Arts

Palace of Mirrors Live, a vibrant performance DVD, showcases the virtuosic abilities of six-piece group Estradasphere. Their musical maelstrom of classical, metal, jazz, Balkan, Japanese, and surf is a spectacle to behold on stage.

Bob Colacello, one of the most creative biographical writers of his time, has released a collection of his photographs from his time as the editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (1971-1983).

Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald will act as keynote speaker this Friday, November 16 at the inaugural Alt-Film Festival. The event serves as an introduction to independent filmmaking and how to operate outside of the Hollywood structure.

Comic book writer/artist Jeffrey Brown’s latest work, Incredible Change-Bots, is a comedic, romantic, action-packed tale of a war-torn planet full of robots that can turn into vehicles. An homage to Transformers, the book chronicles two groups of robots — the good Awesomebots and the evil Fantasticons — and their battles after their arrival on Earth.

On May 9, 1974, the Pennsylvania Gazette published an editorial regarding the lack of unity in the colonies. The author, Benjamin Franklin, also provided a woodcut drawing of a snake cut into eight initialed parts (one for each colonial government) with the text “Join, or Die” underneath.

Hollywood’s favorite cinema pranksters, the Coen Brothers, return with another cinematic mish-mash in No Country for Old Men. The film combines two of their most mined sources of material, shop-worn film noir themes and sly Southern colloquialisms, into one unsatisfying whole. It could be Fargo, Texas, but without the hospitality.

In the 1970s, German artist Joseph Beuys, famous for his public performances and theories on art, politics, and society, developed the term Social Sculpture. The term, which became monumentally influential and continues to simmer in both the high and low art worlds alike, investigates “how we mold and shape the world in which we live” and led to the equally famous saying, “Everyone an Artist.”

Double Game, published by Violette Editions in 1999, was French author Sophie Calle’s first important book published in English, and it received international praise for its idea, text, and extraordinary design. The original edition has been out of print since its release.

Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis may be rock’s ultimate death-and-rebirth archetype. Like Kurt Cobain after him, his early suicide ensured that his visionary music would live long after he did. But in Control, director Anton Corbijn is more interested in the man than the mythos.

Hip-hop records have never had what one would call “substantial” liner notes. Obligatory credits to various producers and guests, a representative photo or two, and often indecipherable shout-outs are all that crowd the glossy pages of inserts to virtually every classic and current hip-hop album, much to the frustration of detail-hungry fans.

From 1979-1991, Minneapolis quartet The Replacements, consisting of Paul Westerberg, Chris Mars, Tommy Stinson, and Bob Stinson (and later Slim Dunlap), became known as much for their irreverent attitudes and explosive live shows as they were for penning pop-rock songs with punk appeal.