On Sept. 27, Blink-182 released its latest album, “Neighborhoods.” It was the group’s first album release in eight years, following the release of the self-titled “Blink-182” in 2003. To the fans who had waited through those eight long years, wearing out classic Blink tracks from the band’s first four albums, the possibility of another album release seemed minute. Most fans would not have dared to wish it. But the album is finally here, and after quite the hiatus, we can truly say that Blink-182 is back.

Halloween and horror movies go together like Will Smith and the Fourth of July: it just feels wrong to have one without the other. There’s nothing to send the chills down your spine like turning out all the lights and curling up with your favorite frightful flick in anticipation of a sleepless night (and you will not be able to blame that midterm this time).

Warm, sentimental and funny, “Midnight In Paris” beautifully explores the clash of nostalgia and reality among fantastical encounters. Director Woody Allen takes us on an exquisite journey through time, spanning across the present, the 1890s and the 1920s — in the City of Light that reeks of wine, music, poignancy and genius, while effortlessly depicting conflicts inherent in the human nature. Only with such grace can the movie truly do Paris justice, and Allen doubtlessly did that, regardless of the extra crème layer on top.

The Renaissance music of the 16th century is easily associated with sexual dramas. Susan McClary, the most eminent scholar of feminist musicology, wrote a whole book, “Modal Subjectivities,” to describe the various sexual scenes she found in late Renaissance music during the final decades of the 16th century. To understand such drama, it is necessary to trace the footprints of such music, which was born out of a confusing and chaotic time.

Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. — Theodor Adorno

Steve Reich, the American composer celebrated for minimalist compositions like “Piano Phase” (1967), “Clapping Music” (1972) and “Different Trains” (1988), just released a piece entitled WTC 9/11 for string quartet and prerecorded tape. Commissioned by his long-term collaborator the Kronos Quartet, it premiered at Duke Univ. this March as a musical tribute to the 10-Year memorial of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Is there a market for something like that?” asked an audience member of Carnegie Hall soloist Jeremy Denk, after having heard him play several piano études of the Hungarian-American composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) at a Seattle Chamber Music Festival concert this summer.

The day has finally come. One of cinema’s most esoteric, obtuse-sounding pairings has finally been realized. “Drive,” the new film from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, deftly blends two dissimilar cinematic worlds: those of the art and action film. In its sensibilities, it’s at one with any of the most popular art films to come out of Europe in the past 10 years. And yet, particularly in the later half, it adopts a distinctly 70s action crime film vibe. It’s about as strange a pairing as can be found in film; it’s unlike anything I have ever seen before.

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