I picked up Joe Bruchac and Will Davis’s graphic novel Dawn Land because (I’m about to get real with you) the cover is frickin’ gorgeous. It’s sunset/sunrise hued watercolors (plus, it’s a graphic novel, so the cover can actually give you some hints about what’s inside/ don’tcallmeshallow/ I’mnotpremptivelydefensiveatall). I figure, it’s a library book—if the […]
Throw out everything you know about Found Footage films. Throw it out. From a realm that used to rely on realism and a medium that thrived on narratives as close to reality as possible comes the story of three high school geeks planning the party to be remembered for all time. Spoiler alert, they succeed. […]
La Fille Mal Gardee is a very old ballet, dating back to 1789. It’s an old-fashioned story featuring old-fashioned caricatures that walk the line of being offensive in today’s PC world. But it’s charming and it’s funny (really funny, actually) and there’s no point in throwing out Beethoven just because Bernstein came along. I love […]
Going into Woodland Theatre Company’s latest production, I was delighted to get the opportunity to see Cabaret; though a fan of Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, Alan Cummings, and Michael C. Hall, I’d never seen this classic of American musical theatre. Unfortunately, the company’s attempts to mount an engaging production misses the mark in numerous […]
Recent films rely on one convention. It’s sad but almost every Hollywood film is about character redemption. We love seeing someone with a problem they must overcome. We love going from liking them to loving them and we get catharsis from the sunset that brings everything together in the end. What makes Young Adult such […]
The biggest problem with The Grey, Liam Neeson’s new movie about fighting wolves in the Alaskan wilderness, is simple, really. It’s the fact that you just walked into a movie theater expecting to see Liam Neeson fight wolves in the Alaskan wilderness – you’re ready to watch Neeson take out our lupine brethren using the […]
I recently saw Ralph Fiennes’s labor of love—his adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus—and I fully loved it. The movie is beautiful, gritty, unadorned, and truly unique in its interpretations of the characters and the play. It’s also a real war movie, with things to say about human nature, politics, and violence. Fiennes directed and stars […]
Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret is a fundamentally flawed piece of theatre; it’s absurdly constructed, tonally conflicted and full of disjointed and ill-conceived numbers. Then Adam Brazier got hold of it. The charming tenor-turned savvy director took on none of the musical’s high-profile baggage when he began preparing to stage the problematic piece at Hart House Theatre. […]