ARTS Pick: The Wonder Bread Years

Former “Seinfeld” writer Pat Hazell stars in The Wonder Bread Years, a fast-paced production that rides the line between stand-up and theater. The nationally touring one-man show is steeped in nostalgia from Eskimo Pies and lawn darts to kids at the dinner table and sitting in the back of a Country Squire station wagon. It’s […]

ARTS Pick: Joe Walsh

Joe Walsh started his career in bars and clubs as a solo act before James Gang showcased his guitar chops on a national level with “Funk #49.” In 1975, Walsh joined the Eagles, where he helped transform the rock music scene with the release of Hotel California, his first album with the band. Walsh says […]

Film Review: Jason Bourne

A key element of the Bourne franchise’s endurance is the thrill of watching amnesiac super-spy Jason Bourne run headfirst into his past with nothing more than his skills and a belief there is an answer somewhere in the darkness. The Bourne Ultimatum—the third film in what we can now safely say should have remained a trilogy—ended […]

Cville Escape Room challenges your brain

Back in May, a sandwich board adorned with a painted skeleton key advertising the Cville Escape Room popped up on the Downtown Mall, between the Main Street Arena and Violet Crown Cinema. Intrigued, a couple of friends and I book three slots in the fortune teller’s Secret room. Passing by the sandwich board we climb […]

Film review: Dheepan earns accolades through complex storytelling

Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan comes stateside after claiming the 2015 Palme d’Or, a prize well-earned for this masterful, seemingly effortless balancing act of ripped-from-the-headlines narrative with slow-burn psychodrama. Though stylistically similar to politically minded social realists, Audiard never betrays individuality in the name of scoring ideological points. The film neither ignores nor tempers the politics inherent […]

ARTS Pick: Ships in the Night

Ships in the Night is the project of Alethea Leventhal, an experimental musician who pilots her music into uncharted dark waters. Her gauzy, earnest sonic constructions transcend the dismissive label of goth and place her at the intersection of decades-old new wave and the future of music. A recent show in Germany caused the webzine […]

ARTS Pick: Swagwüf

Sally Rose has all the charisma of a rock ‘n’ roll star paired with the grit and charm of an old-fashioned Southern girl. A woman of various musical incarnations, she brings attitude and solid chops to the bass in her rambunctious swamp-rock outfit, Swagwüf. The group returns after a summer tour to work on a […]

Poet Amie Whittemore finds growth in Glass Harvest

For some new readers, poetry feels light years away from reality. It reads like a dense abstraction—the literary equivalent of a modernist painting that makes you tilt your head sideways and wonder what the heck you are missing. But when poet Amie Whittemore first found poetry, the self-described “voracious reader” felt like someone flicked on […]

ARTS Pick: Once on This Island

Based on the novel My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy, Once on This Island follows a group of village storytellers as they recount the love story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl, and Daniel, a wealthy man whom she saves from death. The family-friendly summer musical navigates through many obstacles on the pair’s quest […]