The New Republic

Ignore the title: This is not a film about a candelabra, but a very intriguing analysis of the face and what time and surgery can do to it. “Behind the Face” might have been a more suitable name, raising the question of whether there was any there there. Though the film was turned down by every Hollywood movie and relegated to HBO for being “too gay,” if you wonder whether the sex will be tough to take, don’t worry. But the surgery is something else. READ MORE >>

Once a year, some conservative media outlet feels peeved about the arts and publishes a listicle enumerating how a certain form or genre is inherently—often secretly—conservative. These exercises are mostly absurd, shouting out, "We will not be silenced!" when there is no danger of that at all. This year, rap got added to the list. READ MORE >>

The Driskill Hotel, a Romanesque brick and limestone hulk at the corner of Old Pecan and Brazos streets in downtown Austin, is the closest thing the Texas capital has to old-world glamour. The hotel also happens to be haunted, supposedly, by the ghost of the man whose portrait hangs at the stairs to the bar just off the lobby: Colonel Jesse Driskill, a cattle baron who made a fortune during and after the Civil War peddling longhorn to a famine-stricken region. READ MORE >>

In the taxonomy of contemporary music, “alt” can stand for more than “alternative.” For sure, the prefix is commonly used to signify a deviation from a genre’s traditional aesthetics: alt-rock, alt-country, alt-jazz, alt-folk. But “alt” can also mean “anti,” and I know of no instance so extreme as the one of “alt-cabaret,” a genre that has become a sensational vogue in London over the past several years and has recently emerged in New York to attack the entrenched performance traditions of the Great American Songbook. READ MORE >>

The basic premise of One-Man Focus Group is that cultural criticism shouldn't be the exclusive province of cinema, literature, music, and the like. Given the proper perspective and the presence of a reasonably articulate observer, virtually anything can be subjected to insightful, illuminating critique. Or at least that's the idea. READ MORE >>

Yes, it’s a huge comeback. But for whom? READ MORE >>

The facts were sketchy, and that seemed utterly appropriate to Donald Byrd. Last week, a lesser-known jazz-oriented pianist named Alex Bugnon posted on his Facebook page an announcement that Byrd had died on February 4, at age 80. READ MORE >>

Back in December, when Paul McCartney united with the surviving members of Nirvana to play a song at the READ MORE >>

My grandmother slept with the poultry man to help feed her six children, my mother told me many times. READ MORE >>

At a pre-inaugural party three nights ago, rapper Lupe Fiasco lived up to his reputation for stirring controversy when he played an extended, 30-minute version of his anti-Obama track “Words I Never Said.” For this, he was thrown off the stage by security guards. READ MORE >>