You’re probably familiar with Redbox — that’s the company that lets you borrow DVDs from a box outside the supermarket. Supposedly it’s all automated, but frankly they have a long…
Pete Chianca
64 Articles
Pete Chianca is a humor and music writer and author of Glory Days: Springsteen's Greatest Albums. He lives north of Boston with his wife, two kids and an indeterminate number of dogs and cats. Read more Pete at Pete's Pop Culture, Parenting & Pets Blog.
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You know that an adventure series has really hit its stride when you find yourself enjoying the expository sections — those quiet moments when the characters are just talking —…
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I usually try to avoid getting political in this space, except in the case of truly extreme circumstances, such as if the republic were ever in danger of being taken…
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The worst you can say about Leland Sundries’ two EP releases — 2010’s ”The Apothecary“ and 2012’s ”The Foundry“ — is that they were frustratingly short (as EPs are wont…
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Let me say right off the bat that I love Stan Lee. If he hadn’t revolutionized superhero comics at Marvel back in the 1960s, I don’t know what I would…
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After running down the best 2015 albums from classic rockers and taking a look at the rock/pop and country/rootsrecords you don’t want to miss from the past year, you’d think…
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Sometimes I wonder, ”Why doesn’t Hollywood call to ask my opinion about what kinds of movies they should be releasing? Surely I have the type of incisive man-on-the-street insight they’re…
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It was a canny move on the part of producer Stevie Van Zandt — he of E Street Band and “Sopranos” fame — not to try to shoehorn a ”modern”…
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I saw ”Ant-Man“ over the weekend, and given the fact that advance buzz (so to speak) was iffy, I was pleasantly surprised: It was the funniest Marvel movie yet, and…
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I usually don’t get worked up about aging celebrities, mainly because I’ve managed to convince myself that their age is somehow unrelated to mine — this way, no matter how…
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The best albums can take you somewhere else, and not just sonically — they’ll seem to bring you to a place you can almost feel and touch. ”Let the Good…
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It’s been almost six months since the Boston-based band Kingsley Flood launched an innovative PledgeMusic drive to fund the entirety of its 2015 output — who needs record companies anyway?…
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”We Are The World,” the charity single to end all charity singles (except it didn’t), was recorded 30 years ago this week. It was an instant sensation when it was…
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”The [story ideas] that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those,” George Lucas told CinemaBlend.com this week. And now, this…
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As I’m sure you’re aware if you’re a watcher of movies, if you were to put together a pie chart measuring anticipation for movies being released in 2015, about 60…
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Pete Chianca
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Yes, at WickedLocal.com I’ve already run down my picks for the year’s standout albums, my 2014 mixtape suggestions and my ratings for new albums by artists over 50. But that’s not…
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With ”A Charlie Brown Christmas” having already made its first appearance of the season, and ABC Family’s ”25 Days of Christmas“ well underway, we’re into TV holiday special territory once…
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Sure, the government’s a mess, the environment is spiraling out of control and American cities are actually burning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take time to consider some of the reasons…
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My fellow Gatehouse Media editor Matt Phillion is at it again: ”The Indestructibles: Breakout” (PFP Publishing), his sequel to last spring’s young adult superhero saga ”The Indestructibles,” comes hot on…
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I drive my daughter Jackie to school in the morning, and because I’m a swell dad, I let her select the radio station. Occasionally she’ll throw me a bone and…
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One thing Barbara Barnes Sims doesn’t do in ”The Next Elvis“ (LSU Press), the memoir of her time working at Sun Records in the late 1950s, is dish — at…
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I have to admit that I’ve kind of given up lately on brainy, morally ambiguous cable and Netflix shows like ”House of Cards,” ”Mad Men” and ”Boardwalk Empire,” in favor…
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have gotten rave reviews from the Boston critics for their Aug. 30 Fenway Park show — and I can vouch for the fact that it…
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Maybe it’s because it’s when I first discovered Dylan, but I’ve always had a soft spot for his much-maligned ’80s output. I was still an impressionable college sophomore when a…
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When I saw the above fan mash-up (via Comic Book Bros) of the three character stills from the upcoming ”Batman v Superman“ movie, it really crystallized the nagging concern I…
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Since it was written by a colleague — Matthew Phillion, a fellow Gatehouse Media journalist — I would have likely picked up ”The Indestructibles“ just as a show of support….
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Let’s face it, ”Weird Al” Yankovic albums are impervious to typical reviews — you either appreciate his song and style parodies, or there’s something wrong with you. (”He who is…
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I have a sister-in-law who shall remain nameless who has unironically embraced a new life philosophy, which she has dubbed ”WWSHD” – ”What Would Sue Heck Do?” Several days into…
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Yes, there were times as a toddler when my son Tim, now 12, would have fits in the supermarket, or demand to be carried for hours on end, or point…
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My regular readers may recall my ongoing connection with the boy band Emblem3 — they’re the “X-Factor” finalists with whom I arranged a face-to-face interview with my then-14-year-old daughter, my…
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