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NPR: Arts journalism organizations in three major U.S. cities get a much-needed financial shot in the arm | See Word Photo: iStockphoto via N...

A freedom song at 50

NPR: Investigating the birth of Bob Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the different ways the song, and its central questions, remain the same. Photo: Simon & Schuster via Associated Pre...

Think tops weekend box office

Who’da thunk it? Think Like a Man, Tim Story’s romantic comedy starring Kevin Hart and a raft of newcomers, outpointed The Lucky One, with Zac Efron, and the one-time money monster, The Hunger Games, at the U.S. box office this weekend. Logo: © 2012 Sony Pictures. Box office data...

Jack at 75

“A man who, it sometimes seems, more than any other actor alive, happily looms like some trickster colossus over the entire Hollywood landscape ... and no one anywhere begrudges him his dominion.” Life.com: Photos of an actor on the brink HuffPo: John Farr on Jack's greatest hits Photo:...

April, the cruelest month

CNN: Dick Clark, the eternal American teenager, television producer and a tireless champion of rock culture and its music, dies at 82 on Wednesday.  Rolling Stone: Levon Helm, the drummer for The Band and that group’s indelible “beautifully gruff and ornery voice,” gone on Thursday...

The Tupac Show

Never can say goodbye:  The resurrection  of Makaveli  and what it says  about us Photo: Musion Systems Ltd. (U...

NYC: Fixing a Hole

Patty Schemel, Melissa Auf der Maur, Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love took the stage at Public Assembly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on April 14. The classic Hole lineup together for the first time in 15 years. YouTu...

Austin: SXSW: Xroads of culture

It’s maybe the one thing that could bring together Biz Stone and Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones and LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman (in the video below). South by Southwest, the annual collision of music, technology and pop culture that’s on through next Sunday. The objective for many: to find the...

Iranian and American, in L.A.

Does Ahmedinajad know about this? The flashy, gold-plated antics of Iranian-American families in Los Angeles is the foundation for Shahs of Sunset, a new reality series debuting tonight on Bravo. The show offers a fresh look at Iranian culture that’s a long way from mullahs and ayatollahs,...

Channels of diversity

Magic Johnson and Sean (Diddy) Combs are setting the pace for a spate of new television channels aimed at African American viewers who, according to Nielsen, watch more TV than just about anyone else. With these new outlets of black life set to explode in the next few years, how will they change...

Notorious: Life after death

It’s been 15 years since the Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace), perhaps the most lyrically, rhythmically gifted rapper in the game, was slain in a hail of gunfire outside the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. His killer remains at large to this day. Rachel Shapiro of The...

Monkees’ Davy Jones dies at 66

The diminutive British heartthrob, a singer for the made-for-TV rock band that defied expectations, achieved chart-topping success and survived a Beatles-besotted public in the mid 1960’s, succumbed to a heart attack early Wednesday morning near his home in Florida. The Huffington Post reports. Photo:...

Oscars 2012: The rundown

We got an upset, cheesecake, the Muppets and Billy Crystal in blackface. We got the pure emotional joy of Octavia Spencer and the international pride of Iran and Pakistan. We got the lyrical beauty of Cirque du Soleil and the, uh, presence of Sacha Baron Cohen. Oscars 2012 was a mixed bag....

Critic Howard Kissel dies at 69

The tousle-haired, bespectacled theater critic beloved on Broadway for decades, died Friday night in Manhattan from complications from a 2010 liver transplant. Kissel was lead theater critic at the New York Daily News for 20 years; former chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle and the...

White House of Blues

Tuesday was blues day in Washington, as a number of blues and rock luminaries came to the East Room of the White House for a performance celebrating the blues and marking Black History Month. Some British bloke with moves like Jagger made the best of it, ripping into “I Can’t Turn You Loose”...

Ava after Sundance It’s been three weeks since Ava DuVernay won best director honors at Sundance for her film Middle of Nowhere, a surprise choice that caught festivalgoers off guard. Now that the dust has settled and the phone’s stopped ringing as much, the indie darling sat down with Nsenga...

The Help tops NAACP film honors The serious 2012 Academy Award contender wins best picture at the NAACP Image Awards, one of the last awards ceremonies before the 84th Oscars (this coming Sunday night). Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer took home honors as best actress and best supporting actress....

Seattle: Another Oklahoma! The 5th Avenue Theatre's staging of the vintage Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, still "a valentine to America," in the words of producer Peter Rothstein, weds folkloric homage with multiculturalism, via cross-racial casting and a vision of inclusion a far cry from...

NYC: Asian and absent in the arts In an increasingly diverse American society, Asian American actors are battling for wider acceptance. In the hothouse of competition on the New York stage, they find it harder and harder to find roles that white and even African American actors gain with more...

Whitney forever TMZ reports that the legendary singer’s family was told by L.A.  Coroners’ officials that she died of an overdose of prescription drugs, and not by drowning. At the funeral in Newark, Kevin Costner brings it all together in a powerful, emotional speech. The exit: 'I Will Always Love You...

A new home for the blues The National Blues Museum, said to be the first dedicated to the indelible genre of American music, is set to open sometime next year in St. Louis, a city whose DNA is steeped in the blues experience. The project, part of a $500 million riverfront renovation, will have...

Goodbye, Whitney The investigation Los Angeles Times: Authorities probe possible bathtub drowning scenario New York Times: A voice of triumph and pain: “She was, alongside Michael Jackson and Madonna, one of the crucial figures to hybridize pop in the 1980s ... Jackson and Madonna built worldviews...

The Gross Liam Neeson’s dances-around-wolves thriller set in the Alaskan wilderness notched first place this weekend in theaters. Underworld Awakening, with Kate Beckinsale reprising her kickass role as vampire huntress Selene, slipped to second. And Red Tails continues to show strength in theaters,...

Chemicals and reaction The Chemical Brothers performed a triumphal concert one night at last year’s Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. Director Adam Smith was there to commit a movie. The result is what some critics have suggested is one of the best concert films ever made. Don’t Think (screening in...

Strangeness in Seattle The trailers have been trickling out since late October, and the word has been building on YouTube, Facebook and IMDb about Chronicle, Josh Trank’s much-anticipated horror film about three Seattle high-school students who acquire supernatural powers — and the discovery of...

Matthew Lickona, at the San Diego Reader, surveys highlights of Day 3 of the San Diego Black Film FestivalLogo: San Diego Rea...

Hugo sets the Oscar pace Martin Scorsese’s fanciful 3-D paean to Georges Méliès and the history of filmmaking leads the field with 11 nominations. The Artist, a tribute to the movies of the silent era, follows with 10. Jonah Hill, Viola Davis, George Clooney and three (!) stars of The Help also...

The Gross Underworld Awakening and Red Tails set the pace for the weekend’s movie box office in the United States. Source: Rentrak Corporat...

The end of a great R&B song When Johnny Otis and Etta James died this week — about 48 hours apart — it ended one of the great stories of rhythm & blues. Mark Jacobson, writing in New York magazine, looks back at two stellar careers whose sounds weaved their way into music history.Photos:...

Sundance 2012: Action! For Michael O’Hehir at Salon, the most recent iterations of Sundance — under new management — has meant a leaner, more muscular festival refocused on the work of film, something he expects to see again this year. See Movies The Hollywood Reporter: Robert Redford kicks off...

Priceline Negotiator checks out After 14 years, The Priceline.com pitchman (Wlliam Shatner) has made his last deal. As the travel services company begins a rebranding, travelers everywhere are said to be in deep mourning. Below, the details of his final earthly transaction (the ad begins airing on Monday). We’re betting he finds a great deal on a room ... at the Great Beyond Hotel. YouT...

140 to the Twitterverse SPIN Magazine recently announced a bid to “reinvent the album review” as 140-character posts on Twitter, a move that’s aroused some outrage among music writers. NPR's Ann Powers and Jacob Ganz weigh in on SPIN’s move, with ideas on what could be said with a little more...

London: Hockney goes big Spanning past work in conventional media (watercolors and outdoor oils) and more adventurous creations (big-canvas oils and drawings done on an iPad), moving from expansive views of the Grand Canyon and the Hollywood Hills to studies of the Yorkshire countryside, the David...

Hollywood’s Asian whitewash Two of Japanese popular culture’s biggest exports to the United States, manga and anime, have brought that culture to a much wider audience. But when those art forms make the leap to the major motion picture, Asian American actors are strangely in short supply. Stephanie...

Bald, beautiful Barbie? A Facebook movement is on to create a "Bald Barbie" as a role model for young girls experiencing the rigors of chemotherapy or the trauma of hair loss conditions such as alopecia. Diane Mapes reports at msnbc.com Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the econo...

Brazil: Diplo on tecno brega With the World Cup coming in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016, Brazil is about to blow up in a big way. The nation of 203 million people is in the midst of reinvention – some of it in a bubbling, vibrant music scene. Writing for Vanity Fair, the musicologist and...

Derring-do in World War II It’s been years in the making, but Red Tails, George Lucas’ long-planned story of the Tuskegee fighter pilots in World War II, is finally leaving the hangar. The film stars Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., Bryan Cranston and Ne-Yo, and was written by John Ridley (Three...

China turns off the TV The country with the most television viewers in the world – about 1.2 billion people – has officially cut broadcast of entertainment content by about two-thirds, in accordance with a government campaign meant to reduce the impact of “vulgar” reality shows and programming...

Guessing the Grammys The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 2012 Grammy Awards early last month. The actual presentation of the awards goes down early next month (Feb. 12, to be exact). To give Grammy handicappers something to do the rest of this month,...

Jesmyn Ward: The next Toni Morrison? With her second and highly personal novel (Salvage the Bones), the 34-year-old author has won the National Book Award, and the attention of a literary world more accustomed to successful authors of majority culture. The novelist talks with Keli Goff of Loop21...

And still Sharpton rises Four months after the launch of PoliticsNation on MSNBC, the Rev. Al Sharpton is helping the network solidify its progressive bona fides. In The Root, Michael E. Ross reports on how he also represents the emergence “of minority voices finally starting to achieve critical...