After 25 years performing in the metro, Greg Dunlevy has seen some terrible musicianship. “You get a lot people who … bang on pieces of wood,” Dunlevy said. “They go out and get themselves a cheap guitar, they buy themselves a harmonica or a recorder, and they blow in it and they can’t do anything with it.
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Film fest turns 35
The Festival du Nouveau Cinema is the oldest of its kind in Montreal, celebrating its 35th birthday this October. The festival opens tomorrow with Philippe Falardeau’s Congorama and closes Oct. 26 with a spotlight on the Spanish cinema screening of Pedro Almodovar’s Volver.
FILM: Cutting-edged comedy
Dear Journal, what can I say? He drove a cool car, remarks a certain 13-year-old boy by the name of Augusten Burroughs in the new movie adaptation of the memoir Running With Scissors. Having read Burroughs’ reminiscences of a homosexual boy with a 35-year-old boyfriend growing up in western Massachusetts in the late 70s, I was readily expecting golden phrases such as the former in the film’s adaptation.
FILM: A new Versailles
Audiences have been eagerly awaiting Sofia Coppola’s new film since her last offering, the critically acclaimed Lost in Translation debuted. Unexpectedly, Coppola brings us from the neon lights of the streets of Tokyo to the glittering hallways of Versailles.
FILM: Scorsese scores (finally)
All things considered, Martin Scorsese hasn’t made a decent feature film in over a decade. Gangs of New York seemed excessively brutal and utterly pointless, Bringing out the Dead sank like a stone and The Aviator, for all the accolades draped over it, hardly served its biographical purposes adequately and was a remarkably boring film.
POP MONTREAL: Born a ramblin’ man
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.
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.
