Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate
Reason.com review focusing on "Tattoos, dueling scars, and other rational acquisitions"
Insider Higher Ed on "Criminal Incompetence"
Marginal Revolution on rates of violence between men and women in prison
Interviews with the author: Written ... Audio
posted by andoatnp on Dec 18, 2009 - 23 comments

The best Star Wars: Episode 1 review ever (via techland, possibly NSFW, 7LYT, eponysterical) [more inside]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi on Dec 16, 2009 - 108 comments

"In the lawless mountain realms of Asia, a Yale professor finds a case against civilization"

Zomia is a rugged swath of Asia that for 2,000 years has remained culturally aloof from the traditional centers of power and the pull of empires. Its inhabitants, Asia’s “hill people,” have earned a reputation for egalitarianism, insurrection, and independence. Up until the second half of the 20th century, many of the societies there remained nonliterate and supported themselves through trade, smuggling, and Iron-Age practices like slash-and-burn agriculture... In Zomia’s small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm’s length.

posted by andoatnp on Dec 13, 2009 - 82 comments

"Real Meals": Will Self's (relatively) new fortnightly restaurant column reviewing high street food outlets for The New Statesman. Thus far: McDonald's, KFC, Indian Restaurant, Starbucks, Subway.
posted by hydatius on Nov 27, 2009 - 72 comments

"Good, big ideas about evolution are rare." Simon Ings of the Independent reviews "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" by Richard Wrangham. (via)
posted by The Whelk on Oct 13, 2009 - 17 comments

The Producer Cites Religious Controversy. The Director points to a recessionary trend against "serious" movies. A new film about Charles Darwin's life ("Creation") is reportedly having difficulty finding a US distributor. ( Creation: IMDB / Official Site / Trailer / Spoiler-laden review from Roger Ebert / LA Times review // Darwin: Previously on MeFi).
posted by zarq on Sep 13, 2009 - 70 comments

Freeware Genius is a large review site for various freeware apps, from desktop organizing tools to philosophical flash games . There are literally hundreds of applications reviewed, as well as a few compilations to get you started. [more inside]
posted by scrutiny on Jul 2, 2009 - 11 comments

Negative reviews prompt author meltdowns: Alice Hoffman. Lee Oi-soo. Alain de Botton. Ayelet Waldman. Previously on MeFi. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Jul 1, 2009 - 30 comments

“Josephine had practically every desirable personal characteristic, except wisdom and mercy.” Gee, that sounds like she actually isn’t a nice person at all! Gary Brecher (previously) reviews Banquo’s Ghosts, a political-minded spy thriller from National Review editor Richard Lowry and novelist Keith Korman. Lowry describes it as an "episode of “24″ written by Proust. " [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Jul 1, 2009 - 52 comments

Could Transformers:ROTF(L) be one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest? This reviewer argues that it just might be.
posted by blue_beetle on Jun 26, 2009 - 162 comments

The overall effect is like listening to an erudite gentleman employing $20 words while he screams at a bunch of punk kids to get off his front lawn. A review of Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism : A Writer's Manifesto. [more inside]
posted by shoesfullofdust on Jun 19, 2009 - 71 comments

You Can't Please Everyone is a collection of one-star reviews of classic movies, music, and literature on Amazon. It contains reviews of The Odyssey and many others. From Cynical-C [via]
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin on May 7, 2009 - 47 comments

Blindspots is a continually-updated collection of movie reviews based around one very interesting concept -- how accessible they are to the visually impaired. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Nov 22, 2008 - 25 comments

John Leonard is dead. A literary prodigy at thirty-two when asked to edit the New York Times Book Review, Leonard oversaw the NYTBR's glory days between 1971 and 1975. Television critic for New York, monthly books critic for Harper's, regular contributor to The Nation and The New York Review of Books, he also went out of his way to help young writers.
posted by ed on Nov 6, 2008 - 14 comments

Truth's Caper : essay by Simon Blackburn on Sokal's Hoax.
posted by Gyan on Aug 18, 2008 - 175 comments

Lifetime, Wow! A blog devoted to watching, reviewing, and ranking Lifetime movies, including such classics as Fifteen and Pregnant, Fatal Trust, and Love Sick: Secrets of a Sex Addict.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Jul 22, 2008 - 63 comments

Martha Nussbaum reviews three recent books on Shakespeare and philosophy. The essay offers an excellent analysis of love in Antony and Cleopatra and Othello, and an excellent discussion of the interaction between philosophy and literature. [more inside]
posted by painquale on May 5, 2008 - 17 comments

The Video Nasty Project seeks to watch and review all 74 "video nasties" effectively banned in the UK in the 1980s in a moral panic over the subversive new video cassette technology. 39 videos were successfully prosecuted, initally under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, then the Video Recordings Act 1984.
posted by TheophileEscargot on Apr 21, 2008 - 56 comments

In the March issue of Maxim magazine, music critic David Peisner gave the Black Crowes' upcoming release Warpaint two and a half stars out of five, remarking: "...they sound pretty much like they always have: boozy, competent, and in slavish debt to the Stones, the Allmans, and the Faces." Nothing remarkable, right? Except he had never heard the album.
posted by rocket88 on Feb 26, 2008 - 103 comments

Mark Kermode reviews Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. "Is that a nest of tables? No, it's Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley having some red hot passionate embrace that is positively teaky." [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jan 9, 2008 - 91 comments

"You haven't seen true competition until you've watched editors of broadsheet newspapers, distinguished novelists and the controller of Radio 4 locked in furious argument about which was Frederick the Great's favourite musical instrument and what was the name of Jade Goody's range of perfumes." Jeremy Paxman, host of BBC's Newsnight, reviews the events of his week.
posted by parmanparman on Dec 2, 2007 - 4 comments

Maddox on iPhone
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Jul 17, 2007 - 92 comments

Reviews of Dating Tips...? Comic book review blog Hoopla! takes a break from the funny books and instead reviews internet dating tips. Much hilarity ensues.
posted by Outlawyr on Jun 19, 2007 - 27 comments

Painter and comic artist Jun-Pierre Shiozawa visited the Tokyo National Museum recently to view da Vinci's Annunciata which created protests in Italy when the Uffizi Gallery lent this artwork to Japan. Shiozawa then created a fantastic "manga review" of the experience for Tokyo Art Beat's TABlog. You can see the steps Shiozawa made to create his manga review on Shiozawa's Flickr account or blog.
posted by gen on Jun 10, 2007 - 9 comments

Lucid Movement.
posted by hama7 on May 26, 2007 - 18 comments

Cockeyed Absurdist - jonmc's 300 most favorite songs and why, including Iron Maiden, The Exciters, Neil Young (as a greaser), Captain Beefheart, Hanson, and of course, The Dictators.
posted by hellbient on Mar 23, 2007 - 134 comments

You know Bruce Schneier the polymath security genius. Now meet Bruce Schneier the kind-hearted reviewer of local Minnesota restaurants. (He doesn't like to give bad reviews -- sounds like "security through obscurity" to me!)
[previously, also]
posted by grobstein on Feb 13, 2007 - 15 comments

The Ten Word Review Review anything you like, but in ten words or less. For example:
A Scanner Darkly: Rotoscoping gives Keanu a soul. Shame he opens his mouth.
posted by chrismear on Jan 17, 2007 - 35 comments

How excellent is your animal? Animal Reviews may hold the answer. Light-hearted smileyness. via pharyngula of all places
posted by Sparx on Nov 22, 2006 - 30 comments

"At freeway speeds, the Toyota [Prius] is a near silent and comfortable cruiser, whereas the Audi [RS4] sounds and feels like a volcano making love to an avalanche." ... "you would swear the Audi is being launched from a trebuchet." ... "Let's say you're cruising at 80mph in sixth-gear and the engine is doing 3,000rpm, the mechanical equivalent of sipping a latte." ... "RS4 can blast sideways with such force that you will swear you are piloting violence."

Whether you are into cars or not, TTAC's Lieberman entertains. Not entirely unlike Jeremy Clarkson, but without the formulaic, wishy-washy introductions. Read the whole thing here.
posted by SharQ on Nov 1, 2006 - 53 comments

Fun Motion - a blog dedicated to physics-simulating games, currently with 49 reviews (and counting) of well known favorites like Stair Dismount and Truck Dismount, Towers of Goo, Toribash and many, many more. (A follow up to my previous YouTube post.) Kiss your precious, fleeting motes of productivity goodbye, cube-farmers!
posted by loquacious on Oct 19, 2006 - 26 comments

Reviewing peer review.
posted by Gyan on Sep 26, 2006 - 33 comments

Ever wonder if that DVD commentary might put you to sleep? Well, wonder no more. Learn about the first, the worst, and find out what other people think are the best. Vote for your favorites, and add your own reviews. "The definitive commentary track database" is at your service. Link courtesy of Whedonesque.
posted by ZachsMind on Aug 31, 2006 - 60 comments

Oh God, please never let the NYT review of my latest novel never start like this: Every few years, as a reviewer, one encounters a novel whose ineptitudes are so many in number, and so thoroughgoing, that to explain them fully would produce a text that exceeded the novel itself in both length and interest. Lately it seems the book reviewers at the NYT--including Michiko Kakutani, on Jonathan Franzen's latest ("Just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about this unhappy relationship or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen’s mind remains something of a mystery")--have been pulling out all the stops. Poor Irvine Welsh (?).
posted by gottabefunky on Aug 29, 2006 - 61 comments

Bloggers make terrible novelists. Ana Marie Cox's "Dog Days" meets a reader.
posted by The Jesse Helms on Jan 3, 2006 - 42 comments

We love you best when you're snarky, Roger. Perhaps the best reviews from the venerable Roger Ebert are when he gives 1 or fewer stars to a movie (a good example being his review of Just Friends, which comes out this weekend). He has more to say about the industry, the process of film making, and the way people think when they pay to see these things. Now, we've discussed Ebert before, but it's worth a read of his reviews by searching for movies rated from Zero to One star.
posted by thanotopsis on Nov 23, 2005 - 82 comments

Luca Turin on perfume and other things. The Emperor of Scent and CTO of Flexitral reviews perfumes and waxes philosophical in his blog. Also available online: Parfums: le guide (PDF, French).
posted by greatgefilte on Nov 5, 2005 - 6 comments

Do you like claret? Wine reviewer writes haiku. (More fun than Parker.)
posted by Vidiot on Sep 26, 2005 - 9 comments

A contrarian review of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" - "It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans." Having watched Friedman flog this book on seemingly dozens of talk shows in the last month, I can't say I disagree...
posted by GriffX on Apr 25, 2005 - 54 comments

The London Review of Books lands on my doormat twice a month, and is packed with erudite and entertaining essays. But I suspect I am not the only subscriber who turns to the remarkable personals section first.
posted by handee on Apr 23, 2005 - 43 comments

"I want them to remember me with a shudder." Filthy's mind often wanders when reviewing films in his hometown of Armada, Colorado, regailing us with occasional snippets of wage slavery, sympathy, Larry, Jimmy, Gooden, the Harelip of the Armada Tavern, and growing up.
posted by AlexReynolds on Apr 20, 2005 - 11 comments

"It is here, however -- perhaps 50 pages into this 800-plus page anthology -- that something begins to shift, and what was supposed to be sublime (but is actually ridiculous) becomes something that was supposed to be ridiculous, but is actually sublime."
Why H.P. Lovecraft is scary after all.
posted by Tlogmer on Apr 19, 2005 - 40 comments

The clueless reviews the Mac Mini His chief gripes are "The Mini boots up into a stripped-down operating system which Apple calls OS X, similar to the stripped-down WindowsCE OS found on many handhelds." and "No serial ports, no way to connect a printer, no PS/2 ports, no floppy drive, no 5.25" bays." Let the hate mail campaign begin!
posted by StormBear on Feb 2, 2005 - 47 comments

And so it came about, this week, that I gazed at a black screen and saw words so calamitous that they might have been written in my own blood: “Screenplay by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher.” Anthony Lane reviews "The Phantom of the Opera" in the current New Yorker. Now THAT'S how you pan a movie! Does anyone have any other favorite un-favorable reviews?
posted by GriffX on Dec 28, 2004 - 72 comments

'Runaway': Alice's Wonderland Knockout of a book review by wonderful writer about a marvelous author: "JONATHAN FRANZEN I want to circle around Alice Munro's latest marvel, "Runaway," by taking some guesses at why her excellence so dismayingly exceeds her fame."
posted by Postroad on Nov 13, 2004 - 11 comments

Princess Maker 2 - Stressed out from current events? I doubt the game is as much fun to play as it is to be bewildered by, but either might help. "...is basically a perverse sports management simulation where your entire team consists of a single ten year old girl that you have to raise to adulthood. Much like any decent sports manager game you have to keep track of a nearly overwhelming number of statistics that fluctuate based on training. In Princess Maker 2 these run the gamut from the mundane like "strength" and "charisma", to the droll like "cooking" and "conversation", to the bizarre like "sin" and "temper". "
posted by soulhuntre on Oct 28, 2004 - 13 comments

Roger Ebert's new web site, launched by the Chicago Sun-Times, includes nearly 10,000 pieces of the newly svelte critic's writing, including more than 5,500 film reviews dating back to 1967. Love him or hate him, that's quite a (free) resource. [via TV Barn]
posted by realityblurred on Sep 16, 2004 - 31 comments

Essay on the meanings and significance of Blade Runner. Interesting insights on particular scenes and quotes and how they are more relevant today than ever.
posted by stbalbach on Sep 13, 2004 - 27 comments

Funfurde reviews a a pony for your living room
posted by jazon on Jul 30, 2004 - 3 comments

"This is frankly one of the greatest films ever made." Harry Knowles reviews "Return of the King."
posted by adrober on Dec 13, 2003 - 56 comments