A new film premiered this year that is truly one of a kind. whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir was made by Eve Sussman and her collaborators, known as the Rufus Corporation.  They shot most of the footage in Kazakhstan, improvising the script and taking advantage of the Soviet Union’s ...

Video: watch the trailer

This weekend, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented a new work of originality, power, and beauty that left an audience slack-jawed. Brooklyn Babylon is a collaboration between the graphic novelist Danijel Zezelj and composer Darcy James Argue, and it is destined to be considered a classic of the ...

Jesmyn Ward was at the tail end of her summer break when Hurricane Katrina struck her hometown of Delisle, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast. In the days leading up to the storm, she was supposed to return to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to start teaching. "But because I’m always so homesick,” she tells Kurt Andersen ...

Bonus Track: Jesmyn Ward reads from Salvage the Bones

“General Orders No. 9” was the document in which Robert E. Lee ordered his troops to surrender to Ulysses S. Grant.  A film of the same name by Robert Persons never refers to this document or to the Civil War itself, which is strange.  There is a lot ...

The first track on Wild Flag’s debut release is called “Romance,” and ends with this: We love the sound, the sound is what found us, sound is the love between me and you. I love how we don’t know who the “you” is.  The song might be about a lover, but the way Carrie Brownstein switches to “we” suggests something else.  She could be singing to us fans, who’ve kept the indie-rock flame alive in our hearts. ...

Until the movie District 9 came out two years ago, “South African science fiction” didn’t ring any bells for Americans. But that may change. The winner of this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award, more or less the Pulitzer of sci-fi, is a journalist and novelist from Cape Town. Lauren Beukes’ novel is called Zoo City ...

Bonus Track: Lauren Beukes reads from Zoo City

There are ex-spouses who communicate through their lawyers; ex-spouses who send each other Christmas cards; ex-spouses who remain cordial out of affection or for the sake of the kids.  And there are ex-spouses who perform together, playing duets for bass guitar. ...

At 91 years of age, Kitty Wells is the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. And she can still surprise unsuspecting listeners. Despite her demure gingham dresses and sweet plaintive melodies, Wells was a radical. Some of her songs all but declare infidelity and promiscuousness.  Laura Cantrell — a singer and songwriter, and a...

Video: Laura Cantrell performs “I Don't Claim to Be an Angel”

No stranger to controversy — the cliché fits Tony Kushner, whose groundbreaking play cycle Angels in America (subtitle A Gay Fantasia on National Themes) was one of the major flashpoints in the modern culture war.  Now Kushner's views are once again subject of debate, this time from an unexpected quarter.

Mark my words: the beginning of the 21^st century is going to be remembered as a golden age of chamber music. A case in point is the new debut from the Janus Trio, I Am Not.

This is the handsomest set of the essays that made H. L. Mencken famous.

Using a whammy bar and a fuzz box, Hendrix captured the sound of bombs falling overseas and screaming protestors.  “I didn’t think it was unorthodox,” Hendrix said. “I thought it was beautiful.”

Matt Schickele is a tragically underrated songwriter who has put out a handful of solo records of piercing strangeness and beauty. Delicate and jagged, Schickele's harmonies constantly edge toward the dissonant while staying just this side of earworm. On The Badger Game, he sings over perfectly realized small chamber arrangements, but there's nothing trendy about it. Son of the composer and educator Peter Schickele, Matt comes to his classical eclecticism by birthright, and he has composed an opera (in progress), a large number of published bagpipe tunes, and music in many other genres. Fans of Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird should all take note: this record bears repeated -- obsessively repeated -- listening.

A volume of collected stories by any writer can be daunting, but Lydia Davis’s are all so small and seemingly light that dipping in and out feels easy. Her tone often seems dry or ironic (as with the wonderfully titled 'Samuel Johnson Is Indignant'). But beware: Davis packs a punch. ...

Guillermo del Toro was an inspired pick to direct the The Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  If anybody can keep Bilbo from getting cute – and keep Gollum genuinely creepy -- it’s the director of Pan’s Labyrinth.  When del Toro visited Studio 360 last ...

For more than fifteen years Sam Coomes led the band Quasi along with the drummer Janet Weiss - who has been his ex-wife for most of that time. Coomes tells the story of how he found his calling as a rock musician. It all began ...

Caetano Veloso is called the Bob Dylan of Brazil; it may be Dylan who’s flattered there.  At 67, Veloso continues to make music with the grace of a poet and the ebullience of a kid.  In recent years his sound has been reinvigorated by the sharp edges of his son ...

The late Leslie Buck (nee Laszlo Büch) had no training in graphics – he was in the cup business – but he had an eye for design, and he achieved something singular: an immortal disposable cup.  The pseudo-Grecian lettering and ornament celebrated the venerable New York institution of the Greek ...