As most music fans know, rock music is hardly the most popular kid at the table these days. Yet even while rock as a whole has lost some of its prominence in our culture, one strand has recently flourished : pop-emo, a ’90s/2000s movement that crystallizes the transformation of emo from Rites of Spring’s thrashing…
When I was a kid, precious few things made me as happy as stumbling upon Mrs. Doubtfire on TV. No matter what I was doing or where it was, I would always plop down and watch it til the end; I’ve probably seen the first act twice and the ending 12 or 13 times. And…
I can’t lie—I’ve been accused of wallowing in depressing music more than is probably healthy for a (moderately) well-adjusted person. I consider myself both happy and positive (when I’m not reviewing a terrible movie), but my thirst for drama in music is often sated by tortured romanticism, sepulchral synths, self-paralyzing lyrics, the works. But it’s…
Here at EarnThis, we spend a lot of time praising great works of art. It’s safe to say that designation will not be reached by anything on this list of 10 films. However, I’m a firm believer that there is a particular subset of movies that, when stumbled upon late at night on TV, as…
(Do not read if you don’t want spoilers.) How I Met Your Mother concluded after 9 seasons last night with its all-time most-watched episode. And all those extra fans were, shall we say, not thrilled with the serpentine narration’s final twist. In an episode that provoked a text message from one of EarnThis’s founders that simply stated…
I got into Taking Back Sunday and Brand New completely at the wrong time. When I was in high school, I listened to music for 20somethings. Now that I’m in my mid-20s, I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to stuff written for, consumed by, and most heavily applicable to high schoolers. And few groups…
Sigh. Some of our four loyal readers may be all Oscar‘d-out, but after that atrocity exhibition of a telecast last night, I just can’t sit idly by while it goes largely accepted. As I’ve chronicled, I love (the idea of) the Oscars, which is why it irritates me so much that we can’t get the…
I’m a bigger fan of the Academy Awards than anyone else I know. That’s not all on my end—I don’t view the Oscars as some flawless representation of entertainment or anything. No, I make that statement in part because the Oscars—coming up this Sunday night—are one of the easiest punchlines in the world. No one, it…
The Wolf of Wall Street, I can already tell, is never going to get its proper discussion. Whenever someone says anything bad about the movie, it’ll concern its vulgarity, its garishness, maybe its running time—not the actual content of it. And that’s a shame, because Wolf—based on a memoir from Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who…
A little while back, you might recall, Dan wrote a paean to Billy Joel’s 100 Greatest Songs. Naturally, as a male, my first reaction was: I have to equal or surpass his work–by providing a list of the top 100 songs from my favorite (probably) artist, U2. As someone whose number of U2 concerts is in…