Word: popped
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gist: Entertainment Weekly editor-at-large Ken Tucker surveys the lasting cultural influence of Brian De Palma's 1983 cult hit Scarface - a spectacle the author calls the "ultimate gangster film" and a work of pop art that has taken on "an unruly life of its own" in the 25 years since its initial release...
...Scarface Lives Among Us:" Tucker chronicles more than a dozen major news stories and pop-culture events that have revived the Scarface brand since 2006. One story details how a 24-year-old Indiana man robbed a bank while wearing a Scarface T shirt. A 2007 feature comments on the popularity of Scarface posters among teenagers ("every self-respecting guy needs a Scarface poster in his room"). And then there's the Scarface ringtone: By mid-2007, more than 2 million people had downloaded the "Say hello to my little friend!" audio file for their cell phone...
Scarface Nation details the 70-year history of the Scarface story, reconstructs the juicy details of the 1983 Brian De Palma / Oliver Stone / Al Pacino production, and then traces the cultural fallout - questioning how this "antidrug movie [became,] in its pop-cultural afterlife, a pro-thug movie." In being fair to both those who hail the crime thriller as a survivalist masterpiece and those who consider it a blunder of grotesque gratuitousness, Tucker bolsters his argument that whatever your opinion on the film, Scarface cannot be dismissed...
...TRL’s apparent mindlessness, it represented a crucial slice of pop culture—the idea of “climbing the charts”—that I loved and felt a part of. TRL facilitated the sort of direct public engagement with artists that you can’t get on YouTube, eMusic, or iTunes. Though it was a commercial experience, it was participatory, even communal. Beyond the viewer and the video, TRL was about you, your best friend, host Carson Daly, the hundreds of people waving signs outside of MTV’s studio...
...audiotapes bin Laden has put out since 9/11? Experts will tell you that off-the-shelf digital-editing software could manipulate old bin Laden voice recordings to make it sound as if he were discussing current events. Finally, there's the mystery as to why bin Laden didn't pop up during the U.S. election. You would think a narcissistic mass murderer who believes he has a place in history would find it impossible to pass up an opportunity to give his opinion at such a momentous time, at least by dropping off a DVD at the al-Jazeera office...