I cannot help but think that Nina Mansfield conceived of Gymnos: A Geek’s Tragedy while hobbling along on an elliptical machine in an over-crowded gym. Do not get me wrong, I am 100% behind my illusionary version of Ms. Mansfield – gyms suck. Gyms are terrible. Whoever thought that communal exercise was a good idea* must […]

 

The Canadian Opera Company is kicking off their 2013/14 season with a really smart choice. Puccini’s La Bohème is among the world’s most famous operas but it’s also one of its more entertaining. Far from the unrelenting doom and gloom of every other example I can think of (except Gianni Schicchi, that one is a Hoot), […]

The performance time listed on the company’s web page was the first detail to catch my eye. I have not seen many small theatre performances that list their end time along with their start time, much less list it accurately. But there it was: Saturday September 28th, 2013, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM. This was […]

Both of CanStage’s current productions are contemporary one-act contemplations of  female power as attained through sexuality (to put it as simplistically as I possibly could). In The Flood Thereafter, the mythological sirens are represented in the figure of Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster as a brash and modern young woman paid to unceremoniously remove her clothes once […]

Young Man to Middle Aged Man: “You had content but no force.” Middle Aged Man to Young Man: “You had force but no content.” – the original epigraph to Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev’s novel of poetic realism is seen today as a recognized masterpiece in its theme of clashing generations. Unlike many masterpieces of […]

These last couple of years or so have been very big for the, now proven but always sort of suspected, multi-talented artist, director, producer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Having secured and fairly prominent roles in critically acclaimed films such as 500 Days Of Summer, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Looper, Levitt has certainly made a name for […]

 

FX(X)’s brash buddy comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn’t my kind of show. I don’t like brash, and I really don’t like that everyone on cable is a psychopath you’re supposed to pity rather than root for. But I only have one rule when it comes to anything that’s not my kind of thing- […]

 

Gravity is not so much a movie as it is an experience. It’s rare that I insist on seeing a film in one of the more expensive formats. Especially if you live in a  big city, movie tickets are obscenely expensive to begin with, and once you’ve tacked on 3D and Imax you’re looking upwards […]