ARTS Pick: 24/7

Set the timer, choose your topic, write the script, select your cast (random drawing), rehearse, lights, action, and it’s show time. So goes the frenzied creative collective of 24/7, a wild theatrical ride that brings together a wide network of local talent in writing, directing, and acting to produce seven finished plays in 24 hours. […]

ARTS Pick: Adam’s Plastic Pond

Songwriter and UVA alumnus Adam Long has popped in and out of various groups on the Virginia music circuit for the better part of a decade. His current group finds Long writing the lyrics while his friends play the tunes. Scrapping early names like Adam Long and the Quest for the Grapefruits, the band settled […]

Film review: Ride Along is heavy on plot and light on laughs

The buddy cop movie is a familiar trope with many variations. You could have a cop and a crook (48 Hrs.); two cops and a fish-out-of-water cop (Beverly Hills Cop); a straight-and-narrow cop and a by-the-book cop (Lethal Weapon); the villain-is-the-sidekick-in-spirit gag (Die Hard); and the send-up/homage flick (Hot Fuzz). What do the first four […]

Artist Lisa Beane meditates on loss and honor in “Chapters”

“These paintings are so raw; they’re so far from anything I’ve ever done before,” said Lisa Beane about her show “Chapters,” now on view at The Jefferson School African American Cultural Heritage Center through March 30. Beane is a Los Angeles-based artist. But for many years she lived in Charlottesville, while raising her daughter Leslie […]

ARTS Pick: The Currys

After a successful Kickstarter funding, and a month-long session cloistered in the studio, folk rock family act The Currys are celebrating the release of their first full-length album, Follow, fresh from the hallowed boards of White Star Sound. Formerly an acoustic act consisting of Jimmy, Tommy, and Galen Curry, the trio has added Matt Kauper […]

Interview: Matthew Houck steps from behind Phosphorescent

Musicians. They’re just like the rest of us. Some of them you hit it off with immediately—you get them, and they try their best to understand you. With others, you just don’t see eye-to-eye. Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck is the type of guy it would be hard not to see eye-to-eye with. An Alabama native who […]

Two films that had significant impact on current pop culture

If you were a cinephile or an aspiring filmmaker in 1994, the influence of Pulp Fiction was impossible to ignore—especially if you were a 13-year-old boy. Throughout that year, Tarantino’s sophomore effort became more or less gospel in the worlds of independent film and popular culture, which were fast becoming synonymous in the mid-’90s. This endlessly […]

ARTS Pick: MarchFourth

Known to fans as M4, MarchFourth re-imagines a traditional marching band through world music influences and big top visual spectacles. Electric bass, diverse percussion, and brassy horns mingle with Eastern European gypsy, samba, funk, Afrobeat, jazz, and rock. Meanwhile, Cirque du Soleil-style dancers and acrobats perform stilt routines, play with fire, and toggle hula hoops […]

Film review: Lone Survivor

Mark Wahlberg is a bad actor. There are movies when he’s passable (Date Night; Ted), but most of the time he’s inexplicably praised (his wretchedly unbelievable performance in The Departed) or he makes bad movies worse (The Happening; Broken City; The Lovely Bones; I Heart Huckabees). It’s particularly distressing that he’s no better than usual […]

ARTS Pick: Speedy Ortiz

When she’s not teaching composition at UMass Amherst, Sadie Dupuis moonlights as the lead singer for rock troupe Speedy Ortiz. Originated as Dupuis’ passion project, Speedy Ortiz’s composed garage rock is flighty, while anchored in distorted, klaxon guitars. The punk angst is softened by punchy, cryptic songwriting that captures themes of unrequited relationships and self-deprecation in […]