What does Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, a 75-year old country folk guitarist, have to do with Pop Montreal, the city’s ecstatic embrace of the “next big thing”? Perhaps the most significant asset that Elliot’s Wednesday night set at the Ukrainian Center brought to the festival was authenticity.
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
POP MONTREAL: Spektor is simply spek-tacular
The National is a quaint theatre, the ambience a familiar one, ideal for Regina Spektor. The singer/songstress stepped onto the stage with a glittery shape in her hair and smiling red lips, her very presence giving the room a soothing glow. She began an acapella wonder and the crowd became entranced.
Putting Canada back on the television map
Tuesday evening saw the debut of CBC’s latest prime time original broadcast, the brainchild of Chris Haddock, nationally revered creator of decade-spanning Canadian success Da Vinci’s Inquest. His new series, Intelligence, examines a new facet of West Coast criminality, this time turning the camera towards the perpetrators rather than the victims and investigators.
MUSIC: Byrnin’ down the stale record industry house
Studying and an urgent need to pick up dry-cleaning in time for Thanksgiving may have deterred many from attending this year’s Future of Music Policy Summit, held for the first time away from its birthplace of Washington D.C., in McGill’s own Schulich School of Music.
Previews
Theatre: Peccadilloes, Oct. 11-28, Wednesday-Saturday at 8 p.m.; Theatre Ste Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.). Wendy Clubb directs a Whip Theatre Company presentation consisting of a series of eight one-acts penned by Jon Rannells under the temptingly sinful banner Peccadilloes, or “sins” in Spanish.
RADIO: Strangeness appears on the night shift
A woman is calling in to talk about “some teeth that some men found.” “One of them was six inches and one of them was seven inches,” she reports. “They were some great big teeth.” The topic tonight is cryptozoology with guest Loren Coleman, who is a member of the International Society of Cryptozoology, the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club and the author of 17 books and more than 300 articles.
FILM: LIttle trailer park called home
Canada’s favourite foul-mouthed trio hit the big screen last Friday after an excruciatingly long period of anticipation for fanatical devotees. The film, surprisingly, did not disappoint. The “surprisingly” modifier is used hesitantly because, let’s face it, 90-plus minutes of rampant alcoholism, recreational drug use, petty criminality and enough vulgarity to make Lenny Bruce blush has the potential to get old fast.
MUSIC: Sout (out out out out) like it’s a dance party
Well before Shout Out Out Out Out even stepped on stage Thursday night, their presence was felt among the crowd. Flocks of college kids gathered outside the venue and later filled the moderately sized La Tulipe to the brim. The level of excitement was palpable, setting the bar of expectation for the evening very high.
TELEVISION: My superpowers trump your superpowers
The newest and most highly anticipated show from NBC’s fall lineup premiered Monday night. Heroes enacts everybody’s dream fantasy – to wake up in the morning and discover an amazing superpower. Along the lines of a televised X-Men, the show follows nine characters around the globe who find themselves in just that situation.
MUSIC: Rejecting the Metric system
I wish I could make it that everyone who sees the Soft Skeleton has to drink Guinness, says Emily Haines, Metric’s cool, commanding and completely sexy front woman, as she takes another swig, “but it’s okay if you’re having, like, a vodka soda. I just don’t think you’ll totally get what we’re doing, but that’s okay!” Despite the absence of Guinness anywhere in the general vicinity, last Monday night’s show at Le National Théâtre was not lost on many.
