“The Hour” Wednesday 10pm, BBC America Likely encouraged by the critical and ratings success of AMC’s “Mad Men,” the period drama has seen a major re-emergence in the past couple of years. You’ve got “Boardwalk Empire” on HBO, “Pan Am” and “The Playboy Club” set to debut this fall, and this new British spy thriller […]
As a title, Beginners sounds a note of humility, albeit self-consciously. Certainly that makes it the right name for writer-director Mike Mills’ touching, autobiographical new film. In it, a commitment-phobic graphic artist is supportive but bewildered when his father comes out of the closet at 75—just in time to face a terminal illness.
When I’m writing I usually pull lyrics from proverbs. I also scribble a lot in notebooks and journals. I might show the recording to the guys in the band and we’ll rock on it for a while.
As we approach the August 20 Democratic firehouse primary for City Council, a question that’s been asked on the state and federal levels is worth asking here. What should be the city government’s role in supporting the arts? I asked the 12 candidates to respond by e-mail to a prompt: Should the city fund the […]
For more than a decade, guitarist and songwriter Ben Chasny has held the unofficial title of Busiest Guy in Indie Rock. In addition to playing with the MC5-inspired psychedelic act Comets of Fire, Rangda and a number of other groups, Chasny is the architect behind Six Organs of Admittance, which plays Wednesday, August 17 at […]
“Karaoke Battle USA” Friday 9pm, ABC Karaoke is undeniably big business. Practically any decent bar has a karaoke night, and the good ones not only get packed, they get competitive. ABC has finally gotten in on the televised singing competition that has worked wonders for Fox’s and NBC’s ratings—because really, what are “American Idol” or […]
What were you doing when we called? I was with a friend at this thrift store over in Waynesboro. A pretty decent thrift store, with a lot of old keyboards and T-shirts—not as picked over as the Charlottesville versions. You always gotta look. When he’s not making album covers and posters for other bands, […]
Once in a while, even the most tried and true narrative formula needs to be repackaged. Or so it seemed to the people at DreamWorks, who must’ve said while brainstorming Cowboys & Aliens, “So how about this: a thing meets another thing, but not the other thing you might expect! It’s so crazy, it might work!”
Terrence Malick, the Rhodes scholar-turned-reclusive-director and extreme partisan of The Big Picture, returns this summer with only his fifth film in 38 years.
It’s summer, so the airwaves are flooded with cheap, easily digestible reality series.