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Books

10 New Must-Reads for January

By Emily Temple on

It’s a brand new year, so why not start it off right with some brand new reads? If you’re anything like us, your resolution list is largely book-related, so now that your hangover’s gone, it’s time to get cracking. We’ve already taken an early look at our most anticipated reads for the year as a whole, but after the jump, we delve a little deeper into January’s fine offerings. Keep warm and keep your resolve this month with short story collections, debut novels, and series-ending fantasy galore — check out the books we’re most looking forward to reading over the next few weeks after the jump, and let us know which ones look best to you in the comments. … Read More

Film

The Movies Hollywood Was Afraid to Make

By Jason Bailey on

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master opens Friday in limited release — his first film in five years, though we certainly could have been waiting longer. Anderson’s oh-so-thinly-veiled portrait of a cult leader who seems an awful lot like L. Ron Hubbard knocked around Hollywood for a good long while before the writer/director finally found outside financing (more on that later); it’s one of several films — most of them related to religion, the movie industry’s primary hot button — that had to go the indie route when the major studios were afraid to touch them. After the jump, a brief history of movies Hollywood was too scared to make. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we went bird-watching with Birders: The Central Park Effect. We practiced 50 pickup lines for the farmer’s market. We explored the top 10 Madonna controversies. We booked flights for 10 airlines that serve free alcohol. We jumped for this super cute marriage proposal. We read a… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. The good news: Claire Danes and her husband Hugh Dancy are expecting their first child. The even better news: It won’t affect the shooting schedule of Season 2 of Homeland. [via Vulture]

2. Apparently San Diego accidentally set off all of the fireworks in their Fourth of July display in just 15… Read More

Music

Scientology Made a Hip-Hop Video

By Judy Berman on

Children of the ’90s, tell us if this scenario sounds familiar: You’re doing a group presentation in middle school, and someone has a brainstorm. Everyone else is just going to drone on in front of some poster board with a handmade chart glued to it. What will really set your team apart from the others is presenting your information as a rap song. Remember that? Well, that is basically what the Church of Scientology has done in a new video that was apparently never meant for public viewing. According to The Village Voice, the song was probably created by Scientologist rapper Chill EB, although you won’t see him in the clip. Lyrics include such stunners as “Psychotropic drugs we make a thing of the past/ Expose the fraud of the psychs and watch them dwindle real fast,” and while we won’t ruin the visuals for you, we will say that quite a bit more breakdancing happens at Scientology events than we would ever have guessed. Watch the video after the jump, and learn more about it at the Voice. … Read More

Film

12 of the Most Famous Banned Movies in Film History

By Jason Bailey on

As you may have noticed, we’re pretty excited about Banned Books Week here at Flavorwire — so much so, in fact, that we’ve been obsessing over prohibitions of other media. Since there’s no such thing as “Banned Movies Week” (yet!), we’ve assembled a dozen of the most famously banished movies of all time — here and abroad. Check ‘em out after the jump, and throw in your own in the comments. … Read More

Web

Google Shows Us What We’ve Been Searching For: Making Sense of the Zeitgeist

By Doug Schrashun on

Google released its annual Zeitgeist report this week, giving the world a chance to view 2008 through the lens of our search habits. Data geeks that they are, they’ve formatted their version of a year-end report not as an easy to read (read: easy to ignore) list, but rather as a collection of numbers, charts, regional segmentations and other showy stuff that we don’t know how to do in Excel.

While we know that the point of the Zeitgeist is to help us understand the state of the Internet world — and be extension, society at large — our first reaction to it was a resounding “Huh? What does this all mean? What’s a ‘nasza klasa’? Where are we? We’re scared.” After the jump, we try our best to sort it all out for you. … Read More