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Slideshow: Drainspotting in Japan

A collection of artistic Japanese manhole covers
Remo Camerota's photographs of manhole covers in Japan, where 95% of municipalities take pride in their artistic drains.
By REMO CAMEROTA | June 11, 2010

Endless inquiry

Mikael Kennedy’s portraits of his maunderings through the American landscape harness a transcendental concurrence of vastness and intimacy.
Ghostly shapes and images at 37-A Gallery
By ANNIE LARMON | June 11, 2010

The Big Hurt: Reed goes to the dogs

More evidence of the sickening barbarity of America’s penal institutions: Lil Wayne is being hassled because officers found headphones and the charger for an MP3 player in his cell.
Plus Weezy debudded, Ant derided, Michaels bandanna’d
By DAVID THORPE | May 28, 2010

Fortnight to fitness

If you’re reading this now, it may be too late. It’s the middle of May, and beach season is right around the corner.
Shaping up for the summer — in two exhausting weeks
By DEIRDRE FULTON | May 21, 2010

The Big Hurt: Dialing up Billboard’s Ringtones Chart

We may scoff at the very idea of Billboard ’s ignominious Ringtones chart, but mobile phones are one of only three viable revenue channels musicians have left these days (the other two being commercial licensing and crooked charities).
Who Charted?
By DAVID THORPE | April 23, 2010

Thinking outside the Woodbox

As Daniel Bernard Roumain was growing up in Margate, a small city in southeast Florida with a large Haitian population, he felt playing the violin was "a calling."
Fiddler on the Rise Dept.
By MATT TEMPESTA | March 19, 2010

Holy Scrollers!

It hadn't been a pleasant millennium so far for books. But then, lo this past month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled his company's new iPad, and there was much rejoicing.
The future of e-publishing can be found in one of the world's oldest books.
By CHRIS FARAONE | February 19, 2010

Bob Blank | The Blank Generation: Blank Tapes NYC 1975 - 1985

These days, Bob Blank spends his time in his Connecticut studio, producing profitable music for ads and ringtones for the likes of Susan Boyle.
Strut (2010)
By GUSTAVO TURNER | January 15, 2010

Tech Support

"Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools." So wrote Henry David Thoreau, a long time ago, in Walden .
Stereo equipment is so passé. This year's unnecessarily awesome gadgets will stir coffee and turn T-shirts into guitars.
By MIKE MILIARD | December 11, 2009

Basking in life

Nancy and Charlie (Kate Braun and Peter Josephson) have made it to the other side: Their kids are raised, released into the world, and producing their own offspring.
Two humans and two lizards, in Albee's Seascape
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 20, 2009

Review: Pirate Radio

A rusty, red-painted trawler bobs in the waves of the North Atlantic. Inside is a claustrophobic warren of rooms: tiny, brine-smelling bunks, a well-stocked bar, and, crucially, a broadcast booth, its shelves crammed with the latest 45s and LPs, its turn
Richard Curtis’s boat rocks
By MIKE MILIARD | November 13, 2009

Sound words

I appreciate the positive review Jeffrey Gantz gave to Bad Boy Made Good , the documentary film I produced, which was shown this week at the MFA.
Letters to the Boston editor, November 13, 2009
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | November 13, 2009

Idealist views

The path through my various responsibilities has led me to the Portland Museum several times in recent weeks, and along most of the floors. While passing through the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibit of photography I was struck by thoughts about templates
Three shows at the PMA explore truth
By KEN GREENLEAF | August 28, 2009

Giant's steps

Merce Cunningham's death on July 26 wasn't unexpected. He'd been in frail health since this past winter. He was in a wheelchair for his 90th-birthday celebration in April at Brooklyn Academy of Music. In June, the Cunningham Foundation announced plans
Merce Cunningham (1919–2009)
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | August 07, 2009

Magnificent machines

A machine that can make everything. It's been the stuff of science fiction for decades. But now, it's a reality. In fact, there's one in Providence.
Inside AS220's Fab Lab
By CHRISTOPHER COLLINS | August 07, 2009

Familiar Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years started as a Japan-only cellphone game and has washed up on American shores in the form of WiiWare.
The After Years: If it ain't broke, remake it
By MADDY MYERS | June 19, 2009

Inventing the Future

Has Boston found the new Eric Clapton? A shimmying, face-contorting successor to Yngwie Malmsteen? Not exactly.
At MIT's fabled Media Lab, some will change the world with robots and computers, others with . . . Wii guitars
By ABIGAIL JONES | May 15, 2009

Review: OMG/Hahaha

If e-mail or cellphones don't prove the downfall of film, maybe it will be text-messaging or blogs.
An ambitious attempt to incorporate new media
By PETER KEOUGH | May 08, 2009

Eat it, High School Musical!

It's a Thursday afternoon at Lexington High, and 20 or so students have congregated in a music room surrounded by racks of folding chairs and sporting a sleek black Steinway baby grand.
Amanda Palmer and Lexington High take on Neutral Milk Hotel
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN | May 08, 2009

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

It's appropriate that the new Puzzle Quest game should take place in space. Just like a black hole, it's impossible to resist; you wind up crushed into a subatomic particle.
Puzzle Quest drifts off course once more
By MITCH KRPATA | March 10, 2009

Noir film

Fatalism and depression are consequences of life, not goals. Cheer up and don't let this dust-to-dust business slow you down.
Jerry Berndt and Eugene Richards: The inescapable romance of decay
By CLIF GARBODEN | March 03, 2009

Elvis Perkins | Elvis Perkins in Dearland

Elvis Perkins is the third Elvis on my iPod, and he's also the least controversial of the lot: he doesn't shake his pelvis or appropriate the unsung musical styles of others, and he certainly hasn't engaged in an epithet-laced bar fight at a Holiday In
XL (2009)
By ZETH LUNDY | March 03, 2009

Brain damage

Given all the trouble down here on Earth, it may just be a matter of time before we terrestrial residents begin to colonize space.
The dark side of the DS's Moon
By MADDY MYERS | February 03, 2009

Short and bitter words of love

People sum up grand concepts, thoughts, and plans in six words or fewer every day — in Facebook status updates, text messages, text-message novels , iPhone or Blackberry e-mails, Twitter posts, or analog Post-Its.
Six Little Words
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN | January 28, 2009

Review: Chrono Trigger DS

The cartoonish æsthetic still looks better than what we get from games that came out a couple of years ago.
Time capsule
By RYAN STEWART | January 13, 2009

High-tech high jinx

Like being visited by the Grinch instead of Santa, it looks as if Barack Obama is going to have to give up his beloved BlackBerry not long after this holiday season draws to a close.
Anybody can give electronics that do something useful, it takes imagination to air-condition a dog
By MIKE MILIARD | December 08, 2008

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