Themes of empathy define the 2018 Virginia Festival of the Book

What makes literature distinct from other art forms is the opportunity it allows us to inhabit the space in someone else’s mind, to experience a life other than our own. This act of temporarily shedding our perspectives and concerns teaches us empathy and compassion. After a year in which Charlottesville suffered the effects of intolerance, […]

Movie review: The new Tomb Raider is full of glitches

You have to respect when a director clearly loves the material and subject of his movie, and when a performer is perfectly cast and goes the extra mile to give the character extra weight. You just don’t have to like it. So it goes with Tomb Raider and critic favorite Alicia Vikander, who is finally […]

Musical language: Catherine Monnes is bringing music to life

In the sunflower yellow kitchen at the back of her narrow house, Catherine Monnes drops a few thistle teabags into a pink tulip-shaped teapot full of boiling water. She slides the lid into place and carries the pot into her plant-filled sunroom. The evening light is disappearing behind the trees in her North Downtown yard […]

Album reviews: First Aid Kit, Belle & Sebastian, Shame and The Breeders

First Aid Kit Ruins (Sony) Stockholm’s Klara and Johanna Söderberg have lived a charmed life. In 2007, Swedish state radio turned one of their demos into a summer hit. In 2008, their video of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” went viral, and their 2010 debut won rave reviews—all while they were still teenagers. On […]

Lucky for you, we’ve got St. Patrick’s Day covered

Saturday, March 17 C-VILLE Weekly’s Clover Takeover: Craft beers, a cornhole tournament, music from Matthew O’Donnell and more. $12-30, 11am. Three Notch’d Craft Kitchen & Brewery, 520 Second St. SE. clovertakeover.eventbrite.com. Starr Paddy’s Day: Special Irish-inspired beers and food pairings, pipes and drums, Irish step-dancing, jig dance competition and a limerick writing contest. $20, noon. […]

ARTS Pick: Locust Honey adds vintage quality to bluegrass music

Chloe Edmonstone and Meredith Watson bring liveliness and experience to the mixture of bluegrass and traditional music that is Locust Honey. The American duo adds a vintage quality to its original songs, as well as on classic, prewar arrangements with a rotation of fiddles, open-back banjo, acoustic and resonator guitar. John Miller has joined the […]

ARTS Pick: Four County Players is making some noise

Touted as one of the funniest plays ever written, Noises Off follows a troupe of actors that is performing a complete flop called Nothing’s On. Viewers get backstage passes to the ridiculous antics and offstage intrigue of the players, from rehearsal to the last performance, and the cast and the director drive each other crazy […]

Southern Culture on the Skids goes out on a limb

Who really needs an opening act when you have alter egos, right? For the Chapel Hill-based band Southern Culture on the Skids, this was a question well explored in the late ’80s when the group found itself without the funds to pay an opener. With their instruments by their side, they flip-flopped into The Pinecones, […]

Poet Patricia Asuncion gathers a sea of sisters

When writer and Charlottesville resident Patricia Asuncion took to the streets of Washington, D.C., during the 2017 Women’s March, her protest felt eerily familiar. “When I was first divorced in the 1970s, I had no credit. I had no bank accounts. I had nothing in my name. I didn’t even have the first name Patricia. […]

Movie review: A Wrinkle in Time satisfies book- and film-lovers

A tale of science and psychology, A Wrinkle in Time imagines a scenario in which the universe wants those living within it to feel connected to themselves and everyone around them, and that the demons of depression and self-doubt are due to a great cosmic evil. Fifty years after it was first published, Madeleine L’Engle’s […]