February 22, 2013 – For a while now, television has succeeded in making movies look bad, what with its opportunities for complex characters and enriching plotlines — but not so fast, TV!Movies were pretty damn good in 2012, which means the Oscars have a shot at not being a substitute for Ambien this Sunday night, unlike last year, when everyone except The Artist and Co. went home unhappy. The big winners probably won't surprise anyone, Hurt Locker-style, but neither will they raise the hairs on the back of your neck in anger at the injustice of it all, like Crash's 2005 win did. Argo will likely nab best picture, because Ben Affleck shakes the right hands, and his snub for best director needs to be atoned for (at least if the film's wins at the run-up awards, including the Golden Globes and the Director's Guild, are any indication).

January 23, 2013 – At the end of SPIN's Sundance stay, we spotted some unexpected similarities between very different projects: color played a symbolic role in several hyped releases, and someone masturbated in a sleeping bag while in the presence of other people in not one, but two movies. But Richard Linklater's much-anticipated Before Midnight included neither. It was one of the best films we saw and the strongest in the series. Granted, its core fan base has aged along with Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julia Delpy), making it more poignant by default, and the probing questions of the comfortably upper-middle class are a favorite Sundance subject: Can romantic love last? Why do we have kids? Are we really happy?

January 21, 2013 – If there is a lesson to be learned at Sundance, it is that married couples should not let pretty young women into their home on any sort of permanent basis. That's not necessarily the point of this year's Breathe In (or last year's Nobody Walks), but it certainly stands to reason given the consequences when Keith (Guy Pearce) and Megan Reynolds (Gone Baby Gone's Amy Ryan) invite a British exchange student (Felicity Jones) to live with them.Director Drake Doremus has a knack for recognizing the subtle signs of contempt within a relationship. In 2011's Like Crazy, which Jones also starred in, he masterfully captured the small fractures that signal the end of the honeymoon period for young lovers. Here those fractures have been glued over; the considerations of marriage — children, mortgage, the usual — take precedence. Pearce's Keith is not a new character.

January 20, 2013 – It's easy to be our own worst enemy at a festival: what we see and, more important, what we miss is mostly up to us. Obviously, there are obstacles beyond our control — tight lists, long lines, slippery publicists — but the choice alone is cause for anxiety, which is why catching a great movie is a huge relief. Just one good decision can mean the difference between getting on a plane and feeling like an failure versus leaving genuinely satisfied, and we have every reason to think The Spectacular Now was that good decision.On the surface, Now isn't groundbreaking or brave or provocative: Sutter Keely is a harder-drinking Lloyd Dobler — popular, but not obnoxiously so. He's the kind of guy who can give everybody what they need: girls, beers, confidence, whatever.

January 19, 2013 – Within less than 24 hours of the Sundance festival getting underway, people in Park City, Utah, were twerking, hookah-smoking, and hand-sanitizing (the last bit may have just been me in the wake of this flu epidemic). At Main Street's Claim Jumper yesterday afternoon, Adrian Grenier, Lil Jon, Scooter Braun, and Asher Roth were present and accounted for — though definitely not among those doing anything impressive with their butts — to celebrate New American Noise, a documentary series by Nokia Music and Somesuch & Co. that premiered on the Sundance channel last night.

January 17, 2013 – Last year, SPIN went to Sundance and heard no end about a movie that many reporters who descended on Park City, Utah, had missed, because it screened before the festival was fully underway: the tiny, beautiful, and wholly original Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was nominated for an Oscar for best picture last week, alongside films from Steven Spielberg and Kathryn Bigalow. Needless to say, we're pretty psyched to return this year, and though it would be foolish to try and guess what that the next Beasts will be, we can at least tell you which selections we're particularly excited about.Movies from Much-Hyped DirectorsLeading the pack here is the premiere of Richard Linklater's Before Midnight, which is the third installment in the series that started with Before Sunrise.

January 14, 2013 – Jesus, HBO makes January so much better. Sure, winter is coming, but Girls is here, and it's still one of the best shows on television, and definitely the best comedy, which might have sounded like biased love had not the Hollywood Foreign Press Association said the very same thing last night. There were a few uneven episodes at the end of the first season, and no one can dispute the fact that it lacked diversity, but creator/director/writer/star Lena Dunham — who won a Golden Globe both for the series and for her role as Hannah Horvath — has a knack for capturing this moment in time for young, confused, anxious twentysomethings. It's tempting to say that she's the voice of a generation, but as her character Hannah once said, maybe she's just "a voice of a generation," and that's enough.

August 13, 2012 – Freed from death row after 18 years, the face of the West Memphis Three has written a book, Life After Death. Here's the soundtrack to his unusual life. Name a song you've listened to in the past 24 hours. "Tomorrow" by Ozzy [Osbourne], while I was on the treadmill. Every morning after I got out, I would watch Ozzy videos. The last album I'd heard was [1991's] No More Tears, so everything after that is new to me. Also, I had never seen YouTube before, and I thought it was the greatest. What did you listen to in prison? I had a little AM/FM radio, but I couldn't pick up much of anything with it because I was under three stories of concrete [in solitary confinement], so the reception was practically nonexistent.

July 19, 2012 – The nominations for the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards, announced earlier today, contained a few surprises — the dominance of Mad Men and Modern Family was not one of them. Of course, Mad Men genuinely earned its favoritism (17 nominations) — the series, which wrapped its fifth season in May, has gotten better and better, whereas Modern Family never recaptured the perfection of its debut. The writing seems to have plunged along with Sofia Vergara’s neckline — likely the result of tension between showrunners Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd — and hastened into generic, repetitive territory that will probably be continually rewarded for its generic, repetitive humor. Either way, it was great to see some other deserving shows considered this year. We were very pleased that Girls got a nod for best comedy series.

July 9, 2012 – "Do you know Cabrillo?" asks the cab driver. I don't, but Nathan Williams does. I'm in a van with the Wavves frontman, the band's bassist Stephen Pope, and Williams' girlfriend, Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast, heading home from dinner in downtown Los Angeles. This conversation started with the GPS that led us north out of downtown and right into — what else? — bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 101. We've since discussed the Magellan system (inferior), the explorer Magellan (no complaints), and finally Cabrillo. "He discovered California, right?" Williams says. The 26-year-old singer-guitarist's grasp of trivia is impressive.