"Don't worry, be happy / In every life we have some trouble / But when you worry, you make it double / Don't worry, be happy." These are the famous lyrics to one of the best-known songs of the last decade.
A light French comedy about a kind-hearted waitress that succeeds both financially and critically and still leaves viewers reeling from its visuals and charm?
The much-ballyhooed death of irony after Sept. 11 has been declared null and void. Turns out, irony was merely on hiatus.
Of all the exaggerating hype mavens who manically laud a band with the pretension of discovering its supposed genius while harboring a fickle desire to eventually tear them down, the British press truly operates in a class by itself. Presented with mostly painfully somber and utterly derivative mop-tops who harbor no desire past whining about how much they hate their girl-devastated lives, the Brit mags erect a superficial critical-fawning.
Ever since he exploded on to the country scene, Alan Jackson has been a connection between the old-school honky-tonk country and the newer genre known as pop country.
As hyped as the Strokes were in the States, Starsailor landed its debut album in the U.K. last fall with gusts of critical acclaim in the air already.
An inept Whodunnit can quickly become "Who cares?" Thank God "Gosford Park" is in the hands of the more than apt Robert Altman and his - as a line in the movie says - "gift of anticipation." If you're asking who Robert Altman is, he's responsible for the classics "Nashville," "The Player" and "Short Cuts," as well as several other lesser works like "Cookie's Fortune." "Gosford Park" takes the standard plot-centered, clue-scattering mystery with its typical stereotypical pawns and re-establishes it as a slow, steady chess game of character study.
This play wants you to think about sex. Every type of sex, it seems, between nearly every conceivable combination of people.
Fantasy's about as popular as it gets these days, so the timing couldn't have been better for the long-anticipated release of Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring," the first installment in the cinematic version of J.R.R.
A young woman and her estranged father sit in an upscale restaurant. In a nostalgic ploy, he orders her ice cream, claiming he wants to "repair the damage." Flatly, the daughter challenges, "I'll bet you don't even know my middle name." "That's a trick question.
Hip-hop is supposedly pop music's most fickle genre, one where second chances come around as often as hit singles from Craig Mack.
The RZA gets no love. As hip-hop spreads like a conflagration burning down the barriers separating once exclusive genres, his producing peers find themselves flooded with a demand to lend their production prowess.
Admit it. The first time you heard No Doubt's new single, "Hey Baby," you knew you hated it. That contagious chorus, that rapper.
In his first release of new music (not counting the unsuccessful experiment with his alter ego Chris Gaines), Garth Brooks proves with "Scaregrow" why he is the most popular country music singer.
"In the Widening Gyre" addresses the question, "How do we deal with tragedy if we no longer believe in 'the gods'?" It is a question that the play's author, Lear deBessonet, a fourth-year political and social thought major, had long been asking herself. DeBessonet's exploration of the question is staged in this original work that opened yesterday in the Helms Theatre, the smaller theater located next to Culbreth. Considering recent events, this question obviously has become much more timely than was perhaps initially intended.
In the year of our Lord 1998, Fred Durst erected the foundation upon which he turned inane rap-rock into a holy empire. King Durst prudently assembled a court capable of assisting his devious hijacking of commercial airwaves with steroid-boosted metal riffs, rudimentary beats and a message that plundered hip-hop's most obnoxious characteristics. To the king's right slumped Prince Aaron Lewis, following Durst's advice toward fame while harboring no hope of challenging his histrionics.
On "The Sinister Urge," Rob Zombie unleashes his first album of new material since 1998. It's destined to be a hit for one reason and one reason alone: Rob Zombie knows what he's good at artistically and he knows how to deliver it consistently. This is an unabashed metal album.
"Spy Game" is the new espionage thriller directed by Tony Scott ("Top Gun," "Enemy of the State") and starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.
Dragons are not merely storybook figments of your imagination, but charmed (and dangerous) creatures that hatch from eggs and spout fire.
"Crazy For You" has no devastating car crashes or typical scenes of horrific violence used to draw the interest of film or theatergoers.
