. "It's that thing of being able to kind of wear different hats for different power dynamics with different people and realizing something that couldn...

     Claire Foy stars as Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” Even the tattoo is worse. One of the signatures of Lisbeth Salander, the hacker-heroine of the Millennium series, is her tattoo of a dragon, which has morphed as the screen franchise has, too. In  the original Swedish movie  of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” an inky monster covers a huge swath of Salander’s pale back, its teeth and long claws angling for a fight. In David Fincher’s Hollywood take, a kinetic, ferocious-looking dragon drapes over Salander’s left shoulder, its leathery wings dynamically folded and long tail winding down the side of her back. In the latest and emptiest Salander screen vehicle, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” the dragon perches on Salander’s back, its wings fanned and mouth open, like a hungry baby bird. The dragon looks as if it paused in midflight to catch a worm or pose for a coat of arms. It’s as blankly ornamental as the rest of the...

Every year when the nominees for the  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame  and the contenders for a rock / metal Grammy are revealed, artists and fans are split, typically deriding both establishments.  Nine Inch Nails  mastermind  Trent Reznor joined in, explaining that he doesn't care about receiving accolades from either of them. "I saw somebody write something online or comment on Twitter like, 'What could be less rock and roll than the fuckin’ Hall Of Fame.' And that is authentically how I feel about it," Reznor told  Stereogum  in a recent interview when asked about being snubbed from the nominee ballot for the Rock Hall's 2019 class. Nine Inch Nails had been nominated twice in the past, but remain on the outside of the Hall. Reznor acknowledged that he feels it is "nice to be appreciated," but added that it is nicer when the appreciation is "coming from a place that you care about." Turning his attention toward the Grammys, he ...

Former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna discussed Trent Reznor’s reaction to Johnny Cash covering “Hurt” in a new  AL  interview. I read you played the sparse drums on the original Nine Inch Nails version of “Hurt.” What did you think of Johnny Cash’s cover of that song? I loved it, and then I read that I guess Trent didn’t like it at the time or something and I was really shocked by that. I thought it was brilliant. It made me cry. Who doesn’t love Johnny Cash? What do you think it was about Nine Inch Nails’ music that fans connected with?  Lyrically it was interesting. A lot of people could relate. We were young and angsty and people were interested because they hadn’t heard sounds like what they were hearing. And one thing Trent was really good at was taking bands like Skinny Puppy and Coil and Ministry and what that (industrial) genre was doing and made it more digestible for the more average music listener. And it worked.  By the end of...

In 1993, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails composed music for the first station ID for MTV Japan created by the inimitable Shinya Tsukamoto, director of cyberpunk/horror films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Of course, Reznor later penned the theme song for Tsukamoto's 2010 film "Tetsuo: The Bullet Man." Article Credit: boingboing.net

Rami Malek, center, stars as Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Gwilym Lee, left, is Brian May, and Joe Mazzello is John Deacon. Credit Credit Alex Bailey/20th Century Fox “Bohemian Rhapsody,”  the song by Queen , lasts nearly six minutes, a very long time for a pop single back in 1975. A baroque blend of gibberish, mysticism and melodrama, the track is a can of earworms, one of those musical confections that get into your head whether you like it or not and stay there forever. Some of us who were devoted radio listeners in the mid-’70s will surely sit up in our death beds and whisper “Galileo, Galileo, Figaro” with our final breaths. “Bohemian Rhapsody,”  the movie about Queen , lasts more than two hours, not a very long time by modern feature standards, even though it feels interminable. A baroque blend of gibberish, mysticism and melodrama, the film seems engineered to be as unmemorable as possible, with the exception of the prosthetic teeth...

The writer and director of 'Mid90s' shares his love for Nate Dogg and why he decided not to release a physical version of the film's soundtrack. It’s 2018 and Jonah Hill has made an actual goddamn masterpiece. His debut feature  Mid90s , written and directed by Hill and in theatres now, is a stark, hilarious, and deeply emotional coming-of-age movie about a 13-year-old boy (Sunny Suljic) who befriends a group of teen skateboarders so he can escape his violent household. It’s as personal as taking a long look inside his childhood bedroom, reflecting the actor-turned-auteur’s obsessive love of California skate culture and Death Row-era hip-hop. But even after you take in  Mid90s’  sumptuous cinematography (the film is shot on Super 16mm in the sun-kissed parking lots and avenues of downtown Los Angeles), and heartbreaking performances by a cast of brilliant newcomers (it’s seriously  Goodfellas  with tweens), one fact remains undeniable: Jonah Hill has ...