We finally watched the Werner Herzog film "Fitzcarraldo" in its entirety last night. While channel-surfing television over the years, we've caught snippets of the film, as well as part of a documentary about its director and the making of the movie. We had also heard about the movie from other cinéastes and stumbled across references to the film several times in articles and reviews. We even remember seeing newspaper ads for the movie when it was originally released theatrically back in the 1980's, when we were really young. Now we've seen Herzog's film. "Fitzcarraldo" is a stunning and amazing piece of work, though it is one with some technical flaws that undermine it. Far from perfect, it is a great film and one that we'd have to put on our must-see movies list. Herzog's flim is about a crazy, opera-obsessed German-Irish icemaker named Fitzcarraldo, who has made a life for himself in a boomtown along the Amazon River during the rubber boom of the early 20th Century. His real love is opera, and he concocts a quixotic scheme to raise money to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon rain forest. The plan involves him trying to sail a steamship upstream to a rubber plantation in an unsettled part of the jungle, where the river is unnavigable and the area inhabited by a fierce indigenous tribe. For the scheme to work, Fitcarraldo must move this ship over a mountain from one river to another. For the authenticity of his film, Herzog arranged for a real local tribe of Amazon natives to help carry an actual steamship over an actual mountain separating two rivers. It's all captured on celluloid in the telling of this incredible story.

Air Massive rating: 4 stars out of 5

Bloody hell, it was about fucking time! For over six months, the We Are the Superlative Conspiracy (or WESC) shop space on Lafayette Street, in downtown New York City, promised the opening-soon presence of the first WESC store in the Big Apple and on the east coast. (L.A. beat NYC in this round of city-versus-city one upmanship in style and relevance -- the City of Angel's got its WESC store in a plum Beverly Hills spot nearly a year ago.) Since last summer, the New York shop, located between Prince and Houston streets in Soho, had its front windows draped with a giant, bright yellow ad featuring actor Jason Lee. The ad simply announced WESC would be opening in the space. Perhaps the delay in opening the NYC outpost was an effort to build up anticipation and buzz. Whatever the reason, the store FINALLY opened a couple of weeks ago with an in-store event and a big after party at the club Home. WESC is a Swedish clothing label and boutique-size retailer that is putting out some of the dopest gear on the planet right now. We're especially fond of its hoodies and graphic tees, but WESC also has loads of denim as part of a full men's and women's clothing line. We first became interested in the brand and its clothing during a trip to Paris last year, when we stumbled across a super cool pair of sneakers WESC designed for Adidas. The company has a savvy marketing campaign. It's brand is next to flawless. (Above photo: Ivan Corsa)

We just discovered an interesting article in Wax Poetics magazine's online archive about hunting for beats in old, used records bins. Wax Poetics is a music mag that covers "Hip-hop, Jazz, Soul, & Funk" and often has musicans and DJs pen its articles. The article, titled "The Mystery of Beat Shopping, Volume 2, Comps," looks at the way DJs and vinyl collectors "bin dive" and sift through compilations albums in efforts to discover a coveted or obscure track with unique beats and drum breaks, which the DJ/musician then can sample, loop and mix into a new tune set of music. The article is a few years old, but fascinating and still ever-so relevant.

The Internet life-simulation game "Second Life" is probably going to see a spike in new player registrations in the coming weeks. Businessweek magazine has a cover story in its current issue about the game, which has approximately 170,000 users worldwide. More importantly for the mag's readers, the feature article looks at how players (and companies) are making money -- a lot of money, in some cases -- by providing products and services within the game environment itself. Players are selling such things as virtual land and "rezzed" avatar clothing to other players. The business is transacted in "Lindens," a virtual currency that can be exchanged for real-life American dollars. (300 Lindens are worth about $1 U.S. dollar.) One entrepeneur based in Germany has amassed a small fortune of $250,000 by developing virtual real estate for players seeking homes for their avatars. Aside from the business angle, "Second Life" is a fascinating, open-ended and more D.I.Y-based online experience than that other similar and popular life-simulation game, The Sims Online.

Gnarls Barkley is the moniker for a collabo between DJ and producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse and hip-hop heavyweight Cee-Lo. The duo and their first single, "Crazy," have been getting a lot of attention recently in the U.K. For the fourth week straight, "Crazy" has come in at the top of the British singles chart. The track is from the full-length Gnarls Barkley album "St. Elsewhere." What's really impressive about this song is not so much that it's a massive hit, but rather that it has topped the charts based on sales as an Internet download, and in doing so has made U.K. music history.

"The comedian is the first of the Internet auteurs to cross into the mainstream." That's an observation in a Time magazine article this week about Saturday Night Live cast member Andy Samberg, a freshman of the long-time sketch comedy show who has shot to Internet stardom for his "digital shorts," most famously the "Lazy Sunday" gangsta rap video he performed in with Chris Parnell. The video was a highlight of the SNL episode in which it originally aired, but it became a massive pop-cultural hit when it got posted on the Net and virally exploded, reaching a much bigger viewing audience than SNL itself. Time devotes a big feature this week on how clever video clips on the Web are giving rise to a new pool of talent and entertainment for the global broadband audience. Andy Samberg is the first true star of the trend. He used to make comedy clips with his friends and post them on the Web, which is part of how he landed the SNL gig.

From this week's Global Graphica street art collection ... images of one of the new Vans sneaker billboards in SoHo, in New York City. For this current advertising campaign, Vans has asked young artists to create "Vans-inspired" works of art to incorporate into its designs. Some of it's really cool.

The homemade sex tape of Irish actor Colin Farrell and ex-girlfriend Nicole Narain will not see the light of day. After some back-and-forth legal manuevering through the courts, Farrell and Narain have come to an agreement and settled on terms that will keep the sex tape from getting into the public as a for-sale porn production a la Paris Hilton's "One Night in Paris" video. Narain was stopped from producing and selling the tape of her and Farrell's carnal exercises, we presume, as a commercial product or making it available to the public. The terms of the agreement were not made public. We imagine that it all just came down to money. That is, we figure that Farrell and his lawyers probably offered to cut Narain a check with many zeros on it in exchange for the tape. Now, we have a sneaking suspicion that somehow, somewhere, someday, via the Internet (of course), this sex tape might find its way mysteriously into unofficial public view, that is, the Internet being the Internet and all that, and human nature being human nature. Oh, but to dream ... Colin you had better burn every single copy of that tape, dude!

Here they go again. Our favorite U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, has compiled another one of those culture-related Top insert-number-here lists. This time they've polled and put together a list of the all-time Top 50 film adaptations, you know, movies based on a novel or short story.

The "Scary Movie" franchise has been a massive cash cow for Miramax, which is better known for its critically acclaimed and popular independent films rather than broad comedy. So after three successful movies in the horror-film-spoof comedy series, it's really no surpise to see "Scary Movie 4" on the marquees of cinemaplexes across the land. And it's really no surprise that the movie had a huge opening, netting out as the No. 1 movie in terms of gross box-office receipts this past Easter weekend. But the film also distinguished itself by being the highest-grossing Easter weekend movie ever, breaking the record set by "Panic Room" a few years ago. We're talkin' $41 million for "Scary Movie 4." That's right, say it with us, kids ... Ka-chinggggg!!!

Last week we posted about the news that Proof, the lead rapper in the hip-hop unit D12 and a close friend of Eminem, was fatally gunned down at a club in the Eight Mile neighborhood of Detroit. Apparently, according to the Detroit Free Press, before Proof was murdered, he had a dispute with Keith Bender and fired a gun at him. Bender was the brother of the man who then shot Proof. Bender initally survived the attack, but died today.

Seriously, some people have way, way, way too much free time on their hands. A French bloke has taken purple Paris Metro tickets, which are small, yet made of a heavy, thick paper stock, and used the tickets to make Star Wars X-Wing Fighters. This page is in French but has lots of photos of the things, which is all you really need to appreciate this droll and unusual kind of ephemeral pop-culture artifact.

'K, careful and regular readers may have noticed we put the new Cat Power CD "The Greatest" in the On Our Stereo list in the left-hand sidebar a while ago. But we've really been putting in a lot of time with the latest album to arrive from the mellow yet mercurial Chan Marshall, a.k.a., Cat Power. "The Greatest" may be her strongest, most accessible collection of tunes since she kicked off her career as a teenager in the early 1990's. While the CD is unmistakeable Cat Power -- with that deep, heavy, worn, lusty and barely above-a-whisper voice -- the disc is far cry from her first album "What Would the Community Think." The indie heartbreak is still cast all over these songs in typical Chan Marshall style, but the set is punctuated by upbeat, bluesy and soulful ditties arranged and recorded with hints of R&B and a Memphis-country twang, at times reminiscent of Wilco's "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel." The tracks "Could We," "Willie" and "The Greatest" have sucked us in, racking up the most times played in our iTunes tally this past week. So, I guess we really like those three songs a lot. Another Cat Power tune that we've played often recently, but which is not on "The Greatest," is her beautiful, melancholic cover of the Oasis hit "Wonderwall," which she recored during one of those famous John Peel Sessions for the BBC in London.

The New York Observer has a pair of illuminating stories this week on the unfolding-on-itself media scandal involving New York Post gossip scribe Jared Stern and allegations of a kind of blackmail he engaged in with billionaire Ron Burkle. We should clarify Stern's current journalistic employment status: former New York Post gossip scribe -- Stern was fired from the equally loved and hated Murdoch-owned tabloid after the scandal broke. Part of the coverage includes an interview with Stern in The Transom column by former Gawker writer Choire Sicha. The Off The Record column goes into more objective detail on how Stern's alleged misdeeds was his undoing in a stong operation. The suggestion, however, from the Stern camp, at any rate, is that the whole thing was a set-up. We shall see. This may well be the media scandal of the year. At least it should make for great reading.

It's an interesting idea. A VH1 poll of famous musicians, industry professionals and 13,000 music fans on their favorite song lyrics. U2 is number one with a lyric from their song "One." The most loved lyric is "One Life, with Each Other Sisters, Brothers." Top five favorite lyrics on the list include lines from songs by the Smiths, Nirvana and Bob Marley and Coldpay.

Actually, Pooh bear officially turned 80 in December 2005, but no matter. It's now, when Disney's marketing frenzy for a slew of new Pooh merch celebrating his birthday hits the streets, that the anniversary really counts. (You knew that, didn't you. Of course, you did.) Pooh first appeared as a newspaper story by A.A. Milne in 1925 in England. Since then the stories of Winnie and his posse of plush-toy animal buddies Tigger, Piglet, et. al., have been translated into over 40 languages, and Pooh is one of the best-known cartoon characters in contemporary, global pop culture. Happy birthday, Pooh bear, ya' geeza'!

Frontman for the long-defunct hardcore-punk group Black Flag and the eponymous Rollins Band, Henry Rollins has been an avid film buff and had a small acting sideline to his music career, appearing in such films as "Johnny Mnemonic," "Heat" and "Lost Highway." It seemed then that Rollins was schooled enough in cinema and television to host a movie review and interview show on the Independent Film Channel last year. "At first, the Henry Rollins Show" had enough rough edges to make one doubt whether the program would last. But the show had legs, the right spark, an audience and acclaim. The series has returned to IFC in 2006 for its second season, albeit with a few tweaks, more polish and musical guests. The usual Rollins rants are still an entertaining part of the program. So far his guests have included director Oliver Stone and rapper Chuck D. Episode 3, which aired Saturday, April 15th, has musical guest Franck Black of the Pixies. But show's biggest score so far, in our opinion, is the bagging of an in-studio interview with filmmaker Werner Herzog, who directed the documentary "Grizzly Man." In the one-on-one QA with Rollins, Herzog expands on his thoughts on filmmaking and the blurring line of "reality" in contemporary movies and TV -- even in documentaries. (Herzog also references a recent incident during an interview with the BBC in which he was shot and wounded on tape by a deranged passerby.) The Herzog interview is a coup for Rollins because it adds serious cred to his show and reveals much about the range of his tastes and cinematic knowledge. Tune in to IFC Saturdays at 10:00pm and see for yourself.

Alec Baldwin, for reasons unclear, has recently
opined on the celebutante sex-phenom that is Paris Hilton. Baldwin, who has starred in such films as "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "The Cooler," has called Hilton (his "Cat in the Hat" co-star) "dumb." Why Baldwin felt compelled to publicly dump on Paris is a mystery. The actor slammed the blonde hotel heiress for her stupidity in making the infamous sex tape that bears her name. We have to wonder though -- has Baldwin ever viewed "One Night in Paris." We'd wager that he has.

The Chicago Sun-Times film critic and At the Movies co-host Roger Ebert has an excellent and highly amusing glossary of movie clichés on his Web site that's a must-read for film buffs. The aptly named "Ebert's Little Movie Glossary" contains gems of familiar tropes from cinema past, present, and -- without doubt -- future. The terms are supplied by readers from around the country. Take this example of the "Human-Absorption Bus Rule," which states "Whenever one character is looking at another from across the street, if a bus or truck passes between them, it will invariably make the other one disappear, possibly into another dimension." So true in cinema. So not true in real life.

Tigers and Monkeys is a fresh New York City indie band with a bluesy, Southern-accented vocal flavor that's been opening shows for the likes of The Shins in recent months. The band is the project of frontperson Shonali Bhowmik, a member of the indie-pop act Ultrababyfat. We've been getting hooked on Tigers and Monkey's tune "Fire Escape" and watching the song's music video in which Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen appears, hangs out in his apartment and plays ping pong with the band. It's a good clip for a good tune. Mark your calendars: Tigers and Monkeys will play at Southpaw in Park Slope, Brooklyn on May 3rd. (Mad props to Kara K. for the tip.)

We weren't huge fans of pop-singer Pink, but we love the music video for her new single "Stupid Girls." The song and video clip pokes fun at vapid tabloided celebs like the Olsen twins, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, with Pink impersonating all of them to great comic effect. Great stuff. Play the the video in the embedded player above or visit the You Tube site.

What's going on with all the shooting at Eminem's posse? Eminem collaborator and rapper Obie Trice ("Real name, no gimmcks!" etc.) was recently shot and wounded. Now comes news that Deshaun Holton, the hip-hop artist known as Proof, was murdered at a night club in the 8 Mile Road area of Detroit. The startling irony is that Proof appeared in, and collaborated on the soundtrack for, the award-winning auto-biographical Eminem film "8 Mile." Proof was the best man at Em's recent wedding, and he was the founding member of the rap unit D12, which often appeared with Em on recordings and on tour.

Icelandic songstress Bjork and American artist Matthew Barney have collaborated on a new art-film project called "Drawing Restraint 9." The movie can be seen as the next logical artistic and cinematic step after the "Cremaster" series of films Barney produced in the 1990's and early 00's. (Some Barney fans may even see it as an extension of the "Cremaster" saga.) For "Drawing Restraint 9," Barney enlisted Bjork, his wife, to create the movie's soundtrack and star in the film with him. Like "Cremaster" before it, "Drawing" stands as a work of filmed performance art and dwells in a surrealist world, with little dialogue, but much strong visual narrative. From the trailer, the film promises to be a stunning, vivid experience.

As the leading light in the current "Korean wave" of Asian cinema, Park Chanwook has made a reputation for writing and directing some of the most violent and taboo-filled films anywhere in recent years. A long profile by Ian Buruma in Sunday's New York Times Magazine reveals that Chanwook, who lives in Seoul, is a gentle, 42-year old family man, whose wife vets his scripts and whose daughter has seen all but one of his films. Chanwook's best-known movie in the West is the award-winning, ultra-violent and shocking "Old Boy" (2003). Later this month, his newest film "Lady Vengeance" arrives on U.S. screens.

From the Global Graphica file comes this example of Rheingold-sponsored street art by Justink in the Lower East Side of New York City. The appropriation of the street art vernacular by marketers is a recent phenomenon that seems to be on the rise in recent months. Sometimes it works well, like the Rheingold Beer Company street-art ads. Sometimes it doesn't, as was the case with those Sony PSP ads last year.

(Photo Courtesy Global Graphica / Ivan Corsa)

A couple of weeks ago we posted about an article by the street artist Banksy in the U.K. newspaper The Gaurdian. Banksy was writing about recent efforts by the city of Melbourne, Australia to clean up the city's graffiti, which includes much of the stencil art for which the Victoria capital has become famous. Fortunately, you can still see lots of greta stencil art in other major cities around the world, including London, where Banksy is based. You can also see some of Banksy best work on the artist's web site.

Maxim magazine is celebrating ... ahem, er, promoting its 100th issue with a novel attempt at publicity. The magazine has constructed a giant 75 by 110-foot version of its magazine cover in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas. The cover features "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria, who was the winner of a Maxim poll of "HOT 100" hotties. The desert-floor replica claims that it's "The only magazine big enough to be seen from space - And only in Vegas!" (Guys on the International Space Station, are you paying attention???) The publicity stunt seems to be working in terms of getting attention, but it's not clear if that's actually translating into sales at the newsstand. Hmm ... all this silliness sounds like fodder for a question-answer pair in a future edition of Trivial Pursuit ("Pop Culture Edition," no doubt) -- "What desperate housewife made headlines in 2006 for appearing on the only magazine cover visible from space?" Oh c'mon, people ... we're so tired -- so very, very tired.

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. They were friends. Best friends "4eva and eva" type of friends. Then they were on a very successful reality TV series together, Nicole the tag-along unknown to Paris's burning bright star. Then they fell out with each other and became bitter enemies. They didn't talk for a good long while. Then they made nice with each other again, that is, kind of, sort of, in a speculative gossip column-said-it-so-it-must -be-true kind of way, or so it seemed. Paris reportedly offered to patch things up between them. But it was not to be. Nicole didn't reciprocate. They carried on with the taping of the fourth season of their TV series, The Simple Life, shooting their scenes separately. And now it's back to Paris dumping serious, hurtful hate on her former friend in a fresh round of public dissing, calling Richie "pathetic." Now it's Nicole's turn -- will she take the bait and diss back on the hotel heiress? All we can say is that it's Nicole who is appearing in those sexy, stylish ads for Jimmy Choo shoes, not Paris.

From the Global Graphica file this week comes this series of images detailing wheat-pasted illustrated work by "Faro Inc." in SoHo, in downtown Manhattan.

The founder and head of one of the most influential music labels of 1990's hip-hop, the controversial ex-con Suge Knight, has put his record company, Death Row Records, under bankruptcy protection in the U.S. For someone who has spent years in prison for a number of crimes and whose currency in the rap game is virtually non-existent, you would think that Knight had pretty much hit rock bottom, but, no, things are getting worse. Not only did a court action in 2005 rule that he would have to pay out over $100 million to former Death Row business partners and not only were his assets frozen last year, but now, to protect himself and Death Row from total ruin, he's had to file for bankruptcy. That's actually good news for Knight. Yes, it could be worse for the gansta' rap mogul -- He could have lost control of the company completely. It will be interesting to see if Knight can sort this mess out and turn a titanic situation around to into a titanic success once more. Knight's role in bringing Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Tupac and the gangsta' rap game to the mainstream was a major force in the evolution of hip-hop and had a tremendous influence on pop culture.

We're on page 280 of the 639-page paperback edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Chabon novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." The book tells the story of a pair of Jewish cousins, one a Czech emigre, in Brooklyn who set out to make action-adventure comic books at the dawn of what would become comics "golden age" in World War II-era America. Chabon's writing is rich and exciting and full of detail. "The Amazing Adventures" transports the reader to depression-era and 1940's New York City and Central Europe as the story of Joe Kavalier's escape to Amercia from Nazi-led oppression and his success as a comic book artist unfolds. We're loving this book in a big way.

We've been listening to tunes from "Loon," the new CD from the band Tapes 'n Tapes. We've been listening to it on recommendation from a friend. We've been listening to the song "Omaha" in particular, over and over again. We've been listening and enjoying it a lot. We've been bathing in its quiet, fragile indie pop urgency. Tapes 'n Tapes is a Minneapolis quartet and even before we knew that fact, we had been thinking that their sound is that of an artfully crafted but casually executed music made by young men stuck indoors for long periods due to bitter cold, snowy and wet weather conditions, nourished on coffee, Canadian beer, cigarette smoke, bad flourescent light, and thrift store clothing. Tapes 'n Tapes reminds us of the band Pavement, a comparison that the group probably have heard often and will continue to hear. Tapes 'n Tapes' low-fi sound is like a finely worked-out molecular-level mash-up of instrumental flourishes from the 1990's indie canon, potent in their beauty and aged, but unidentifiable in their reconfiguration and appropriation in 2006.

This ad really speaks to how far the personal computer and Apple have come (not to mention how far the marketing has come). This history of ads on Wired magazine's blogs site looks back at Apple ads from the earthy Apple II era to the recent iconic iPod silhouettes. Lots more of these ads here.

Aaah .. tsk, tsk, tak ... Naomi, Naomi, Naomi! What is it with you and cell phones and temper tantrums and use of said cell phones as alleged projectiles for punishing underlings and lower non-supermodelling commoners? Huh? Seriously. For fuck's sake now -- you're 35 years old and that supermodelling career is, well, er, kind of ... over. Now, okay, okay, okay ... just say these two itty-bitty pretty words with me now: "anger management." Repeat. Again.

New York Times Digital, the online publisher of the New York Times, has just rolled out a redesigned Web site for the esteemable broadsheet. The new home page layout for the American newspaper of record looks more newspaper-like, more "frontpagey, if you will, above the digital fold. At first glance, the changes might not be so apparent, but on close inspection, especially as one scrolls down the home page and clicks through to deeper levels of the site, some of the changes are more obvious. The year-long effort to redesign the site seems to have made the NYTimes.com seem wider, packed with more upfront content, but with more space to accomodate it too. We give it the thumbs up. The paper explains its reasons for the updated look in A Letter to Our Readers. (Domo arigato for the tip, Jess.)

The Beastie Boys can be really funny sometimes when they do interviews with the press, especially, as in most instances, when they don't take the questions seriously and just turn every response into an opportunity to make a joke, riff on a gag or dispense patent fictions. This works best in on-camera interviews. While it can make for funny reading too, sometimes the humor, sarcasm and attitude get lost in the printed word, making what might be an otherwise interesting and informative interview almost completely devoid of meaning beyond the most basic facts -- i.e., that the hip-hop trio's innovative new concert film, "Awesome! I Fuckin' Shot That!" has just been theatrically released; that the film was shot from many different angles by 50 audiences members and edited together like a video mash-up. This briefest of interviews with the Beasties Mike D, MCA and King Adrock that appeared in last Friday's Metro New York is a case in point of the meaningless-but-effective Q and A.

The Dardennes brothers, a Belgian pair of filmmakers, are known for their raw, taught stories of life at the margins of Belgium's bleak, working-class industrial towns. Their latest film, "L'Enfant" ("The Child"), is no exception. The movie is one of the most powerful and compelling films we've seen this year, or for that matter, in the past one. The Dardennes were documentary filmmakers for many years before they set out to make dramatic features. That documentary sensibility has informed the way they frame, direct and record the movements and dialogue of characters in their cinematic fiction. In "L'Enfant" the story centers around a petty thief named Bruno and his girfriend, who has just borne their first child. The couple live a hand-to-mouth existence, stealing and selling to make cash, only to impulsively spend it on small, fleeting and -- given their circumstances -- foolish extravagances. To score a big payday, Bruno suddenly and shockingly decides to sell their newborn child, Jimmy, to an underground baby-adoption ring. He does so without telling his girlfriend. And that's when the real trouble begins.

Air Massive rating: 4 stars out of 5

One has to wonder if it's an April Fools Day hoax, but major news outlets, including the BBC, are reporting the news of the split between hip-hop and fashion moguls Russell Simmons and his wife, Kimora Lee Simmons. This separation at the pinnacle of American music and style royalty may be the first of its kind: Russell a seminal force in the early commercialization and spread of rap music and one of hip-hop's first true massively successful entrepeneurs; She a former model for Karl Lagerfeld and the ruling figurehead of Baby Phat, the spin-off brand from his Phat Farm clothing brand. If this isn't a prank on the part of the hip-hop power couple, then this is a split to which we want front-row, center seats. Will the divorce be messy? Bitter? Acrimonious? Will it be played out in the media in barrage after barrage of he-said she-said insults and gossip? Because the couples' business interests are so intertwined, how will their empire be divied up? Or, will there be a reconciliation? Or ... wait ... might this be the perfect opportunity for a new reality TV series? Stay tuned, kids.

One-half of the Air Massive feline mascot team, Cornelius, has his paws on the April issue of Play, the best-designed, best-written video games magazine that ever was. Although, to be accurate, Play bills itself as a "Games / Anime / Multimedia" publication. And, indeed, it covers all of those things and covers them well. Think of it as an otaku reviews mag minus the misfit otaku style. That is, Play looks like it was designed for a kind of anime and games fan who prefers to stay at the W Hotel. Anyway, the April issue has an interesting article on the relative merits of the super-charged Microsoft X-Box 360 videogame console, now that a few months have passed since the hysteria of its launch. The verdict is that the X-Box an amazing piece of hardware with amazing multimedia potential, but the paucity of game titles and the prohibitive expense of many of those titles is what will keep Microsoft's second generation games platform from winning the console war with Sony PlayStation and Nintendo.