The debut season of Girls received effusive praise, and viewers fell in love with the triple-threat director, writer, and lead actress Lena Dunham. Dunham plays Hannah Horvath, a twenty-something writer living in New York, who struggles with a steady job and a relationship with an uber-horny boyfriend. Among the complicated[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Sebastien Tellier: My God is Blue
In his latest album My God is Blue, French musician Sebastien Tellier plays with numerous different genres, sounds, languages, and emotions. Tellier’s release won’t be enjoyed by all, but those who do will like it whole-heartedly. My God is Blue is a spiritual album. Tellier asks the listener to connect[Read More…]
Flamenco, revisited
Flamenco is recognized for its passionate, precise, and lightning-fast footwork. La Otra Orilla’s captivating presentation of their new piece, HomoBLABLAtus, blends the nuances of traditional flamenco with contemporary expression. Founded in 2006, the small and relatively new company has a unique approach to the Andalusian art form, including projected recordings[Read More…]
Haiku Reviews: Holiday Films
Chris Life of Pi Shot with utmost care, Every frame is priceless art; Beauty incarnate. The Hobbit One book—three films. Why? Jackson’s winded, winding tale: All filler, no fun. Zero Dark Thirty Steely, steel-cold work; Not war song, but elegy. Apolitical. Django Unchained Slavery and race Subject to Q’s mockery—[Read More…]
A Valentine’s day sentence: an author’s fight for freedom
On the morning of February 15, 1989, two unknown men knocked on Salman Rushdie’s door. The day before, a mortally ill despot in Tehran had issued an edict condemning all those involved in the production of Rushdie’s most recent novel, The Satanic Verses. The Valentine’s Day fatwa concluded in a[Read More…]
McGill alumnus, marching to the beat of his own drum
You live in Upper Rez. You have an 8:30 a.m. class at the bottom of the hill and you’re just rolling out of bed at 8:15. You throw on your shoes, dash outside, and sprint down the steep, slippery, slush-covered University Street. As you slide into your seat in the[Read More…]
Where the wild things are
Landscapes have always been a natural muse for Canadian artists, and interpretations of such an inherently stable subject have always been a welcome challenge for those who want to capture its grandeur in a unique way. The Group of Seven painted vistas abstractly, but still captured the native beauty of[Read More…]
Strength of heart
Recalling my encounter with Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign, I reflected on this healthy reminder to be a critically thinking consumer. For those who are not familiar with the experiment, KONY 2012 was a thirty-minute online video released in an attempt to make “an obscure war criminal famous”—that criminal being[Read More…]
(III): Crystal Castles
If Crystal Castles’ duo of Alice Glass and Ethan Kath danced near the edge of despair in their first releases, (I) and (II), in their latest effort, (III), they take the plunge. Producer Kath toys less with the bleepy 8-bit sound that characterized their debut, which had a threateningly manic[Read More…]
Hummingbird: Local Natives
Hot off their critically-acclaimed 2010 release Gorilla Manor, Local Natives return with Hummingbird, bringing with them a new sense of maturity and complexity. Although still possessing an authentic feel, Hummingbird presents a dramatic shift in sound, trading light, airy tones for heavy, intimate tracks that reflect the group’s coming-of-age. Nevertheless,[Read More…]
