Film review: Pixar makes an emotional breakthrough with Inside Out

After several years of leaning heavily on sequels and good-but-not-great properties, the Pixar we all know and love is back with Inside Out to reclaim its title as a beacon of emotional honesty in the spastic, cynical world of family entertainment. Its long history of tugging at audience’s heartstrings by making us empathize with unlikely […]

Album reviews: Jon Foreman, Allen Stone, Best Coast

Jon Foreman The Wonderlands: Sunlight EP/Word Entertainment Foreman’s songs, whether for Switchfoot, Fiction Family or solo, are always insightful, engaging looks at the complicated nature of humanity in all its awesome beauty and staggering disarray. Sunlight, the first in a four-EP series that features one song for each hour of the day, is no different. […]

ARTS Pick: Mary Chapin Carpenter & Indigo Girls

  When it comes to the optimism and social justice that fills many folk songs, you might think “easier said than done.” Get ready to buy in when Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter and folk rock’s Indigo Girls team up for an intimate acoustic show benefiting the Charlottesville Free Clinic. Carpenter’s country-tinged vocals have charmed […]

ARTS Pick: Paul McCartney

So you missed the boat on seeing The Beatles live by about 40 years? There’s hope for your bucket list yet. Paul McCartney’s bafflingly active tour schedule shows no signs of slowing down. Responsible for Fab Four hits like “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Eleanor Rigby,” this 72-year-old knighted British composer and multi-instrumentalist has kept […]

Film review: Jurassic World leans on the franchise’s past

  Peppered throughout Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World are self-aware, and self-defeating, references to the original 1993 film and what one can only imagine as the sequels to come; from a techie in a vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt to a military grunt who imagines a world in which trained velociraptors are weaponized and sent into combat […]

Natural resources: Casting Shenandoah National Park in a starring role

As the newest artist-in-residence at Shenandoah National Park, documentary filmmaker Stace Carter sums up his outdoorsy side in one word: “Meh.” A former Boy Scout, Eagle Scout and decades-long Albemarle resident, Carter says he has “a great appreciation for comfort,” and his interest in this artistic residency comes not with the chance to shoehorn backcountry […]