REW Feature: Local Theater

Perhaps your taste in live theater runs to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged for an evening’s worth of laughs). Or maybe you’d prefer a musical trip to 1960’s Las Vegas with tributes to Frank, Dean, Sammy and their crooner friends. How about the Brothers Grimm fairytales woven together in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the […]

Oceans on the Mall

Andrew Owen, the co-founder and director of the festival that has made Charlottesville an important stop for serious photographers and photo lovers each June, has fond memories of the slide show parties wildlife photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols used to hold in his Albemarle County backyard. A 25-year tradition, these annual one night affairs, last held […]

Virginia Festival of the Book

Every few years, it seems, someone comes out with a study finding that Americans are reading less. But not in Charlottesville. In Charlottesville the driver looking down in the next lane over may be texting, or he may be rereading War and Peace. We love our books in Central Virginia, and we love our book […]

The Paramount Theater

It’s the grandest room in town; a neo-classical beauty with brass chandeliers, plaster molding, and lush silk tapestries. It was the Saturday night dress-up destination for decades of Charlottesville families eager to catch the latest Technicolor Hollywood hit. First opened on East Main Street in Charlottesville in 1931, long before the street was turned into […]

Snow Homes

So the car’s all loaded with that new winter sports equipment Santa brought us, and now we just have to wait for a good snowfall. Or do we? Not with the Massanutten and Wintergreen resorts so close at hand just off the Blue Ridge Parkway we don’t. Massanutten boasts that its 5,200 acres include “1,110 […]

First Night Virginia

They call it First Night in a spirit of optimism, not irony. It’s the last night of the old calendar year, but the night when new hopes lead to new opportunities. It’s a night when kids can stay up late and parents can choose from a couple of dozen entertainment options on the cheap, like […]

More Than Our Share – The 24th Annual Virginia Film Festival

 “I want it all quickly ‘cause I don’t want God to stop and think and wonder if I’m getting more than my share,” says Elizabeth Taylor’s character, Velvet Brown, in the 1944 movie classic, National Velvet. After 23 years of the Virginia Film Festival, it’s clear that somebody up there loves Charlottesville, because where else […]