Iceage, “You’re Nothing” (Matador Records) The second album from the four Danish lads known as Iceage is an even more caustic slab of brooding punk than their blindsiding first record. “You’re Nothing” rails [...]

Jamie Lidell, “Jamie Lidell” (Warp Records) British-born Jamie Lidell may have relocated to Nashville, Tenn., but his new album is anything but country. His fifth full-length release — self-produced in his home studio — is an [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — William Shakespeare‘s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” benefits from a lighthearted approach and an evenly-matched pair of verbal jousters to conduct a battle of the sexes. An accomplished, zestful production [...]

TOKYO (Reuters) – According to author Jim Crace, his latest book will be his last novel. But “Harvest” came about largely by chance, and wouldn’t exist at all if a work in progress hadn’t failed. Inspired [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — Star-crossed lovers, an onstage brawl, great singing and gentle mockery of Irish stereotypes have a perfect confluence in the charming revival of the 1961 musical “Donnybrook!” currently at the Irish Repertory Theatre. “Donnybrook!” [...]

Terri Lyne Carrington, “Money Jungle: Provocative In Blue” (Concord Jazz) Producer Terri Lyne Carrington follows up her Grammy-winning, all-female “The Mosaic Project” by offering a fresh take on the classic trio recording [...]

You’re entering a tight corridor filled with menacing shadows. Is that breathing you hear? Well, don’t run. Clanging metal walkways and staircases always give your position away. You might be playing a first- or third-person shooter [...]

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Few authors can boast that Pope Benedict helped sell their books, but the pontiff’s shock resignation has boosted interest in all things Catholic just as veteran Vatican journalist John Thavis is about to [...]

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – One either sparks to Nicholas Sparks, finding his melodramatic love stories to sigh over, or one doesn’t. Sparking to “Safe Haven,” the latest film based on one of the bestselling [...]

It’s supposed to be a parody of itself, right? That’s the only way to explain the ridiculously over-the-top, repetitively numbing fifth film in the “Die Hard” franchise, the clunkily titled “A Good Day to Die Hard.” John [...]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s easy to understand why Hollywood loves doing business with author Nicholas Sparks. His books are huge best-sellers, and several of the films adapted from his novels — “Message in a Bottle,” ”The [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — With perfect timing to brighten winter doldrums comes a revival of David Ives‘ hilarious six-pack of one-act plays, “All In the Timing.” The comical, witty and very well-acted production by Primary Stages [...]

LONDON (Reuters) – A review belitting award-winning British novelist Rachel Cusk‘s memoir of her bitter divorce as “poetic whimsy and vague literary blah” has won an annual prize for most competently trashing a literary [...]

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Southern gothic meets superpowers in the knowingly silly “Beautiful Creatures,” like some crazy cross-breeding of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and the “X-Men.” No doubt designed [...]

The genders have been reversed but the supernatural, star-crossed teen angst remains firmly intact in “Beautiful Creatures,” which clearly aims to pick up where the “Twilight” franchise left off. Writer-director Richard [...]

Sure, President Obama spoke for more than an hour during the 2013 State of the Union address about important issues like gun violence, manufacturing, job creation and education, to name a few. But on Twitter some were a little bit more preoccupied with [...]

LONDON (AP) — A critic who dismissed a divorce memoir as a stew of “vague literary blah” has won a prize celebrating the year’s most lacerating book reviews. Camilla Long’s review of Rachel Cusk‘s “Aftermath: [...]

“Airtight” (Minotaur Books), by David Rosenfelt The brutal death of a judge opens “Airtight,” David Rosenfelt’s latest tale of mystery, family dynamics and paranoia. New Jersey police officer Luke Somers gets the [...]

“Extinction” (Thomas Dunne Books), by Mark Alpert A Chinese experiment involving the use of political prisoners and a supercomputer goes horribly wrong in Mark Alpert’s chilling thriller, “Extinction.” Alpert spins [...]

“Hit Me” (Mulholland Books), by Lawrence Block When we last left Keller, Lawrence Block’s killer-for-hire anti-hero, he was on the run after being framed for a political assassination in the 2008 thriller, “Hit and Run.” Now, [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — The old expression that an Irish person can “hold a grudge like a tomahawk” holds alarmingly true in Kirsten Greenidge‘s smart, affecting new play, ironically titled “Luck Of The Irish.” A suspenseful [...]

Jonas Kaufmann, “Wagner” (Decca) Just about anything the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann does these days is special, and he sounds in particularly fresh voice as he ventures into some new and some familiar territory on this album of [...]

Various Artists, “Wagner: Die Walkuere” (Mariinsky) There’s no shortage of classic recordings of the second and most popular opera in Wagner’s four-part “Ring” cycle. This new version — first installment [...]

Veronica Falls, “Waiting for Something to Happen” (Slumberland) The second full-length album from indie pop’s Veronica Falls is a tasteful guitar pop set, brighter in tone than their first. The London foursome takes a communal [...]

Foals, “Holy Fire” (Warner Bros. Records) One thing you can say about the Foals is that they always mix it up. Their first album, “Antidotes,” was loaded with heavy drumbeats, while “Total Life Forever” was [...]

“Detroit: An American Autopsy” (The Penguin Press), by Charlie LeDuff Detroit has long been the poster child for urban blight, a city that gives rise to images of crack houses, senseless killings, burnt-out buildings, civic corruption, [...]

NEW YORK (AP) — If you want to find beauty and meaning in life, it’s probably a good idea to stop looking for it in your mirror. Bertolt Brecht‘s first full-length play “Baal,” written in 1918 when Brecht was a 20-year-old [...]

It seems ironic that the title of the movie is “Identity Thief” when its co-stars have such a firm grasp on their well-established screen personae. Melissa McCarthy is the brash wild card with an off-kilter sense of humor and an [...]

Isaac Clarke has grown over the first two “Dead Space” games from a troubled systems engineer into a full-fledged action hero, so it would be naive to think that the series would not morph alongside its protagonist. “Dead Space [...]

TOKYO (Reuters) – Canadian novelist Lisa Gabriele never felt she was especially good at writing sex scenes, but when an editor dared her to write an erotic novel to rival the wildly popular global hit “Fifty Shades of Grey,” [...]