March 2011
0 posts
The Oscars, In Case You Missed Them
by Dan Erenberg
I last blogged about the Oscars for Slow Century two years ago. Re-reading it now, it seems to drip with vitriol. Now, the simple reason for my anger was that Slumdog Millionaire was the big front-runner that year and I totally hated that movie. Just be glad I didn’t write about the Oscars last year because my Avatar hatred actually managed to far outshine my Slumdog hatred. This...
October 2010
1 post
1 tag
Slow Century is not dead, just resting.
In the fourteen months since our last post, the members of our staff have been busy doing things like moving to faraway places and starting grad school and—as 20-somethings are wont to doing—finding ourselves. Attempting to, at least.
In the coming weeks we will be making some changes to the site and producing new content. Hooray!
August 2009
1 post
1 tag
EFAYW: Embarrassing Fact About Yourself Wednesday
By Danielle Berg
EFAYW is cross-posted from my personal blog. (Almost) every Wednesday, I tell a story about something very embarrassing that I’ve done recently, or not so recently. Because I’m extremely unphotogenic, I prefer to post a story than a gratuitous photo of mysef, as many tumblrers do on Wendesdays. If you want to contribute your own EFAYW, send us an email: slowcenturymag@gmail.com....
July 2009
3 posts
White House Keg Party To Serve Bud Light, Red...
by President Barack Obama, special guest blogger, with help from Adam Hunter
My fellow Americans. I am writing to you today to talk about an important issue in our country, one that too often goes ignored in our society. For too long, our United States have been divided. While Americans in generation after generation did their part to end these divisions, the recent events involving a police...
"Much, Much More Than a Flea Market"
by Danielle Berg
The other night, my boyfriend Matt, my friends Becky and Josh, and I went to a Brooklyn Cyclones game. Since I work two stops from Coney Island, I got there before them, and spent some time walking through the park. I’d been to the boardwalk, and to Surf Ave., but never in between.
Joe Sitt, the developer who bought up most of the central amusement area of Coney Island,...
Editor's Note
From what Google Analytics tells me, people are still checking out the site, even though it hasn’t been updated in a while.
A quick note, to shed some light on the Slow Century situation. I (Danielle) certainly overestimated how much time I had to devote to this. But I’m so used to making mistakes (I’d guess that 80% of my decisions are bad/wrong ones) that I’m happy to...
June 2009
2 posts
6 tags
Two Weeks At The Movies
by Daniel Erenberg
My excitement for the summer movie season this year has been curiously subdued. I’ve been seeing pretty much everything that’s coming out, but I’m finding it difficult to care about any of them. The only film I’ve seen this summer that I’d consider seeing multiple times was Star Trek. And I probably only have one more viewing of that movie left in me. Meanwhile, looking ahead,...
7 tags
Playing Catch Up: A Capsule Review Fiesta!
by Daniel Erenberg
So, it seems that Slow Century Magazine has taken the entire month of May off. Co-founders Joe Ireland and Janna Washington have spent the month packing up their shit and shipping it out west, as they now reside in Eugene, Oregon. Danielle Berg has spent most of her time working on The Quilt Project, a wonderful Community-building non-profit, which hosted a very successful...
April 2009
4 posts
3 tags
"Down These Mean Streets"
An interview with photographer Will Steacy
by Janna Washington
“The Forum, Philadelphia, 2008” from Down These Mean Streets
Will Steacy is an American photographer. Born in Philadelphia, he received a B.F.A in Photography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Steacy worked as Union Laborer before becoming a photographer. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous...
3 tags
Why I Think Pot Should Still Be Illegal
By Adam Hunter
[Editor’s note: This came into my inbox post-email-checking hours, so it’s a day late.]
Yoooo, duuuude. It’s four-twenty, man. Fore-twen-tee. 420!!! Haha. You guys know what I’m talking about. Well, maybe not you losers. You don’t know what I’m talking about. Or maybe you think you know what I’m talking about, but what I’m talking about isn’t what you think I’m talking about....
1 tag
Slow Century Summer Movie Preview
by Daniel Erenberg
Well, it’s only April, but the Summer Movie Season appears to have begun in earnest. Fast & Furious is out and making a ton of bank (over 100 million bucks in its first two weekends) and, in so doing has resurrected the careers of both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. And thank Christ for that, right? But, meanwhile, the studios have also begun releasing genuinely good films....
4 tags
Album Review: The Hazards Of Love, by The...
by Daniel Erenberg
We all knew that The Decemberists would eventually write a concept album. After all, they’ve always been storytellers just as much as they’ve been songwriters, sometimes to an extremely frustrating degree. Their last record, and major label debut, The Crane Wife, came very close to being classified as such, by packing in the three-part title track, as well as the five-section...
March 2009
8 posts
4 tags
Ménage à TV
by Daniel Erenberg
Three new television shows premiered last week, amidst much hype and ubiquitous advertising campaigns. All three shows turned out to be ratings disappointments, but the networks certainly couldn’t be blamed this time. They got those shows out there. For one, who here hasn’t heard of Kings? That show has been everywhere these last few months. I haven’t been able to take a damn...
3 tags
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Nan Goldin’s famous slideshow at MoMA
by Janna Washington
Ryan in the tub, Provincetown, Mass. 1976
Growing up, everyone has that hip friend. You know the one I’m talking about. The worldly girl who sneaks you your first cigarette one afternoon in the bathroom next to the cafeteria. The guy who has his own car while you still depend on your mom to pick you up from the movies. The kid who has the...
4 tags
Our First and Final Word On Watchmen
by Daniel Erenberg and Joe Ireland
Joe: I think I should start out by saying that I’m no expert when it comes to comics, though I’ve read several series and enjoyed most of the ones that I’ve read, some of them quite a bit. Watchmen is hands-down my favorite comic, so I was super excited when I heard that an adaptation was going to be released, and only slightly less excited when I heard that...
3 tags
TV Review: Castle
by Daniel Erenberg
Somewhere, in a saner universe than our own, Nathan Fillion is the biggest movie star on the planet. He’s got matinee idol looks, he looks like he could take you in a fight, he’s as good at slapstick as he is at subtler verbal humor and he forces you to immediately care about the characters he plays, no matter how morally ambiguous they are. Unfortunately for his career and...
2 tags
City Tree
by David Zarnitzky
A city tree like a peasant indentured with shackled feet has no fair vision of lofty heights climbing or great girth gaining to be hole-cut-through and driven on a picture postcard placed. To the heavens from its common root Never shall it rise…
FULL POEM AND MORE BY DAVID
4 tags
ADVANCED Film Review: I Love You, Man
by Daniel Erenberg
I Love You, Man is a good film for only one reason. Its cast is phenomenal. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel carry this movie, completely elevating it beyond the rather uninspired material they are given. The film is also populated with such gifted comedic actors as Rashida Jones, Jon Favreau, Jaime Pressly, J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin and Andy Samberg in appropriate supporting roles....
3 tags
The Smoke Monster vs. Ben Folds Five's "Smoke"
by Danielle Berg and Daniel Erenberg
The smoke monster of Lost is perhaps the show’s most mysterious element; “Smoke,” off Ben Fold Five’s album Whatever and Ever Amen is a fantastic song about a breakup. Dan and Danielle pitted these two contenders against each other to decide which is better. What they found was not the obvious conclusion they had predicted; led, perhaps, by destiny, they...
2 tags
Life On The TV Bubble
by Daniel Erenberg
It occurred to me this week that we are a mere two and a half months away from the broadcast network upfront presentations. So I thought we could take a look at some existing shows that remain on the proverbial network bubble and whether they will or won’t and should or shouldn’t be cancelled. I’m not going to go into mid-season replacement shows like Dollhouse or Castle...
February 2009
15 posts
3 tags
The Oscars: Minute By Annoying Minute
by Daniel Erenberg
I’ve been watching the Red Carpet show on E! for an hour and I’m already pissed.
I should probably give you guys a disclaimer. I thought Slumdog Millionaire was a totally lame movie, and I don’t care what anyone says. And don’t try to explain the film to me. I don’t care that it’s a fairy tale. I don’t care that it’s being honest about real life events that have occurred in...
3 tags
Music Review: It's Not Me, It's You, by Lily Allen
by Daniel Erenberg
“Not Fair,” the third track on Lily Allen’s new album, represents everything that is great about her as an artist. It’s a break-up song about a guy who is perfect in every way, with the apparently massive exception that he’s terrible in bed. The lyrics are cutting and laugh-out-loud funny, calling attention to those aspects of relationships that no one really talks about...
3 tags
Dollhouse--Episode One: "Ghost"
by Daniel Erenberg
I’ve been very reluctant to review the Dollhouse pilot since it aired on Friday. Since the launch of Slow Century Magazine, it’s the only thing that people have actually requested I write about. In fact, friends of mine have asked me to review each episode individually, which is something I haven’t done with anything yet. You have to understand. As I’ve stated elsewhere on...
3 tags
When I Watch You, I Really Pretend I’m Watching...
by Danielle Berg
MTV’s The City is the television show you don’t admit you watch, unless you’re watching to be ironic, or to stay updated on The Cut’s hilarious recaps. I watch it. But I’m not doing it (primarily) for the reasons above. I’m watching it for the same reasons we fall in love with slightly less attractive, less intelligent versions of our greatest loves; why we order the same dish...
4 tags
Friday Night: Where Good TV Goes To Die
by Daniel Erenberg
With Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse set to premiere this Friday night, it must finally be said and agreed upon that Friday is currently the best night of the week for TV. After all, NBC and Sci-Fi are airing near-perfect seasons of Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica, respectfully, and FOX is working hard to create a Geek brand on Friday nights by pairing Dollhouse with...
3 tags
A-Roid... See What I Did There?
by Matt Hevia
The don of douchebaggery, the Mickey Mantle of morons, the sultan of steroids, ladies and gentlemen: A-Rod. The man many have deemed baseball’s best player has admitted to doing steroids in an interview with ESPN’s Peter Gammons and, strangely, I couldn’t care less. I was more concerned with the fact that I’ve never seen someone look so orange on television, and I live on the...
3 tags
50 Beautiful Boxes for 50 Beautiful Films
by Janna Washington
I love a good piece of design almost as much as I love a good movie. It only makes sense, then, that a brilliantly designed movie poster is to me a work of art on par with anything I’ve seen in a museum. The people at the Criterion Collection understand the value of both good films and good design. In designing boxes for their DVD releases of films they have deemed...
4 tags
Comic Book Review: Secret Warriors #1, by Jonathan...
by Daniel Erenberg
Comic books will never be understood by mainstream audiences, and it’s all the fault of the comic book companies. Here, Marvel have a wonderful new book, written by the interesting indie creator Jonathan Hickman, doing his first mainstream comic book work, co-plotted by superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis and penciled beautifully by rising star Stefano Caselli. But, if a...
5 tags
New York Comic Con Coverage: Day 3 (of 3)
by Daniel Erenberg
It was impossible for me to be too depressed today, because I was about to see two of my three modern TV idols in person. I feel as though Joss Whedon, Josh Schwartz and J.J. Abrams are at the top of the heap in terms of TV writing these days (I’m gonna go ahead and wait until Matthew Weiner’s follow-up to Mad Men to add him to this list). Abrams wasn’t going to be attending...
2 tags
New York Comic Con Coverage: Day 2 (of 3)
by Daniel Erenberg
Like the middle chapter of most trilogies, the second day of Comic Con felt a bit like filler, killing time until the grand conclusion. I woke up in better spirits this morning (though still not great) and walked over to the Javits Center with my head held medium-high. There were only two Saturday panels that I really gave a shit about and those were Cup O’ Joe, a regular...
2 tags
The Figments (A Short Story Cycle)
written by Patrick Gaughan illustrated by Hanna S. Abi-Hanna
If Billy from Manor Drive came over, he would want to play wiffleball, and Jerry didn’t feel like chasing the ball around the yard all day. Wiffleball’s no fun with two people. Tom from four doors down might be home, but he was much more interested in playing police games with plastic guns. They would run around Jerry’s brick...
3 tags
“A Strange Sound In The Deep Silence”
Photographer Morgan Levy’s images of Iceland
Interview by Janna Washington Upon graduating from the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in May of 2007, photographer Morgan Levy was awarded the Daniel Rosenberg Fellowship. The fellowship was established in 1989 by Irwin and Civia Rosenberg in memory of their son Dan, who received his BFA from...
3 tags
New York Comic Con Coverage: Day 1 (of 3)
by Daniel Erenberg
For the second straight year, your intrepid reporter is going through a breakup during the New York Comic Con. So, for the second straight year, going into the Jacob Javits Center, I wasn’t excited. I was depressed. And not only about the breakup, mind you. Something sort of personal that had been building up for the last couple weeks came to a strong head this morning. So, on...
2 tags
Nation in Debt? Time for a Little Bit of Luck
by Adam Hunter
The national debt is approaching 11 trillion dollars, and with all the money Congress is giving out during this economic crisis to just about any rich guy who asks for it, that figure is bound to skyrocket. With our government’s finances in worse shape than Jessica Simpson, how can we find the money to improve our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and fund the programs that are...
Music Review: Noble Beast, by Andrew Bird
by Daniel Erenberg
Andrew Bird is a musician who, historically, has flitted between genres like a hummingbird. For a while there, with each record released, you never quite knew what to expect. So it’s a little bit dismaying that his new release, Noble Beast, sounds so much like an Andrew Bird record. All the signs are there that it is clearly him being himself: the ever-present whistling, the...
3 tags
Media, Upstream
by Danielle Berg The Printed Blog, a new venture by Josh Karp, of Chicago, is taking blog posts across the Internet and putting them to print. A small team of (for now) volunteers is fighting the strong media current with a paddleboat, and as far as interest goes - it seems to be working. It’s not that the Printed Blog is trying to change the direction of the current; they’re simply rowing in...
January 2009
8 posts
Comic Book Review: Dark Avengers #1, by Brian...
by Daniel Erenberg
The new Marvel ongoing series, Dark Avengers, wisely plays off of the fascinating results of their big 2008 event series, Secret Invasion. Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, has wrested control of S.H.I.E.L.D., the world peace-keeping task force, away from Tony Stark, disbanded the whole thing and set up a new organization, which he calls H.A.M.M.E.R. (in this issue, he...
Film Review: The Lodger
by Daniel Erenberg
The Lodger was released in theaters on January 23rd. It comes out on DVD on February 10th. This is not usually a good sign for a film, but it seemed like The Lodger might have been different. It is billed as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock, complete with many of Hitchcock’s signature shots and set-ups, and it boasts a truly impressive cast, which includes interesting actors like...
Film Review: My Bloody Valentine 3-D
by Daniel Erenberg
3-D technology can make anything cheesy. So a film that is meant solely to scare the shit out of you might not be the best choice for it. I can sort of see what they were going for though. The first killing in the movie pops an eyeball out at you, and later in the film a human heart goes flying out into the audience. But these shots should elicit more shock and less...
TV Review: Lie To Me
by Daniel Erenberg
I’ll give FOX the credit they deserve. Tim Roth is an inspired choice to headline a procedural dramedy, and the fact that the network was able to steer him away from the new Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds in order to appear in what is essentially House if they let Hugh Laurie be British is nothing short of remarkable. And Tim Roth does not let his network down....
TV Review: The United States of Tara
by Daniel Erenberg
Toni Collette is going to win an Emmy for her performance in the new Showtime series, The United States of Tara. After all, this is the kind of performance that the Best Actress in a Comedy Series category was built for. As Tara, a woman with split personalities, she is also required to play three “alters,” including T, a 15 year-old lolita who is besties with Tara’s teenage...
3 tags
Short Story: "We All Will Be Received"
By Lillian Pontius-Goldblatt
She was watching a science fiction TV show with her grandmother in the house on the very steep hill. The night before she’d lain on her back on top of the sheets on her bed listening to the saddest song on a very sad album over and over. She’d cried some, but not very much or for very long (though the music was up loud enough, no one would have heard; she made...
Biggie Smalls Was A Total Dick
by Daniel Erenberg
So after the monstrous rush to see every supposedly Oscar-worthy film that came out in the tail-end of December in order to be eligible for award consideration (by the way, who are you kidding, Defiance?) the first film of 2009 that I give a shit about is Notorious.
Full Review