The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a reputation as tame, dust-covered fossils that shirk from innovation and gravitate towards the crowd-pleaser. This was true for the Best Picture winners of the last two years—both The Artist and The King’s Speech are fine, but not spectacular, eulogies for[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Cooking up a family feud
The world of haute cuisine is a mystery: what happens in the kitchen is usually kept secret, and what comes out is invariably delicious, beautiful, and expensive. Every dish has a deliberate balance of textures, flavours, and colours. Similarly, every restaurant has a clearly defined balance of power that inevitably[Read More…]
A legendary film dynasty unveils its prince
Charlie Sheen is clutching a bottle of vodka in one hand, and $800 worth of caviar in the other. The two alternate in entering his mouth. These are comfort foods—the taxi driver was unable to supply the “coke” and “grass” that Sheen initially requested. No, this isn’t TMZ’s latest update.[Read More…]
A History of Violence
“Empire does not require love, only loyalty.” With this, the stage is set. Waiting for the Barbarians is decidedly anti-love, presenting instead a steel-cold latticework of power relations and authoritarian abuse. For Empire imprisons all semblance of humanity, then throws away the key. Treading a thin line between provoking masochism[Read More…]
Hosanna: flaunting convention one dress at a time
The ’70s were a time of societal progress; Quebec’s Quiet Revolution irrevocably altered the political and civil landscape, giving members of the LGBTQ community a foothold in metropolitan life which they had previously been denied. It is at this time of great socio-political upheaval that the title character in Michel[Read More…]
Hilotrons: At Least There’s Commotion
Hilotrons come storming back from a five-year album break with a furiously charged, eclectic new release. At Least There’s Commotion’s 11 tracks weave through various genres, tempos, and themes, undergoing a metamorphosis every time listeners think they have the album figured out. While At Least There’s Commotion begins with the[Read More…]
Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (Reissue)
Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic Rumours is the best break-up record ever made, as it chronicles the breakdown of relationships between bandmates John McVie and Christine McVie, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. This month, the band is reissuing the album to coincide with a tour of the U.S. and Canada in[Read More…]
The Reason: Hollow Tree
The Reason, a Canadian five-piece rock group based in Hamilton, Ontario, has created quite a buzz across the country in the last few years following the success of their 2010 album, Fools. With their freshly released 2013 EP Hollow Tree, the band has taken its sound a step further, with[Read More…]
MTL: then and now
ABC:MTL’s urban series is in the final stages of the alphabet, with a collection titled Streetview now showing alongside a third wave of projects exhibited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). While the months-long ABC works have been crowd-sourced from the Montreal masses, the photos in the exhibit have[Read More…]
A long and torturous path to justice
Minute misfortunes, cringing incompetence, and wanton, inexplicable malevolence—that’s all one needs to hang a boy. Steven Truscott’s case is a black stain on Canadian history. In response to the violent rape and murder of a child—12-year-old Lynne Harper—our neighbours, our courts, and our society took the life of another. Just[Read More…]
