jojonews.com Making a film that deliberately attempts to confuse its audience can be a tricky thing. Not only is there the risk of repelling (or simply boring) viewers, but the incoherence can overwhelm the purpose of the trickery. Fortunately, first-time director Sean Durkin was able to avoid most of these[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Building health from the ground up
See footnote. Our environment has a deep impact on our mental, physical, and emotional health. A new exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) called Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture explores the numerous ways in which this truism has, and could, manifest itself in the arenas of structural[Read More…]
Art beyond the canvas
Nick Petrillo / McGill Tribune Down on St. Catherine, a block east of Foufounes Électriques, is Cease It 2, a pop-up art gallery sponsored by Montreal’s CEASE art collective. Seventeen featured artists have taken over Fresh Paint’s open floor space for a free exhibition that’s open to the public. But[Read More…]
Why judge music?
Music is everywhere. One can’t go an hour without hearing music at the mall, from an alarm clock radio, or even when someone’s cell phone inadvertently rings in class. Music has completely permeated our culture in every respect, with intentions to soothe, to market, and—although it’s rarer—to create art. It[Read More…]
To be or not to be Shakespeare?
If Shakespeare didn’t write any of his plays, who did? That’s the scenario of Roland Emmerich’s newest film, Anonymous. The film pits Shakespeare the person against Shakespeare the bard, but barely scratches the surface of the complex history of Shakespeare and his works. Based on the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare[Read More…]
In concert: Braids
Will Smibert Ending where they started, Braids returned to Montreal last Thursday to cap their North American touring for the year. And what a year it’s been: the release of their Polaris Prize-nominated debut in January has had them touring almost nonstop around the world, honing their live skills in[Read More…]
Coldplay: Mylo Xyloto
Coldplay have been around for over a decade now, and while immensely popular, they haven’t gone without criticism, often getting labelled as unoriginal and uninspired, both in their music and lyrics. Even so, they continue to produce music that their fans love. The band introduced a more upbeat, poppy sound[Read More…]
Florence and the Machine: Ceremonials
Florence is back and her machine is in full throttle. While the new album, Ceremonials, isn’t a total stylistic departure from Lungs—it has that same dark, dramatic sound that so pleased critics—its material offers a newfound catchiness and a slightly more conventional pop feel that might appeal to an even[Read More…]
Sunparlour Players: Us Little Devils
Us Little Devils seems like a name too deviously coy for a band that’s named after their hometown’s sunny climate. Yet Sunparlour Players’ latest release is certainly not lacking in contradictions. Within a scant 36 minutes, listeners are dragged through a disorienting mixture of frenzied, eclectic, pop-rock Canadiana. What results[Read More…]
Difficult to explain, easy to like
Sometimes authors face a chasm between the critical and the consensus. Last year Johanna Skibsrud won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her debut novel, The Sentimentalists. Critics praised the book for its poetic language and complex themes, though many readers disagreed. Some found the work overwritten, and the storytelling murky,[Read More…]
