During my visit to NYC last week, my good friend and EM contributor, Emily Baines , sent me a link to this limited edition Barbie doll from Mattel, the Purveyors of Amerikitsch and anatomically incorrect role models. Presumably to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds , the corporation is releasing this doll modeled after Tippi Hedren in a memorable scene →

Patti Smith and Kevin Shields
PASK Records
(2008)
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Patti Smith’s voice cuts through the hushed and darkened theatre of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London–resolute in delivery. Her elegiac recitation is based off her 1996 book entitled, the Coral Sea. Her subject of grief: the slow and agonizing death of her dear friend, Robert Mapplethorpe →

My Celluloid Fix: Graveyard of Honor
Toei Studios
(1975)
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Kinji Fukasaku

Over five years ago, Kinji Fukasaku passed away. In his wake, the giant of yakuza cinema had remolded the genre and left a wealth of intelligent violent films that riveted the imagination with political intrigue and complex storytelling as enjoyable as guilty pleasure.  Yet his razor-sharp incision of Japanese culture through the eyes of social deviants elevated him far from such shallow connotations →

Editorial
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Welcome to the neighborhood of Echo Park. A visual reference point for consciously clad hipsters, flanneled Cholos with a penchant for →

Interview with Mulatu Astatke
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Mulatu Astatke, 67, as an extraordinary multi-instrumentalist, composer, and community builder; he is one of those rare individuals →