Welcome to another installment of Cultural Sommelier. This week’s pairing includes two works of salacious, polarizing social critique: Mary Harron’s 2000 film, American Psycho, and Kanye West’s 2013 album, Yeezus. More
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After the blizzard this past week, I’m sure many of you are thinking of getting away, off to someplace warm and sunny. Some of you may even be planning trips for spring break. In honor of that well-worn idea, this edition of Cultural Sommelier will be focusing on the trashy pop art of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers and Miley Cyrus’s Bangerz. Writing about these two works in tandem feels like a no-brainer. More
Since the year will be coming to a close soon enough, I’m going to use this week’s Cultural Sommelier to highlight two of my favorite works from 2014: Arca’s debut album “Xen” and Jonathan Glazer’s film “Under the Skin,” starring Scarlett Johansson. They make for quite the pairing. More
In retrospect, Wes Anderson’s second feature film, “Rushmore,” looks like something of a blueprint for what we all know as a “Wes Anderson film.” From the visually-inspired, diorama-like set pieces to the montages set to British Invasion hits, “Rushmore” is the film where Anderson truly came into his own, with the idiosyncratic qualities that weren’t as readily apparent in his first feature, “Bottle Rocket.” Since its release in 1998, “Rushmore” has grown from a modest cult hit into one of the most revered films of the 90s. And for those of you who didn’t know, Wes Anderson has since become one of the greatest, most well-respected directors working today. More
Horror movie month continues! This week, I take a look at two finger-lickin’ good works from the American South. More
This week, I continue our look at classic horror movies and some equally horrific musical pairings. This time around, let’s start with John Carpenter’s tense, wickedly grotesque “The Thing,” adapted from the sci-fi novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr. More
This whole month, in honor of the great season of Halloween, Cultural Sommelier will be focusing on some classic movies of the horrifying, eerie, and disturbing variety and pairing them with some musical counterparts. More
“Night Drive” (the 2007 album by Chromatics) or”Drive” (the 2011 film by Nicolas Winding Refn), it doesn’t really matter. Both titles could perfectly capture either work; they go hand-in-hand. “The Telephone Call,” “The Killing Spree,” “Tick of the Clock”? Are they chapter titles or song titles? I’ll be the first to admit that pairing these two together is fairly obvious, but that doesn’t ruin the fact that it’s a damn near perfect match. Allow me to elaborate. More
Looking back at Quentin Tarantino’s stellar filmography, his 1997 film “Jackie Brown” feels like something of an outlier. Sure, it maintains his flair for iconic dialogue, stylization, set pieces, characters, and then some. All of these elements, however, are grounded in a greater sense of reality: the streets of Los Angeles and the surrounding area. More
In a 2011 interview with Pitchfork, Alex Zhang Hungtai, the man behind experimental/lo-fi/pastiche music project Dirty Beaches, said, “The way I approach my music projects is a lot like film in conception and delivery. The sound is akin to the look and soul of the film.” With a point-of-view like that, what a great artist to kick off BDCwire’s new feature, Cultural Sommelier, your guide to flavorful pop culture pairings. More