PHOENIX STAFF

Beijing 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:15:58 GMT

Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

Win tickets to Grizzly Bear

PHOENIX STAFF — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:17:15 GMT

Free tickets to the show at the MFA
Text the word GRIZZLY to 22122*, and you will be entered into a random drawing to win yourself and a pal a pair of tickets to see Grizzly Bear on August 14 at the MFA.

Slideshow: 50 Bands, 50 States

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:54:27 GMT

Posters, records, and other memorabilia trace the history of our nation's most important bands
In honor of this week's 50 Bands, 50 States feature, we scoured Boston Phoenix archivist David Bieber's treasure trove of rare musical paraphernalia, in search of the best stuff from the best bands. Here's a taste of what we dug up.

In honor of this week's "50 Bands, 50 States" feature, we scoured Boston Phoenix archivist David Bieber's treasure trove of rare musical paraphernalia, in search of the best stuff from the best bands. Here's a taste of what we dug up. All photos courtesy of David Bieber Archives.

A cover from a bootlegged live Stooges album, signed by Iggy himself. The Stooges are our best group from Michigan.

50 Bands, 50 States

PHOENIX STAFF — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:42:50 GMT

We pick the best new artist from every state
The Phoenix declares the best new artist from each of the 50 states. Plus: We declare the best all-time band and solo artist from each state (and the District of Columbia) — 153 winners in all! Click on any state in the map to get started.

Slideshow: Tattoo you

PHOENIX STAFF — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:09:58 GMT

Some of Boston's best tattoos
Inspired by the Peabody Essex Museum’s current exhibition on Maori tattoos, we raised a call to adventurously inked souls in Boston.

Inspired by the Peabody Essex Museum’s current exhibition on Maori tattoos, we raised a call to adventurously inked souls in Boston. You sent in photos — from the artistic to the sadistic — along with quotes about what your body art means to you. A panel of tattoo artists (plus Darkbuster’s Lenny Lashley) judged the entries.

I have always been a diehard sox fan and I always wanted a Red Sox Tattoo to show I wasn't a Bobby Bandwagon fan with an average tattoo. So I got a half sleeve of what is heaven on earth, Fenway Park and the backround of Fenway and both the 2004 and 2007 world series banner. My name is Paul and I'm from Weymouth Mass.

VIDEO: Throw some C's on it

PHOENIX STAFF — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:11:21 GMT

2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics celebrate

Summer Guide 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:59:36 GMT

Fossil-free fun, a new look at the freedom trail, beach books, eco-tourism, and complete summer listings

Guide to Pride

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:58:31 GMT

The parade route, the festival, the block party, a complete Pride calender, and more

Best Music Poll 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:27:11 GMT

Local and national winners from our annual readers' poll

Coachella 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:41:16 GMT

Video and MP3s: Kate Nash, MGMT, Vampire Weekend live from the WFNX Coachella party lounge

Best Music Poll concert

PHOENIX STAFF — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:01:19 GMT

May 10 at the Bank of America Pavilion

The Best 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:33:54 GMT

Our readers pick the best places to eat, drink, party, and shop. Plus, special tips from Phoenix staffers.

The Best of Arts and Entertainment 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:10:58 GMT

Are you experienced?

The Best of Shopping 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:08:15 GMT

This is Boston, not Paris, but we get by

The best of City Life 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:07:07 GMT

We may go home early, but we know how to have a good time while we're awake

The Best of Food + Drink 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:35:04 GMT

Our city's tables have no reason to apologize

The 100 Unsexiest men of 2008

PHOENIX STAFF — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:55:26 GMT

Our annual survey of the planet's least lust-worthy lads

The Boston Phoenix–Alumni Film Critics’ Poll

PHOENIX STAFF — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:28:42 GMT

Our first-ever round-up of the past year’s best movies, with a little help from our friends
It’s true, the Boston Phoenix has never won an Oscar.

Daniel Day-Lewis

It’s true, the Boston Phoenix has never won an Oscar. But our fictional equivalent, the Back Bay Mainline, did help Joan Micklin Silver win an Otto Dibelius award at the Berlin International Film Festival. (Take that, Oscar.) Silver’s 1977 comedy/drama Between the Lines (starring John Heard and Jeff Goldblum) concerns the operations of a Boston alternative weekly, modeled after the Phoenix and its former competitor, the Real Paper.

Still questioning our cinema cred? Well, when it comes to film criticism, the Phoenix (originally called Boston After Dark) has one of the richest histories of any American publication. In our 41 years, we’ve been privileged to publish works by some of the best critics in the country. (A privilege we still enjoy today.) Many of those whose bylines we’ve featured have gone on to prominent positions as critics for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun, the St. Louis PostDispatch, Salon, Entertainment Weekly, and New York magazine, among others.

With the Oscars coming up, we figured this group would have as intelligent and relevant opinions as any to weigh in on contemporary film. Thus the formation of the first annual Boston Phoenix–Alumni Film Critics’ Poll.

It’s hard to remember everyone who has written about film in the paper’s four-plus decades, let alone track them down. Some we simply could not find. Others were no longer reviewing movies full-time and ruled themselves ineligible. At least one declined participation for philosophical reasons, believing critics should not play the poll game. Another is now a Hollywood player and didn’t think it kosher — or politic — to pass judgment on his colleagues’ fare. But we did manage to round up 30 past and present contributors for what we feel is a pulsing survey of the films of 2007. Move over, Oscar: Otto is in town.

Scoring
Participants were asked to rank their top 10 films of the year, and their top five performances in five other categories: best director, actor, actress, supporting actor, and supporting actress. For best picture, we awarded 10 points for a number-one selection, nine points for a number-two selection, and so on. For the remaining categories, five points were given for a first-place selection, four points for a second-place selection . . . you get the idea.

Once all 30 ballots were tallied, we dropped nominees’ high and low scores in each category and tabulated the rest. (Nominees that received less than three votes in any given category are not listed in the final count.) In all, 142 films received at least one vote in any category, including, most surprisingly, one tally for Norbit.

Are we grading on a curve?

PHOENIX STAFF — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:08:11 GMT

Peter Keough’s Oscar Scorecard
It’s a solid B, which isn’t bad considering the vagaries of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.

Defending the universally loathed

PHOENIX STAFF — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:56:06 GMT

The Phoenix looks with loving eyes at some of the worst people, places, and things in the world — and gives them a big hug
Forsaken entities deserve a second chance.

Okay, it’s a new year. You’ve “resoluted” this and forsworn that, all so your waistline will shrink and your breath won’t stink. (Good luck with that, by the way.) But as long as you’re being so forgiving with your mind, body, and spirit, perhaps you can extend your generosity to other entities that you previously scrutinized a little too harshly. Forsaken entities that deserve a second chance.

Of course, not every reviled person, place, and thing can be defended. Some have no redeemable qualities whatsoever — think George Steinbrenner, Nazi Germany, adult-contemporary music. But there are other critically and popularly despised articles and individuals worth rescuing from the scrapheap of judgments past

For this exercise, we asked our staff to play defense lawyer for the universally loathed, to find a spark of life in a black hole, to kiss instead of kick. So with an open mind, read on. And embrace that which you thought was un-embraceable.

Album: Standing in the Spotlight, Dee Dee King (a/k/a Dee Dee Ramone)
In the late ’80s, bassist Dee Dee Ramone (née Douglas Colvin) quit his eponymous band and made the absurd decision to record a rap album, under the nom de mic Dee Dee King. It’s since been disparaged as one of the worst albums ever made, and, yes, seen as a hip-hop record, it’s easy to see why. Dee Dee’s rhymes and “rap” vocal phrasing are clueless, and the incoherent execution of the record — in every minute detail, from its pink album cover and photos of Dee Dee, in all his scumbag CBGB glory, mugging with a Run-DMC–style black fedora and Mercedes dookie chains, to ludicrous boasts like “I’m the baddest rapper in Whitestone, Queens” — seems like a lackadaisical gag. (It wasn’t.)

But seen as the great lost Ramones album, Spotlight is more than a rapper’s delight: it’s a happy accident that captures the raw, naive talents of an outsider artist. On display in Spotlight is the formula that fueled the Forest Hills Fab Four’s Rocket to Russia and other early-career successes (successes arguably responsible for every good album made by any rock artist after 1976): cartoonish bravado and fantasy narratives (meeting a mermaid in “Commotion in the Ocean,” becoming the world’s best wrestler in “The Crusher,” being a fucking rapper in multiple tracks); raw id (“I Want What I Want When I Want It”); Spector-esque girl-group vocals (here provided by Debbie Harry on “Mashed Potato Time”); political naiveté bordering on idiocy and a Teuton-centric world view (“German Kid,” which features rapping in Deutsch, and the admittedly cringe-worthy English couplet, “I used to live in Berlin/It’s pretty cool to be half German”).

Dee Dee was delusional, clumsy, and lost, but he was also a goofy genius who, even at his drug-and-drink-addled worst, could pen deceptively simple, hook-riddled nuggets.

— Lance Gould