The ideal audience member of Players’ Theatre production of Dinner! is someone who played with their food as a child, and sat in on philosophy lectures as a first year wondering how the hell this applies to real life. Dinner!, written by Moira Buffini and first premiering in 2002, follows[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Religiosity of a new ilk: The Coen brothers praise 1950s Hollywood in Hail, Caesar!
It makes sense for directors to pay homage to their industry as a whole. An entertaining romp through the Hollywood of the 1950s, Hail, Caesar! is the Coen brothers’ latest triumph, an in depth study of a single man, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a studio fixer, who works tirelessly to[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: Respectability politics in “Fresh Off the Boat”
A year in, Fresh Off the Boat (FOTB) is still much of the same: An occasionally poignant portrayal of the immigrant experience tempered by whitewashed sinophilia. Take last week’s episode for example. Right before Chinese New Year, FOTB aired the first depiction of Mandarin Chinese New Year on American primetime[Read More…]
Exploring other worlds: The McGill Classics department reimagines 2500-year-old play Hekabe
The Ancient Greek tragedy Hekabe, also known as Hecuba, takes place on the sandy shores of Thrace after the fall of Troy. The Trojan queen Hekabe has been captured as a slave and kept at a camp, destined for a life of unending despair. Eerie in the most fascinating way,[Read More…]
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly offers an immersive experience
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly opens with the beeping of life support, and a comatose figure; right away the audience knows that what follows will be as hard-hitting as it is intimate. Like the novel and film version of the same name, Tuesday Night Café (TNC)’s stage adaptation of[Read More…]
Album Review: The Catastrophist – Tortoise
Musical progress is a bus usually driven by the young. Generally speaking, young people are more accepting of progressive artistic directions and their familiarity with technology allows them to make greater strides in musical creation. There is something to be said about an aging veteran playing a heartfelt show for[Read More…]
The darkness of Othello revealed in Opera Montreal’s Otello
Few stories are as tragic or as devastating as Shakespeare’s Othello, a drama that questions truth and character at its core. Guiseppi Verdi’s interpretation of the drama is equally haunting, with a satisfying balance of choral, solo, duet, and quartet pieces that highlight the complexities of the story. The libretto[Read More…]
Survival, grief, revenge: Leonardo DiCaprio suffers with skill in The Revenant
Based on the true story of 19th century frontiersman Hugh Glass who, after being mauled by a bear, was left by his hunting companion to die in the wilderness, Alejandra Gonzalez Iñárritu’s The Revenant is a haunting story of survival, grief and revenge. The hero of The Revenant, portrayed by Leonardo[Read More…]
Surfing the Korean Wave: How K-pop is taking over the world
Last December, K-pop superstar group EXO announced a North American tour scheduled for early 2016. This headline garnered thousands of views and shares on various social media platforms, and concert tickets sold out almost instantly for each stop of the tour. But before the late 2000s, K-pop and South Korean[Read More…]
From the viewpoint: Ann Arbor Film Festival
As a newcomer to art house cinema, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival’s screening of 13 short films by independent filmmakers at Cinémathèque Québécois on Saturday night. It could have been the hushed atmosphere of a dimly lit room, or maybe the fact[Read More…]
