One of my favourite music teachers once observed how challenging it can be to write music with a positive tone. Personally, I’ve never tried my hand at it, but I can certainly recognize that going the other way and digging into and indulging negative emotions is a potent source of inspiration. The one possible exception […]
How well do you remember James Cameron’s Avatar? I’m sure you remember the look of the film- the groundbreaking visuals, the swooping excitement, the one time the headache you always get from 3D somehow seemed worth it. It’s the #1 highest grossing film of all time (unless The Force Awakens makes another 1.2 billion before […]
[Editor’s Note: I shouldn’t need to warn you about language and “adult themes” in an editorial about The Hateful Eight but… yeah] When Quentin Tarantino burst onto the scene with Reservoir Dogs, it was clear the trajectory of his career was going to be built off scintillating dialogue, violence, and an underlying theme of men […]
Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit Courtney Barnett has a way with words. Freewheeling and deadpan with a heavy Melbourne drawl, Barnett delivers some of the year’s best hooks to a backdrop of poppy, gently psyched-out rock. These eleven story songs focus on such everyday topics as insomnia […]
Though it may not be quite as contradictory to my Canadian self-identification as my dislike of maple syrup, I’ve never felt particularly drawn or sympathetic to the character of Wolverine. I’ll grant he’s somewhat endearing when portrayed in films by that charming Aussie song-and-dance man – and a less mystifying object of admiration than Deadpool […]
Three years into this year-end tradition and the list just keeps getting longer. Last year’s rankings of every new release movie I saw topped out at 110 but this year I hit 140. Of course, no matter how many films I saw, I have yet to recapture the magic that was the 2012 film season and […]
It wasn’t easy, with the TV landscape getting more and more crowded. 2015 had a lot of great TV. A lot of shows had a lot of good episodes. Here are my picks for favorite shows of 2015. The shows that, looking back, I looked forward to watching week after week (or binged the fastest). […]
I am pleasantly surprised by the recent renaissance of interest in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. This summer I attended a delightful all-female production staged by Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company in a Somerville park, free for all to attend. This year Jeanette Winterson released her novel version of the play, The Gap of Time, published by […]