AUTHOR: Adam Kern

There are few Sinophiles out there without a healthy respect, even envy, for the vibrancy of Japanese culture, especially its all-powerful manga comics which have permanently emblazoned the Barbie Doll sex babe and the unstoppable ninja warrior on the popular imagination. These constructs have antecedents and Adam ... Read more »

ARTIST: Mary J. Blige

In her first new album since 2005’s multiple Grammy-Award winning "The Breakthrough," Mary J. Blige makes the artistic admission that, despite all the success, she is still human. While sincere, the album isn’t painful, and the first single “Just Fine” proved an instant hit ... Read more »

pianographique.net

Used to be you needed thousands of kuai of equipage to spin mad tracks. No longer. Pianographique turns your QWERTY keyboard into an audio/visual sampler, with every letter and number setting off a snippet of music and an animated visual. Different sets give you a separate collection ... Read more »

DIRECTOR: Marc Forster

This tale of betrayal and repentance from director Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball," "Finding Neverland") begins in 2000, when an Afghan emigre returns to Kabul and confronts painful memories from his childhood in the 1970’s. Based on the best selling novel by Khaled Hosseini, the film ... Read more »

DIRECTOR: Chris Weitz

Based on the first book of Philip Pullman's “His Dark Materials” trilogy, this elaborate fantasy transports us to a world where people’s souls manifest themselves as animals, bears talk and 12-year-old Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards) embarks on a perilous adventure to the ... Read more »

postsecret.blogspot.com

What started as an art project has become one of the Web's most viewed blogs. People anonymously mail in secrets on the back of homemade postcards to Postsecret, anything from the trivial to the profound, from embarrassing habits to hopes and dreams. At the moment blogspot ... Read more »

ARTIST: Alicia Keys

The long-awaited follow up to the award-winning “Diary of Alicia Keys” brings even more soulful and gut-wrenchingly emotional songwriting to the table, embodied by the album’s first single, “No One.” A slight departure from previous work, expect to hear more echoes of Keys’ early R’n ... Read more »

AUTHOR: Yu Hua (translated by Allan Barr)

Word on smart people street is that Chinese writer Yu Hua is edging closer and closer to a Nobel nomination. Thankfully for Western audiences, there is already a rich body of texts floating around, rendered by excellent translators, of which “Chronicle of a ... Read more »

In Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men, a film adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, the barren Texas landscape takes on a mythological grandeur. Yet once the movie gets going we realize that this country is no mere backdrop. Instead, it is a character itself, a ... Read more »

Shopping and temple-ing in Japan’s ancient capital.

Kyoto fully lives up to the Japanese image with ultra-slick service; a convenience store where you can walk in naked and come out with a whole new identity; and a show on TV where girls pull suction bras off each other with ... Read more »

BAND: Carsick Cars

Widely hailed as one of the brightest talents to come out of China in many a yue, wonderkids Carsick Cars exploded onto the Beijing scene in the spring of 2005. Fast forward two years and they now dominate the scene to such an extent that it is ... Read more »

AUTHOR: Jonathan Spence

Jonathan Spence is the greatest living scholar of pre-modern Chinese history. From his comfortable sinecure at Yale, he has delivered to the world book after book detailing the vicissitudes of medieval China (Ming-Qing is his specialty) through the comfortable valence of individuals. His latest work revisits old ... Read more »

ARTIST: Britney Spears

Britney—love her or just want to slap her around a bit to keep up your indie credentials—is a powerhouse of pop. Her latest album isn’t a departure so much as a Madonna-ization, as she’s taken her bootie call lyrics and pasted them on ... Read more »

www.chinese-tools.com/tools

A wayward character pops up that has you flummoxed and you’re not about to pull out your dictionary to hunt it down. Chinese Tools offers a score of handy tools to aid you in your Hanzi woes. Look up words in Chinese and English in ... Read more »

DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis

The new IMAX blockbuster is a live-action/animation mix, like Zemeckis’ 2004 holiday hit “Polar Express.” But while “Express” targeted kids, “Beowulf” is after bigger game: adolescent males and the adults who mimic them. With a cast featuring Anthony Hopkins and Angelie Jolie and writing by Neal ... Read more »

BAND: Joyside

A small but enthusiastic crowd has assembled at the newly re-opened and fantastically refurbished Yugong Yishan in Beijing for the launch of the new Joyside CD. Disco balls hang above the stage and glittering strands of tinsel sway beneath bright lights: It’s a high school dance after-party ... Read more »

AUTHORS: Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis

With the untimely passing earlier this year of famed Taiwanese film director Edward Yang, there’s never been a better moment to look back at the sweep of recent cinematic history emanating from this little island, which has done much more for ... Read more »

AUTHOR: Slash

Why read this book? Because you live in China. That’s right: Like it or not, Guns ‘n Roses is one of the most popular foreign bands here. And with rumors swirling that they will be coming to the mainland next year for the arena rock show of ... Read more »

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott’s newest epic takes Brian de Palma’s “Scarface” and welds in Denzel Washington. The resulting gangland drama charts the rise and fall of Frank Lucas, the heroin king of New York City in the 1970’s. It is gritty and subdued, a subtler counterpoint ... Read more »

The title may reek of cheap Geraldo Rivera sensationalism, but this Discovery Channel series presents gut-wrenching, real-life survival stories bolstered by candid interviews with the actual survivors. There isn't any “light at the end of the tunnel” operating table mysticism, instead each episode narrates an extreme adventure gone way ... Read more »

It makes sense that Mangold should parlay the laconic, high-living iconicity of Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line” into a full-on serial western. His new film is a gift wrapped in barbed wire homage to the ‘50s high noon showdown featuring a stunning cast with Russell Crowe as the outlaw ... Read more »

Your local DVD shop doesn’t stock that obscure TV series you not-so-secretly geek out over? The file sharing system, Bittorrent, makes transferring large files (movies, music and TV) easy and efficient. Install the Bittorrnet 6 download client then search a hosting site. Open the file with your Bittorrent client ... Read more »

It’s not easy belonging to the post-cynical age, but Radiohead seems to do it effortlessly. Jettisoning emotional autism and outré oddity for pure music malignancy, the seminal UK band has all guns pointed outward. Their newest album elaborates the same angular, post-rock thematics with the wonderful twist that it ... Read more »