Checking in with Steph Finn

 What are you working on right now? I am about to start Cabaret at Four County Players, and I’ll be playing Sally Bowles.   Tell us about your day job. I work at Bittersweet Clothing in the Glass Building. I love it. I’m basically there every day, sometimes half days, sometimes full days. I’m into […]

Capsule Reviews

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel! (PG, 89 minutes) The Chipmunks flick that will likely appeal to the High School Musical crowd, thanks to the debut of the Chipettes! Playing at Regal Seminole Square 4   Avatar (PG-13, 162 minutes) Read C-VILLE’s featured review here. James Cameron’s opus uses brand-new filmmaking technology to tell the story of a […]

Checking in with Lisa Russ Spaar

What are you currently working on? At the moment, I’m reading and responding to a number of student projects from two seminars I taught this semester, so I’m devoting a lot of time and energy to finding ways to honor the work they’ve done.   What is UVA poet Lisa Russ Spaar currently listening to? […]

From the prophet Denzel

Quite appropriately for a movie about the apocalypse, it gets most interesting at the end. But to explain why would spoil it, and most of the time it’s already too close to spoiling itself. For starters: Yes, here is another goddamned movie about the apocalypse, and with a god-saved hero to boot. The Denz of […]

Blades of glory

“The Tonight Show” Weeknights 11:35pm, NBC In June, Conan O’Brien took over “The Tonight Show” from 17-year host Jay Leno, who apparently didn’t really want to leave. To placate Leno—and to shore up holes in its pathetic primetime schedule—NBC gave the big-chinned “comic” his own show at 10pm, five nights a week. “The Jay Leno […]

Capsule Reviews

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel! (PG, 89 minutes) The Chipmunks flick that will likely appeal to the High School Musical crowd, thanks to the debut of the Chipettes! Playing at Regal Seminole Square 4   Avatar (PG-13, 162 minutes) Read C-VILLE’s featured review here. James Cameron’s opus uses brand-new filmmaking technology to tell the […]

A Single Man; R, 99 minutes; Vinegar Hill Theatre

It’s hard not to notice that A Single Man’s timing seems a little awkward.   For starters, it will inevitably be confused with the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, and both movies follow horn-rimmed sad sacks who feel trapped in the peculiar quicksand of 1960s Americana.   Colin Firth navigates the simultaneous numbness and volatility that mourning […]

Michael Cera: Born to Revolt?

Before Youth in Revolt became a movie, it was the first book in C.D. Payne’s popular six-novel series, known collectively as The Journals of Nick Twisp. Its partisans likely will find the film disappointing, but the rest of us should have a good time.    Rebel without a clue: Michael Cera plays up his mean […]

Here we go again

 “American Idol” Tuesday-Wednesday 8pm, Fox The big news for Season 9 is, of course, the departure of Paula Abdul from the judging panel. The four-person panel definitely wasn’t working—a number of last year’s episodes ran over because of the judges’ ceaseless prattling—but Paula wasn’t the problem. She might have been totally incoherent and hopelessly uncritical, […]