March 30, 2012 – When the season one finale of AMC's crime drama The Killing aired last June, it was met with outrage from fans and critics alike: Seething tweets, bilious recaps, and several demands for the head of showrunner Veena Sud. The network's "Who Killed Rosie Larsen?" campaign had, with this question, implied that audiences would actually know who killed the teenage girl by the end of the first 13 episodes (although the Danish television show that the series is based on unfolded in 20). But a last minute twist left the mystery intact: Lead detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) was sorta double-crossed by her down-with-the-lingo-yo partner Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman), who provided false evidence framing prime suspect, mayoral candidate Darren Richmond. (Actually, when we put it like that, it does sound pretty intriguing.) A lot of people were pissed.

March 22, 2012 – Watching The Hunger Games, you get the sense that the Twilight franchise belongs to a different, more frivolous generation. The films share the distinction of being based on hugely successful young adult books featuring female protagonists and love triangles, but the similarity ends there. The funny thing is, the adaptations of Stephenie Meyer's sexless vampire novels actually did the author a favor by breathing life into her clumsy prose, whereas Hunger Games director and cowriter Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit) has such excellent source material in Suzanne Collins' dystopian trilogy that his film could be seen as primarily faithful — it's a darkly imaginative experience because what else could it be? This is a serious story about children forced to fight to the death in a televised competition that plays out like a twisted Olympics.

March 15, 2012 – The Oscar-nominated actress, who stars as the teenage huntress Katniss Everdeen in this month's much-anticipated adaptation of The Hunger Games, reveals the soundtrack to her life.Do you recall the first album you bought with your own money?I think it was the first Spice Girls CD. It was my everything. I would come home from school every day and play it as loud as I could. My room was right next to my brother's, so it drove him nuts. Then he told me about this really cool trick that involved taking a pin and scraping the underside of the CD. I've never forgiven him for it. I don't even give him Christmas presents.Who would you like to portray in a biopic?I love Joni Mitchell. I heard Blue when I was 19 or 20 and I thought it was the most beautiful album in the world. She's an interesting character.

March 13, 2012 – Here's a question: How long will it take before the inevitable My So-Called Life reboot? If the scavenging of our past continues unchecked (see: 90210, Melrose Place, Footloose), it's only a matter of time until the prematurely canceled series appears ripe for rediscovery, an elevator pitch that starts and ends with, "Hey, remember this?" Bless Girls' creator Lena Dunham for not doing exactly that. The actress/director/producer/writer was only eight when My So-Called Life debuted in 1994, but her half-hour dramedy, which premieres on HBO on April 15, is hands down the most resonant series about a young woman — actually, women — since MSCL, even if the format couldn't be more different.

March 9, 2012 – Silent House, which opens today, is no ordinary thriller, and it's important to the filmmakers that you know this. It's billed as a journey "experienced" in a single uninterrupted shot, meaning the 88-minute movie, about a young woman trapped in a house and terrorized by unseen forces, wasn't actually filmed in one take, but it unfolds in real time. Directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, the team behind the minimalist left-behind nightmare Open Water, were approached to adapt the 2012 Uruguayan flick La Casa Muda, and as luck would have it, they were able to cast a then-unknown Elizabeth Olsen as the lead — and practically only — character. The actress, who has since gone on to do more than just surprise us with her existence, certainly adds to House's intrigue, but the real feat here is how Kentis and Lau managed to capture the action. SPIN asked them exactly that.

March 7, 2012 – As '90s alt-rock anthems go, L7's "Pretend We're Dead" was a perfectly immediate slice of "bubblegrunge," simultaneously channeling the noisiness of an active trash compactor with the effortless pop of opening a soda can. When deadpan vocalist Donita Sparks delivered the lyric "Just say no to individuality," she echoed the ironic detachment of the previous year's most popular chorus (something something "entertain us"), and the song enjoyed a brief ubiquity in 1992, spending 20 weeks on the Billboard Alternative Song charts. Yet it didn't stick around for as long as it should have. Hell, when CSS covered it at Coachella a few years ago, they credited it to Daft Punk.

February 24, 2012 – Wanderlust is much funnier than it had ought to be considering that it might have been known as the movie in which Jennifer Aniston lost the upper-hand (by frolicking with her then-attached costar Justin Theroux). Instead, cowriter-director David Wain (Role Models) brings to Wanderlust the same oddball sensibility that he did to his 2001 cult classic Wet Hot American Summer. Like many New Yorkers, George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Aniston) are so “aspirational” in their lifestyle that they get hoodwinked into buying a studio apartment — a “micro-loft” corrects their realtor — in the West Village that they can barely afford. When George is promptly fired from his lucrative job and the ever-dabbling Linda pitches a documentary about penguins with testicular cancer and melting glaciers to HBO, who prefer “violence and heartache, but sexy,” they see their prospects dwindle.

February 24, 2012 – Method Man, better known as Cheese from The Wire (okay, no, better known as Method Man), stars in The Mortician, a suspense drama about a man who finds a boy hiding in the morgue and helps him escape the threatening bands of nogoodniks who are out to kill him. (Somehow, Edward Furlong is fifth-billed in this production.) With the spirit of the film in mind, SPIN contrived to ask Meth for his top five horror films. He generously shared six: 1. The Thing (1982) "The Thing is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen because I didn’t know what to expect. And the fact that, you know, like, they were in the middle of nowhere and the thing could’ve been anybody at any given time. That right there is a great premise for a movie. You don’t know who the damn thing is gonna pop out of! It caught me off guard." 2.

February 24, 2012 – What was the last concert you attended? Jeff Mangum at Town Hall [in New York]. My girlfriend turned me on to Neutral Milk Hotel about two years ago; I'm not cool enough to have been in on the ground floor. There were songs that I knew really well, but everyone in the crowd knew every word to everything. For some people, this was a bucket-list-level event. Who would you like to portray in a rock biopic? David Byrne. I saw Stop Making Sense when I was really little and I didn't know what it was, but I thought he was really funny. I actually thought he was a comedian at first. So I'm going to say him. Or Little Richard. Growing up, did your parents object to anything you were listening to?

February 22, 2012 – Caroline Polachek is not a night owl, or at least she hasn't been lately. While recording the second Chairlift album, Something, with bandmate Patrick Wimberly, the singer for the Brooklyn avant-pop duo turned into a nine-to-fiver (sort of). "We wanted the record to have a daytime feeling," explains Polachek. "It was about being too bright, too awake, and the tension that comes with that." Below are some of the things she considers indispensable when she's away from her Williamsburg apartment: This is a Proenza Schouler bag. I love the futuristic and utilitarian side of Proenza's designs. And it's a good bag to have on tour because it can take a beating. The vintage Russian watch is from eBay. I think I got it for, like, $30. I'm not a collector, but I'm obsessed with watches that have really big faces, and I really liked the Soviet-style font of these digits.