ARTS Pick: Festival of Cultures

The Charlottesville Festival of Cultures may be the simplest way to learn about the world. With more than 30 countries represented by local citizens and organizations, the event offers a glimpse into the art, food, music and languages in our diverse community. Saturday 5/14. Free, 10am. Lee Park, Market Street and Second Street NE. festivalofcultures.org.

Captain America: Civil War plays off Marvel subplot

The world is a different place than it was eight years ago, when Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s unprecedented ascendance to critical and commercial acclaim. Superhero movies, once seen as a pariah on the medium, have become the main cash cow for major studios. And we’re way past the point of making movies […]

ARTS Pick: Midnight Snack

Asheville, North Carolina’s Midnight Snack rips open a set of melodious, psychedelic rock to support the Music Resource Center. The band will hang out late with those who can’t get enough of the Know Good Beer festival and take over the stage for an after-party benefit show. Saturday, 5/14. Free, 8pm. IX Art Park, 963 Second St. […]

Novelist Hannah Barnaby writes from personal experience

Hannah Barnaby’s second young adult novel, Some of the Parts, published in February, was “partly inspired by my own experience with sibling loss,” she says. Her brother, to whom the book is dedicated, died accidentally, and while the events in the novel differ greatly from Barnaby’s experience, she says the emotional journey of the protagonist […]

Traditions continue at Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase

“I see apprenticeships as a crucial part of keeping folk traditions alive,” says Jack Dunlap, a mandolin player who is part of the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase. In the program’s most recent class, Dunlap worked with master musician Danny Knicely. Together, they composed and recorded a bluegrass album titled Chop Shred and Split: A Mandolin Player’s […]

ARTS Pick: The Great American Trailer Park Musical

The New York Post describes The Great American Trailer Park Musical as “‘The Honeymooners’ meets The Best Little Whorehouse in Urinetown.” And if that doesn’t lure you into Armadillo Acres, then the oddball story of an agoraphobic stripper-in-hiding and her tollbooth collector husband, directed locally by Linda C. Zuby and Gary Warwick White, surely will. […]

ARTS Pick: Sick of Stupid

Are you tired of incest jokes and fried food references? So are comedians Tom Simmons, Stewart Huff and Cliff Cash, who bill themselves as “an intelligent voice with a Southern accent” on the Sick of Stupid tour. Poking fun at low-hanging fruit such as Kim Davis’ arrest, “Duck Dynasty” and the Ted Cruz campaign allows […]

Kristen-Paige Madonia considers the impossible

Most writers are preoccupied by a single theme that they revisit and explore in new ways again and again in their fiction. It’s what makes their work distinctive, their style dependable. For local Young Adult novelist Kristen-Paige Madonia, that theme is the threshold of adulthood. “All of my characters are 17,” she says. “It is […]

ARTS Pick: Gina Sobel

Multifaceted singer and musician Gina Sobel brings a unique, vibrant energy to the stage. With her melodic voice and the twinge of funk, jazz and improv present in her music, she earns the warm accolades put forth by BolderBeat, “…listening to Gina Sobel [and her band] feels like a mid-summer celebration-—you can almost feel the […]

Film review: Green Room scores with a convergence of values

It’s not just cultures that clash in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, when a series of unfortunate events finds left-wing punk band The Ain’t Rights playing at a remote club for neo-Nazi skinheads. After bassist Amber (Alia Shawkat) accidentally witnesses the scene of a murder in the club’s green room—the place acts go before and after […]