"The Landlord" (1970)

Nearly 30 years after its release, Hal Ashby's 1970 black comedy of manners The Landlord remains a strange and visceral interrogation of race and gentrification. The film is gleefully problematic, and performs with grace and intelligence the sort of high-art "social autopsy" sought by its peers in the New Journalism. 

"Unconscious Collective" (2012)

Unconcious Collective brings a heightened level of dexterity to the obtuse arena of "heaviness," drawing into bold relief primitivism's relationship to a nuanced network of jazz fusion, classic punk,  beat music, and across a spectra of heavy metal(s) -- from highly technical death to the blast-beaten grind and crust stylings for which the brothers Gonzalez have largely built their reputation. Moods change swiftly on the Dallas-based trio's self-titled LP, and crescendos have stakes: when guitarist Gregg Prickett glides from polite pentatonic riffing into a fuzzed-out sonic assault, or when Stefan Gonzalez's hyperactive rhythmic inclinations throw the track into a frenzied bloodlust, one is left with the undeniable sense that a significant movement has occurred.  What Unconscious Collective (2012) does with enviable mastery is create a context in which these movements not only make sense, but seem completely necessary. 

: : : Unconscious Collective @ Bandcamp : : : 

: : : Tofu Carnage Records : : : 

Neda Ulaby: "Who's Gay on TV?"

From the crushing success of American programming like Modern Family and Glee, to the 'cross-the-pond soapy melodrama of Downton Abbey, NPR's Neda Ulaby identifies a sort of representational renaissance in queer imaging. Gay dads, teens and villains are occupying a larger chunk of our visual landscape but, while the cultural distance travelled since the "shyness" of Tony Randall in Love, Sidney is staggering, Ulaby interrogates the gaps:

"Equality is not exactly television's strength when it comes to LGBT representation. Last fall, Gallup released findings about its largest poll ever about gay Americans. Slightly more women identified as gay than men, and more African-Americans, Asians and Latinos said they were LGBT than whites. So where's that on TV?"

: : : More at NPR.org : : :